The Artist Colony Page 9

  Sarah watched the Japanese pedestrians cross by in front of her. She was surprised to see them wearing the same stylish clothes worn by white people on Alvarado Street a few blocks away—stylish Western suit jackets, hats, and ties for men and sundresses and hats for women. Back when she lived in New York, she often went to Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown and the Chinese wore traditional Chinese clothes, Mao suits for men and long cheongsam dresses for women, with high cut collars.

  The Japanese, in their eagerness to become American citizens, seemed to want to assimilate their previous culture into ours, thought Sarah. The Chinese were not as eager.

  Rosie waved to a group of young Japanese women giggling amongst themselves as they entered the temple. “I taught English to several of those girls. They are Nisei, the Japanese term for children who were born in this country and have Japanese-born parents—Issei—who immigrated here. The Issei want their children to learn our language so they’ll have more opportunities as birthright citizens. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out as they had hoped. Their children still face racial segregation at school, and when they graduate, they can only find work in the fields or in Japanese food shops and laundries. It’s only going to get worse now that our government is passing stricter laws to stop all Asians from coming here, and some politicians are even trying to take citizenship away from those born here.”

  “So it’s true what I’ve read about the growing influence of the Ku Klux Klan and other anti-immigration groups in our country?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. My dear friend, Mr. Kassajara, who we’re about to meet, is very worried about the anti-foreign hysteria. His people try not to draw attention, dress like their neighbors, and hope if ‘you stay in your place they’ll leave you alone,’ but white people are just too darn suspicious of all people who don’t look like them. Even before the war Asians were demonized as the ‘Yellow Peril.’”

  Sarah knew of the Yellow Peril from reading the dystopian short story “The Unparalleled Invasion” by Jack London. It was about an Asiatic population taking over its neighbors with the intention of eventually overpowering the entire Earth. She mentioned it to Rosie and asked, “Wasn’t Jack London one of the first bohemians to live in Carmel’s artist colony?”

  “Yes, he was,” said Rosie, getting up with Sarah’s help. “Goes to show that even artists can be prejudiced.”

  It was ridiculous to have such fears, but now, standing in front of the Japanese Center, Sarah was beginning to feel the racial tension in Monterey, like the tension she had felt in New York between the whites and the Negroes.

  “There’s Mr. Kassajara,” said Rosie.

  An elderly gentleman had come out of the temple entrance. His brown face was lined with wrinkles that came from a long life spent outdoors, his smooth brown head shiny and bald when he removed his hat. But there was nothing worn-out about this solidly built man who Sarah found quite dignified and handsome in his tailored black suit and waistcoat.

  He greeted Rosie with a warm, welcoming smile.

  “Sarah,” said Rosie, “may I present Mr. Shin-ichi Kassajara.”

  He pressed his hands together and bowed. Sarah had learned from her Asian friends in Paris to return an even deeper bow to show respect. When she straightened up she saw him glancing over her shoulder at someone hurrying past. Sarah saw a flash of saffron and was about to call out Sirena’s name, but the girl had disappeared inside.

  When Rosie handed Mr. Kassajara a package, he said, “Arigato,” then bowed again and walked inside, closing the door behind him.

  “That was strange,” said Sarah. “I could’ve sworn I saw Sirena go in there.”

  “Really? I didn’t see her,” said Rosie, shouldering her shopping bag.

  “Can we go in? I’m a huge fan of Japanese woodprint painters and maybe some of their work hangs on the walls.”

  Rosie put her hand up. “This is not a good time. Mr. Kassajara is the leader of a Japanese cooperative and he is very busy. By trade, he’s a fisherman and if he had his choice, I know he’d rather be out in the Bay diving for abalone. But his people are counting on him to find a way to hold on to their fishing businesses now that stricter laws forbid him and other non-citizens from owning property.”

  Rosie hooked Sarah’s arm and pulled her away with a suggestion of lunch.

  They stopped at a restaurant near the bus depot with a pleasant terrace overlooking the road that led down to the wharf. They ordered tea and sandwiches, but Rosie was unusually quiet and ate little.

