Belle Cora: A Novel (71 page)

THE ATTENTIVE READER WILL OBSERVE THAT
sometimes in the course of this narrative I claim the playwright’s prerogative of leaping forward in time. I skip over months or years, to the moment of a crisis in my affairs; and we discover that certain cast members have disappeared, while others, who spent the whole previous act in exile, have apparently returned long ago. It all happened in the interval, while the audience perambulated in the lobby, smoking cigars and drinking refreshments.

Still, even in a play, when the curtain rises, there is a moment for learning all we can from the new props we find on the stage, and a helpful line in the playbill tells us where we are and what the year is. Very well: We find ourselves in a fancy house with entrances on Dupont Street and Washington Street, in February of 1851, in a city that is still in flux. San Francisco has burned down three times more since the fire I saw from the deck of the
Flavius
a little over a year ago. It has been in each instance quickly rebuilt, larger and more substantial than before, in a miracle wrought by the gold of California. Ships more full of treasure than the galleons of New Spain leave our port monthly, and each day from the States—as we still call the main body of the country, though California now
is
a state—come other ships, laden with every simple necessity and idle luxury that human labor can provide, all cheaper to sail around the Horn or drag across Panama than to make here. Even brick and limestone, trousers, apples, and ice are cheaper to import. Men send their shirts to be laundered in Hawaii.

I am twenty-two years old. It is a year since Jeptha threw me in the bay. But as Mrs. Austin has remarked, things happen quickly in this city. It seems much longer, and I feel much older. I’ve been busy. Eighteen forty-nine, the
Juniper
, Rio—that was another life. I don’t think about it. Edward and Lewis are back in town, after a falling out in the mining camps. Edward, after trying his hand at many things, now works as a reporter for the
San Francisco Herald
. Lewis lives very irregularly; he has
done things that don’t bear close examination. He and Edward see each other sometimes, but they aren’t on very good terms.

I meet them both occasionally, but not at my house, because I don’t want their family connection to me known.

Edward has said: “I know how it is between you and Lewis. But I have to be honest with you: if you want anything in this life except worry and heartbreak, you have to know that Lewis is a dead man. It will be a miracle if he sees twenty-five. He lives by the sword. He likes hurting people. I’ve seen it. And he’s reckless. Men like that die young. We’ve got to resign ourselves.”

And I have said this in reply: “Our mother told me what my responsibility was toward Lewis. I have lived up to it, and
he
, what
he
has done for
me
, what
he
and
I
are to each other—don’t pretend you understand that. Only Lewis and I understand that. We’re a family of two, he and I. You’re an agreeable fellow, Edward, but I have no notion what you use in place of a heart.”

We made up and agreed to be friends. Edward was shocked to learn how I make my living, but that did not last long, and he is by now quite comfortable with the idea. I think he actually likes me better this way. It confirms his view of women. From Edward, I found out that Robert knows. My grandfather must have told him. Robert loves me, so he is heartbroken, but wishes to have no further communication with me.

From the street, my house looks plain, two stories tall, with an unpainted exterior. It is not meant to excite the curiosity of pedestrians. Still, anyone who has been in San Francisco for over a week has heard all about it. They know that when you knock on that unassuming door on Dupont Street you are met by a Negro maid or footman, better dressed and cleaner than ninety-nine out of a hundred of the inhabitants in this raw and grimy city. Your eyes, long accustomed to disorder and squalor, behold what appears to be a hallway in some European palace—Brussels carpets, damask curtains, crystal chandeliers, mirrors, paintings, mahogany surfaces rubbed by servants until their laboring hands are reflected in the wood. Perhaps briefly you glimpse one of the inhabitants, the sweets in this improbable candy box, the costliest luxury of all.

To the best house in San Francisco come the best men of San Francisco: bankers, merchants, ship owners, real-estate developers, judges, the
mayor, the aldermen, the collector of the port. Their friendship helps me in several ways. They spend money in my house. Thanks to them, no laws hostile to my business are passed, and ruffians do not break into my house and mistreat my girls. Thanks to them, my house is popular even when the city is in one of its periodic business slumps. There is still money to be made during hard times if you know the people who pull the strings—and they are all here, the leading bankers, merchants, and ship owners, the judges, the mayor, the aldermen, the collector of the port. All I have to do is keep them happy.

A GENTLEMAN SITS ON A SOFA
in my parlor. His left hand strokes the leaves of a potted palm. His right hand stroke’s Pauline’s cheek. He has made his fortune, never mind how, and will leave by steamer tomorrow, and have no further part in my story. I mention him solely because of the information he is about to impart.

Give him wide-apart eyes and a wide mouth: a frog face. Not old, maybe twenty-five. He’s smart. He likes people to know it. He talks about the war that is coming to San Francisco. “You girls are going to be in the middle of it,” he declares, and he offers Pauline his wineglass and watches her sip.

I recline on a sofa that faces theirs, and though he talks to Pauline, he often glances at me. I’m the one he wants to impress, or help—I’m not sure which. “On one side, it’s State Senator David Broderick and his friends—immigrant laborers who cast their votes for the Democratic Party. On the other side, it’s Sam Brannan and his people—Know-Nothings.”

Pauline licks her lips. “Know Nothings,” she says in a careful way that draws attention to her mouth. “Am I one of those?”

