City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

We walked on, rounding the shoreline. A blooming forsythia blocked our view of Grace. Susannah turned and gazed out over the rapids; the waters of the Niagara River looked lazy, like a thick blanket. The Canadian shore on the far side of the river was a hazy, evanescent green.

  Suddenly I realized that this must be close to the spot where I had tried to capture diamonds for my father. The topography looked familiar, embedded in my memory from that day long ago, but something was different. Gradually I realized that the island was bigger than I remembered; the shallows were wider. Now I saw what I hadn’t been able to see before: how much water the makers of electricity had indeed taken from the river; how much land had been uncovered. Yet there was still enough water—more than enough—for anyone so inclined to find God among the rapids.

  I stood at the shallows, staring out. There was a sprinkling of little islands in the rapids, nothing but rocks really, covered with quivering shrubs and bent trees that somehow clung on through the torrent of wind and water. Susannah stood close beside me. As she looked out at the water, there was a strangeness about her, and she bore a probing expression I couldn’t comprehend.

  “It’s mighty, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “People are foolish when they think they can control it. It could sweep them away in an instant.” She took a step forward, the water lapping at the toes of her boots. The current flowed at over thirty miles an hour, and yet the water appeared almost completely still.

  “How wide it is,” she said. “Do you see how each tilt of a wave takes on a different reflection? That’s never really been captured in the paintings of Niagara—all those separate tilts. A sky or a cloud or a tree reflected in each one. Sometimes I stand here and think how easy it would be to wade in and touch those tilts. To be part of them. To let the water buoy me and carry me gently on its back. That color. That green. The river water’s filled with air—that’s what gives it the color. Did you know?” She glanced sharply at me, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Sometimes I want to float there. To be part of the color. The air in the water would hold me up. It would be comforting, to be part of that color.”

  The moving water was hypnotic. She took another step, water surrounding the soles of her boots. She spoke as if from a trance. “Do you ever want to float there? Do you ever imagine what it would be like? The water lifting your body and carrying you away? No sense anymore of right or wrong? No need to fight for anything. Just resting. Floating and never sinking. The water is like God, isn’t it?”

  She gripped my hand, like a child crossing the street, hesitant but eager. She took a half-step forward. And another half-step. I myself took a step into the rapids. Her words had lulled me. Water seeped into my boots, cooling but not cold. She was right: The water was like God. It would bear me away with dignity and cover me with oblivion. I wanted to give myself over. To embrace the oblivion and merge with it and rejoice when the water and I were one.

  “What a terrific spot for a picture!” Franklin came up behind us. “You two are getting your boots wet, you’ll regret that later.”

  Franklin cautioned us too loudly. He began to set up his equipment close beside me. Too close. Stepping into the shallows himself. Protecting me with his proximity. I shook myself out of the trance and realized that the water was near my ankles. I was farther into the rapids than Susannah, who in fact hadn’t stepped in farther than the arch of her foot. What could I have been thinking of, to forget myself, and my past, so completely?

  “Miss Riley, we meet again,” Franklin said, reaching out his hand to her in such a way that he placed his body between us. Then I realized that he’d been frightened. There was perspiration along his hairline, and he breathed deeply from running. Could he really have believed I would walk into the water? Did he somehow think that Susannah was a threat to me, that she intended to … I studied her, but she was simply herself—a frail young woman seven inches shorter than I was. No … Fiske was overreacting, as my father had; there’d been no danger then, there’d been no danger now. Susannah came here frequently; she knew what was safe and what wasn’t.

  “Mr. Fiske,” she replied, holding her hand back for a moment and then, as if feeling she had no choice, reaching out to shake his with a quick, cutting motion.

  “I read in the guidebook,” he said, “that there’s at least one suicide a week here in the summer months. Although the guidebook calls it one ‘accident’ a week. That’s gruesome to think about. Did you know that?” He addressed both of us, but Susannah answered.

