Belle Cora: A Novel

by Margulies, Phillip

  I believed him. It was one reason I was anxious to get Jack Cutter fired at the least, in prison if possible; and it was another reason to take my brother off the path he was on.

  I sent Lewis a note, and we met in a Bowery oyster cellar at four o’clock in the afternoon; at that time of day the place was almost empty. We could see the boots of passersby through high windows on the side that faced the street. Whenever we weren’t talking ourselves we heard rattling pots and snatches of conversation from the kitchen, along with the slurps and moans that went to show how much the top-hatted customer a few tables away from us appreciated his soup. “Lewis,” I said, when we had asked after each other’s health and told each other how fine we were, “do you remember Robert and Edward very well?”

  “I wouldn’t say well.” With a glance at the noisy creature behind him, he removed his own hat. I observed his profile. He wore his hair Bowery Boy fashion, short in the back. At the front and sides were the long, carefully tended soap locks, sideburns oiled and brushed to stand stiffly away from the face. A Bowery Boy could not pass a reflective surface without inspecting his soap locks. “I remember Edward made a lot of jokes, and he would put me on his shoulders and another boy Edward’s age would put his little brother on his shoulders and we’d fight, me and the other small boy. I never had much to do with Robert.”

  During all the years on my uncle’s farm, we had had perhaps four or five conversations in which we pooled our memories of Bowling Green.

  “And Grandpa and Grandma and the house on Bond Street?”

  “Mostly from after we went to live there.” As if it had suddenly occurred to him, he said, “Edward could walk on his hands.”

  A waiter brought stew, bread, and pickles. We talked about old times, Christina, the Great Fire of 1835, my father’s stories about the Turk, Lewis’s accident-prone years. At last, I said, “They’re here, Lewis. Robert and Edward and Grandpa and Grandma. They’re all here in this city.”

  I told him, very selectively, what I had learned, leaving out Frances and our father. “I overheard some men discussing it, and got their addresses at the post office. Lewis, you must announce yourself to them.”

  I proposed that he do it himself, not mentioning me. In case they found out later from the Moodys, he should tell them what he had done to Matthew, say he had done it in my defense, say that he had lost touch with me and did not know where I was.

  Lewis became upset. I had it exactly backward! If only one of us should return to the family, it must be me. He was getting on fine. He was a man doing man’s work. He didn’t have to go hat in hand to rich relatives. “But you, Belle.” He looked around the nearly empty room and spoke in a low voice. “I shouldn’t even have to say it. How can you think of going on, when there’s a way out?”

  I told him that I couldn’t stand the shame. “I would always know what I had been. It’s easier for me now to stay with my own kind.”

  “Your own kind!” There were tears in his eyes. “Your own kind? But you’re not like those women, Belle.”

  “Hush, don’t call me that.”

  He grabbed my hand and kissed it. “You’re not like them.” Not since he was a boy had I seen him so emotional. I began to pity myself. “I don’t care what you do,” he said. “You’re better than all those people.”

  His naïve words took me unprepared, and I wanted to weep in earnest. He loved me after all. I was his big sister, I was good—how could I be a prostitute? That wasn’t me. I saw my fate through his eyes; it was sad that he had to know what I’d become.

  I used these feelings. “Lewis, you’re all I have now—you know that, don’t you?”

  “Oh God, Belle. Don’t.”

  “You’ve got to seize this chance for my sake. You can’t let it pass. Or what is my life worth? What’s it all been worth if I can’t help you? Lewis, remember we were talking a little while ago about the Great Fire? I went to look for you in the fire.”

  “I know. That’s what I mean, Belle.”

  “You can make me happy in spite of everything, in the very midst of everything.”

  He sang his aria and I sang mine, and I believe it was effective, though it wasn’t until the following week, when he had gambled away his pay, that he walked into the offices of Godwin & Co. and asked to speak to Edward or Solomon, whoever was nearest to hand.

  I saw him next a few weeks later, when he slipped away to meet me. The soap locks were gone. He wore a new suit of clothes and looked a new man, and he told me of the rejoicing and how many times they called him “the Prodigal Son” and how the help was told, “This is Lewis, my grandson, who I had thought was dead!”

