Chapter 36

La Paz had started as a small fishing village built around an inlet off San Francisco Bay. The inlet was fed by a creek which drained nearby portions of California’s Central Valley. Both the creek and the inlet were called La Cala Gato, which could mean either, or both, Cat Cove and Cat Creek. The inlet, in fact, was a protected cove, and it served as the berthing for the shallow draft fishing boats with which the villagers plied the south end of the Bay.

Here, in the year seventeen seventy-three, Franciscan Padre Junipero Serra established the mission he christened Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Our Lady of Peace. And there, in eighteen forty-eight, the Jesuits opened a teachers college which was first called the La Paz Normal and Technical School but which became, in eighteen sixty-four, La Paz College, and, in eighteen seventy-eight, La Paz University.

La Paz, itself, was still not much more than a village, though it now sported a small oyster cannery owned by the local fishing cooperative, and a bulk honey processing and packing plant, the center of a wide network of apiaries throughout the nearby farms, fruit orchards, and nut groves. Otherwise, it remained a generally sleepy town, its business district and neighborhoods laid out along meandering streets that followed the contours of the creek and shoreline. Those neighborhoods were, in turn, shaded by the cottonwoods and elms that grew along the bottom lands of La Calo Gato.

The University was on higher, more open ground, on the eastern edge of town, amidst irrigated farm fields. The University had subsumed the old Franciscan mission and its agricultural trade school, a school which the Franciscan friars had founded so they might teach conquered Indian tribes how to become farmers. Later, the Dominican priests, who had taken over from the Franciscans, added other trades to the curriculum, including carpentry, metal smithing, and commercial fishing, the latter course amounting to a study of small business management. The cannery cooperative grew from a project in that class. Finally, just before the Mexican-American War, the Jesuit order had been assigned to the La Paz mission. They began expanding the school almost immediately, by turning the trade school into a normal school, training teachers of those skills. The coincidence of the California gold rush allowed the Jesuits to find generous donors for the growing college.

The Southern Pacific tracks had been laid on the same higher ground. They formed the western border of the University campus and served as a dividing line between the campus and the town’s main business district. The depot was on Pacific Avenue, immediately across the tracks from the University’s main entrance.

Malik was most pleasantly surprised to see his old professor, Phillip Deering, Judah’s father, waiting on the platform. He’d already made arrangements for his car to be spotted on a yard siding about a half mile from the University, so he eagerly dismounted his car and approached Deering. That man looked as happy to see Malik and he opened his arms and the two men embraced.

“Emil, Emil, it’s so good to see you,” Deering sniffed through a mist of tears.

“I’m so happy to find you hale and hearty, Professor. I was so very, very sorry to hear about Missus Deering. She was a sweetheart.”

“Indeed she was. And thank you for the sentiment. But enough of sorrow. How are you? Really? I mean, is all going well in your life?”

“If one doesn’t count the unhappy events, then all is going very well. But, I too lost a wife and a best friend, over the last year-and-a-half. But, as you say, enough of sorrow. I’ve also gained a daughter. I think things are on the rise, generally speaking.”

“Then tell me of Judah. How is he doing?”

“Very, very well, in my estimation. But there is much to tell. First, though, come aboard my car. Allow me to introduce my companions.”

After supper at Deering’s home, Malik, Peng, and Deering were sitting on the professor’s front porch, enjoying the deepening twilight. Deering was in a rocking chair, Malik and Peng shared a porch swing, which was suspended from the ceiling by a creaking rope. Juniper and Stone Raven were exploring the campus. Lee Jin was on overwatch, somewhere in the gathering gloom.

“But what of this girl he is courting, this Mariel Kuiper? Do you know her?” Deering asked, a bit of worry creeping into his tone.

