Peter Davies - The Fortunes

Crocker told him Strobridge, his foreman, had hired “fifty Celestials” the very next morning. “You’re a credit to your race, my boy.” (And to Crocker, it seemed; he’d won a tidy wager with Stanford in the process, he confided cheerfully.) It felt like a vindication to Ling. Tanka were looked down on by the Han Chinese, Eurasians viewed with suspicion. Yet here he was proving himself the best of them. It was the Year of the Ox, of hard work. He went about his duties in the Crocker home, even his ironing, with greater gravity, as if every load of laundry lifted required stiff-backed dignity.

Ling had boasted to Little Sister about his new significance. They were lying together after coupling, her head on his chest so that he felt he was breathing for them both — a fleeting tenderness she might end at any moment, since it wasn’t part of her price, and which he tried to draw out with talk.

“Credit to your race?” She twisted her neck to eye him. “How do you spend that?”

He tried to settle her, stroking her hair, but now it seemed as if he were pushing her away with each inhalation.

“Besides, what’s he pay these new workers?”

Ling had to admit that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.

“No head for business, lah,” she berated him, sitting up.

“As if you have!” He’d been teasing, reaching for her, but her eyes sparked.

“What do you think? I have an ass for business, tits for business only?” Slapping at those parts, and not gently.

And she told him the story of Ah Toy, the first Chinese courtesan in California, so beautiful— ho leng —men paid just to look at her. “Her face, I mean!” Little Sister shook her head at the wonder of it. “And you know what she did with her money? Bought her own brothel!” she added approvingly. “Now that’s what I’d do if I could.” She brightened suddenly. “That’s what we could do if you get more than credit! Sure. You make enough money, buy a brothel, I’ll run it for you. Partners! ” She said the last in English and he’d laughed it off, but later, walking back to Crocker’s through the quiet streets, he’d whispered the word to himself over and over, as if correcting her: Pardners.

7.

He was improving his English, training his tongue to roll his r ’s so that Crocker didn’t sound like Clocker. He lingered at the door when the little Crockers — Master Fred, Miss Harriet (his favorite: she was fascinated by his queue. How long did it take to grow? she asked once, wide-eyed), and little William — were at their lessons, and forced himself to practice his English when on errands, wincing to hear other Chinese with their accented Engrish and Melican. Several times he leaned in to “interpret” between a countryman and a white, easing the way, as he saw it, and setting a good example.

But one morning he came across a stooped Chinese in a standoff with a blowzy ghost woman. She was barring his way on the boardwalk, a knot of passersby tangling around them.

“Go on!” the woman was demanding, her face ruddy. “Cat got your tongue?”

“More like t’other way round,” someone hollered from the crowd.

It was the laughter that made Ling worm his way to the front.

“May I be of assistance?” he offered soberly, but the woman regarded him with frank repugnance—“’arken to ’im!”—fanning herself with her hand as if to shoo him away.

Up close, she reminded him of Bridey, albeit much reduced, hair wild beneath her bonnet, face chapped and wan. He almost called her by name, yet she didn’t seem to know him, and he thought he must be mistook.

Instead he quietly asked the other fellow in Cantonese what was going on, but the wretch only shrugged. “The mistress turned her down for a job. Now she blames me!”

“W’as he say?” the woman demanded of Ling, lurching between them. “W’as ’is answer?”

“Let it be,” the other Chinese muttered, eyes down.

“Sing-song,” the woman jeered. “Bing-bong, ning-nong-nang!”

“What is it you wish to know?” Ling asked punctiliously.

“Just this! What’s so blasted special about him, eh? About your lot, that they hire you afore me and mine?”

Ling stared at her blankly, as if it were a trick question, as if she couldn’t see they were Chinese. He remembered how Uncle Ng dealt with untoward customers, giving no indication of understanding, smiling and chattering away in Chinese — insults mostly — until they threw up their hands. Ling regretted it was too late for him to take the same tack.

He tried to leave instead, turning away from her, and she yanked his queue, snapping his head back so hard he bobbled the package he was holding. But it was the laughter — even the other Chinese smirked — more than anything that set him off. He whirled on her, snatching his hair away, causing her to fall back.

“Unhand me, you trollop!”

There was an appalled hush, broken only by the woman’s choked sob.

“Couldn’t even get hired for that, damn you!” Too late he grasped how drunk she was. “Chinks even got that market cornered.”

The other Chinese made to bolt, there was a scuffle of boots on boards, and Ling felt hands laid on him. He struggled, but then he heard the cold snick of a blade being drawn, felt the bright line of it at his throat, and went limp.

“What do you want us to do with them, darling?” he heard someone drawl over his head, but the young woman was inconsolable, hurrying off in tears.

The tears were coming to Ling’s eyes too. A hand was pulling his head back by the queue so that his neck was bared, the knife so hard against his Adam’s apple he didn’t think he could swallow. The pain from his scalp was excruciating. He felt a fumbling behind him and then he was released, the knife scraping his chin as it withdrew so that he touched the spot at once, as if feeling for a shaving cut, in case he bled into his collar. But when he started to move off he felt his hair pulled again. Twisting, he found himself face-to-face with the other Chinese, their queues knotted tight together.

“A real pair of Siam twins!” someone ballyhooed.

Ling tried to turn away again, but the other man set off in the opposite direction and almost pulled Ling off his feet. The crowd howled.

“This way,” Ling hissed.

“No, this!”

And now when they set off, they clashed, the brim of the man’s hat catching Ling above the eye.

“Let me—” Ling began, picking at the knot before it got any tighter, but the man slapped his hands away.

“Who asked you to interfere? You’re asking to be kicked!”

“Son of a dog!” Ling snapped back.

The other man raised his leg — as if to stamp, Ling thought — and drew a gleaming cleaver from his boot top. Ling closed his eyes, braced himself for the blow.

He felt himself struck, a momentary searing pain, and then nothing.

“Scalped him, by God!” he heard someone hoot. “Bloody savages!” And when he opened his eyes he saw the other Chinese holding up a severed queue like a snake. Ling only recognized it by the royal blue ribbon at the end, given him by Miss Harriet.

He tried to snatch it back, but the fellow jerked away, Ling’s queue still knotted to his own, trailing in the dust.

Ling crooked his neck, felt the odd weightlessness, then shook his head more swiftly. It felt like it might fly off altogether, and he stopped, suddenly dizzied. Golden motes of dust kicked up in the melee and lit by the sun swirled around him.

“Quite the queue-riosity, you might say,” some wag joked. “A rat without his tail.”

“Go on with you,” another of the ghosts said, not ungently, and Ling nodded — once, as he meant to, and then two, three times, as if his head were loose on his neck. He put a hand there and felt the thick, loose brush of hair at his nape. It ran like water through his fingers. Like a mane, he thought. A breeze stirred across his shoulders, and then he was running, chasing the other Chinese, heedless of the blade flashing in the man’s hand, his own queue skittering ahead of him just out of reach. He could have caught it too — the running came effortlessly, as it seemed to him, as if he were flying, with no flailing weight of hair at his back — but what was the point? They were approaching Chinatown, but at the end of an alley he veered off from the chase, headed back to Crocker’s instead, still running, as if untethered, with nothing to hold him back.