Time of Fog and Fire

by Rhys Bowen

  I lay there, holding my breath until I heard a door close behind her. Bella had seemed so carefree and gay. Was she privy to the fact that a body lay in her basement? She had clearly been upset when Señor Garcia arrived, but had she ordered his murder? Even taken part in his murder? She seemed like such a warm and generous person. I could envision both Francis and Tiny killing someone if necessary, but surely not Bella. Had Tiny killed Garcia to somehow protect Bella? Or had I got it wrong and was Tiny under the control of Bella somehow? And what about the trunk full of money in the cellar? I’d often found that money and murder go together. Had Bella decided to keep her life savings here, rather than in a bank? And had Señor Garcia learned of the money and tried to steal it? In any case it appeared that Francis had not had a chance to tell her that I had been down to the basement tonight. I was safe until morning and then I’d make my escape.

  * * *

  I was awoken by being thrown violently across the bed. Someone was shaking me awake with considerable force. I opened my eyes in terror. My first thought was that Tiny or Francis had come up to my room to finish me off.

  “Holy Mother of God!” I heard myself exclaim as I looked around me in panic. It was still quite dark outside. From what I could see I was alone in the room, but I was still being pitched around like a rag doll. From deep below came a rumbling sound as if a freight train was passing close by. But there was no train line in this part of the city. Then I heard other sounds: creaking and clattering, wood splintering, glass breaking, heavy thuds. I clung on to the bed frame as the bed skittered and danced across the room as if it was possessed. I had no idea what was happening or how to stop it. In truth I wondered if I was in a nightmare and might awaken at any moment. Then a picture crashed down from the wall. Plaster fell from the ceiling in large chunks. The light from a streetlamp outside allowed me to see only a hint of flying shapes. I glanced around the room in time to see the wardrobe against the wall teetering. I managed to scramble out of bed as it crashed where I had been lying.

  Liam! I thought. Have to get Liam out of this.

  I tried to reach my dress, which I had left lying over the back of a chair, but it was now covered in plaster and the chair had tipped over. I retrieved the dress, brushed it off, and tried to put it on, but it was impossible to stand. It was like being on the back of a bucking horse. And now the sound of screams and wails rose up from the city below. I didn’t bother to do up the buttons, just slipped my feet into shoes and managed to pick my way over broken glass and plaster to my door. I turned the key in the lock but the door wouldn’t open. I yanked at it. I kicked at it. Then in frustration and panic I staggered across the room, picked up the wrought iron lamp that now lay on the floor, and used it as a battering ram. A panel in the door splintered. I hammered some more and finally shattered the lock.

  And all the while the shaking continued. A light had been left on in the stairwell. Now it flickered and jiggled around, sending crazy shadows dancing over the stairs. As I came out onto the landing someone was running down the stairs ahead of me. It was Li Na, with Liam in her arms. Thank heavens that sensible girl was carrying him outside to safety.

  “Li Na. Wait. I’ll take him now,” I called.

  But she didn’t stop. She wrenched open the front door and ran down the front steps.

  “Li Na. Wait for me!” I shouted after her and ran down the stairs as fast as I could, clinging to the shaking banister. The grandfather clock fell into the hall with a great clang and crash. Statues were toppling onto the marble floor, which was springing up in chunks as if with a life of its own.

  “Earth Dragon. Got to stop Earth Dragon!” Li Na shrieked as she ran out of the house.

  Liam spotted me. “Mama!” he cried, struggling in her arms. But she didn’t stop. She was already out of the front door, down the steps, and running at a great rate up California Street.

  “Wait!” I shrieked, but she was striding out ahead of me, her cotton trousers not hampering her movements in the way that my dress over my nightgown did. What was she doing? Where was she taking my son? The world had stopped shaking but from the city below came the wail of sirens, cries for help. Electrical wires lay across the street, hissing and writhing like snakes as they sparked in the darkness. Some of the streetlamps had gone out. It was horribly eerie. The mansions I passed seemed unscathed, with people in night attire standing outside them, but bricks had been flung across the sidewalk from the almost-finished Fairmont Hotel. The first streaks of light appeared in the eastern sky.