Malik smiled. “I know her quite well. She is the youngest daughter of my landlady, at a most hospitable boardinghouse, just south of town, the same one in which Judah resides. I’ve watched Mariel grow up. She’s a bright and comely young woman with a most pleasant disposition. She completed high school and is a talented seamstress and cook. She helps teach classes in both at the high school. I understand that Judah plans to bring her here at the New Year. After you meet her, I’m confident that you’ll be more than pleased with his court of Miss Kuiper.”

“She was engaged once before, Judah wrote,” Deering probed.

Malik looked grim. “She was. Bill Edwards, her intended, was a deputy sheriff and a deputy US marshal. He was a good friend of my brother and well-liked in town. Even as young as he was, there were many who would have supported him for sheriff. But he was ambushed and killed by members of a criminal gang, the leader of which also accounted for my good friend, Cowboy Tsosie, Juniper’s oldest brother.”

“I’m sorry for your troubles, Emil. My concerns for Judah must seem trivial.”

“Not at all, Professor, or I guess I should say Dean. You are a father. Now I know the feeling.”

“I can’t persuade you to call me Phillip, then?”

“I might, but it would take getting used to, and I prefer not to have that interference in our visit. Besides, becoming dean of the law school is quite the feather in your bonnet. I take pleasure in recognizing it.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have brought two such bright young men to the law school, instead of dumping them with those ‘ditch diggers’ in the engineering school.”

Malik shook his head and chuckled. “Ditch diggers, indeed. Those two think in numbers and mathematics. I’ve seen Juniper do calculations in his head that would have taken me a minute or two on paper. And both of them see patterns and solutions to problems that escape some of the smartest and most practical people I know. Stone Raven has likely saved his clan from seeing the end of their tribal community simply by seeing things from, literally, a different angle. I look forward to the day they have the tools and the knowledge of how to use them. I think it will be exciting.

“By the way, thank you, again, for help in their admissions.”

“Oh,” Deering said, waving a hand in dismissing his role. “It was my pleasure. As all of the deans make up the admissions committee, I was able to read all of the admission essays. Those two were top notch. There was some doubt that they had been written by two Indian boys raised on the frontier, but I assured the others that you were a scrupulous sponsor who would have brooked no charlatanism.”

“You’re quite right. I simply counseled them to write about themselves, why they wanted to attend college, and why they felt that college would be of value to their goals. What probably played most in their favor was that both of them had better than average educations, for their situations. Beyond that, they spent several months in private tutoring under the Jesuit headmaster of the local mission school.”

“Yes, I remember. His was a glowing endorsement, and having it come from another Jebbie didn’t hurt.”

“Jebbie?” Malik said.

“Ah, it’s a nickname some have begun using to refer to the Jesuits, more pejorative than affectionate, but it amuses the priests and they’ve co-opted the term for their own entertainment.”

Then Deering looked toward the floor and shook his head. Looking up at Malik, he said, “As a group, those Jesuit priests assigned here as professors are as smart as any I’ve encountered. But I think that ridiculous celibacy doctrine somehow retards their social development. They’re as bad as first year students when it comes to irresponsible high jinks. And when they’ve been drinking, well, people from your neck of the woods would say, ‘Katy, bar the door.’”

Malik looked skeptical. “What do you mean?”

The Professor grinned. “After spring term this year, when the students had left for the summer, the priests had their customary end-of-school-year dinner and celebration. At midnight, or so the report read, one of the night janitors had to dodge several goats running down a hall. Apparently, some of the good padres had borrowed some goats from the Agriculture Department’s pen in order to hold races to prove some point of mechanics that the ditch diggers had been arguing over.”

Peng just shook her head, but Malik was laughing. “Seriously?” he said. “Those priests were racing goats in a school building? No wonder you think they’re bereft of social grounding. When I was a first year, we thought simply releasing the goats into the berry patch was enough of an adventure.” Now Peng looked at Malik and shook her head, again.

