They freed the bedposts again, then there was another landslide. The two firemen stopped throwing bricks. One of them stood up. He wiped his sweating face with the back of his hand. “Come on, Bill,” he said. “There’s fires.” They left, going off down the hill on California without turning to look back.
The others went on working for a little while longer. Then a red-haired youth stopped and said, “What’s the use of digging out people that’s dead?” This struck them all as so profoundly true that, without another word, they turned and climbed out into the street. Herma looked back once. The leg was still dripping. Then she went away with Grasse, holding up her hands to look at them. Little dots of blood stood on them, gleaming like rubies through the grime.
He turned and saw what she was doing.
“He was dead.”
Herma nodded without meeting his glance.
“A bath would be nice,” said Grasse. “No chance of that. Let’s see if we can’t find some coffee instead.”
The fire had crossed Market Street in places now. Columns of smoke could be seen over the rooftops, off beyond the City Hall in the direction of Van Ness. Refugees from south of the Slot were still streaming up Stockton and Powell toward Union Square, carrying Victrolas, furniture, bedding, and kitchen utensils. Herma and Grasse crossed through this procession at right angles, stared at by a solemn child about three who was towing a toy wagon behind him. A patch of sun had come out now and was shining down on a straggling line of hungry and homeless people making their way up Powell Street.
Beyond Powell the refugees thinned out, and there were only a few spectators standing in the street looking at the wall of smoke advancing from the west. It was curiously quiet. There was a chink of masonry as someone dug at the rubble a block or so away, and they could hear a voice from a second-story window talking to someone in the street below. Herma and Grasse didn’t say much either. Grasse seemed preoccupied, although not particularly depressed. He even smiled to himself once in a while, in a vacant sort of way. Perhaps, she thought, he was a little bit unhinged.
It was a little farther on, as they were going down O’Farrell toward Delmonico’s, that they saw the first soldiers. They were coming down the street toward them in a long ragged line, with the ruins of St. Mary’s Cathedral behind them in the distance. They were wearing campaign hats, tunics carelessly unbuttoned, and narrow trousers with boots. They carried their rifles slung and they had bedrolls over their shoulders. Their uniforms were not very clean and they were various colors of khaki, some faded and some new. There didn’t seem to be anybody in charge of them. There were a few officers, but they simply walked along with the rest. They went by one by one. They all wore their hats at different angles, some to one side and some to the other. One red-faced soldier had his hat on exactly square, pulled down over his face, with his eyes glowering underneath. As he went by he stared at Herma and said something to himself, or at least moved his lips as though he were mouthing a word. He was the last for a while. There were more coming along in the distance.
“Here’s Delmonico’s,” said Grasse.
Ahead of them a pair of soldiers turned and went into the restaurant. Three or more followed them. When they got inside Herma and Grasse found a dozen or more soldiers roaming around with their slung rifles through the dim interior. The building was relatively undamaged. A pile of bricks had slid to the floor at one place, and a thin dust hung in the air, drifting slowly back and forth. Except for that the room was exactly as it was when they left it two nights before. The waiters had only partly cleared away the tables. One table was covered with wine glasses with napkins stuck into them. A soldier pulled out a napkin, found the glass still half full of wine, and drank it.
“Where’s the coffee, boys?” Grasse asked them.
They stared. None of them spoke. These soldiers were reservists and they looked very young. The one who had drained the wine glass found a bottle of champagne and began unwinding the wires at the neck. When he got them off the cork failed to pop out. Impatiently he banged the bottle on the edge of the table. The neck snapped off, and most of the wine foamed out onto the table and over the soldier’s tunic. He drank the rest from the broken neck of the bottle.
“Capn’s gonna eat out your ass,” one told him.
“Fuck him.”
Grasse took Herma by the arm. He led her off toward the kitchen. “They’re harmless boys,” he said. “It’s just the first time they’ve been away from their mothers.”
In the kitchen there were more soldiers. These were better organized, or at least a little more systematic. They had found some firewood and started up the stove, even though the chimney over it had collapsed and the kitchen was littered with bricks. Some of them cleared the bricks off the stove, and others filled the coffeepot from a spigot which miraculously still gave forth a trickle of water.
“Ah. Coffee,” said Grasse.
“Who’s this?”
“Civilians,” said another without turning his head.
The kitchen began to fill with smoke.
“This stove don’t draw,” said the soldier in charge of the coffeepot.
“Open the damper.”
“There ain’t no damper. It fell down with the chimney.”
“Maybe,” said another, “you hadn’t ought to light the stove, if there ain’t no chimney.”
“It just makes a little smoke. What’s the difference?”
“You’re setting fire to the ceiling,” Grasse told them.
“Who is he anyhow?”
“Some kind of Dago. Hey, what are you, Eyetalian?”
“I’m French.”
“Says he’s a Frog.”
“What are you doing in here anyhow?” said the coffeemaker. “You can clear out.”
“What right do you have to be here?” said Grasse. “Is it your restaurant?”
“It’s martial law, Dad. We’ve requisitioned this here restaurant and it’s a military reservation.”
“It’s also on fire, as I told you,” said Grasse.