  Li Na had reached the crest of the hill where California Street drops down sharply toward the Bay but still she didn’t stop. She jumped over piles of bricks with the ease of a gazelle and kept running down California Street. I followed, stumbling and tripping over the debris that littered the sidewalk, unable to see more than a foot or two in front of me. A pall of dust rose up around us, getting into my nose and throat. I read the street names as I passed them. Past Powell Street. Past Stockton. A sharp pain shot through my side and I gasped for breath. It was hard to run in my dainty shoes while she wore flat cotton slippers. The buildings on this side of the hill had clearly suffered more. Cornices had been shaken down and chunks of decorative stonework lay across the street and sidewalk. On some houses whole fronts had fallen, oil lamps had tipped over, starting small fires that revealed rooms with furniture hurled around, as if by a giant hand. Paving stones had popped up from the street and the rail for the cable car had buckled like a switchback. Until now I had not had to encounter people but ahead of me the street was full of them, standing dazed, in nightclothes, with bleeding heads and damaged limbs. One building had collapsed completely and a man had been buried up to his neck in fallen bricks. “Help me,” he implored as I ran past.

  Crowds were now coming up the hill toward us. And among those crowds now were Chinese people—men in baggy trousers, with skullcaps on their heads and long pigtails down their backs. They carried bundles of possessions or cages with small birds in them. Behind them women hobbled pitifully, trying to keep up on bound feet. We reached Grant Avenue and the beginning of Chinatown. I caught a glimpse of Li Na’s white tunic, far ahead of me. She turned left at Grant Avenue and vanished. I followed. I was thoroughly winded and finding it hard to breathe now in the dust and smoke that hung in the air.

  We were now in the midst of utter destruction. The pall of dust gave everything an indistinct and unreal quality in the half-light. Flimsy buildings had slid off foundations and were lying at drunken angles. Shops had spewed out contents, with vegetables and fruit rolling under our feet. What had been streets were now littered with fallen bricks and debris. From around me came the sounds of constant moaning, and in the distance the ringing of fire truck bells, as small fires had broken out, creating pockets of hazy glow in the darkness. One of them was on my right—some kind of temple building had collapsed, its green and gold pagoda-style roof now lying pancaked a few feet from the ground with smoke curling up around the edges. Further away black smoke was rising all around.

  Grant Avenue was crowded with Chinese people. Some were trying to flee, dragging small carts of children and possessions. But others were kneeling on the ground, digging away furiously. Some were holding up pieces of paper to which they had set fire, then dropping them into holes in the ground. It would have been fascinating had I not been so terrified. I stepped gingerly past the burning papers and ran on. How would I ever find my son in this chaos?

  “Li Na!” I shouted over the wails and sirens. It was impossible.

  Then I spotted a policeman. I ran up to him. “Help me. My nursemaid has run off with my son. She wouldn’t stop.”

  He was a young man and he had that look of utter bewilderment in his eyes. “Ma’am, I’d get out if I were you. This place is going to go up in flames.”

  “What are they doing, lighting all those papers?” I asked.

  “Appeasing the Earth Dragon, I gather. That’s what they do when there’s an earthquake.”

 
Earthquake. Of course. The word took shape in my mind. It was the first time it really sunk in that I had just experienced a massive earthquake. And that’s what Li Na had shouted. Earth Dragon. That meant she would be digging and burning paper somewhere close by. And I remembered Portsmouth Square. A big, newly planted garden with plenty of room to dig in the soil. I turned down a side street, pushing past fleeing Chinese and heaps of bricks and stone. Another fire was crackling away in what had been a restaurant to my left. Sam Woo’s Chop House, said the drunken sign on the collapsed awning. The park was ahead of me now and I could see hundreds of Chinese scrabbling in the dirt. Then without warning the rumbling came again. Cobblestones started popping up like popcorn; buildings around me creaked and groaned. People screamed and ran in panic, pushing past me to get to the open space of Portsmouth Square. I ran with them, swept along in the tide. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the wall to my left start to fall. I tried to put on a spurt but I was hampered by the crowd ahead of me. As if in slow motion it came. Bricks floating toward me. All around me. Then something hit me on the back of the head and I knew no more.

