I like my job, from my window I can see almost all of Chinatown.
701 Grant Avenue, fourth floor. Sitting behind my desk I glimpse the Dragon Gate, which marks the beginning of the largest Chinatown in the world.
The large window behind my computer screen shows the narrow Grant Avenue crisscrossed by street lamps that imitate green bamboo stalks crowned by red pagodas. On the same corner, the same old man with his Erhu rehearsing the same old tune. Tourists taking photos, browsing the shop windows and menu prices. Bruce Lee, patron saint of minorities, impassively observes the red paper lanterns floating above the cars from his mural.
This part of the city resisted being evacuated countless times and, like a stubborn vermin, endured being exterminated, becoming another of San Francisco's exotic attractions.
After work, I like to wander and get lost in the small passages of Chinatown, perhaps involuntarily searching for some connection with the community, some affinity.
I was five years old when I boarded the Braniff train with my mother to the Golden State. My mother, a very small, pale, fragile and thin woman, was just over five feet tall, but she seemed enormous to me. We traveled shortly after my father's death and on the way I could still smell the condolences and the scent of white chrysanthemums. From my mother's stories and from the occasional secret from a relative who came to visit us, I was able to piece together the story of her marriage. My mother was the woman everyone knew as the spinster of the family. At almost forty years old she had not yet married and the family had no doubts about her future celibacy. She worked in the office of a lawyer uncle as an assistant, organizing paperwork, making appointments, receiving clients. I assume she was perfect in that position given her excessive order and perfectionism.
She used to have her snack, which consisted of a packet of vanilla cookies and a Watts fruit juice, at a store half a block from the office. There she met my father. He was the manager of the grocery store of her godfather, Godfather Man San. Apparently she fell in love with him instantly and despite the rejection of my mother's family - which actually fueled the enthusiasm even more - they ended up getting married. The disapproval was not so much because my father was Chinese - my mother's family was rather "Creole" - but because of my father's lack of self-improvement, he is a mediocre person, they tried to dissuade her. Their marriage was, apparently, happy, while it lasted.
- Did Dad make you unhappy? I asked him once.
- Your father? He couldn't make anyone unhappy.
There have been many versions of my father's death, but I am inclined to adopt the least problematic one, in which my father was hit by the spout of a broken bottle when he intervened in a fight between some customers who were drinking liquor in the back room - most wine cellars usually had a semi-clandestine bar inside. He was not yet 50.
- Mr. Lock? Good morning, my name is Victor Huaman, a deep voice spoke to me on the other end of the line. I didn't usually receive calls in Spanish on my office phone.
-I've been trying to reach you, I'm just passing through and I'd like to talk to you, it's a personal matter, that slow voice continued, not giving me time to respond. I arranged to meet you at Mr. Wang's restaurant, which was more of a greasy diner with an empty fish tank to one side and its tables occupied, most of the time, by old men playing Mahjong.
When I walked through the restaurant door, Víctor Huamán was waiting for me there, of an indecipherable age, with a friendly face furrowed by wrinkles earned, surely, with great effort, straight, greased hair trying to hide incipient baldness.
-Excuse me for bothering you, I won't take up much of your time, this is very important to me, to us, he said while looking at me from behind small, almond-shaped eyes. The committee, knowing that I was going to be here ‒he candidly confessed that they had found me searching on the "Internet"‒ asked me to give you this, it's a diploma, he handed me a "Manila" envelope, please open it, it means a lot to us. "Sociedad Comunidad Hijos de Pamplona Alta" grants the following diploma of honor to Don Carlos Lock, in the absence of his father of the same name, in recognition of his contribution to our community. Signatures of Cesar Huaroto, president, Carlos A. Vásquez, director, and Víctor Huamán, secretary follow.
As I looked at the diploma, Victor told me a story that he had undoubtedly rehearsed many times. Your father was our benefactor, he told me. He helped us a lot, first with the Chinese Charity and then he continued on his own. He never missed a Sunday. He arrived with his red car full of groceries from the grocery store. He paid for my studies. We have his photograph in our club. He continued, and then he showed me some photos of the stairs they were building, of their organization of soup kitchens, of their library.
-Your father was a good man, Victor told me confidentially, holding out his hand in farewell. I saw him disappear into the impersonal crowd of Chinatown.
In the days following Victor's visit, I relived the few moments in which my mother nostalgically remembered her homeland. There is much to do, she repeated, and on one occasion I thought I heard her say that my father spent Sundays with his "family in the hills," I think I heard her say.
My plane has just landed at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima. I am beginning to perceive, once again, the scent of chrysanthemums. I think I can hear a distant murmur, like a welcome, the welcome of my family from the hills.
San Francisco, October 2022.
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