“Well, I for one am very glad for this whore’s house,” I felt bound to say. “I don’t think you ought to be quite so ungrateful, and if James is such a prig—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“I don’t see Mrs. Haas thinking she’s too good to eat Tan’s roast beef.” I stopped, for just then I remembered that we’d finished the last of the roasts in the icebox on the first night.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Did you say Tan’s serving Rose’s beef?”
“Yes-yes. It seems that icebox of hers has endless meat.”
I looked out the window again. Lifang was handing Mrs. Sugarman’s boys two identical plates heaped with stew. The little vixen made a point of bowing as she took their money.
“Pie? Are you absolutely sure Tan didn’t barter for the beef too?” I tried to hide the urgency in my voice.
“No,” she insisted. “LowNaa and Tan were in the back garden cooking the roasts all night. I hear they have a secret recipe, famous in Shanghai. It’s meant to be delicious.”
As if summoned, the old man brought a fresh platter of grilled meat from the backyard to the kitchen at the curb.
“Where are you going?” Pie asked.
“Lie down, Pie,” I said. “Your cough sounds awful.”
“Are you going to stop Tan?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Across the road, in the park, soldiers were setting up rows of army-issued tents. The fire, torching the city behind us, was only a hill away.
I was more frightened of Tan than the fire. The fire I figured we could outthink.
“Tan!” I called to him from the top of Rose’s front stairs. I had no idea what I was going to say.
When Pearl Sugarman and her boys saw me, she pointed to her plate and nodded.
I saw a hint of a smile on Tan’s face as he came up the stairs carrying a cup of tea and a full plate. I waited till he got very close.
“Tell me,” I spat, “tell me you aren’t serving them horse.”
“Nah,” he huffed, but in no way denying it. He set the tea and plate on the stairs beside me—where I could plainly see he’d saved for me a leg of chicken from last night’s supper and a slice of potato pie and a sliver of corn bread—a meal decidedly not horse.
“Horse is dead.… But not so dead he can’t do. Look at these hungry people. This is good for them. Good for us.”
“Tan, have you no shame?” I asked, surprised to feel my anger quickly dissipate, replaced by more practical concerns. Having seen the world from Tan’s point of view, I couldn’t unsee it, and while I wasn’t about to admit that I agreed, I flicked my hand to show him that I was just as eager to move on.
He looked me over. I had the feeling he’d made a decision too, and that despite all I resented about him and him about me, we were somehow aligned. Slowly, reluctantly, he untied the silk purse from around his waist. “You the boss now?” He shrugged and handed me his purse.
I pinched the sack by its neck, as if it were stuffed with worms. I set it beside me on the stairs.
“How much did you keep?” I asked.
Tan shrugged.
“Show me.”
He glanced behind him, to see who was watching. Then he made a show of turning out his silk pockets. The few scant cents he’d saved for himself tumbled to the steps with a hollow ring. He picked them up, weighed them in his hand, and offered them to me.
I shook my head, and Tan returned the coins to his pocket.
“Lifang,” I said. “Where is she supposed to sleep? And the old man?”
Tan tipped his head in the direction of Rose’s basement—where his windowless, unheated cell awaited, a subterranean existence made up of dirt floors, a cot, a slop jar, and cast-off furniture.
I took the cup of tea in my hands, grateful for its warmth. I was trying to see the angles, to guess at what I could not see. I considered the blunt, steady sound of the ax that had fallen all night; I hadn’t wanted to think what it could be. I had wanted them to bury General so I didn’t have to feel guilty. I wanted Tan to take care without bothering me.
I looked Tan in the eye. “Even so, you have to stop. Do you hear me? Serve them—I don’t know—beans and rice. There’s plenty in the larder.”
He shrugged as if to say, why, when there’s so much horse?
We never finished that conversation. While we were talking, a series of blasts shook the air. General Funston and his army were creating firebreaks throughout the city. They were blowing to smithereens the mansions along Van Ness Avenue, in the hopes that they could stop the blaze from jumping the wide boulevard and gobbling Pacific Heights.
The steady boom was worse than the quake aftershocks—every five minutes Funston’s troops set off another blast.
The army had taken the dynamite from the Chinese but never thought to ask which dynamite to use. It turned out there were hundreds of varieties. The Chinese had fireworks for funerals and weddings, and for knocking down buildings—as many kinds of dynamite as spices in Tan’s jars. Funston’s troops had seized granulated dynamite: gunpowder, the most highly combustible. For every block the soldiers leveled in an attempt to stop the fire, they created new blazes, the sparks hopping from roof to roof.
The owners of the mansions along Van Ness were given just forty-five minutes to clear out, before the horn sounded and their houses exploded with their art and valuables inside.
Van Ness was just two blocks east of Rose’s house.
“Saaa,” Tan hissed as yet another blast exploded behind us. Rose’s house shivered. Tan glanced at the roof, to see what might fall on our heads—or perhaps just on my head.
I wasn’t about to show that anything scared me. I picked up the plate and started eating. I was famished.
Tan nodded, eyebrows raised;