  “Is something wrong, Rosie? You said you were hungry.”

  Rosie looked at the crowded tables and shifted her chair closer to Sarah. “What has Sirena told you about herself?” she said softly.

  “Very little. She’s a bit of an enigma. I don’t even know her last name.”

  “Well, if she did tell you, she’d say her last name was Silver and that she grew up on a sugarcane farm in Hawaii. She’d say she broke away from her parents to come here to study art.” Rosie paused. “A whopper of a story.”

  “It’s not true?” asked Sarah, leaning toward her with curiosity.

  Rosie looked out at the blue bay shimmering in the distance and then back to Sarah. “I’m sworn to secrecy, but I think Sirena needs our help, so I’m going to break my promise. What I’m about to tell you could put her in grave danger so you must keep it to yourself.”

  “What danger could that young girl possibly be in?”

  “That was Sirena you saw at the temple.”

  “Why didn’t she say hello?”

  “She has her reasons. And they’re good ones.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sirena’s last name is not Silver. It’s Kassajara-Silvia. She was visiting her grandfather at the temple.”

  “Sirena’s Japanese!” She’d found the girl exotic, a nymph from the sea, but she’d never have guessed Japanese with her pale wide-set eyes and Mediterranean coloring.

  “Not only is she Japanese, but she is an ama.”

  Sarah looked at her curiously and Rosie explained that ama roughly translated to “women of the sea.” “Women who were trained from childhood to hold their breath for many minutes so they could dive sixty feet underwater to forage for mollusks. The women in Sirena’s family had been amas through many generations. Sirena has carried on the tradition and goes diving at Whalers Cove whenever she can find the time.”

  “And her father?” asked Sarah.

  “Portuguese. Generations past, his family, the Silvias, were whale hunters. They immigrated to Monterey from the Azores. When there was no longer a demand for whale oil, his family started a dairy farm in Point Lobos not far from the Japanese village. He met Sirena’s mother, Juniko, at the local Point Lobos school and they grew up playing together at Whalers Cove. Juniko’s mother trained her and Salvador to be free-divers and in time they fell in love with diving and each other.

  “This all sounds far more exciting than Sirena telling people she grew up on a sugar plantation. I can’t see why she wouldn’t want everyone to know about her parents. Their story is so romantic.”

  “Not for Sirena’s parents. The miscegenation laws in our country forbid marriages between a white person and someone of another color. If our upright citizens had found out they were married, they could’ve had them arrested and possibly deported.”

  Sarah swallowed her tea but not her rising sense of injustice.

  “Do Sirena’s parents still live in Whalers Cove? I’d love to meet them.”

  Rosie’s face saddened. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. When Sirena was eight years old, Mariko and Salvador took their skiff out to dive for abalone off Whalers Cove. Mariko didn’t come up from her dive and Salvador dove in after her. Her foot had gotten caught in some thick cords of kelp. He got entangled himself and they both drowned.”

  Hearing Sirena’s story rekindled her own grief at the sudden loss of her parents at a young age. “Did Sirena move in with Mr. Kassajara and his wife?”


  Rosie shook her head, no. She explained that Sirena’s grandmother couldn’t bear to live near where her only child had drowned, and she went back to Japan. After she left, Mr. Kassajara thought Sirena would have better opportunities growing up with the “white” side of her family in San Juan Bautista, which was only an hour by train from here. Sirena still visited him in the summers and continued her training as an abalone diver. Rosie had once asked her why she wanted to dive after what had happened to her parents, and the girl had said she felt their presence when she dived and it relieved her inconsolable grief.

  Sarah waited until after the waiter had taken away their plates before asking how Rosie knew so much about the Kassajaras.

  “I taught Sirena at the Japanese Association. She was a very determined six-year-old student when she joined my class. Curious and attentive. We became good friends.”

  Sarah asked again why Sirena had ignored her.