  My grandfather had taken Lewis to his house in Bloomingdale (which was far north of the city in those days); and so, straight from his foul quarters in a Mulberry Street tenement, Lewis moved into a big room with a window, with curtains. Lying on crisp bedsheets, he could see the silvery bow of a beech tree, and if he stood up and got closer to the window, he could see a lawn, a marble birdbath, and flower beds. It was very strange at first. One morning, Lewis came out of his room and asked the servants, “Who stole my shoes? Has anyone seen my shoes?” The shoes had been taken away to be blacked. When they were returned to him, Lewis clutched them to his breast, called them the Prodigal Shoes, and said he loved them better than the shoes that had never strayed. This story reached my humorless grandfather, who considered it a wonderful jest and repeated it ponderously to everyone he met.

  Robert and Edward lived in town, and Lewis had met them. I envied no part of his reintroduction to the family so much as the hour the three brothers spent comparing their memories of the old house, of our dead parents, of Frank; of Anna, Sally, and Christina. I could tell from the way Lewis talked that it meant less to him. He found Robert, who was now a lawyer, a little stuffy. He preferred Edward. One Sunday, after church, Lewis watched a baseball game between the men of Edward’s volunteer fire brigade and the members of some other volunteer fire brigade; later, in a saloon, Lewis told Edward what he had done to Matthew and what Matthew had done to me. “Solomon must know of this,” said Edward, and that evening he had Lewis repeat the tale in my grandfather’s study. My grandfather, Lewis said, was moved, and said he understood now why a good boy like Lewis could have become so angry; had he been there, he might have wished for such a reckoning as he had visited upon our cousin. If only they could find me! Then his happiness would be complete.

  Though Lewis said he missed his Bowery friends, he missed bowling, gambling, and drinking, it seemed that he was willing to give his new life a try. I suspected, however, that he was sneaking off now and then to his old haunts to show off his new clothes and spend the pocket money my grandfather was giving him. My biggest worry was that a careless word from him might lead the Godwin family to me, and I would have to return to them in the character of a fallen woman. Fortunately, before this could happen, my grandfather sent Lewis off to a place called the Pearson Academy in New Haven.

  I did not dare visit my brother at the school, but I went to meet him once in the town, and some hours later, as I walked by the iron gate between the school and the sidewalk, I glimpsed a rambling two-story house and a brick dormitory. Some students in the uniform of the school eyed me curiously. None of the boys happened to be Lewis.

  XXXIV

  DESPITE THE IMPRESSION that a superficial acquaintance with my biography might create, I am really quite a prudent individual. Although I was not yet ready to change my mode of life, I knew I might one day wish to come up from the diving bell and be Arabella Godwin again, and I became attached to the thought that it might actually be possible. The more I considered the matter, the more anxious I was to neutralize Jack Cutter.

  “SHAME OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE: Police Purchase Stars by Bribery: Bribe Price Lists—Specified Amounts for Differing Ranks and Wards—Corporation Officials as High as Aldermen Involved.” So went the headlines of Mr. Heywood’s first article, breaking the news that was actually common k
nowledge. “Proof has been obtained by the New York Courier of a scandal which, when its details are fully made public, will rock the city to its foundations and shock the Corporation into a reform of the most corrupt police administration to be found in any city of comparable importance in the world.” The article, which promised to be the first of a six-part series, named only one individual, Jack Cutter.

  The day it came out, a boy appeared at Mrs. Bower’s house, asked to speak to me, and recited word for word a carefully memorized message inviting me to a powwow in the basement of the grocery. I bade him wait and wrote a note back.

  Dear Mrs. Donoho,

  I was delighted to receive your gracious invitation to share a cheerful glass of lees beer in the lovely basement of your husband’s fine grocery. However, I feel disinclined to accept this generous offer, as you have entertained me so often and I have never been in a position to reciprocate. Now that I find I am better placed, I have the great pleasure of inviting you, your husband, Constantine, and the esteemed Alderman Michael O’Daniel to the Sawdust House at 1:00 in the afternoon this Thursday. An important journalist and literary man may also be present, and we shall all discuss the best road to good government and other matters of mutual interest. Please do come and bring your husband and Alderman O’Daniel, or I shall be heartbroken.

