Portrait in Sepia Read Free Page B

scoundrels.
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    Once Captain John Sommers had assured himself that the mythic bed was on the cart and that the coachman understood his instructions, he set off on foot in the direction of Chinatown, as he did each time he visited San Francisco. On this occasion, however, grit alone wasn't enough to get him there, and after two blocks he had to call for a rented coach. He climbed in with difficulty, gave the driver the address, and leaned back in the seat, panting. His symptoms had begun a year ago, but in recent weeks they had become more acute. His legs were too weak to hold him, and his head was filled with fog; he had to battle constantly the temptation to abandon himself to the cottony indifference that was seeping into his soul. His sister Rose had been the first to notice that something was not going well, back before he felt any pain. He smiled as he thought of her: she was the person closest and dearest to him, the guiding light of his wandering existence, more real in his affections than his daughter Eliza or any of the women he had held in his arms during his long pilgrimage from port to port.
    Rose Sommers had spent her youth in Chile at the side of her older brother, Jeremy. At his death, however, she had returned to England to grow old in her own country. She lived in London in a small house a few blocks from theaters and the opera, a slightly down-at-the-heels neighborhood where she could live as she pleased. She was no longer the proper mistress of the house for Jeremy; now she could give free rein to her eccentric bent. She liked to dress as an out-of-luck actress and take tea at the Savoy, or as a Russian countess when she walked her dog; among her friends were beggars and street musicians, and she spent her money on trinkets and charities. "Nothing is as liberating as age," she would say, happily counting her wrinkles. "It isn't age, sister, it's the economic freedom you've won with your pen," John Sommers would reply. This white-haired spinster had made a small fortune writing pornography. The true irony, thought the captain, was that now that Rose had no need to hide, as she had when she lived in the shadow of her brother Jeremy, she had stopped writing erotic stories and devoted herself to turning out romantic novels at an exhausting pace, and with unparalleled success. There was no woman alive whose whose mother tongue was English, including Queen Victoria, who hadn't read at least one of the romances written by Dame Rose Sommers. Her distinguished title merely legalized a position that Rose had taken by assault years before. Had Queen Victoria suspected that her favorite author, one upon whom she had personally bestowed the rank of dame, was responsible for a vast body of salacious books signed "An Anonymous Lady," she would have swooned. It was the captain's opinion that the pornography was delicious but that Rose's love novels were pure trash. For years he had taken on the task of arranging publication and distribution of the forbidden stories Rose produced right under the nose of her elder brother, who died convinced that she was a virtuous maiden whose only mission was to make life agreeable for him. "Look after yourself, John. You know you can't leave me alone in this world. You're losing weight, and your color isn't good," Rose had repeated every day the captain visited her in London. Since then, a relentless metamorphosis had been transforming him into a lizard.
    Tao Chi'en had just removed his acupuncture needles from a patient's ears and arms when his assistant advised him that his fatherin-law had arrived. The zhong-yi carefully placed his gold needles in pure alcohol, washed his hands in a basin, put on his jacket, and went out to welcome his visitor, amazed that Eliza had not informed him that her father would be arriving that day. Captain Sommers's every visit created a commotion. The family would await him eagerly, especially the children, who never tired of admiring his exotic gifts and