  “I’m getting to that,” said Rosie. “Last year, Sirena asked me if she could live at the Lodge. She couldn’t pay me, but she said she’d help out doing the chores. Of course I wanted to help, but there was one condition that worried me.” Rosie lowered her voice and leaned toward Sarah. “She wanted to cross the color line and pass for white. Otherwise she wouldn’t be accepted into the Carmel art school.”

  As a woman artist, Sarah had been turned away by men-only art schools in New York and Paris. Fortunately, Académie Julienne accepted women students, but that was an exception. But she had never had to worry about also being excluded because of the color of her skin.

  Rosie added. “If the immigration authorities found out Sirena was passing for white, they would deport her immediately because she is not only bi-racial, which is fraught with its own problems, but she’s illegitimate in the eyes of the Court, a child of no one.”

  Sarah began to feel a deeper sympathy for Sirena and an impulse to protect her. It also made her want to stand up and protest loudly, which was something new to her.

  Ada, an early suffragette, had been cross with her when she didn’t vote in the first election after women finally gained the right to vote. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, though it would be difficult to find any politicians that weren’t against immigration.

  “Are you the only one that knows Sirena is passing for white?”

  “Her grandfather, of course. And Ada knew. She was very sympathetic toward Mr. Kassajara and his community. That’s why she hired Sirena to work for her.”

  “And why do you think Sirena needs our help? She seems to be doing a good job of passing for white on her own. She certainly fooled me.”

  “Something’s bothering her, but when I ask her what it is, she takes the offensive.” Sarah had seen her do that when she’d tried to talk to her about Ada. “She’s been like that ever since Ada died. I was hoping you could befriend her like Ada did and get her to tell you what’s wrong.”

  Sarah hesitated. She was only going to be in Carmel a short time. But how could she not at least try to help? She might not be able to change the immigration laws, but she could help this one girl who was a victim of them. “I’ll do what I can, Rosie.”

  A single orange-billed tern landed on the terrace railing. Her black eyes gazed into Sarah’s, then she flew off, her white-arched wings spanning across the blue sky, her underbelly as white as the clouds she soared toward.

  —8—

  Compared to the bustle of commerce in Monterey, Carmel was a quiet retreat. Rosie and Sarah passed by only a few pedestrians as they walked down Ocean Avenue, turned right onto San Carlos, and stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue. A polished red truck was parked in front of the fire station. Next door, a saddled palomino with a white mane and tail stood hitched to a post outside the police station. Sarah picked up a handful of hay from the ground and fed the mare who snorted her appreciation.

  Riley, the officer at the front desk, knew Rosie—everyone seemed to know Rosie—and he told them to wait on the bench in the shabby lobby while he let Marshal Judd know they were there. He returned quickly and said, “The marshal can only see you for a few minutes. He was just on his way out.”

  A squeaky door opened onto a backroom cramped by an oversized desk. The only window opened out onto an empty lot. Marshal Judd had a telephone earpiece pressed against his ear and the short stub of a dead cigar clenched between his tobacco-stained teeth. His stocky legs were propped up on the desk, his cowboy boots with their two-inch heels holding down a stack of papers that were flapping under a rotating ceiling fan.

  The two women sat down on metal folding chairs. A Zane Grey novel and a magazine entitled Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West lay open on his cluttered desk. Sarah glanced at Rosie, trying not to show her amusement.

  He spoke into the receiver, “Gotta go. It appears I have an unscheduled meeting. I won’t be long. No, sugar, I won’t forget.” He hung up the receiver and put his cigar down in an ashtray crowded with similar dead stogies. The fan gave little relief to the small closed-in space, heavy with the cloying scent of days-old cigar smoke.

  Judd stood up, came over to their side of the desk, and closed the book and magazine. He crossed his short arms over his fringed leather vest, just below a shiny six-point badge.

  Sarah couldn’t stop staring at his getup. It could’ve been stolen from the wardrobe room of a Hollywood set for a Zane Grey western.

  “Well, Miss McCann,” the cowboy said in a raspy voice. “I take it that this isn’t a neighborly visit. Yours seldom are.”

