Daughter of Fortune (34 page)

Lost in the throng, Eliza watched the spectacle with fascination and horror. She had bet the little money she had left, hoping to multiply it in the next minutes. At the third blast of the trumpet a wooden gate was raised and a young, gleaming, black bull trotted into the ring, snorting. For an instant the gallery was silenced with awe and then a full-throated “
Olé
!” engulfed the animal. He stopped, dazed, uplifted head crowned by long, unblunted horns, his intelligent eyes measuring distances, his rear hooves pawing the sand, until a growl from the bear caught his attention. His opponent had seen him and was scratching out a hole a few steps from his post, in which he lay flat, hugging the ground. At the cries from the crowd, the bull put his head down, tensed his flanks, and, raising a cloud of sand, charged, blind with rage, snuffling, steam issuing from his nostrils and slobber streaming from his lips. The bear was waiting. He took the first hook of the horn in the back; it tore a bloody furrow in his thick fur but he did not budge an inch. The bull trotted completely around the ring, confused, while the crowd egged him on with catcalls; he charged again, trying to lift the bear with his horns, but the bear took its punishment without moving, until he saw his chance and with one sure slash tore open the bull's nose. Pouring blood, crazed with pain and disoriented, the attacker made a series of blind thrusts, wounding his enemy again and again but unable to rout him from the hole. Suddenly the bear rose up and grasped the bull's neck in a terrible embrace, clamping his teeth in its flesh. For long moments they danced together around the circle described by the chain while the sand grew red with blood and the galleries echoed with the yells of the men. Finally the bull broke free, staggered a few steps, his legs wobbly and his gleaming obsidian hide stained crimson, until he collapsed onto his knees and sank to the ground. A great clamor celebrated the bear's victory. Two horsemen rode into the ring, shot the loser squarely between the eyes, roped him by the hind legs, and dragged him from the ring. Eliza pushed her way to the exit, nauseated. She had lost her last forty dollars.

During the summer and autumn months of 1849, Eliza rode the length of the mother lode from south to north, from Mariposa to Downieville and back again, following the ever fainter trail of Joaquín Andieta from the rivers to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. At first when she asked about him very few remembered anyone with that name or description, but toward the end of the year his figure began to take on real proportions, and that gave the girl strength to continue her search. The rumor had circulated that Joaquín's brother was looking for him, and several times during that month the echo returned her own voice. More than once when she inquired about Joaquín she was identified as his brother even before she could introduce herself. In that broad region, mail from San Francisco arrived after months of delay, and newspapers took weeks, but there was no shortage of news that spread by word of mouth. How could Joaquín not have heard that she was looking for him? Since he had no brothers, he must be wondering who this Elías was, and if he had an iota of intuition, she thought, he would associate that name with hers. Even if he didn't catch on, at least he must be curious to know who was posing as his relative. At night Eliza could scarcely sleep, fretting over various theories and haunted by the persistent doubt that her lover's silence could be explained only because he was dead—or didn't want to be found. And what if, in fact, he was running away from her, as Tao Chi'en had hinted? She spent her days on horseback and slept at night on the ground, anywhere, in her clothes, with her Castile blanket as a cover and her boots as a pillow. Dirt and sweat no longer bothered her; she ate when she could, her only precaution not to drink water before she boiled it and not to look Anglos in the eye.

By that time there were more than a hundred thousand argonauts in California, and more kept arriving, scattered all through the mother lode, turning the world upside down, moving mountains, diverting rivers, destroying forests, pulverizing rock, displacing tons of sand, and digging monumental pits. At the places where gold was found, the idyllic land, which had remained untouched since the beginning of time, was turned into a lunar nightmare. Eliza was constantly exhausted, but she had gotten her strength back and lost her fear. She started menstruating again when it was least convenient, difficult to disguise in the company of men, but she welcomed it as a sign that her body was finally healed. “Your acupuncture needles served me well, Tao. I hope to have children some day,” she wrote her friend, sure that he would understand without further explanations. She was never without her weapons, although she didn't know how to use them and hoped she would never find herself in a spot where she had to. Once only she had shot into the air to frighten off some young Indians who came too close and looked threatening to her, but if she'd had to fight she would have come off badly because she couldn't hit a burro at five paces. She had not refined her marksmanship but had improved her talent for making herself invisible. She could ride into a town without attracting attention, blending into groups of Hispanics where a boy of her looks would go unnoticed. She learned to imitate Peruvian and Mexican accents to perfection and so pass for one of them when she was looking for company. She also changed her British English for American and adopted certain indispensable swearwords in order to be accepted among them. She learned that if she talked their lingo they respected her; the rules were to not offer any explanations, to say as little as possible, to not ask for anything, to work for her food, to stand up to provocation, and to hold tight to the small Bible she had bought in Sonora. Even the crudest among them felt a superstitious reverence for that book. They were amazed by the beardless youth with a woman's voice who read the Holy Scripture every evening, but did not make fun of him openly; just the opposite, some became his protectors, ready to beat up anyone who did. Among those solitary and brutal men who had sallied forth in search of fortune like the mythic heroes of ancient Greece only to find themselves reduced to an elemental existence, often sick, prone to violence and alcohol, there was an unconfessed tenderness and longing for order. Sentimental songs brought tears to their eyes; they would pay any price for a piece of the apple pie that gave them a moment's respite from homesickness, and they rode miles out of their way to pass a place where children lived, and then sit watching them in silence, as if they were some kind of miracle.