The coffeemaker looked up at the ceiling. It was smoking fiercely, and a tongue of flame was visible now in a place where the boards were broken. Some of the soldiers started to drift toward the door. They were met by a pair of policemen rushing in, sweaty and panting. One of them, a sergeant, was hatless.
“Here it is. It’s in the kitchen.”
“What in Blessed Tarnation do you boys think you’re doing?” said the sergeant. “Don’t you know better than to light a fire in a place with no chimney?”
“Just makin’ some coffee,” said one sheepishly.
“All the other fires is still west of Van Ness. Look at what you’ve done, you precious idiots. Ain’t you heard about the proclamation? No kitchen fires until the building’s inspected. You blooming nincompoops are supposed to be enforcing it.”
“It was these two civilians done it,” said the coffeemaker.
“Clear out, the lot of you. Who’s your officer?”
“Tell’im Capn Andrews. He’s a son of a bitch,” said a voice in an undertone.
“Capn Andrews.”
The sergeant wrote it down.
“Now go on. Get out. You too,” he told Herma and Grasse. They all filed out onto the street. As they left the building was burning briskly.
Herma and Grasse went on up O’Farrell toward the wall of smoke in the distance. It was almost nightfall now. A few fires were smoldering in the houses along the street, even though the sergeant had said there were no fires east of Van Ness. Nobody was paying any attention to them. A block ahead were the walls of St. Mary’s Cathedral, which were still standing although everything else around it was flattened into a wilderness of bricks. With the blackened church in the background, like the ruins of a medieval French abbey dimly lit in the glow from the fires, the scene resembled an opera set, a Walpurgisnacht for Faust.
“Where are we going?” Herma asked him.
“Que voulez-vous, ma petite? We are tak
ing a walk. Perhaps we shall find a restaurant that the soldiers haven’t burned down, so we can have a cup of coffee, or perhaps by some miracle we will find a hotel that will provide us with a bed. Two beds,” he added quickly. “Ah, here is someone I know. Hallo, Arnold!”
A man about thirty, with a long and equine face, turned and came toward them. He was hatless and wearing a German canvas jacket, an odd coat that came about halfway to his knees.
“Hullo, Lucien.”
“It’s Arnold Genthe, the well-known photographer,” he told Herma. “Arnold, mon vieux! This is Herma, the well-known opera singer. How is it,” he asked, “that you are both so well known and you don’t know each other? Arnold, my dear friend, how are things with you? What have you been doing with yourself?” he inquired volubly, as though it were a perfectly ordinary meeting between friends on an ordinary day.
“My God, I’ve been photographing like a madman, until the light failed,” said Genthe. “I’ve used up all my plates. Oh, how I wish I could develop them! But the pipes are broken and there’s no water in my laboratory. Lucien, my fortune is made! I’ve got it all on glass. The burning of the Palace—the City Hall—the crowd in Union Square—the financial district—views of the whole blasted fantastic thing from Nob Hill. A hundred and ten plates and thirty stereoscope slides. Now I’ve got to figure out how to get them out of town and on a train to the East. The Times will buy them. The Chicago Trib will buy them, everybody will buy them. And the stereos! I’m exhausted. I’ve been dragging the two cameras around on my back for two days. Lucien, listen, you bibulous old freak. I’ve got a bottle of Johannisberger Schloss ’68 at home that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I think this is it, don’t you?”
“If it’s a case of drinking something, I say drink it in any case. Where is this precious bottle of Riesling?”
“In my house up on Van Ness. It’s just beyond Clay.”
“Isn’t there fire up that way?”
“No, no. There’s no fire that far yet. There may be tomorrow. All the more reason to open the bottle now.”
“Alors. En route!” said Grasse.
They went up the street, not exactly arm in arm but crowded together and bumping elbows convivially. Genthe looked at Herma as though noticing her for the first time.
“And who did you say you were?”
“I didn’t say. Lucien said I was Herma.”
“And what do you do exactly?”
“I sing.”
“Ah! delightful.” He kept turning to look at her as they walked. He seemed to be quite taken with her. Or perhaps he was just a little delirious from fatigue and from the excitement of the pictures he had taken.
They turned the corner onto Van Ness. Here the advancing wall of fire was only a few blocks away. Yet for some reason there was no one in sight. The first houses across the street were flattened to the ground. After that the row of houses seemed intact. The soldiers—these were regulars from the Presidio—were systematically dynamiting the houses in an effort to stop the fire along the Van Ness Line. As they watched, a pair of soldiers came bolting out of the first standing house. One of them fell to his knees, got up, and began running again. An instant later there was a deafening explosion and the boards, bricks, and furniture of the house flew into the air in a cloud of dust. When the dust settled the house had been converted into a flat layer of rubble like the others on the street.
“Holy Moses!” said Genthe admiringly. “I’d like to get that. But I’m out of plates, and it’s too dark now anyhow.”
A soldier appeared from nowhere and ordered them to go back the way they had come. He had a rifle in his hands with the bayonet fixed. “Which way?”
“Any way. Back. You can’t go by here.”
“Why not?”