  Rosie took no notice of his rudeness and introduced him to Sarah. When he showed no facial recognition, Sarah said, “I’m Ada Davenport’s sister.”

  “Well, Rosie, fancy you springin’ Miss Cunnin’ham on me without makin’ an appointment.”

  He returned to his office chair, which made an agonizing creaking noise under his weight as he dropped down in it.

  “You caught me at a busy time, Miss Cunnin’ham, but I know you’ve come all this way from Paris, France, so what can I do for you?”

  “The telegram I received from you in Paris said that the cause of my sister’s death was unknown and you asked me to be a witness at the coroner’s inquest. Unfortunately, the inquest was concluded before I got here. But seeing I came all this way I was hoping you could clear up a few things for me.”

  “It was pretty much an open and shut case, but I’ll help you if I can.”

  “Seeing you are also the coroner, I’d like to know, Marshal Judd, how you decided upon a verdict of suicide rather than a verdict of accidental death or even murder by person or persons unknown?”

  He cleared his throat, sat forward, and put his elbows on the desk. “First let me apologize for sending you on a fool’s mission. Days after I sent that telegram it became apparent that your sister’s death was a suicide and I could have saved you a trip.”

  Sarah raised her hand. “You needn’t apologize, marshal, I would still have come to bury my sister. But please do me the courtesy to answer my question. How did you reach that verdict?”

  “Okay then, I can see you’re a woman who doesn’t mince her words, so I’ll shoot it to you straight. I interviewed several witnesses who knew Miss Davenport well, and from their testimony we concluded that your sister was rather, well, shall we say, emotionally unstable.”

  Sarah tamped down her rising anger at his amateur assumptions about Ada’s stability, though she had made similar assumptions earlier, and asked, “Was that the professional opinion of a psychiatrist?”

  “No. I didn’t think that was necessary.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  “It was an obvious suicide.” He took out a fresh cigar, bit off the end, and spit it into a brass spittoon next to the desk. Pleased with his good aim, he then took out a small notebook from his vest pocket and flipped through a few pages until he found what he was looking for. “Let’s see here. No wounds on a fully dressed body. No signs of struggle, like bruises or scratches. Pockets filled with stones. N
o suspects with motives, and,” he gloated from across the desk, “there was a suicide note addressed to you.” He shoved the notebook back in his pocket.

  “Is that it, marshal?” Sarah asked.

  He reddened. “Isn’t that enough? I’m sure this is a most unpleasant situation for you, Miss Cunnin’ham, and you have my sincerest condolences, but there is nothing more I can do. The case is closed, and I make no apologies for that.”

  Sarah shifted in the hard chair. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to see that suicide note and the written testimonies of the witnesses, and of course any notes from your investigation.” She kept her expression neutral as she met his beady dark eyes.

  Judd stuck the cigar into his mouth and lit it. He shifted his eyes over to Rosie. “Was this your idea?”

  “Marshal, Miss Cunningham is only asking for what is her legal right to have.”

  “Thank you, Miss Rosie, but I don’t need a lesson in law.” He pointed at a shelf of law books behind his desk. “As you can see, I don’t get to be the marshal just because I ride in rodeos. Tell me where you’re staying, Miss Cunnin’ham, and I’ll have my deputy deliver the files tomorrow morning.”

  Sarah hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “Why thank you, marshal. You can deliver the files to the Sketch Box.”

  “Where?”

  “My sister’s cottage on Camino Real.”

  “I’m not sure her house is legally—”

  Rosie interrupted. “The deed to the cottage is in Miss Cunningham’s name, marshal. She is now the legal owner. Do you need to see the deed or take our word for it?”

  Sarah was about to say she didn’t have it with her, when he looked up at the clock and said, “That won’t be necessary.”

  Sarah marveled at Rosie’s quick draw on the lazy lawman.

  He stood up. “Now if you ladies don’t mind, I have to mosey on home.”

  “One more thing,” said Sarah, who had saved this question for the last. “Did you know my sister was pregnant?”