The Edge of the Earth (13 page)

CHAPTER 17

W
HEN I’D MARCHED
a good distance up the beach, the steady rush and retreat of the surf, together with my own exhaustion, began to soothe me. I slowed my pace and took notice of my surroundings.

Almost at once a sea star presented itself, stranded on the sand by a wave. I picked it up and balanced it on my palm. It seemed alive, its body not light and stiff like the ones in our schoolroom, but heavy and surprisingly fleshy. Such a strange creature, and yet its five arms were so like my five fingers. Over a year before, I had dissected a starfish in Miss Dodson’s biology class. I remembered the smell of the oiled wooden floors of Gruber Hall and the wash of the bright morning sun. I’d cut along the creature’s underside, as Miss Dodson had indicated, and duly observed the means by which the animal took food directly into its stomach without the intermediary of throat or esophagus. Miss Dodson limped from girl to girl, a magnifying glass in a leather pouch at her hip, her gold locket tucked into her blouse so that it wouldn’t swing and knock against the specimens.

“You see the madreporite, Miss Schroeder?” she’d asked, touching a small circle at the center of the star with her ink-stained finger, the place where the animal let seawater into its body. I’d nodded and noted all the structures, but the creature had been only the peculiar basis of an exercise to me; I couldn’t conceive of it as a living being. And yet here it was, far more at home than I. I drew back my arm and hurled it as far into the ocean as I could, hoping to give it a chance to survive.

I wondered if Miss Dodson had ever seen a sea cradle or a nudibranch, the real live animals, not just pictures in a book.

∗ ∗ ∗

The valleys and the soft hills of California had been thick with oats and fruits and, finally, humanity again. In Oakland, we were met by a good old steam tug and ferried across the bay to San Francisco. The dock at night was a confusion of shadows and shouts. Men stalked up and down, swinging lanterns, and women, terrified lest their children tumble into the bay, swatted little ones behind their skirts. Dazed by the people who seemed to swoop around me from all directions, I clung to Oskar’s arm as he arranged with a Chinese pushing a wheelbarrow for the transportation of our trunk and consulted with a colored man about the location of our hotel.

I waited for a long time in a tin-ceilinged lobby while he talked to the man behind the desk. At last he turned to me, shaking his head. “We can’t stay here.”

Though Oskar spoke matter-of-factly, I was alarmed. “We wrote ahead. I’m sure we reserved a room.”

He shrugged. “They say there’s no place for us.”

“But what should we do? Where should we go?”

“The porter says he’ll store our trunk for us. I think we’d better do it. We can’t afford to have it trundled all over the city, and who knows where we’ll end up? We can come get it tomorrow.”

Who knows where we’ll end up? That wasn’t encouraging, and, indeed, although we passed several other hotels, he barely glanced at them.

“What’s wrong with these?” I asked, finally.

“We haven’t got the money for these places. That parlor car wasn’t free, you know!”

“You mean we couldn’t afford it?”

“I paid for it, didn’t I? I wouldn’t say we couldn’t afford it.”

“Now we’ll have to lie down on the street? I would far rather have used the sleeping berths and had something left over.”

“Heavens, Trudy!” He put his arms around me. “We won’t have to sleep in the street. We’ll find a cheap room somewhere, and I’ll pawn my pocketknife in the morning. It’s only for a day or two, after all. In exchange for a little scrimping now, we had that wonderful parlor car all to ourselves. Wasn’t it worth it?”

I felt foolish and cowardly. “I’m sure you’re right.”

∗ ∗ ∗

In another two or three blocks, the hotels had become dark and shabby boardinghouses, and he said we might give one of them a try. The landlady, roused from her bed, came to the door without her teeth and with her hair tied up in rags. She led us up three flights of narrow stairs that smelled of damp and rodents to a room at the back. We wriggled out of our clothes in the tight space between the wall and the sagging rope bed and lay down on thin sheets turned edges to middle with a roughly sewn seam. Still, Oskar was merry, and I was easily infected with his optimism. He reached for me before my hair was properly undone, accidentally knocking my brush to the bare wooden floor in his impatience.