Juniper and Stone Raven, apparently anxious to begin their college careers, had already moved into the tiny room they would share with two other students in one of four dormitories. The sleeping quarters were not an elaborate proposition. The University typically enrolled fewer than fifteen hundred students, and the three-story Benton Hall, the largest and newest dormitory, housed at least a third of them, with first year students being relegated to the upper floors. Upper classmen, that is, third and fourth year students, were permitted to live off campus, in boarding homes, rented apartments or houses, or at one of the four fraternal houses that had been established with the University’s acquiescence. Female students resided in the fourth dormitory, Kubring Hall. The dormitory was named in honor of Hedwig Kubring, one of the founders of the Sisters of Notre Dame du Sacre Couer, the order of nuns who taught elementary and secondary grades at the local La Paz parish school and who used the first floor of Kubring Hall as their convent residence and their provincial headquarters for the western United States. However, the women’s dormitory served secular as well as religious female students.

Despite La Paz University being a “Catholic” school, neither religious instruction nor religious worship was required, though both were strongly encouraged. Class credit in certain sociology courses was offered for attendance at Sunday mass. However, neither Juniper nor Stone Raven had been baptized or raised in any Christian tradition. Religious participation, except as a purely academic pursuit, was not on their planned course lists.

Nevertheless, it would have been a mistake for any student to misconstrue the University’s seeming spiritual laxity as a sign of moral leniency. Expulsion for immoral behavior -- which seemed not to include minor displays of public drunkenness -- tended to be swift and certain.

In lieu of leaning on her cane, Peng had her arm tucked into Malik’s for support, as they walked back to Malik’s rail coach along the edge of the dark switch yard.

As they walked, Peng said, without preamble, “I am not a virgin, Emil. I was raped a number of times while in service to the Dawn of Justice Society, more often by my own comrades, but twice by members of the Tiger Poppy Society.”

Malik patted her hand and said, “Your own people?”

Peng sighed. “There are two cultural barriers that complicate our relationship, Emil. One is ethnic in origin and the other is based in gender.

“As to the ethnic problem, even while females in this country have a lower status, in Oriental cultures it is more profound. Males represent economic stability, even for their aging parents. Females have value only until they produce a male child, otherwise they are a burden to a family. To gain a perspective of this debasement of the female, consider that it is not unknown that female newborns are left to die because male children are more valued. It is not a proud tradition, but neither is it unaccepted.”

“Parents simply leave their infant daughters to die?” Malik questioned.

“More often, they drown them,” Peng replied.

“Unbelievable,” Malik whispered, his own attachment to his daughter, Aspen, adding to his incredulity.

“Yet generally unremarkable there,” Peng said.

She squeezed his arm, then said, “As much as that ethnic difference might perplex you, Emil, I suspect that, even if you cannot fully comprehend it, you might be able to at least appreciate what it represents by way of our differing cultural experiences.

“On the other hand, the gap I suspect neither of us will ever bridge, is that which prevents us from the experience of living as the opposite gender.” She had slowed their walking pace as she spoke.

Then Peng went on, in a quiet but intense voice, “To be a female human being, anywhere that I know of, means that you not only always feel vulnerable but, in almost all instances, you are vulnerable -- to the men around you. Men, in turn, consider themselves, not just superior to women, but they also assume a position of authority over and even entitlement to, any woman who falls within their sphere of influence.”

Malik brought them to a halt and he looked at her as he said, “But surely not all...,” and his words trailed off into silence as his eyes focused, not on Peng, but on the dark middle distance of the rail yard.

After a few moments, Malik again looked at Peng, whose dark eyes he could discern in the moonless starlight. “You’re saying, even with me...?”

“Emil, ingrained superiority is an unconscious part of your male being, while vulnerability is a part of my female self, and it is more pronounced because of our different cultural immersions. I am confident that you do not intend to feel or act superior to women, and yet you do. Nor do I consciously put on the veil of insecurity and fear, yet it is a fact of my life as a woman. What I am saying is that, though we are wholly unconscious of those attitudes, yet they exist, and we take no notice of them, any more than we take notice of the weight of the atmosphere upon us.”