  Sincerely,

  Harriet Knowles

  Heywood came. So did Donoho and O’Daniel. It was agreed that future crusading newspaper stories would omit mention of their names and be harsh on their rivals in the Democratic Party, and that Jack Cutter would be sent to Sing Sing for bribery and his replacement would be a man of my choosing. I had no one in particular in mind, but I thought that it would be good to have on the police force someone who was beholden to me. I knew by now that, although bribery and blackmail are useful in emergencies, the usual currency of politics is gratitude.

  Philip Heywood gladdened his father’s heart by marrying into an old New York family. Cutter went to prison. I took a breath.

  XXXV

  NOT LONG AFTER THIS, MY ATTENTION was drawn to the one watchful-looking gentleman in a rowdy group that had just entered the house. He was dressed quietly for a man of his profession, but extravagantly for most men, in a soft black hat, a black suit, black boots, a white shirt, and a silk vest, with gold rings on his fingers and a small diamond pin on the shirt. When he spoke to Mrs. Bower, I heard the Italian accent: it was Charles Cora, the gambler whom I had met in the company of Eric Gordon on the Israel Putnam between Cohoes and New York. It had been a year and a half. Mrs. Bower introduced him to Juliette, but he turned to me. “You,” he said. He snapped his fingers and was about to speak but stopped, noticing my alarm.

  “This is Harriet,” said Mrs. Bower, who had also noticed; she noticed everything.

  “The boat,” said Cora.

  I nodded tightly, and he took the hint and didn’t mention it, and then I made sure that he was the one who took me upstairs.

  Later, I asked him if he was surprised to see me here. We were both on our backs. It had been easy and in no way unusual, except for the delicacy of his long fingers, and he said, “Yes, a little.” A little was a funny way to put it. He added, “I knew I’d see you again. I didn’t think here.”

  “You have presentiments? They come true?”

  “The strong ones.”

  “That must be useful in your profession.”

  There was more skepticism in that remark than I had intended. He said simply, “All gamblers believe in fortune.”

  I had been ready to bribe him to keep my secret, but there was no need: he wouldn’t think of harming me. He had a comradely regard for women of my type. In this he was an unusual example of his own kind. Most sporting men, though they may admire a fine whore and thank God that some women are bad, are contemptuous as well; to feel otherwise would be to insult their wives and mothers and sisters. In Italy, where Charles Cora was born, an even sharper distinction is made between good and bad women, but he had different ideas, because his mother was a prostitute, and he had been raised in a brothel in Milan.

  Though he was—and I liked this about him—as thoroughly a creature of the present as any grown man I have ever known, and not much interested in his own past, now and then during our time together a scrap of it rose to the surface of his talk. With your permission, I will tell it all now, everything I learned in all the years I knew him. He thought that his father might have been a French officer, since he was born in the time of Napoleon, when there were many Frenchmen in Italy. Or maybe his father was the amiable landowner’s son who spent as many hours playing with him as dallying with the girls, and gave him his first deck of cards. He did not know who arranged for him to be sent to the school from which he had run away to live on the streets of Bologna when he was fourteen.

  He had lived in Brazil and Cuba. He had called himself Fabrizzio Bologna and Bernardino Blanco. “Charles” was from St. Charles Street in New Orleans, and “Cora” was really his ignorant misspelling of cuore, Italian for the suit of the card that was in his hand when he decided it was time for a new last name.

  He was a very gifted gambler, with a brain that was wonderful for remembering the play and calculating odds; and hands uncanny for their skill in conjuring the wide, irregular, or slightly nicked card, so swiftly and eyelessly that it was all over before his victims knew it. He could imbibe quarts of liquor without visible effect, and he always knew exactly when to leave town.

