Love and Other Consolation Prizes(81)
Mr. Turnbull kept talking, rambling, drumming his fingers on his desk as he spoke. “Ever since my late wife, Millie, left this world, I have been…consumed with Flora Nettleton, despite her being the Mother Jones of madams—you know, the wrinkled old bird who likes to chirp, ‘Women don’t need the vote to raise a little hell.’ Well, maybe Mother Jones is right though, because Madam Flora is one heck of a woman.” The man stroked his beard and took a deep, clarifying breath. “Pity that she’s so unavailable now. She was a smart one though, perhaps the smartest woman I’ve ever known. That’s why I’m not surprised she cornered the market on you that day at the AYP.”
Ernest began to wonder what Maisie might be doing downstairs. Perhaps she was outside, kicking the tires of the motorcar by now.
“The point that I’m trying to make,” Mr. Turnbull said, “is that I wanted to meet you in person, to see the good things—the promise, in a young man like yourself, especially from someone of such humble, provincial beginnings.”
“Because I was won at the fair?” Ernest asked. He couldn’t understand where this was heading.
“Not just that.” Mr. Turnbull laughed as though he’d been crystal clear and somehow Ernest hadn’t been paying attention. “I wanted to meet you—yes, you—because you came to this country as a lowly child from the Far East—from a territory that was rent asunder, torn apart by war, by rebellion.”
“Because I came from China?”
“Exactly. Now we understand each other. I called my executive secretary and had him look up the manifests at one of my offices this morning, and lo and behold.” Mr. Turnbull took another sip and then pointed at Ernest with his cup of coffee. “There’s a decent chance, young man, that you came over on one of my ships. What are the odds?”
Ernest opened his mouth, about to speak, and then closed it. His head spun, and lurid memories returned. Images of the unsavory men in China, the ship’s doctor, the blackbirders who’d passed themselves off as merchants, silk-clad girls in cages, Jun and the other boys who drowned after they were transferred to the care of smugglers.
“I was on a few of those voyages myself,” Mr. Turnbull said, as he casually tugged up his shirtsleeves, revealing a blur of faded ink.
Ernest remembered a morning in a cemetery.
Refugee children waking up.
Being herded away from his ruined village.
The sound of gunfire. A man in an elegant coat.
Louis J. Turnbull.
Ernest stared at the man as he kept speaking.
Louis J. Turnbull was the man who was not my uncle.
The rich man went on and on about his business ventures in the Orient, the ships he built, the fleet he owned, the precious cargo they’d carried.
Ernest could almost smell the smoke, the fetid mud, and his mother’s peculiar fragrance before she wandered off to die.
“Now look at you.” The man slurped his coffee as Ernest woke from his strange memory. “You’re an upright figure, a model citizen, as Western as can be. I know what you are thinking—that you should thank me…”
Ernest’s mouth hung open as spoken words vanished into the dull throbbing at his temples, the pulsing of his heart as he imagined hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, lied to, tricked, bought and sold, shipped overseas, offered to the highest bidder, indentured. While others were cast off, given away. Bodies bobbing on the surf like driftwood, flotsam and jetsam, women and children.
“If anyone, I should be thanking you, my young fellow,” Mr. Turnbull continued. “I started off with lowly, penal colony riffraff from the darker parts of Australia and Fiji, but Canton changed my fortunes.” He waved a hand, looking about the room. “All of this, everything I have, was built on the idea that despite the unfair labor laws, the damnable exclusion act designed to keep your kind out—bringing people like you to this country was a profitable, charitable, and even humanitarian transaction.”
To Ernest the man seemed so full of himself, his waistcoat looked ready to burst.
“Just seeing what has become of you”—Mr. Turnbull smiled broadly—“that’s all the thanks I will ever need. You’re living proof that my life’s work has been a noble adventure. Gold is folly, ships—they sail away. But fresh humanity, that is still the ultimate commodity.”
Ernest thought about Fahn, staggering home in the rain. He imagined all the girls like her, who never found someone like Madam Flora. And even Flora, succumbing to the tolls of her labors.
Ernest watched as Mr. Turnbull returned to his morning paper.
The man spoke without looking up. “And now John D. Rockefeller Junior has retired to become a full-time philanthropist.” He turned the page. “Meanwhile half a world away, China has abolished slavery. How about that? If you ask me, it sounds like the slaves have broken their chains of bondage on two shores.” He laughed to himself as he looked up. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I’m sure you can find your way out.”
Ernest left without saying goodbye. He was barely able to depart without grabbing the man and throttling him. But he’d be of no use to Maisie and Fahn in jail.
Beyond the elevator a servant showed Ernest to the door and down the steps to where he found Maisie next to the roadster, eyes closed, sunning on the grass, legs crossed, arms spread, her fingers amid the clover. When Ernest’s shadow fell on her, she opened her eyes and squinted up at him. “He told you, huh?”