  “Yes,” she said, turning away. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Where have you two been!” Grace called, skipping up the path, looking not the least bit worried but rather peeved that she’d been ignored for so long. She stopped about ten feet from us. “You two got your boots wet. How could you, Miss Riley, after you made me promise not to get near the water? That’s not fair. I want cool feet, too. I’m going to—”

  “Stay back, Grace,” Susannah warned sharply. “Miss Barrett and I were scouting scenes to paint when a wave caught us. If you get your feet wet on purpose I’ll never bring you here again.”

  I was surprised by the depth of anger and fear in Susannah’s voice. Grace sulked for a moment, but when Franklin invited her to help him with a photograph, she perked up. The scene was so incongruous: the trees waving in the breeze; the dappling misty sunlight; the delicate wildflowers and flitting birds; the mirror-smooth rocks; the peace of a springtime glade late in the afternoon—a few steps from the oblivion of the Falls.

  Franklin let Grace take the exposure. Afterward, she glanced at me with a contented pride that made my entire life seem worthwhile.

  The next day, this appeared in the afternoon newspapers, under the front-page headline, Tragedy at Niagara:

  James Fitzhugh, age thirty-one, acting chief engineer of the Niagara Frontier Power Company, devoted his life to Niagara Falls. During his lunch break he made a habit of walking along the river. When the weather was fine—as it was yesterday—he often went as far as Goat Island and on to the Three Sisters. Yesterday he apparently made a misstep and was swept to his death. His battered body was discovered upon the boulders at the base of the cataract, just before sunset. The police have discounted foul play.

  “We can only assume that some tragic accident overtook him, on paths that were well-known to him,” said Mr. Thomas Sinclair, director of the power station. “His work was first-rate and vital to the nation. I doubt the truth will ever be discovered. The entire staff of the power station grieves with his family.”

  Readers will remember the accidental drowning in Delaware Park Lake earlier this year of Mr. Karl Speyer, chief engineer of the power station. The two events appear to be unrelated.

  When informed of Mr. Fitzhugh’s death, Mr. Daniel Henry Bates, leader of the Niagara Preservation Society, commented, “The cataract has claimed him as her own.”

  PART III

  I was … at Buffalo in October 1861. I went down to the granaries, and climbed up into the elevators. I saw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and from the railroad vans up into the huge bins of the warehouses—for these rivers of food run uphill as easily as down.

  The work went on day and night incessantly; rivers of wheat and rivers of maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in corn as they distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score laden with wheat. I breathed in the flour, and drank the flour, and felt myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff….

  I began to know what it was for a country to overflow with milk and honey, to burst with its own fruits, and be smothered by its own riches.

  North America,

  Anthony Trollope, 1862

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Monday, May 20. The Dedication Day of the Pan-American Exposition. It was a city holiday, and the schools were closed. Tom had asked me to look after Grace for the day. Theodore Roosevelt, vice president of the United States, led the ceremonies. Nothing else was worthy of attention. The death of James Fitzhugh
four days before—who could even remember it? No one.

  Except for me. Fitzhugh’s death haunted me. First Speyer, now Fitzhugh: the power station’s chief engineer and his replacement. An announcement was promptly made that Tom would take over the duties of chief engineer, adding to his already full schedule. I knew the police had labeled both deaths accidental, and yet … although I had no proof, I believed more than coincidence was at work. What could these deaths possibly accomplish, however? And for whom? One conclusion was that someone wanted to cripple the power station. But to what end? Besides, the deaths of two people could never disrupt the inevitable progress of electricity. Another possibility (one that Fiske had mentioned) was that Speyer particularly had wanted to force policy in a direction that Tom—or other directors of the station—had disapproved of. But Tom himself was the one in charge, so why would it be necessary to resort to murder just for the sake of policy?