  Twenty-two

  I came to consciousness slowly to see a face peering down at me.

  “This one’s not dead,” said a male voice.

  I blinked. The light hurt my eyes, even though it was muted. From around me came sounds: low moans, groans, an occasional scream.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “Mechanics’ Pavilion, my dear,” the male voice said. The words meant nothing to me. I had never heard of a Mechanics’ Pavilion. I stared up at him. I could just make out a drooping mustache and a round face. “The hospital was too badly damaged so we’ve been bringing patients here. You’re lucky they found you. You were under a collapsed wall and everyone around you was dead. It was in the middle of Chinatown so as you can imagine there weren’t that many volunteers wanting to help with rescues there. The Chinese were all fleeing as fast as they could. And the whole area is going up in flames.”

  I tried to sit up.

  “What were you doing in Chinatown anyway so early in the morning?” He was looking at me suspiciously. “Why didn’t you get out after the first quake?”

  “I was…” I paused. What was I doing? Chinatown? I toyed with the word. Wasn’t that where Chinese people lived? How could I live there then?

  “Where do you live, my dear?” the male voice sounded kinder now.

  “I live…” I tried to think but my head hurt. “I forget.”

  “What’s your name?”

  My name was … I wrestled with that one and then it came to me. Molly. That was my name. I tried harder, screwing up my eyes. Molly … Murphy. “Molly Murphy from Ballykilleen,” I said.

  “Ballykilleen, where’s that?”

  “Ireland.”

  “From Ireland, are you?” He looked at me with sympathy. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Yes,” I said, realizing this to be true. “I’m a long way from home and I’d like to go back there.”

  “You just rest on that cot for a while and then we’ll see about getting you out of here.” He patted my shoulder gently. “So where were you staying? Which hotel?”

  “Hotel?” I shook my head. I couldn’t picture a hotel. Frankly I couldn’t picture anything except a schoolroom. A nun was standing at the front of the class and she had a pointer in her hand. “Molly Murphy!” she said in her sharp voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your catechism?”

  “I must go home,” I said, struggling to sit up. “I forgot my catechism. Sister will be angry.”

  The man was looking at me with concern now. “You just rest. You’ve had a nasty bump on your head.”

  Another man came up, this one in a white coat. “Has this one recovered enough to send her out?” he asked. “We’ve just had another wagonload brought in and we need the bed.”

  “She’s from Ireland,” the mustache man said. “Talking about her sister.”

  “Who was she staying with here?” He looked down at me. “Whom were you staying with, ma’am? With friends or in a hotel?”

  For some reason I found the word “ma’am” funny and wanted to giggle. “I can’t remember,” I said.

  “Were you with your family?”

  There was a flash of memory. A baby. “My baby brother was with me,” I said.

  “Anyone else?”

  I thought but no images would come.

  The man in the white coat nodded. “The blow to the head has caused some amnesia. We’d better leave her here and give her time. We can’t turn her out like this. Bring her a drink of water.”

  “I can’t do that, Doctor,” the mustache man said. “There’s no more water. The main must have ruptured. You turn on the faucet and nothing comes out.”

  “Dear God.” The doctor sighed. “If water mains are ruptured, how the devil are they going to stop the fires?”