  He told me that where men were honest he was honest, but America, if he could say so without hurting my feelings, was a very dishonest country; here he had to cheat in self-defense. This was nonsense. Cheating is the whole art of professional card dealing; it had been his study since he was a half-wild boy in Lombardy.

  He lost everything he had—it happened all the time—and to watch the methodical, uncomplaining, and perfectly confident way he began again from nothing was an inspiring sight. He was always generous, because money was unreal to him.

  CORA CAME BACK ALMOST EVERY DAY for a few weeks. There was something between us, though I couldn’t put a name to it; perhaps we were friends. At any rate, I felt comfortable with him; he was comfortable in a brothel and would stay almost for the whole next day, having breakfast with the whores, telling them stale jokes, of which he had an encyclopedic knowledge, playing absentmindedly with a deck of cards (in my room, he would go even further and sit at my desk trimming them and nicking them).

  Since his appetite for lovemaking was no greater than average, for a while I wondered if he might be jealous and trying to monopolize me, but if so he was going about it very carelessly: he often went out, and I was with other men; sometimes, when he was busy trimming cards, I was writing love letters, and it didn’t seem to bother him. He usually came back in time to be the last man and to spend the night.

  I will not say that I fell in love with him, but I looked forward to his visits, and I wondered what he was doing when he was not with me. When, on occasion, he did not show up as expected, I was disappointed, and when he returned again, I found myself taking him to task for it, as if the absence of obligation were not the whole point of him and me. He had an easygoing, self-possessed manner that was very agreeable—instant intimacy of a low order; I could speak freely, he was never angry or hurt—but which would be frustrating to anyone trying to make the acquaintance of the inner man. Then I’d say something sharp to get under his skin, but he would just smile. I envied Charley his composure, and after a while I learned to take his mood as my own, and to glide lightly and swiftly over the surface of life, as he did.

  Once, he was gone for over a month, and I decided that when he returned I would tell him not to come anymore, because I was becoming too attached to him. But when he showed up he was in a good mood, and it seemed foolish to spoil the moment. “Let’s go out,” he said. “Show, restaurant, dance, hotel.”

  He had just been to New Orleans, where he had run a faro game in a little storefront, and also played
poker in rich men’s houses, and he had prospered, and he told me how it all was done.

  “I’d like to see New Orleans,” I said, and he promised to take me next time.

  He suggested later that we go to his hotel room, which, it turned out, was on the second floor of the Astor House. My back stiffened when I learned this, and I told him how I had embarrassed myself with Eric Gordon who often stayed at that hotel. “Let’s go somewhere else, then,” said Charley. I thought about it and said no, I didn’t want to be weak, and he nodded. That was something he understood.

  At the Astor House, we registered as Mr. and Mrs. Cora. The next morning, in the bed, with his arms crossed behind his head, watching me dress, he said: “Why not stay?”

  “I have to answer to Mrs. Bower,” I reminded him.

  “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Where do you stand with her?” He knew how American parlor houses worked. He offered to settle my debts.

  I told him that I was paid up, and that I liked him, but I had to be realistic. What was he offering me? Was he offering to keep me permanently?

  “No, just while I’m in town.”

  “And when you go?”

  He shrugged. “You won’t be any worse off.”

  He was right, I realized. I had already stayed with Mrs. Bower as long as the average girl did. I was still popular, and she wanted to keep me, but she had nothing to complain of if I left. In a month or a year, I would still be marketable. I sat down at the desk and, with an Astor House pen on Astor House stationery, wrote a letter to Mrs. Bower; I tipped a boy to take it. And so, for a time, I lived in the best hotel in New York City as Mrs. Charles Cora. We lived a life of idle pleasure, going to see races and prizefights out on Long Island, learning to ride horses, taking cruises in schooners and steamboats around the bay and up the Hudson, attending concerts, plays, picnics, and circuses, drinking champagne, and eating saddles of veal and oysters as big as dessert plates. When I was bored with all that, I would sit in the hotel common room, read The Tribune and The Penny Magazine, and strike up conversations with people from far-off places, people who had uprooted themselves, if only for a few weeks: here they were in New York; and where was I from, they would ask me, what was my story?