Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [99]
Francie nodded. “But like him, the one thing we never had was what money couldn’t buy. Love and friendship.”
Later that night as she tossed restlessly in bed, thinking of Lai Tsin and his story, Francie clasped her hands to the unborn child fluttering in her belly, and she vowed that the one thing in life her baby would never be short of was love.
CHAPTER 22
The very next morning Lai Tsin spoke to Francie about his idea. “Other merchants are already selling the same goods,” he told her. “I must offer better prices, newer things, or lose my advantage. Therefore I must cut out the agents and the middlemen and buy direct from Shanghai and Hong Kong and ship the goods myself. And not just to San Francisco, but to New York, Chicago, Washington, all of America. And I will not buy just goods for the immigrant Chinese, but more important things that will appeal to the gwailos: silks from Hunan, carpets from Persia, ancient silver, bronze mirrors and antique ebony chests, fine paintings and screens and porcelain. My future as a merchant lies not only with my own countrymen but with the world. But gwailos will not do business with a Chinese. A company bearing the name of Lai Tsin is valueless. But with you as my Western partner, everything is possible.”
Francie looked at him, puzzled. He was a man of mystery—she knew him and yet she didn’t. Maybe she never would know the real Lai Tsin. Yet he had become her guide in life and she trusted him completely. She was so excited he’d asked her to be his business partner that she wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him, but Lai Tsin always kept a respectful distance between them and she knew she could never violate that code. “I am privileged to be your partner, Lai Tsin,” she said simply.
And that night after supper, as the wind howled like a wolf outside the little wooden ranch house and the first flakes of snow flung themselves against their windows and the pups snored in front of the blazing fire, Lai Tsin continued his story.
He told them that they were only a couple of days out to sea when he realized that the ship’s cargo was not tea, but men.
He said, “The hold was filled with coolies heading, like me, for the Gold Mountain. None of them had entry papers and all of them had paid the captain large sums to smuggle them into America. After a while they were allowed up on deck, and grateful to be out of the filthy, crowded hold, they spread out their worldly possessions: their grass bedmats, their padded quilts, and their treasure pillows, and immediately took out the cards and the maj-jongg tiles. They lit incense and kowtowed to the gods, and began to gamble, breaking off only to pick up their chopsticks and shovel rice into their mouths as fast as they could, or to smoke a pipe of opium, and occasionally, to sleep.
“In between my duties for the captain, endlessly running between the galley and the bridge carrying food, emptying his slops and scrubbing out his cabin, I assisted the cook, washed the dishes, helped stoke the big roaring boilers with coal, sluiced the decks and tried to keep out of the way of the drunken crew. And I watched the gambling. I already knew maj-jongg, but now I studied it intently. I watched the fan-tan, a game played with beans, and pai gow, which is Chinese dominoes, and many different complex card games, and soon knew I could win. But I had no money with which to play.
“When the ship suddenly ran into a typhoon it was every man for himself. The coolies were thrust into the hold and the hatches battened down. The captain stayed at the wheel, cursing and swigging whiskey as the ship lurched through mountainous green waves, tossing like a cork on the boiling foam at the top and sliding with a sickening lurch down a Niagara of water, only to be swamped at the bottom by the next enormous wave. The terrified crew hid themselves, waiting for their fate. Their cries were as loud as the coolies’