Breakfast—sour bread and weak coffee—was included. Even in the morning, the house was dark, although that was as much the fault of the weather as of the placement of the windows hardly three feet from the next building. Only one other lodger sat at the dining table, a man who stared in response to my “good morning” before going back to his newspaper. From my own seat, I glanced at the headlines—counts of troops boarding ships for Manila, a report of an opium raid.

Oskar nudged my arm and produced a little book from the pocket of his jacket. “Look what I found in our compartment.”

It was the guide to San Francisco. “You stole it?” I was more shocked than accusing.

“I’m sure we were meant to take it. What good does it do on a train?”

Outside was nearly as dark as inside, the sky gray and heavy, as if before a snow. I could feel droplets of water thick on my skin and in the fabric of my dress.

Oskar was ecstatic. “Feel the sea! We’re nearly walking in it!”

The landlady, who, once her teeth were in, had become a cheery woman with her gray hair in ringlets like a little girl’s, had recommended a pawnshop on the next street. At first the ease with which Oskar walked into the place and presented his knife to the proprietor reassured me. Then I considered the significance of his being familiar with such procedures.

The pawnbroker didn’t offer as much as Oskar had expected. “Pretty case, but out here,” he said, pressing his thumb to the blade critically, “they’re wanting something bigger. Not much call for apple paring and twig whittling.” He sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Maybe some woman will buy it.”

“How about this?” Oskar said. He produced our silver pickle fork.

The man turned it over. “Good. No monogram.”

He gave Oskar a few worn bills and pieces of silver. Oskar pushed the money deep into his pocket and looked carefully up and down the street before stepping out of the shop in a way that made me walk close to him until we reached Western Union.

We used some of the silver to send a telegram to my parents: arrived san francisco.

“That’s only three words,” Oskar pointed out. “You could say three times as much for the same money.”

I shook my head. Expressing my complicated feelings would require far more than six or seven extra words.

After much studying of the maps in the guide (I had to admit it was useful), we clambered onto a cable car—for which we had to spend more silver—and its thrilling, lurching ride, crawling up the hills and barreling down the other side, lifted my spirits again. Our stop was in a district of buildings made of shining white stone that were tiered like wedding cakes, but the address listed in Oskar’s letter didn’t correspond to any of the confections. His interview and exam—the means by which some unknown person or persons would determine whether he would suit as an assistant lighthouse keeper—would be in a low gray rectangle. I could see that whoever worked there would care for nothing but straight answers and strict adherence to rules.

The Customs Offices were just inside the door, as befitted their importance, and Philip spotted us at once. Since I knew no more about him than that Oskar’s father approved of him, I expected a youthful version of the great man (if such a being were possible), but Philip, a rumpled young man with a beaky nose and a large smile, was warm and welcomed us with a charming, self-deprecating manner.

“But you won’t be finished until five o’clock, you know,” he said apologetically to Oskar.

“That’s all right.” Oskar pulled the guidebook from his jacket. “Trudy’ll have a look at the city.”

Philip frowned. “I don’t think she should wander around on her own. I mean, she doesn’t know the first thing about the place. The wharves are pretty rough, for instance, and you never know about Chinatown.”

Oskar looked at me. “Stay off the wharves and away from Chinatown, all right?”

I giggled. “Yes, sir!”

Although I may have shared Philip’s trepidation, I dared not express it. In any case, I had no desire to spend my time in the Paris of the West sitting in our dirty little boardinghouse room. “I have the guide,” I said brightly.

“We’ll meet at the house at half past six,” Oskar said. “And we’ll take Philip somewhere to celebrate.”

The two of them went off down the corridor. I listened until their footsteps stopped and a door closed behind them. Then I took myself back out onto the street alone.

I spent the morning marching through the gloom on the most respectable, well-populated streets, gathering notes in my head for my letters, aware that I would enjoy the place more in the telling than in the somewhat tense experience. At the malodorous fishing docks, I turned west for a time and skirted the city, taking comfort in the water that was darker and greener but not so different from the water I knew well. Now that I wasn’t climbing, I had to walk briskly to stay warm—so strange to feel cold in July—and soon I turned inland to escape the chill and was faced with another hill.