“You can see for yerself. They’re blowin’ up the houses.”
“Why?”
“So they won’t burn. Have you lost yer wits or what? To make a firebreak.”
“Come on,” said Genthe.
He led them back a block to Polk, then up the street a short distance to a point where they came back onto a stretch of Van Ness still free of soldiers. From down the street they heard the sharp crack of exploding dynamite again, followed by a kind of crackling sigh as the next house collapsed. From all evidence the dynamiting only made the houses burn better. Already flames were licking in the ruins of the one they had just blown up, perhaps from a broken gas pipe.
A little farther along they found a hastily printed poster nailed to a telegraph pole, and stopped to read it as well as they could make it out in the failing light.
“I don’t particularly want to get shot,” said Herma.
“We’re not looting,” said Genthe. “We’re only going to my house for a drink.”
“It says everyone should stay at home.”
“Well, we don’t have a home,” Grasse pointed out. “Mrs. Morbihan’s is burned down, and so is the Palace.”
“It’s only a little farther,” said Genthe. “In the next block.”
They crossed Clay and approached the house. A soldier came down the sidewalk toward them, holding his rifle with the fixed bayonet before him in a businesslike way. He was young and had a red face. His hat was cocked to one side and a lock of curly hair stuck out from under it.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“This is my house,” Genthe said. “I live here. “We’re just going in to drink a bottle of wine.”
“A bottle of wine?”
“To celebrate the occasion.”
“What occasion?”
“The earthquake.”
“Oh, it’s an occasion, is it?”
“Don’t you think it’s an occasion?”
“You goin’ in to drink wine or to have some fun with that girl?”
“Salaud!” cried Grasse. “Mind your tongue, or I’ll have a word with your officer.”
“My what?”
“Captain Andrews.”
“Oh, he’s a son of a bitch,” said the soldier.
“Then mind your manners, and stand out of the way,” said Grasse, still angry.
“You got a key?”
Genthe produced a key and opened the door.
“You can only stay a minute,” said the soldier. “I’ll go in with you.”
They all trooped in, the soldier last, slinging his rifle and bumping the bayonet on the door frame. Genthe lit a lamp. The house was small but tastefully furnished and neat. Genthe’s two cameras were standing against the wall on their tripods, the big wooden Eastman for the four-by-six plates and the smaller stereo camera with its twin-goggle lenses. The studio was adjoining, on the other side of the kitchen, and the laboratory was at the rear of the house.
“I’ll go get it,” said Genthe. “It’s in the cellar.”
“Don’t leave this room,” said the soldier.
“I’ve got to go get the bottle.”
He was suspicious. “Where’s this cellar?”
“Right here. The door’s in the kitchen.”
“All right. But I’m watchin’ you.”
He stood in the kitchen, where he could keep an eye simultaneously on Genthe in the cellar and Herma and Grasse in the parlor.
“Why are you so anxious for people not to enter their own houses?” Herma asked him.
“Looters.” After a moment he added, “Anyhow we’re blowin’ this whole block up.”
“If you’re going to blow up the house anyhow, what do you care about looters?”
He had nothing to say to this.
Genthe came up the stairs with the bottle. He searched around in the kitchen until he found a corkscrew, then he came out into the parlor carrying the bottle, the corkscrew, and three glasses. The soldier came after him carrying a fourth glass.
“Think I’ll join you,” he said.
Genthe opened the bottle and filled the four glasses. They drank silently. Genthe picked up the bottle and examined it, regretfully. There was only a
little more than a glass left in it. He set it down on the table again, and the soldier picked it up and looked at it.
“Say, this is not bad. What is it?”
“Johannisberger ’68.”
“Must be one o’ them German wines.”
“That’s right,” said Genthe.
The soldier drained the rest of it without bothering with the glass. Then he threw the bottle into the corner.
He said, “Now get out of the house. They’re goin’ to blow it up.”
“My house?” Genthe seemed dumbfounded. “Wait a minute. I’ve got to go into my lab for something.”
“Out. Or I’ll have to shoot you, see?”
“But what about my plates?”
“You can eat out of your hand.” He herded them out of the house onto the sidewalk and away down Van Ness. Genthe didn’t bother to lock the door behind him.
It was later; perhaps the same evening. Genthe had disappeared to try to find Mayor Schmitz and get permission to go back to the house for his plates. Herma and Grasse were going up Gough Street, with the fire a few blocks behind them. A line of soldiers was coming down the street toward them, every third or fourth soldier carrying a lantern. They were going systematically into each of the houses on the street; the lanterns could be seen glimmering in the darkened rooms. A pair of soldiers came out of a house leading a thin-faced and grimy man by the arm. Other soldiers came up to him and bound his wrists behind him with a piece of wire. One pushed him roughly. They led him down the street to a place where some householders, forbidden to light fires in their kitchens, had built an impromptu campfire in the street and were cooking soup. In the light of this fire they pushed the grimy man against a wall. He blinked, looking at the fire and then at the soldiers. The soldiers backed away from him and a couple of them raised their rifles. The two sharp reports rang out almost simultaneously. The grimy man slumped and fell on his face, then rolled over on his back.
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