We passed the church there. An old woman in rags, her shoulders rounded, her gait stiff, was slowly, painfully climbing the church steps. I wondered if she was sick, or perhaps in debt to the Haj too, or maybe she was just religious—all seemed equally likely. I wondered if she’d committed a crime and had come to repent.
Well, I, for one, didn’t feel repentant. I was en route to my new life—on a mission to save Morie and Pie, to save myself. I never once considered the possibility that Rose would refuse me.
It was hard going for General to climb Nob Hill. The buggy lumbered with the horse’s effort. I held my breath until at last we reached the peak where the road evened out—on top of what all of us natives referred to as Snob Hill. Picking up speed, General trotted past the palaces of Stanford, Huntington, Crocker, Hopkins, the mansions clustered like small countries bordered by iron gates. I thought: One day I’ll live this high and owe no one.
But no sooner had we climbed than we started going down—down the treacherously steep grade that marked the approach into Chinatown. The buggy pitched forward and I was tossed to the floor.
General whinnied with terror. Horses routinely lost their footing on that hill. Going up was hard, but going down was bare-knuckles. One badly placed hoof, a too-heavy carriage, and the horse and buggy would crash. General was neither young nor nimble; he protested, snorting and arching his neck. Tan talked to him in Cantonese, his voice low and calm. The buggy rocked side to side with each of General’s cautious steps.
My dress was dusty, and I’d skinned my knee. I climbed onto the seat and struggled to hang on. We entered Chinatown—five square blocks packed with twenty thousand Chinese.
I’d never been there either. And since I believed most of what I read in the papers, the recent outbreak of bubonic plague in Chinatown having been heavily trumpeted, as was the story of its underground zoo, I was predisposed to think of Chinatown as barren, haunted by tigers and vermin.
Well, I saw no tigers. Just throngs of Chinese packed in the brackish alleys and narrow streets. I saw no women. The few children, dressed like tiny emperors, were chasing each other through the doorways of the shops, while the men in the same black tunics that Tan wore puffed on their long pipes, their black bowlers and conical hats tipped back to take in the sun. I hadn’t anticipated the bustle. Or the grimy alleys and blacked-out windows of the opium dens—in easy reach of the carriage. I hadn’t imagined there would be so much life, from the overflowing bins of fruit and potatoes, to the stalls filled with trinkets and silk bags, to the butcher shop windows hung with fowl, their curled feet and droopy beaks, the live ducks strutting in straw cages, the crabs swimming in tanks of clouded water.
The girl was waiting on a corner, dressed like a bride. She looked up as we approached. The resemblance was unmistakable: a girl version of Tan. An elderly Chinese man stood beside her, his black garb hanging loose as if he’d recently been ill. The old man raised himself up, at attention, the moment he spotted Tan driving the coach.
Tan whoaed General to halt, reached under his bench, and handed the girl a sack. She passed it to the old man. Then Tan took hold of her thin wrist and hauled her onto the bench. That was it. The old man disappeared among the black hats. Tan rolled the whip across General’s rump and on we went.
Why her? I wanted to know, feeling jealous and irked to have to share my ride to The Rose.
As if reading my mind, Tan flicked his whip, sending its popper, the hard leather knot at the end, flying through the air to land with a loud crack on the carriage roof. I shuddered as if struck. This way, Mr. Elegance silenced me.
We plowed through the knotted traffic at Portsmouth Square, straight on, each block of the Barbary Coast seedier than the last: the joss houses and saloons, the pawnshops, the dance halls with billboards overhead of girls doing the cancan.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, downtime for the brothels and bars. Along the dirt-packed streets, things were quiet, with many of the joints shuttered, their doors and windows filthy with dust, their signs casting long shadows in the street.
Now we passed the truly sordid joints, the infamous Nymphia with a hundred and fifty cubicles on each of its three stories; on past the cribs and cow yards where customers weren’t allowed to remove their shoes. Here were the joints where the music blasted from gramophones and customers routinely had their pockets picked; where thugs were hired to shanghai the unsuspecting, who awakened to find themselves chained in the belly of China-bound ships; where, in the worst of the worst, the wretched cribs, a prostitute might be forced to withstand scores of tricks in a single night.
How could this be the nexus of The Rose? I didn’t want to believe it. I feared that it was a trick, that Tan was taking me to some new hell. I was about to bang on the window and protest when we passed a row of brick buildings, one with an unmarked, glossy black door. Above the door, hanging from iron fancywork shaped like a woman’s outstretched arm, a sign painted with a single red rose.
Tan drove to the far end of the block, to the Hippodrome dance hall, where a pair of women were lazily leaning on the open Dutch door. Their dyed hair was crimped, their lips painted, their eyes ringed with kohl. Their blouses were cut where the bodice would have been, exposing their breasts. They were chatting lazily with the girls next door at the Bear. But when Tan steered General to the curb, they fell silent.
Tan