  These questions were like a puzzle that defied solution, and they gave me no rest. Meanwhile the newspapers were looking for answers as well, but the journalists took a different approach, indulging in extravagant speculation about whether the dark forces of the supernatural were involved. The papers also printed graphic descriptions of how the thrashing waters had torn away Fitzhugh’s clothing and battered his body. But even these lurid details were soon swept away by more pressing matters, such as: Would the vice president’s hoydenish daughter Alice travel with him and his wife to Buffalo to see the exposition, and, if so, what would she wear? Every publication in the country focused on us—on Buffalo and its Rainbow City, as the Pan-American was dubbed because of its brightly colored pavilions. We had become the center of the nation.

  The idea of glory was like an infection that struck us down, rich and poor, immigrant and native-born alike. We who lived in Buffalo looked only to the future. We became passionate optimists. We could feel to our fingertips all we would achieve through our work and dedication. We understood our future as if it were alive. No vision was too far-fetched. If alternating current could send electricity long distances—and the Pan-American Exposition was a celebration of electricity—anything could be accomplished. Electricity: It seemed like magic, but it was science. Magic had become science, science had become magic, anything was possible and the future was ours.

  At eleven A.M., Grace and I followed at the back of the crowd while Tom gave the vice president a tour of the Pan-Am’s Electricity Building.

  “Can you see Papa?” Grace asked, standing on tiptoe in her patent-leather shoes. She wore a pleated sailor dress, sky-blue with white piping, the collar wide across her shoulders. With little success, she tried to peer around the all-male bodies pressing toward Tom and Roosevelt, among them my board members, other businessmen not quite worthy of the board, the commissioners of the Pan-Am, and assorted city officials including our titular mayor, Conrad Diehl. Mrs. Roosevelt and Miss Roosevelt (Alice is here! the newspapers gushed) were off being entertained by the Women’s Committee (i.e., the wives) at the Women’s Building. But Grace wanted to see her father’s presentation, and so we moved along behind the tobacco-scented crowd, examining X-ray machines and washing machines, electric motor cars, irons, toasters, and gramophones, each one a marvel.

  At the end of the building was the sleek electric transformer which stepped down the voltage of the alternating current sent from the power station at Niagara so it could be used here at the exposition. This item elicited much gentlemanly admiration, particularly from Roosevelt, whose detailed questions revealed the depth of his interest. The vice president, attired in a formal morning coat, relished everything, no matter how small, alternately clucking with approval and booming with enthusiasm. Tom appeared taken aback by Roosevelt’s unalloyed excitement. As the stocky vice president grew ever more ebullient, Tom, tall and polished, turned ever more diffident, creating a pleasing study in contrast.

  Soon, Grace’s attention began to flag. “Would you like to go outside?” I whispered. She nodded, but glanced guiltily at her father. “He’ll understand,” I reassured her. “He’d probably prefer to be outside himself.” She turned to hide a smile, and quietly we slipped out.

  Stepping into the noontime brightness, I squinted, and the scene came into focus like a mirage shimmering in waves. On the far side of a half-acre of apricot-colored tulips, about twenty Negro women dressed in formal white marched in a circle. They wore the purple sash of the National Association of Colored Women. The fringes on their white parasols swayed with every step. They might have been a group of well-to-do society ladies enjoying a spring fete, except for the color of their skin, the repetition of their walk—and Mary Talbert, who climbed onto a crate in the middle of the circle. In her deep, sonorous voice, she called, “What are you afraid of, Mr. Milburn? Are you afraid of civil engineer Benjamin Banneker? Are you afraid of heart surgeon Daniel Hale Williams? Are you afraid …” On she went, through a litany of Negro achievement.

  Although I hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Talbert since the day we’d parted in anger at the Buffalo Club, I knew that her fear had come true: The Midway boasted the exposition’s only coherent reference to Negro life and history, and it was “The Old Plantation.” The promoters proudly advertised that it was manned (womaned and childrened) by “genuine southern Negroes” portraying “happy slaves.” Nevertheless Mary Talbert hadn’t given up the battle for recognition. “Mr. Milburn, give us our black Edison—Granville T. Woods—and you may keep your ‘Old Plantation.’ Give us Jan Ernst Matzeliger and his lasting machine, and you may keep your display of ‘happy slaves.’”

