A-Splendid-Ruin(69)

As if in answer to my thoughts, the building seized, the ground rumbled and rolled. The vaulted ceiling shook, wooden struts groaned. I stumbled to my feet, forgetting pain in panicked terror, and rushed to the door along with many others. Police gathered to block the way and push us back.

“Stay where you are!” a doctor shouted. “Do not move! Stay where you are!”

The shock eased, but everyone was jumpy. I limped back to the mattress. A nun brought coffee, blessedly hot, and bread. My forehead and my feet stung, and I was exhausted by panic and fear, but I knew I could not rest here. There were too many people; someone might recognize me, and while I knew I might not be thinking clearly, I believed I must find some place to hide until I could locate my allies—if they were still alive, and if they were still my allies. If they weren’t alive, if they refused to help me . . . No, I wouldn’t consider that.

I glanced at my poor bandaged feet and winced at the thought of walking, but I had no choice. First I needed shoes.

Then I heard something change within the cocoon of sound and motion all around me, a low and almost imperceptible rustle at first, then carried whispers, a rush of excitement, or panic, or both. Nurses and doctors and everyone who could lift a hand were pulling mattresses and carrying patients toward the rear entrance of the Pavilion.

Then the whispers formed voice. Fire.

Time to go. I hobbled toward the seats ringing the pavilion floor, toward the makeshift morgue. There were still people moving among the corpses, but the hurry now was for the living. I tried not to look at the mangled dead too closely, to feel nothing at the stilled children, the man missing an arm and a part of his skull, the woman who was only half there. I found a young man still wearing his boots. I unlaced them and took them off, ignoring his crushed shins and the blood matting his trousers. I shoved my feet into the boots, lacing them again as tightly as I could. They were too big, but the bandages on my feet helped, and they would do.

The rush to doors intensified; the panic of the crowd grew electric, and now I smelled the smoke. I took the man’s coat from him, not noticing until I had it on that blood stained the back, but it was more decent than only my nightgown. Someone shouted, “Hurry!” and men came running now to carry out the dead.

There was no more time. I clomped in my heavy boots to where the others were herded out into waiting automobiles and ambulances and wagons and whatever could be corralled. Once I was outside, it was an easy matter to disappear again into the crowd and the pandemonium.

Across the street, the facade of city hall’s elegant dome had peeled away, leaving only the metalwork structure. I stared at it in shock, remembering the awe with which my cousin had pointed out the pride of San Francisco and Sullivan Building. “This is what Papa does,” she’d said, grabbing my arm. “Look at how lovely it is! Papa says it’s what all buildings in the future will aspire to.”

It had been imposing, and beautiful. What had taken decades to build was now only a spectacular wreck of broken pillars and piles of powdery stone. The ground shook again to the accompaniment of screams and gasps. Another pillar from city hall toppled, smashing, spewing debris from its interior.

A steady exodus spilled from rising pillars of smoke. Most headed toward the waterfront and the ferry to Oakland, away from the city. Others stood watching the fire grow south of Market Street, where there were mostly poor shanties and ramshackle wooden buildings. Firefighters raced with their engines and muscled horses while others worked relentlessly, looking for survivors. Smoke grayed the air. A tangle of warped rails, fallen trolley poles, and drooping wires choked the streets. Posters from Carmen, which had apparently played at the Opera House last night, lay trampled and torn.

I was caught in the moving crowd, pressed on all sides, borne along without volition.

My feet hurt even with bandages and shoes. I stopped dead at a sudden, deafening blast, and a manhole cover shot fifty feet into the air, with it a fusillade of paving stones and dirt. The horse standing near shied, upsetting its cart, spilling kegs of wine, which ruptured and poured into the hole, so the stink of sewage mixed noxiously with the tang of wine.

“Get out of here!” shouted a soldier. “Go on! Over there!”

I went to where he directed me. Men scrambled over fallen walls, trying to pull survivors from the ruins in a cloud of smoke and heat. Screams from inside the rubble: “Help!” “Don’t let me burn alive!” and “Please, get me out!” Rescuers swore and worked feverishly, then fell back as the boards caught in the intense heat and the screams that followed from those caught within—dear God, such a terrible sound, one that vibrated into my skull until the flames took it and it dissipated in smoke. I spun away, my eyes stinging. The cries were swallowed by the sound of sucking air and crackling boards and plaster and paper. The heat was stifling; cinders fell like rain, one burning its way into the wool of my jacket until I beat it away.

After that I walked without regard for my feet or the smoke or my throbbing head. The city was no longer mine but a place I didn’t know. I had no idea where I was going, only that I must keep on, get away, stay hidden, find a place to rest, to think. I was mad with thirst; the next time I came across a broken water main, I knelt with others to drink. Though the water was dirty and tasted foul, it was water, and I was grateful for it.

Finally, I stopped at the edge of a large crowd filling a square surrounded with buildings. It took a moment before I saw something familiar in the piles of gathered trunks and bags and people sitting on the grass to watch the billowing gray smoke beyond as they might watch a fireworks program or a grand parade. The genteel grass lawns, the hedges and the benches, mobbed. The pillar with the statue Victory stretched into the sky, glinting in smoldering sunlight, the blocky white pedestal nearly hidden by the masses.