THE THIRD CIRCLE {Stories}

 

 

 

There's more to San Francisco's Chinatown than you can dream of in heaven and earth. Actually, Chinatown is divided into three parts: the one that the guides show, the one that they don't show you and the one that no one has ever heard of. This story has to do with that last part. A lot of them could be written about that third circle of Chinatown, but, believe me, they will never be written—at least until the neighborhood has been, as it were, drained of the city, as a fetid bog is dredged, and then we can see the strange and fearful life that is stirring down there, oozing deeply—  that crawls and writhes through the mud and darkness. If you think this is not true, ask a Chinese detective (the usual patrol is not to be trusted) and ask him to tell you the story of the Lee On Ting case, or what they did to old Wong Sam, who thought he could end the trafficking of enslaved girls, or why Mr. Clarence Lowney (a Minnesota priest who believed in direct methods) is now a "dangerous" inmate of the State Asylum... Ask them to explain why Matsokura, the Japanese dentist, came home faceless... Ask them to tell you why Little Pete's killers will never be discovered, and tell them to tell you about the little slave Sing Yee or—no, on second thought, you can spare that story.

The story I'm going to tell you here began about twenty years ago, in a See Yup restaurant in Waverly Place -demolished a long time ago-, but I don't know where it will end. I think it is still going on. It began when young Hillegas and Miss Ten Eyck (they were from the East and had become engaged) went to the restaurant Las Setenta Lunas late in the night of a March day. (It was the year after Kearney's downfall and the subsequent bewilderment of amateur baseball players.)

"What a beautiful, picturesque, and ancient place!" cried Miss Ten Eyck.

He settled into an ebony stool with a marble seat, and laid his gloved hands on his lap, looking around at the huge hanging lanterns, the engraved golden screens, the lacquerware, the inlay, the stained glass, the dwarf oaks planted in satsuma pots, the marquetry, the painted mats, the metallic jars of incense,  tall as a man's head, and all the grotesque trinkets of the East. At that time there was not a soul in the restaurant. Young Hillegas pulled up a stool to sit in front of her and rested his elbows on the table, throwing his hat back and pulling out a cigarette.

"It's as if we were in China itself," he said.

"As if?... - she replied. We're in China, Tom... In a little piece of China transplanted here. Even though all of America and the nineteenth century are just around the corner! Scope! You can even see the Palace Hotel from the window. And beyond, above the roof of that temple, the Ming Yen, I can see Aunt Harriett's rooms.

"Well, look, Harry"—Miss Ten Eyck's first name was Harriett—"let's have tea.

"Tom, you're a genius!" It will be a lot of fun! Well, of course you have to have tea. What a laugh! And you can even smoke, if you feel like it.

"This is the way to know places," said Hillegas, as he lit a cigarette. Stick your nose out there without anyone watching you and discover things. The guides have never brought us here.

-No, they never have. And I wonder why. We have had to find it alone. So it's ours, isn't it, honey, for having discovered it.

At that moment Hillegas was convinced that Miss Ten Eyck was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. There was a great delicacy in her—an undoubted elegance in her custom-made dress, as well as in the scarcely perceptible inclination of that new hat which enhanced her charm. She was pretty, no doubt, possessed that fresh, vigorous, and wholesome beauty which is found only in certain specimens of genuine American stock. Suddenly, Hillegas stretched out his arm on the table, took her by the hand, and kissed the small round lump of flesh that lay uncovered where the glove was buttoned.

The Chinese waiter appeared to take their order, and while they waited for tea, dried almonds and pieces of watermelon, the couple approached the balcony that faced the outside to contemplate the darkening streets.

"There is the soothsayer again," observed Hillegas. See? Down there, on the steps of that stage.

-Where? Oh yes, I see.

"Let us bring him up, shall we, let him give us his fortune while we wait."

Hillegas yelled for him to come and eventually got the man into the restaurant.

-Golly! "You are not Chinese," said Hillegas when the soothsayer placed himself under the circle of light of the lantern. The other showed him some brown teeth.

"Half Chinese, half Kanak.

"Kanak?"

"Like in Honolulu, you know?" My mother, Mrs. Kanaca, washed sailors' clothes back in Kaui. And he laughed as if he had just explained something funny.

"Well, I'll call you Jim," said Hillegas. I want you to give us good fortune, you know? What is going to happen to the lady? Who are you going to marry, for example?

-No future... Tattoos.

-Tattoos?

-Only tattoos. All birds. Three, four, seven, many little birds in a lady's arm. What? Do you want a tattoo?

He pulled a tattoo needle out of his sleeve and pointed it at Miss Ten Eyck's arm.

"Tattoo my arm?" What an idea, though it might be funny, right, Tom? Aunt Hattie's sister came back from Honolulu with a beautiful butterfly tattooed on her finger. I partly feel like doing it. And it would be so eccentric and so original...

