1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  "Damn it!" Schmitz bellowed. "Five thousand houses, all the city's records in danger because somebody had to have ham and eggs for breakfast?"

  "I think that's about what happened, yes, sir," the messenger said.

  Schmitz looked around at the men who had come to save the city: former Mayor Phelan, Chronicle publisher Michael de Young, several bankers and Schmitz' adversary, Rudolph Spreckels. They had survived wars, currency crises, lawlessness, and crippling strikes, as well as their political animosities. Nothing had prepared them for the horrors raging about them.

  The door banged open and General Funston strode in. He walked across the room, imperious and annoyed, stopping abruptly before Schmitz.

  "You wanted to see me?" Funston asked. The General was not happy.

  "Yes," Schmitz answered, shuffling a stack of papers. "I'm not sure where I should start. I have reports of your men looting stores, your men drinking on duty, and your dynamite squads blowing up buildings without consulting me!"

  "Maybe you should step outside and see for yourself," the fuming General urged, his jaw clenching, his face reddening. "Half the city is about to catch fire and a couple of hundred thousand people are on the short road to hysteria. Now, you call me in for a bunch of ridiculous rumors!"

  Assistant Chief Dougherty returned and pushed his way to Funston and Schmitz.

  "Chief Dougherty," Schmitz called, "we just received a report that the wind has shifted and Market Street is now in the path of the fire."

  "It's worse than that," Dougherty replied. "I was on the roof. The South of Market fire is spreading in two directions. The western tail jumped Tenth Street and is headed toward the Mission District. If it merges with the new fire in the Hayes Valley, it could surpass everything we've faced so far. And the wind has not only shifted but strengthened. The main wall is now bearing down on the Mint and the Palace Hotel. If it leaps Market, the entire Financial District is in its path."

  "Half of the City," Schmitz replied, voice trembling.

  Funston jabbed his finger at the map. "We have to extend the firebreak. Take out all the buildings on the east side of Van Ness. That will protect Pacific Heights and the Western Addition. And we have to dynamite Mission Street and the south side of Market. That's the only way to protect the Financial District, North Beach, Chinatown, every bloody thing all the way to the waterfront."

  The implication left everyone stunned. Rudolph Spreckels cleared his throat and stepped forward. "General, you're asking us to sacrifice the Grand Hotel, the Palace, the Chronicle Building. Two, three hundred million dollars worth of real estate. Maybe more."

  They were all too preoccupied to notice Hunter and me pushing toward them.

  "Every building on the south side of Market Street," Schmitz repeated. "Their records, their assets, everything."

  "You don't have to do any of that," Hunter interrupted. As the two dirtiest people in the building, it took little effort to clear a path.

  Hunter unfolded Dennis Sullivan's plans atop Schmitz' map. "I was the lead surveyor on the Stanford team that did the water study for Chief Sullivan. This is his map."

  Bertrand offered me a glass of water. I guzzled half and then passed it to Hunter, who gulped the other half.

  Hunter pointed to the plans. "Dennis Sullivan is a genius. Here's a schematic of the entire Spring Valley Water System. That thick dark line running through it is the San Andreas Fault, mapped by a geologist from Berkeley. The breaks in the thirty-inch conduits are directly above the fault, in filled land, just like Chief Sullivan predicted. Now, look at this."

  Hunter wiped his forehead on the back of a dirty hand before turning the next page. "A list of every iron works and pipeline supplier in San Francisco. It's pretty obvious. Chief Sullivan is telling us to splice into the Spring Valley system at the breaks and run pipe above ground. Has anyone even tried splicing into the ruptured lines?"

  A dull silence was his answer. He flipped to the next page. "Here's a list of every Navy vessel on the West Coast with firefighting capacity. We don't need the Army. We need the Navy! If we can splice into the Spring Valley system we can hold back the fire until the Navy gets here. We can keep it from jumping Market and Van Ness and devouring the whole city if we move fast enough."

  "Dynamite is the only way to stop it," Funston argued, banging the table, "and the more we stand here talking, the less likely it is to work."