“Don't worry, Tao, I don't travel alone, that would be insane,” Eliza wrote her friend. “It's best to go in large groups, well armed and on guard, because the gangs of outlaws have multiplied in recent months. The Indians are fairly peaceful, although they look frightening, but when they see an unprotected rider they may take his most prized possessions: his horse, weapons, and boots. I join up with other travelers: salesmen going from town to town with their merchandise, miners looking for new veins, families of farmers, hunters, the speculators and land agents who are beginning to overrun California, gamblers, gunmen, lawyers, and other scoundrels who tend to be the most entertaining and generous travel companions. There are preachers about; they are always young and look like holy madmen. Imagine how much faith it takes to travel three thousand miles across virgin prairies for the purpose of battling others' sins. They leave their towns filled with strength and passion, determined to carry the word of Christ to distant California, with no worry for obstacles or dangers along the road because God is marching at their side. They call the miners ‘worshipers of the golden calf.' You have to read the Bible, Tao, or you will never understand Christians. Those pastors are defeated by broken spirits, not material reverses; they feel impotent before the overpowering force of greed. It is comforting to see them when they have just arrived, still innocent, but sad to meet them when they have been deserted by God, dragging from one camp to the next under a burning sun, thirsty, preaching in squares and taverns to an indifferent audience that listens with hats on and five minutes later is getting drunk with the whores. I met a troupe of itinerant actors, Tao, poor devils who stop in every town to entertain with pantomimes, off-color songs, and crude comedy. I traveled with them for several weeks, and they worked me into the show. If we could find a piano, I played, but if not, I was the ingenue of the company and everyone was amazed by how well I played the part of a woman. I couldn't stay with them, though, because the confusion was driving me crazy; I didn't know whether I was a woman dressed as a man, a man dressed as a woman, or an aberration of nature.”

Eliza made friends with the mailman, and whenever possible rode with him, because he kept on the move and had contacts; if anyone could find Joaquín Andieta it would be him, she thought. He delivered mail to the miners and carried back bags of gold for safekeeping in banks. He was one of the many visionaries made rich by gold fever without ever having held a pick or a shovel in his hands. He charged two and a half dollars to take a letter to San Francisco and, profiting from the miners' hunger for news from home, he asked an ounce of gold for every letter he brought them. He made a fortune with that business; he had customers to spare and no one complained about the prices since there was no alternative; they couldn't abandon the mines to go get their mail or deposit their earnings from a hundred miles away. Eliza also sought the company of Charley, a little man who always had some story to tell, who was in competition with the Mexican drovers who transported goods on mule back. Although he wasn't afraid of anything, including the devil, he always welcomed company because he needed ears for his stories. The longer she watched him, the surer Eliza was that, like her, this was a woman dressed as a man. Charley's hair was bleached by the sun, he chewed tobacco, swore like a stage robber, and was never without his gloves or his pistols, but once Eliza got a glimpse of his hands and they were small and white like a young girl's.

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. When she had given herself to Joaquín Andieta in the room of the armoires she had committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the world, but in hers love justified everything. She did not know what she had lost or gained with that passion. She had left Chile with the purpose of finding her lover and becoming his slave forever, believing that was the way to extinguish her thirst to submit and her hidden wish for possession, but now she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders. She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them. She owed no one an explanation; if she had made mistakes she had been duly punished by giving up her family, suffering in the hold of the ship, losing her baby, and facing a future of total uncertainty. When she found she was pregnant, trapped, she had written in her diary that she had lost her right to happiness. However, in those last months of riding across the golden landscape of California she felt she was flying free, like a condor. She was awakened one morning by the whinnying of her horse with the full light of dawn in her face, surrounded by tall sequoias that, like centenary guards, had watched over her sleep, by gentle hills, and, far in the distance, purple mountaintops; at that moment she was filled with an atavistic happiness that was entirely new. She realized that she had lost the feeling of panic that had lain curled in the pit of her stomach like a rat, threatening to gnaw her entrails. Her fears had dissipated in the awesome grandeur of this landscape. To the measure that she confronted danger, she was becoming bolder: she had lost her fear of fear. “I am finding new strength in myself; I may always have had it and just didn't know because I'd never had to call on it. I don't know at what turn in the road I shed the person I used to be, Tao. Now I am only one of thousands of adventurers scattered along the banks of these crystal-clear rivers and among the foothills of these eternal mountains. Here men are proud, with no one above them but the sky overhead; they bow to no one because they are inventing equality. And I want to be one of them. Some are winners with sacks of gold slung over their backs; some, defeated, carry nothing but disillusion and debts, but they all believe they are masters of their destiny, of the ground they walk on, of the future, of their own undeniable dignity. After knowing them I can never again be the lady Miss Rose intended me to be. Finally I understand Joaquín, why he stole precious hours from our love to talk to me about freedom. So, this was what he meant. . . . It was this euphoria, this light, this happiness as intense as the few moments of shared love I can remember. I miss you, Tao. There's no one I can talk to about what I see, what I feel. I don't have a friend in all this lonely country, and in my role as a man I have to watch everything I say. I go about with a scowl so people will think I'm tough. It is tedious to be a man, but being a woman is worse still.”