  “Isn’t that Millicent’s aunt?” Grace asked. “What is she talking about?”

  “She’s upset because Negroes are only being remembered for slavery, not for all the good they’ve achieved.”

  Grace thought about this. “She’s right, it’s not fair,” Grace said with the forthright conviction of the innocent.

  “I know.”

  About a dozen police officers lounged nearby. They glanced at the protesting women and occasionally shrugged, shaking their heads as if to say, what foolishness. A few repressed smirks.

  “Mr. Milburn, where is your courage?” came the challenging call.

  Obviously Mrs. Talbert was attempting to provoke an incident, to gain attention and publicity. Probably she wanted to be dragged away to a police wagon, but the police must have been instructed to do nothing, to ignore the women. Even the reporters and sketch artists who waited for the vice president paid no attention, as if Mrs. Talbert and her protest had been made to evaporate, as evanescent as a true mirage in the beating sunlight.

  Several groups of exposition visitors did pause to listen, however: two youngish ladies arm-in-arm; a family with three children dressed in their Sunday best; an older couple, the wife holding her parasol close over her head. They heard Mary Talbert’s words and then they moved along, apparently uninspired, as she soldiered on. “Mr. Milburn, are you afraid of scientist George Washington Carver? Are you afraid”—then suddenly, urgently—“Mr. Roosevelt—hear us, join us!”

  I turned. The vice president was striding out of the Electricity Building with Tom beside him.

  “Mr. Roosevelt!”

  Talking with animation, undoubtedly plotting the future of electricity in America, the vice president didn’t glance up or take his attention away from Tom. For him, Mrs. Talbert’s impassioned pleas must have been nothing more than background noise. The retinue of men in formal morning coats followed behind the vice president, all heading to a luncheon reception on the roof garden of the nearby Electric Tower. After lunch, they would go up to the observation deck, over three hundred eighty feet high; from there, they hoped to see the mist column of Niagara in the distance. Even on their short walk up the esplanade, they strove to establish a hierarchy in relation to Roosevelt, positioning and repositioning themselves in a kind of minuet. Not one paused to gaze at the glimmering geysers in the Court of Fountains, or at the seventy-foot cascade in front of the tower. They cert
ainly had no time to listen to Mary Talbert.

  Except for John Milburn. When he stepped out of the doorway he did pause, he did listen. While others made their way around him, he stopped about ten feet from Grace and me. He saw.

  “Mr. Milburn, we appeal to you!”

  Steadily he observed the scene. The brightly painted pavilions. The profusion of tulips. And the disturbance—created by a collection of colored women—to his day of glory; to his moment of precisely balanced perfection, the apex of years of labor. He seemed to look slightly to the right of Mary Talbert, the way his wife looked at me. Two young couples, prosperously middle class, the women bright and lively, paused close to us. As they listened to Mrs. Talbert’s continuing oratory, their faces fell into looks of disgust. “We paid good money to see this?” one of the men asked. Mr. Milburn turned sharply to stare at him. The speaker was beefy yet slick. I pegged him as a salesman—just the kind of upstanding citizen with a bit of excess income that Milburn wanted to attract to the Pan-Am. The exposition needed many, many such ticket-buying visitors to repay the huge private investment that had gone into its construction. “We should get a refund!” the salesman said, only half-joking. He and his friends shook their heads in distaste as they wandered away. Milburn’s eyes narrowed. He stared at Mary Talbert and her friends with contempt, his famous charm far from evident. Gradually he steeled himself into an expression of profound indifference and walked away.

  “Mr. Milburn, where is your courage?” she called behind him. But he never looked back. When he was too far away to hear, she studied the few passersby stopped before her. “We invite all like-minded citizens to join us!” A small group of gray-haired matrons came near. “Ladies, join us! Ladies, show your strength! Show your power! Join the fight for justice!” They continued walking. Then her glance arrived at me, focused on me. “Ladies, join us?” There was a catch in her voice, an abrupt shift from demand to question; a begging for support; an admittance of despair—her inner self suddenly revealed and open to any knife.