  "It's not working," Hunter argued. "Ten percent of the city is in flames and the other ninety percent will be if this continues. All your men are doing is spreading the fire. If they dynamite Market Street, we won't need the fire to jump to the other side. All that burning debris will do it for us. Dennis Sullivan said that unchecked, it would take a week for this city to burn. With the Army in charge, it will be gone in two days. We don't need dynamite, dammit, we need water! Instead of starting fires, maybe General Funston's men could start running pipes and hoses!"

  Funston shook, barely able to contain his anger. "What it comes down to is whether the administration is going to trust a Brigadier General in the United States Army or a smart-mouth college kid!"

  Hunter glared at Schmitz. "The question, Mr. Mayor, is whether you're going to let General Funston blast the city to smithereens or listen to Dennis Sullivan, the best firefighter in the country."

  "All right. All right," Schmitz said. "Here's what we're going to do. Is the telegraph still operating at the Postal Office?"

  "Yes, sir," Bertrand replied, "but if the fire leaps Market Street, we will be completely cut off."

  "All right. Send a telegram to the Navy. We want every fireboat, every foot of hose, every sailor on the West Coast as fast they can get here. General Funston, I want a specific plan for the expansion of the dynamiting in ten minutes."

  "It won't work," Hunter countered. "The more we dynamite, the faster the fire is going to spread and the harder it's going to be for the Navy to stop it. I saw one of General Funston's teams blasting away with black powder, setting everything around it on fire. You can't use black powder and you can't blast firebreaks if you don't have water. You have to soak those buildings first, soak the buildings around them and be prepared to douse any fires they set. That's just common sense. If we use every resource we have, we can slow it down until help arrives."

  "You've made your point," Schmitz replied, "but we can't sit by and do nothing. That will be all, Officer Fallon. They need you on the rescue operations."

  Hunter started to roll up Sullivan's plans.

  "You better leave those with me," Schmitz said. "When the Navy does arrive, we may need them."

  "It will be too late," Hunter said. He stuffed the plans into Schmitz' arms and stalked away.

  I lingered behind, staring at Schmitz and Funston. "If Chief Sullivan were here to speak for himself," I said, "he wouldn't stand for any of this. Not the military taking over, not people who know nothing about explosives blowing the place to Kingdom Come. The world is watching. When there's nothing left of us, there will be Hell to pay for ignoring what Chief Sullivan is saying to you."

  I stormed off as a soot-encrusted fireman burst through the door, almost knocking me over in his rush toward Schmitz. I stopped to listen.

  "Mr. Mayor," he gulped, "the Hayes Valley fire just hit City Hall. It's spreading toward the Mechanics' Pavilion. Every hospital in town has been sending their wounded over there. Must be a thousand people laid out on the floor."

  Schmitz looked ready to sag to his knees. He scratched his head as if trying to raise an idea. "We better evacuate the injured."

  "We can't take them to the train station," Dougherty said, "if the fire jumps Tenth Street, they'll be cut off. One entire escape route would be gone."

  "Good God, man," Funston said. "Listen up. I want every automobile and wagon in the city commandeered and the wounded moved to Letterman Hospital at the Presidio." He pulled a notepad from his pocket. "Have a messenger run this note to the duty officer. I want a tent city set up on the Presidio ground
s and every blanket and spare ration on the West Coast sent here immediately. Now, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, there's a fire that requires my attention."

  Funston shoved past me as he exited. Dennis Sullivan had been denied again, this time by a man he thought an ally.

  I trudged up the steps to teeming Kearny Street, trying to stave off the fear. To my left, a fiery mountain towered behind Market Street's tallest buildings. The fire had taken on a frightening sound, a tick tick ticking like a million cicadas. I grew light-headed in the heated air as people scuttled about with strange, jerky motions, a marionette show bathed in unearthly crimson light.

  I spotted Hunter pacing in Portsmouth Square, waving his arms and muttering, head and shoulders above a sea of displaced Chinese. A halo of red and yellow, the fire's reflection, danced about his head and soiled face.

  A burst of laughter escaped me, which abruptly turned to joyous tears. Hunter had become a man before my eyes, simply because a man was needed. He found his best, as his father did, when things were at their worst. An emotional shiver swept through me, a welling that brought a momentary calm.