“Yes, I can see that. And it is the same with race, and other basic human differences,” he said. “I knew that, about race, about religion, and other human differences, but I had not thought how it might apply to gender.”

After a moment, he said, “And so your practice of Tai chi.”

She nodded. “In the major part, yes. I did not fully grasp it at the time I began to study Tai chi, but I wanted to feel less vulnerable in a world where men controlled everything, including women. I fought that control with both body and mind. Still, I could be overwhelmed by numbers and was violated by the multiplicity of male strength, some half dozen times. And even though most of those men died at the time of the assaults and afterward, nevertheless, I remained vulnerable to the attitude of men.”

Malik, a dispirited cast to his face, turned his eyes to the ground and shook his head. “You are right, though, Yan. Now that you have brought it to my attention, I can feel that attitude of superiority within me. It seems a natural part of my being,” he shrugged, “as unremarkable as standing upright or adding two plus two in my head.” He looked at her, “This is a terrible truth to learn of myself, thirty-four years into my life. And it is only more confounding and discouraging to realize its effect on the women around me, for whom I have the most sincere respect.”

Peng stepped closer to him. “I possess yet a more terrible truth, Emil,” she whispered. Her eyes looked downward, not meeting his gaze.

“Then tell me, Yan. It is a time for such revelations. Let us deal with them once and for all.”

Peng was breathing heavily. She glanced up at him but immediately returned her gaze to his torso. She trembled then tensed, as if readying herself to bolt.

He said, softly, “Tell me, Yan. You, more than anyone, know who I am.”

“Emil,” she said, in the quietest voice, “I want you to be superior to me, to control me, to own me. I want to be your servant. I want to belong to you.” Now she looked up at him and said, “Master.”

Malik looked shocked, then concerned. “Yan, are you...? Have I, uh ... have I done something that makes you doubt me? Doubt my love?” He could see that her eyes were filling with tears. He wrapped his arms around her, as they stood on the gravel between the yard siding and the nearby trees. “What is this all about, Yan? I don’t understand. Are you asking me to marry you?”

He could feel her sobbing in his arms. “No,” she gasped, “Not marry,” she sniffed, “I will not marry you.” Her shoulders began to shake and her sobs became audible. He held her tighter.

A small stone bounced off his shoe onto the ballast and Malik looked up to see Lee Jin about fifty feet away, across several tracks. The young bodyguard stood there, looking attentively at Malik. Malik shook his head slowly and waved the young man away with the fingers of the hand that embraced Peng’s back. Lee Jin turned and a moment later had faded into the night.

Peng took a deep, ragged breath and let it out. “Lee Jin?” she inquired.

“I sent him away,” Malik replied.

Then he held her off from him, but only enough that he could see her eyes. “What is it we are talking about, here, Yan? I seem to be in the odd position of trying to persuade you to marry me when we have never even broached the topic and, yet, you have already refused my troth. Please explain to me what you are asking and what you are denying.”

She looked up at him and, again whispering, she said, “I would not, will not, marry you. Rather, I would have you take me as your qie,” Peng used the Mandarin word, pronounced tseh, then interpreted it. “I would be your plighted concubine, your bonded servant, and servant to your wife, should you take one.” Peng watched his face. This time, it showed no reaction.

“And this talk of men subjugating women...?” he puzzled, the question left hanging.

“It is a travesty that cries out to be rectified,” she said, with fervor. Then, after the briefest of pauses, she added, “But not between you and me. Between you and me, that is how it should be. I wish you to subjugate me.”

“Why bring this to me now, Yan?”

Her eyes fell again, the lids lowered to shade them from his view. “Because,” she whispered, “I do not want your betrothal, but I wish to come to your bed, tonight and every night that you would have me”

Now Malik allowed a lengthy pause. Then he took in an audible breath and said, “Yan, though I do not require it of you, it is possible for us to sleep together without being married. People do it all the time. Marriage could easily be a topic for later discussion.”