When I reached the top, the sun at last broke through, and suddenly, the day was blue and clear, the air fresher than I’d ever experienced. To the west, in a vast open space, I spotted soldiers massing, rows of tents, and whole herds of horses. With a thrill, I understood that they were readying themselves to board a ship to the Philippines. The events of the wide world were shaping themselves before my eyes.

I watched them for a time and then began to walk in what I knew must be the general direction of our boardinghouse. The neighborhoods I traversed were ordinary in their makeup—the bakeries and butcher shops, greengrocers and saloons not so different from those in Milwaukee—but they seemed more interesting somehow, their signs more colorful, their wares more vibrant, simply by virtue of being in this place.

I walked up and down more hills, past brightly painted, shingled, and sometimes turreted houses, and then through some neighborhoods without any paint at all. I heard people speaking a language I thought must be Spanish or Italian; maybe I heard both. Confident of my direction and sure that I must be within a mile or so of our boardinghouse, I stopped consulting the guide. If I didn’t happen upon the right street, I could always get my bearings again or inquire. I wasn’t such a ninny that I couldn’t find my way home. I was pleased with myself and eager to tell Oskar about all I’d seen.

Then I made a mistake. I didn’t realize my error at first; the blocks along which I walked resembled those from which I’d come, the cobbled streets muddy, the houses two-story wooden structures. It was the writing on the signs that first caught my attention, slashing lines, jumbles of sticks and rods, more foreign to my eye than Spanish or Italian could ever be.

I resisted as too embarrassing turning tail and going back the way I’d come. I thought I might go around a block and make my way back more subtly, but the narrowness of the next street, a sort of alley, discouraged me from that course. Anyway, I wanted to see, so I walked on.

At first I was almost disappointed because the men—initially, I saw only men—might have been anyone, anywhere, at least when viewed from behind. They wore the same sack suits and bowlers as the men of Milwaukee or Chicago, although some had the flatter-crowned hat I’d grown used to seeing at the western depots. As I got deeper into the district, however, differences began to accumulate. More and more often, a long black pigtail hung down from under the hat brim, and sometimes the hat had no brim at all. And the women were wearing trousers! I began to see stiff black jackets, bright white stockings, old men in satin robes with fur collars, children with their heads shaved. I passed a table where two men sat drinking tea from little bowls; each had a nail on the fifth finger of his right hand several inches long, yellow and curved as a scimitar.

I saw a woman carrying a basket of curled eels, and a man shouldering a stick from which pairs of satin slippers hung like fish. I stopped to admire some bright globes, like miniature hot-air balloons, that dangled from under second-story balconies. How silly the Muncies were to fear these vivid people!

Someone bumped my shoulder. Stepping to catch my balance, I knocked against a woman carrying a bundle who scowled and spat syllables that hit me like slaps and made me blush. On my right was another dark, narrow lane, off of which a door opened, and I thought of the newspaper article I’d seen at breakfast about the raid on an opium den. Our teachers had frightened us with stories about those dim, foreign holes with their depraved and addled customers, lolling upon soiled mattresses and sucking at pipes, the mouthpieces of which, “you can be sure, are never properly sanitized.” I realized with alarm that I might be standing beside such a place.

I became aware of words as harsh as crows’ caws in the air, along with pungent smells: garlic and animal fat, fish and cabbage, spices I couldn’t recognize, and something sweet and sharp at once.

A man smoking a thin cigarette smiled at me, and I looked quickly away to avoid meeting his eyes. How many Chinese there were! It was as if I’d entered Peking itself. How much farther did this district extend? Ought I to go on or go back? This time I did try a side street, but it led to a louder, more crowded, more Chinese street to the south. Or was it east? Although I turned over every page of the guidebook—as discreetly as I was able—I could find no mention of Chinatown.

When at last the signs above the shops began to appear in English, I hurried along for some blocks, anxiety pressing me on, and then, as my fear drained away, I wished I could stop somewhere and rest. I’d been walking all day with nothing to eat except that bit of bread at breakfast. There was no place suitable, however. There was no green park in which I might relax; nor, even had I the money—which I did not, Oskar had it all—was there a café in which to spend it. There were saloons, but I couldn’t go into those alone, not even to ask directions.