  "Those idiots," Hunter said when I reached his side, his tone more pity than rancor. "How do pathetic little men like that come to power? What is this obsession the world has with grinning imbeciles with the backbone of a pimp?"

  He swung me gently in his arms as tears streamed down our dirty faces. I wanted to tell him how proud his parents would be, how much I loved him, but I was unable to speak.

  I stared at the fire and my melancholy turned to horror. The inferno was growing by the second.

  Chapter 56

  UNION SQUARE

  APRIL 18, 1906. 12:18 P.M.

  In the dining room of the St. Francis Hotel, where he had gone to escape the pandemonium at the Palace, Enrico Caruso used the last wedge of toast to wipe the last smear of egg from the corners of his plate, washing it down with his third glass of orange juice. A stifled belch signaled the finale of an enormous breakfast.

  The other guests had switched from discreetly watching Caruso to staring at him in disbelief. Even Kaitlin, whose three brothers would devour a horse if given the liberty, sat transfixed.

  Caruso patted his stomach, slid back his chair and wobbled across the dining room. He shoved his way through the kitchen's swinging doors and promptly found the headwaiter, who was quietly relating Caruso's gastronomic feat to the chef. "Is wonderful prima colazione. I am thanking you very much," the smiling tenor declared, handing over a five-dollar bill.

  They stared at the biggest gratuity they had ever received and nodded politely to the tenor, who wore a smear of jam across his mustache. Caruso bowed politely and exited.

  He was halfway across the dining room when an aftershock sent him to his knees. Cups and dishes crashed and moans echoed across the cavernous room. When it stopped, Kaitlin ran to the tenor's side and helped him to his feet.

  "'Ell of a place," Caruso said hoarsely as Kaitlin helped him to his feet. "I never sing here again."

  They stepped outside the St. Francis, where the sight of the fire arching above Market Street added to their malaise. Caruso took Kaitlin's hand and pulled her through the crowd gathering around Union Square.

  They crossed Market; the faces of those in flight toward the waterfront grew more anguished each minute. A mother, father, and two young boys struggled to shove a piano over the tracks and cobblestones, the motionless body of an elderly woman sprawled atop. A legless man on a wheeled board clung to a rope trailing from a manure truck now loaded with antiques.

  They entered the Palace lobby, where Alexander Sharon made a beeline to Caruso.

  "Signor Caruso, Mr. Hertz is in your room having your belongings packed. We are evacuating the hotel as a precaution. The fire has shifted directions. I am so sorry."

  "What is thees, escavazione?"

  "Evacuation, Mr. Caruso. They want us to leave," Kaitlin replied.

  "The Grand Opera House has just surrendered to the flames," Sharon added apologetically. "Everything was lost. Your costumes, instruments. Everything."

  On the Palace roof, a mismatched crew of security guards, bellmen, and waiters braced as the fire reached Mission Street a block away. A janitor beckoned them to the edge of the building, where they watched soldiers moving the crowd away from the unfinished Monadnock Building next door. A sapper ran out from the steel girders as his comrades scattered. Seconds later, a dynamite charge exploded and sent the Palace shaking from foundation to roof.

  The men on the hotel roof staggered away, holding their ears as a storm of sparks and cinders showered down on them. Scores of tiny fires sprung up on the expansive, black pitch roof. A burly waiter turned a brass wheel and three hoses bulged with water, the streams so powerful the force almost ripped the nozzles from the men's hands. They quickly extinguished the flames.

  On the west side of the hotel below, crews on each floor ran the hallways, kicking in doors where the explosion had shattered windows and set curtains and carpeting ablaze. They doused the flames, cursing Funston and the Army.

  In his suite at the opposite end of the Palace, Caruso finished dressing in a blue striped suit and entered the parlor where Kaitlin and Hertz awaited him. The calm that ushered him through breakfast had disappeared. He clutched his most prized belonging, the photograph with President Roosevelt.

  "My voice," he croaked, "my voice ees died."

  "Enrico," Kaitlin soothed, "your voice is fine. Have you tried to sing?" She looked at Hertz, busy directing bellboys struggling with Caruso's trunks.

  "Yes," Hertz called, "why don't you try? Sing something, Enrico." Caruso's eyes darted fitfully between Hertz and Kaitlin.