"Well, let him do it on your finger, then." If it is on your arm, you will never be able to wear an evening dress.

-Of course. I can get a ring-shaped tattoo, and I can always cover it with the glove.

The Chinese-Kanak drew a fantastic-looking butterfly on a piece of paper with a blue pencil, licked the drawing a couple of times, and wrapped it around Miss Ten Eyck's little finger, the little finger of her left hand. When he detached the wet paper, the imprint of the drawing was imprinted on it. Then he poured the ink into a small seashell, dipped the needle into it, and within ten minutes he had finished the tattoo of a small, grotesque insect that could be a butterfly as well as anything else.

"That's it," said Hillegas, when the work was finished and the soothsayer had gone. It's already yours, and it will never vanish. Now you better not plan a small robbery, or forge a check, or strangle a baby to keep his coral necklace, because you can always be identified by that butterfly on the little finger of your left hand.

"I almost regret having let it happen. Will he never leave? Golly! "But I really find it very chic," said Harriett Ten Eyck.

-But, well! Hillegas cried, jumping to his feet. Where are the tea, cupcakes, and so on? It is getting late. We can't spend the night waiting. I'm going to go find the boy and hurry him up.

The Chinese man who had placed his order was not on that floor of the restaurant. Hillegas went down the stairs in the direction of the kitchen. There didn't seem to be a soul in that place. On the ground floor, however, where they sold tea and wild silk, Hillegas found a Chinese man who was making beads using some balls strung on wires. The Chinese man in question was a very good-looking guy who sported round tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and a dress that looked like a dressing gown, made of quilted blue satin.

"Hey, John," Hillegas told him. I want some tea, do you hear me? Up. Restaurant. Tell it to the Chinese waiter, who doesn't even show up with gunshots. Let's see if you get going, okay?

The merchant turned and looked at Hillegas over his glasses.

"Ah," he said slowly. I regret the delay. Without a doubt they will attend to you right now. New to Chinatown?

-Ahem..., well, yes... I—we are, yes.

"Without a doubt—without a doubt!" murmured the other.

"I suppose you are the owner, aren't you?" Hillegas ventured to ask.

-I? Oh, no! My agents have a silk house here. I think they rent the upper floors to the See Yup. By the way, we just received a batch of Indian silk shawls that you might like to see.

She spread out a bunch of shawls on the counter and selected one that was especially beautiful.

"Allow me," he remarked solemnly, "to offer it to you as a present for your distinguished companion.

Hillegas felt that his interest in this extraordinary oriental was awakened. I was looking at an aspect of Chinese life that I had never seen or even suspected. He stayed for a while talking to this man, whose attitude might have been that of Cicero before an assembly of the senate, and said goodbye to him after agreeing that he would visit him the next day at the consulate. He went back to the restaurant and found that Miss Ten Eyck was gone. He never saw her again. Not him or any other white man.

I have a friend in San Francisco who goes by the name of Manning. He's a wanderer of the Plaza—that is, he sleeps all day in the old Plaza, that crowd where so much human waste has gone—and at night he goes about his business in Chinatown, a block up. Manning was once a scuba diver looking for pearls on Oahu, and now, since his eardrums burst on one of his dives, he can smoke from both ears. That achievement was the first thing that made me like him, but then I discovered that I knew more about Chinatown than is usual and even prudent to know. The other day I bumped into Manning in the shadow of Stevenson's ship, recovering from the effects of a binge of undiluted gin, and I told him, or rather reminded him, of the story of Harriett Ten Eyck.

"I remember," he said, leaning on one elbow and chewing grass. A good mess was made at the time, but nothing was ever known... Nothing more than a good mess and they also killed one of the Chinese detectives in the Gambler's alley. The See Yups specially brought an uncle from Beijing to take care of the matter.

"A hitman?" I asked him.

"No," Manning said, spitting greenish. It was a two-knife Kai Gingh.

-And that?

"Two knives—one in each hand—" You cross your arms and then you put them together, right and left, like scissors... He almost split that guy in two. They paid him five thousand. After that, detectives said they couldn't find a single clue.

"And of Miss Ten Eyck nothing was heard from again?"