“No,” she said calmly, “you are not understanding me. It is as I said: we are having confusion because of our different cultural orientations. Listen carefully to what I tell you and understand what I say as literal in its meaning.

“I do not wish to be your wife, at least not in the western sense of the term. I wish to be your que, an avowed servant concubine, not simply a a sexual companion. Between master and que is a relationship based on a mutual loving pledge of fidelity, but it does not confer the esteemed and critical position of your honored spouse, your wife.

“The role and title of qizi (TSI-zweh), wife, must be reserved for the person who will, like your first wife, increase both your and her social standing and economic wherewithal. Your business interactions with Gabriela have assured a worthy and honorable inheritance for your daughter. That you and Gabriela enjoyed a strong emotional bond was all the better. The combining of families’ wealth and influence is an ancient tradition in both the east and the west.”

She paused, gripped his arms, and moved away a few inches,

Searching his eyes, she said, “But I want my oath to you to be even more profound than that of honored concubine.” She took a breath and let it out, her grip on his arms becoming more firm. Speaking slowly and with deep emotion, she said, “I want to pledge myself to your absolute control, to give myself to your will without any reservation. This is, I think, a yearning born in me at my mother’s death, but it is what my heart most ardently desires,” Peng said.

“I have not felt this with anyone before, but you have drawn this from the depths of me. It is, I think, the real reason I reacted so strongly to you when my feelings were first realized. The desire was contrary to everything I had fought against for over fifteen years. Even since we reconciled, I have attempted to suppress my deepest longings.

“But now,” she said, and she went to her knees on the rough gravel, her arms embracing his legs, and, with bowed head touching his knees, and continued, “with these myriad stars as witness, I pledge my life and love to you, Emil Valerian Malik, until my death. I am yours to do with as you will. Whether as qie or not, I am your most humble servant. I am yours to command.” At which point, she bent low, until her forehead touched his boot.

Malik stood, both still and silent, for several minutes. All the while, Peng remained on her knees, forehead to the toe of his boot. He looked at her, then he looked off into the darkness. After a few minutes, he realized he was looking at Lee Jin, standing by the end platform of his coach. He gave a slow wave, gesturing the young man to join him.

Once Lee was standing beside him, Malik said, “Peng Yan, repeat your vow before this witness, but add your own name at the beginning.”

Without raising her head, she said, “I, Peng Yan, pledge to you, Emil Valerian Malik, my body, my mind, my heart, and my soul, my life and my love, until my death. I am your unreserved servant, to do with as you will, even unto death. I am yours to command.”

Malik looked at Lee Jin, who stood silently, arms at his side, a neutral expression on his face. “Do you understand, Lee Jin?”

“Yes. Peng Yan has made pledge of a qie, an honored concubine, but she also pledges to be a bond-servant, your slave.”

Malik nodded, and said, “Now, witness this, Lee Jin.” Malik looked down and said, “Remain on your knees before me, Peng Yan, but raise yourself so that I may see your eyes.” She moved into an upright, kneeling posture and looked up at him.

He looked down at her and said, “I, Emil Valerian Malik, on this third day of September, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, do accept your pledge and bond, until your death. You will serve as my qie and in any other role I might assign. You are instructed to scrupulously maintain your health and your fighting prowess and to sustain and enhance such other skills as might benefit me. In turn, I will provide shelter and sustenance to my purposes. I make no other pledge or promise.”

Malik looked at Lee Jin, now standing with his arms crossed. “Did you understand that?”

“As I...,” and, in Mandarin, he asked something of Peng. She looked at Malik and he gave a curt nod.

Peng looked at Lee and said, “Summarize.”

Lee Jin began again. “As I summarize, you accept her pledge and you promise to give her a place to live and to give her food, until you no longer wish to do so.” Lee finished on a rising note, making his statement sound like a question.

“Yes,” Malik said, “a fair summary.” Then he looked down at Peng. “Peng Yan, do you accept those terms?”