  They walked away. I heard them say, “This one’s gone, poor devil.” And a body was lifted from the cot beside me. I lay still. My head was throbbing and I felt violently sick. Even the dim indoor light hurt my eyes. When I opened them I could make out that I was in some kind of auditorium. It reminded me of a concert hall I had been in with a glass-domed ceiling high above and tiers of balconies running around the walls. So what was I doing in a concert hall and what had happened there? From what I could see the place was now full of makeshift cots and beds and every one was occupied by someone who lay still, or groaning.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think. Molly Murphy from Ballykilleen. That’s who I was. But how did I know about concert halls? Surely there was nothing bigger than the church hall in Ballykilleen? A school trip to Westport? Was there anything as big as this building in Westport? It hurt to think. Clearly something catastrophic had happened. A war. A plague. Something terrible. But try as I might, I couldn’t remember what it was.

  I must have drifted off to sleep again because I was being shaken awake. “You need to try and stand up,” a male voice said. “We have to get out of here. The fires are coming closer. Here, let me help you.”

  I was hoisted unceremoniously to my feet.

  “She seems okay,” the voice said. “No broken bones that I can see.”

  “Can you walk by yourself to the cart, my dear? We’ve still a lot of patients to move and we’re racing against time now.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. The room swam around as I stood and I felt violently nauseous. All I wanted to do was lie back on that bed again.

  “Golden Gate Park. They’re going to be setting up tents there. It should be far enough away to be safe.”

  Golden Gate Park. That name meant nothing to me either. But tents? Why did we need tents?

  I allowed myself to be led past the rows of cots. Because wherever we were, something catastrophic had happened and I was in some kind of infirmary. I looked down at myself. My arms and legs seemed to be there just fine but I was finding it hard to walk straight. Whoever was with me held my arm firmly as I staggered.

  “You’ll be quite safe out there,” the man said kindly.

  I blinked as I was led into the open air. The light hurt my eyes and I closed them. Ahead of me was some kind of open cart. It was already full of poor souls with bloody bandages around their heads, arms in slings. I put my hand up to my own head and touched the unfamiliar fabric of a bandage there too. So I had been hurt. Wounded. But how? Where?

  “Got room for one more?” a voice called. “Just a little one this time.”

  Hands reached down to hoist me up and I was squeezed onto a few inches of wooden bench. The driver shouted a command to the horse and the cart lurched forward. I was being taken away to a park I had never heard of to live in a tent. It all felt too absurd to be real.

  “Are you okay, miss?” The woman sitting next to me touched my arm gently. “You look as white as a sheet. You hang on to me if you feel you’re going to pass out. We’ll be much better when they get us to the park. If on
ly the streets are clear enough for us to make it that far. What a terrible business. I’ve no idea where my husband is. I was bleeding so bad that they took me to the hospital and he said he’d find me again. He was going to try and save some of our possessions. I brought my mother’s good china all the way out here from Ohio and somehow it hadn’t fallen off the shelf. Was your own house badly damaged?”

  I looked at her. She had a round face, now half-covered in white bandages with only one eye showing. A flash of memory returned. “Things were falling,” I said. “The grandfather clock.”

  “They certainly were. But your family got out okay?”

  I tried to think about this. “I’m not sure,” I said. My parents—were they all right? I could picture our cottage with its scrubbed pine table in the center of the one living room, but did we have a grandfather clock? I could picture it toppling over with a horrible crash onto a marble floor. We had never had a marble floor. That was for palaces and fine churches. Obviously not in my own home. The man I had spoken to when I was lying on the cot had asked if I was staying at a hotel. All of these elements seemed too luxurious to be real.

  The only thing that was real was that I was in a place of terrible destruction. We set off along a street littered with bricks and glass. Pillars had fallen from the front of a bank and now lay in chunks across the sidewalk. I thought I saw a dead hand protruding from a pile of rubble. Ahead of us was an enormous building with a dome that rose up into the sky. At least it had been a dome; now only the top part was intact, gilded and shining while beneath it was a skeleton of the tower that supported it. The ribs of the building with no bricks or stone attached to them.

  “Would you look at our poor City Hall,” the woman said. “And only just completed too. The most expensive in the land, they said, and all that money wasted. What a terrible shame. I don’t know how the city will ever hope to rebuild after this.”