  "Please, Enrico," Kaitlin said with a touch of her alluring smile. "For me."

  He handed her the Roosevelt photo and walked to the window. Hertz ripped back the curtains and shoved open the broken sash, offering Caruso a smile.

  "See, Enrico, there is no fire here," Hertz declared. The statement was a hollow one. The light of the fire behind the Palace danced eerily off the buildings before them. It sent Caruso's spirits plummeting.

  "You are the greatest voice in the world," Kaitlin said, "sing something." Quickly.

  "What are you like me to sing, Kaitlin?"

  "The one about Mimi and Rodolfo, the poor seamstress and the poet who falls in love with her. From La Bohème. I love it because I'm a seamstress who loves poetry."

  Caruso stared at Kaitlin's earnest face and his spirits revived. "Che gelida manina. Is 'ow you say?" patting his head to dislodge the words. "Froze little hand. Is Rodolfo sing to his poor Mimi while 'e is a' try to warm hand. Is aria I was sing tonight."

  Kaitlin nodded, choking back tears. She wanted to tell him how many times she had fallen asleep, her ear pressed against the horn on her Gramophone, dreaming of Rodolfo. Caruso squeezed her hand and the gesture steadied them.

  He cleared his throat and faced the window, Kaitlin on one side, Hertz on the other.

  "Che gelida manina/se la lasci riscaldar/cercar che giova?/Al buio non si trova/ma per fortuna è una notte di luna/ e qui la luna l'abbiamo vicina."

  Kaitlin mouthed "How cold your tiny hand is/let me warm it/what's the use of looking/we won't find it in the dark/but with good fortune it is a moonlit night/and here we have the moon so close." They were the words that Lincoln had translated and she had written in her diary. A tear ran down Kaitlin's face. The stoic Hertz succumbed as well.

  On Market Street below, Hunter and I rode through the torrent of refugees struggling toward the waterfront. Fearful and exhausted by their efforts, many left sewing machines and bassinets, hope chests and hand baskets, rocking chairs and coat racks, family portraits, bicycles, a sidewalk bazaar of personal memoirs.

  Hunter slalomed over and between piles of the debris. He slowed as we stared up at the Palace Hotel, crowned by the flame and smoke a block behind it. Streams of water played across the fiery backdrop as desperate men fought to keep the jewel of the c
ity from the encroaching holocaust. All around us, people were stopping to gaze upward.

  I tapped Hunter's shoulder and pointed to the fifth floor.

  Through a shattered window frame, Caruso appeared, his miraculous tenor drifting down, piercing the thunder and the fear. "Chi son/Chi son/Sono un poeta/Che cosa faccio?/ Scrivo!/E come vivo?/Vivo!"

  "Who am I? Who am I? I am a poet. What do I do? I write," I whispered in Hunter's ear, hugging him from behind, "And how do I live? I live!"

  Caruso's voice soared, reaching ever deeper into his storied baritone, soaring to lyrical heights that once again seemed impossible. The horror faded and an eerie feeling of peace swept through the crowd.

  "In povertà mia lieta/Scialo da gran signore/Rime ed inni d'amore /Per sogni e per chimere/E per castelli in aria."

  "In my carefree poverty/I indulge like a rich man/in rhymes and poems of love/by dream and fantasy/by castles in the air," Hunter called back to me.

  I noticed streams of people pouring from the Palace. "Hunter, they're abandoning the hotel. We can't leave Caruso on his own."

  "He has a manager, a valet . ."

  "Who don't know anything about the city. They can't get to the railroad station and the Ferry Building must be overwhelmed. That's Enrico Caruso, we can't leave him here like this."

  "All right," Hunter said. "Take him to my house and get some rest before you collapse. Telegraph Hill is the safest place in the city right now. I'll come back for you. Go, I have work to do."

  I climbed from the Waltham and quickly kissed Hunter's dirty face, momentarily struck by the fear that I might not see him again.

  "Ma il furto non m'accora/poiché v'ha preso stanza/la speranza!" Caruso soared to the airiest heights on “speranza” and held it effortlessly as a shiver went through the crowd.

  "But the loss does not bother me/because its place has been taken/by hope," I said softly as Hunter powered up Market Street, Caruso's voice fading behind him.