"No," Manning replied, nibbling on his nails. They took it to China, I suppose, or maybe to Oregon. That kind of thing was a novelty twenty years ago, and that's why the one that was put together was put together, I suppose. But now there are a lot of women who live with Chinese and everyone doesn't care, even if they are Chinese from Canton, the lowest class of coolies. One of them lives in Saint Louis Place, just behind the Chinese theater, and is Jewish. A very strange couple, the Hebrew and the Mongolian, and they have a boy with coppery curly hair who massages in a hammam. A curious gang, yes, and there are three other white women in a slave slum below Ah Yee's tanning salon. That's where I stock up on opium. They even speak a little English. It's funny: there's one that's mute, but if you get her drunk enough she lets loose a bit in English. I swear! I've seen her do it often—you can get her drunk until she starts talking. "I'll tell you something," Manning added, rising to his feet with effort. Now I'm going there to see if I can get some drugs. You can come with me and we'll take Sadie (her name is Sadie), put her up to the top, and ask her if she's heard of Miss Ten Eyck. "They've got a big business," Manning said as we drove over there. It's Ah Yee, those three women, and a policeman named Yank. They collect all the yen shee, that is, the residue that remains in the opium pipes, you know, and turn it into pills that they pass on as foreigners to the prisoners of San Quintín through someone they trust. When he arrives at the prison yard, the dose of drugs has risen from five dollars to thirty. When I was there, I saw a guy being stabbed for a pea-sized pill. Ah Yee gets the material, the three women turn it into pills and the policeman, Yank, passes it on to his cronies. Ah Yee is already a rich and independent man, and the policeman has a bank account.

-And the women?

"Those are slaves... Ah Yee's slaves! And they usually take a slap at the first change.

Manning and I found Sadie and her two companions four stories below the tanning salon, sitting cross-legged in a room the size of a large trunk. At first, I was convinced that they were Chinese, until my eyes became accustomed to the darkness that reigned in this place. They were dressed in Chinese style, but I quickly noticed that they had brown hair and a high bridge of their nose. They were making pills from the contents of a jug of yen shee that was in the center, on the floor, and they were moving their fingers with a speed that seemed horrible.

Manning spoke to them briefly in Chinese while lighting a pipe, and two of them answered him in genuine Canton sonsonnet: all vowels and not a single consonant.

"This is Sadie," Manning said, pointing to the third girl, who was silent.

I turned to her. He was smoking a cigar and occasionally spit through his teeth, as a man would. That woman was a fearsome-looking beast, wrinkled like a dried apple, her teeth blackened by nicotine, and her hands bony and prehensile like the claws of a hawk... But she was undoubtedly a white woman. At first, Sadie refused to drink, but the smell of Manning's gin can put an end to her objections: after half an hour, her loquacity was unstoppable. I can't say what effect alcohol had on his paralyzed organs of speech. Sober, she did not let go; drunk, she could emit a series of discreet bird chirps that sounded like a voice coming from the bottom of a well.

"Sadie," Manning said, blowing smoke from his ears, "what are you doing living in Chinatown?" You're a white girl. You'll have family somewhere. Why don't you go back to them?

Sadie shook her head.

"I prefer the Chinese," he said, in a voice so weak that one had to make an effort to understand it. Oh Yee is very good to us... There's plenty to eat, plenty to smoke, and all the yen shee we can handle. Oh, I'm not complaining.

"But you know you can get out of here whenever you feel like it, don't you?" Why don't you stop one day when you're out there? Go to the Sacramento Street Mission... They will treat you well there.

"Oh," said Sadie, absently, kneading a pill between the stained palms of her hands. I've been here so long that I've gotten used to it, I guess. I have nothing to do with white people. They would take away the yen shee and cigars, and that's pretty much all I currently need. If you dedicate yourself to the yen shee for a while, you end up not wanting anything else. Pass me the gin, will you? I'm going to faint from one moment to the next.

"Wait a little," I said, taking Manning's arm. How long have you been living with Chinese people, Sadie?

"Oh, what do I know. All my life, I intuit. I don't remember much from the past... Only fragments here and there. Where's that gin you promised me?

"Only fragments here and there?" I asked him. Can you remember how you embarked on this kind of life?

"Sometimes yes, and sometimes no," Sadie replied.

And suddenly, his head slung over his shoulder as his eyes closed. Manning shook her hard.

-For! For! she exclaimed, sitting up. I'm dying of sleep, don't you see?

"Wake up and stay awake if you can," Manning told her. This gentleman wants to ask you something.

"Ah Yee bought it from a sailor on a junk boat on the Pei Ho River," one of the women interjected.

"What do you say, Sadie?" I asked. Have you ever been on a reed in a river in China? Hey? Try to remember it.

"I don't know," she said. Sometimes I think so. There are many things I can't explain, but it's because I don't remember much in the long term.

"Have you ever heard of a girl named Ten Eyck..., Harriett Ten Eyck, who was kidnapped by some Chinese here in San Francisco, a long time ago?"

There was a long silence. Sadie stared straight ahead, her eyes wide open; the other women continued to make pills at a good pace. Manning watched the scene over my shoulder, still fuming from his ears; and then Sadie's eyes began to close, and her head tilted to one side.

"I've run out of cigars," he murmured. You said you'd bring me gin. Ten Eyck! Ten Eyck! No, I don't remember anyone with that name. His voice broke suddenly, and then he sighed. Hey, how did they do this to me?

He extended his left hand and I saw a butterfly tattooed on his pinky.

 

The end

Traslate Spanish to English by Paya Frank