He taps the end of her nose. “Soon, my pet, we’ll go upstairs and discover what you know.” He looks at me. “The Know-Nothings are simply men who hate immigrants and the children of immigrants. They especially despise Irish Catholics.

“Now, you know that in San Francisco many of our laboring men are Irish Catholics and members of the Democratic Party, and they all worship David Broderick, because he used to be one of them. They think he walks on water. They made him a senator. They’ll vote for an old shoe if he tells them to. Against Broderick, and hating him like poison, are
the bankers and merchants and auctioneers and newspapermen, who are mostly Protestants and Know-Nothings. Their leader is Sam Brannan, the richest man in San Francisco—he comes to this house sometimes, doesn’t he?” (So he did; special requests; money no object.) “Have you ever had Sam Brannan?”

“I?” says Pauline deliciously. “I told you, I’m a virgin.” She does this very well, and as a result, we both realize, the frog-eyed gentleman is ready to take her upstairs.

But I want to hear the rest, and to her annoyance, I say, “So it is Brannan, and the rich natives, against Senator Broderick and laboring immigrants.”

He blinks, nods, and says distractedly, “With, in between, a lot of native, Protestant laborers who, at election time, might go either way.”

“And who is the bad one?” Pauline asks, squinting at me: Is this really what you want? Are we in a lecture hall? Time is money, no?

His fingertip toys with a corkscrew curl beside her brow. “The honorable Senator Broderick does lots of dishonest things. He’s from New York—so, you know, New York politics. Uses his boys, tough fellows, to keep his opponents away from the polls at election time. When he wins, he rewards his cronies with city jobs and he plunders the treasury.”

“So David Broderick is a thief,” I say, “and Sam Brannan is a hero.”

He smiles slyly; he knows I’ve made a joke. “Sam Brannan is a slippery fellow. You know how he made his fortune—what he did to poor Mr. Sutter.” I do; it is the founding legend of our city and everyone here knows it, the way everyone in ancient Rome knew the story of Romulus and Remus. But he repeats the tale anyway. “Brannan used to be a Mormon elder …” he reminds us. In 1846, he came to San Francisco (then a small village with another name), leading fifty bigamous families who shared his dream of turning the West Coast of North America into a Mormon republic. In 1848, several of the families found work in what is now Sacramento City, building a sawmill for a man named John Sutter—building Sutter’s Mill, later to be inscribed in numberless schoolchildren’s composition books as the place where gold was first discovered in California. Brannan, who was always starting small business ventures, opened up a general store near the mill. One day, his people showed him some gold nuggets they had found while at their work. They told him of Sutter’s
predicament: gold was a fine thing, but his claim to the land was uncertain; he must keep the discovery quiet until he was firmly in possession. Brannan urged his people to keep the secret, telling them that that way they could look for other gold deposits around here without having the whole world pour in to elbow them aside. Very quietly, Brannan purchased every pick and shovel in the West, and choice waterfront property in San Francisco. Then he ran down the street with a horn full of gold dust, screaming, “Gold! Gold from the American River!” The gold seekers came like locusts. Sutter was ruined. The Mormon laborers stayed broke. There was no Mormon empire, since the hordes that came to California from all over the world were not Mormons. But Sam Brannan became the prototype of the rascal who gets rich by mining the gold in the pockets of the miners.

“Now Sam Brannan and his friends have all the money in the city, but David Broderick controls the government. Brannan means to change that. And I know how. I—who was privileged to be present when Mr. Brannan was even drunker than usual—I know his plan. With the excuse of all the crime that you have in any city this size, and the fires that keep destroying the town because it is made of kindling, Mr. Brannan and his friends will form a Vigilance Committee like the ones in the mining camps. They’ll say they’re going to clean up the city. They’ll lynch a few robbers to show they can do it, and then they will run Mr. Broderick and his men out of town. Only Mr. Broderick is not the sort to go without a fight; the bloodier it gets, the more he likes it.”

He stands up and takes Pauline by the hand. He looks back at me. “I don’t have a dog in the fight, not anymore. But you do, Belle. Because you have to be friends with whoever comes out on top, and you don’t know who that’s going to be, do you.”

He bows to Pauline—
After you
—and they retire to her room on the second floor.

L

A FEW DAYS LATER, I HEARD
a tremendous clamor in Portsmouth Square, one block west of my house. I went up to the roof and observed a great mass of people packing the streets and the field near City Hall and looking upward, as if someone was giving an address from the balcony. I went out to the plaza to see what was going on, but by the time I arrived the crowd was dispersing. As the men walked off in various directions, I noticed the handbills scattered all around me. Some of these pages, caught in a breeze, quivered like live creatures on the wooden streets and sidewalks. Others momentarily took flight, or floated in puddles, or were firmly trodden into the mud. “What’s happened?” I asked a young man in a miner’s outfit, who, coming closer, emitted a yeasty reek of whiskey, bobbed forward and back on his feet, and stared at me as if I might be a product of his delirium. Another man, in a long black coat, having overheard my question, said, “They called off the hanging; maybe they’ll have it later,” in the same tone as one might mention the postponement of a boxing match. He removed his tall black hat and knelt; with his free hand he picked up a page that bore a boot print, and held it open before me. The handbill invited “all those who wish to rid our city of thieves and murderers” to come to Portsmouth Square today.