Belle Cora: A Novel Read online

  “Many years?” I asked. I could hear his heart. “How many?”

  “I have the diary. You can read it if you care to. There was a time of doubt and wavering, and there had been earlier episodes when he lost it and found it again. The first time you saw him, he spoke what he believed—maybe adapting his terms a little for country people.”

  “And when we went to Canandaigua Lake and heard the Millerite?”

  “Then he was telling his diary that perhaps Jesus was merely an excellent man.”

  “And when he baptized you and Jacob?”

  “He had gone deeper into infidelity. Religion was a lie, but people weren’t strong enough to live without it. If you took Christianity away, they would make up something else. ‘The human imagination will always populate the heavens with gods,’ he wrote. ‘At least monotheism keeps it to a minimum.’ ”

  I asked carefully, “And what has knowing this done to your faith?”

  “The world without the Gospel makes no sense. Are we here on this ship? Am I me? Are you you? It’s like that. It’s a fact before my eyes. It’s not faith.”

  The ocean lifted us up and plummeted us down to remind us that we were tiny beings borne on a little chip of wood over inconceivable fathoms of water. After a while, he went on: “This is my first congregation, the people on this ship. I preached before as a guest in other pastors’ churches, and at revivals, and in the street to whoever would listen. Then, for two years, I didn’t. I felt like a dead man. I need to preach; when I didn’t, like most people, I believed in my religion but I didn’t feel it.” He stopped. I knew there would be more. I waited. He went on: “I don’t prepare sermons anymore. I get up. I wait for the spirit. It comes. It lights me up. I watch it working—I see their faces and bodies, I see them put down their armor, hear them cry out, their hearts melting—each time a miracle.”

  “It must be fine to be able to touch people that way,” I said, thinking, though I did not want to think it, of the many times when I had persuaded men to put down their armor. I had made them gasp and cry out, and even thank Jesus, or at the very least say His name. Me, too, I could have told him. I’ve done that, too.

  “There’s nothing like it,” he said. “Only I wish I could reach you.”

  “You do reach me.”

  “No, I don’t. You wear so much armor. You resist so much. I think that is why God has put us together. You’re a hard case. You need special attention.”

  THE JUNIPER WAS BY NOW PUSHING INTO climes so far south that it began to be cold. The sailors took down the upper yards and sails, checked the rigging, and changed new sails for old ones that had so many patches and extra seams they resembled the clothing of tramps. Little Philippe followed these preparations with his wide brown eyes, asking Jeptha questions about it all with the bits of English his quick mind had by now absorbed.

  “He’s smart,” Jeptha said to me the night we had begun again to sleep under blankets. “He doesn’t need Owen for translation anymore.” After adducing other evidences of Philippe’s intelligence, he added: “He hates heights. Did you notice? He doesn’t even like to look over the gunwales. When he sees the sailors climbing, he feels ashamed. Being brave is important to boys.”

  Jeptha began taking pains to help Philippe overcome his fear, encouraging him, in calm weather, to climb a little higher each day, while his mother watched nervously. You had only to see the absentminded way she stroked his hair and the happy way he leaned into the stroke, or the pleasure on both their faces when they talked to each other in French, to know that she was a loving mother. She was lucky to have her child with her.

  WE WERE SHIVERING IN OUR BERTHS, wearing our coats and under all our blankets, long before someone said we were at latitude 50 degrees, and our misery counted as rounding Cape Horn. Strong winds were dead ahead, the breath of a giant determined to keep us in the Atlantic, where we belonged, and the ship zigzagged ten or twenty miles for every actual mile of progress. During a lull in the violence, Jeptha and I bundled ourselves as warmly as we could and went up top to look around, shielding our eyes with our free hands. The ropes and much of the canvas were encased in clear and milky ice, which made a tinkling sound amid the wind’s roar. Snowflakes fell at a slant. They were so densely packed that they hid the ocean from view, and thus everything, ship and ropes and canvas, seemed to be rising at a slight angle into the sky.

  At last, we were on the other side; the good sails were put back; the ship headed north again. We had a long stop in Valparaíso, a city of labyrinthine cobblestone streets, brightly colored houses and churches, and pretty brown-eyed girls. As in Rio, a few men were left behind in jails. New passengers joined us, Chileans male and female. The women, all prostitutes, began to earn their passage, and probably the passage of their men, immediately, using the stateroom of a man left behind in Valparaíso. I feigned ignorance, then shock, then the lofty sympathy suitable to a missionary’s wife.

  As we neared the equator a second time, and Philippe sought Jeptha’s attention more anxiously than before. I was reminded of the way Lewis had behaved with my father’s clerk long ago on the canal boats to Livy, how he had laughed too much at Horace’s jokes, bothered him with questions, and performed childish feats in hope of a compliment. “Look at me, Jeptha,” Philippe would shout, pronouncing the “J” in the soft French way. When Jeptha looked, the boy jumped onto his small eight-year-old hands and walked a few paces across the deck. He loved Jeptha but couldn’t pronounce his name; I thought it said something sad about love.

  We pushed north. It grew colder again. All around us, the passengers were becoming more alert, and they forgot the hobbies that had helped them pass the time during the voyage and began talking of what San Francisco would be like, and the methods of recognizing and extracting gold. Jeptha began to think more of his mission in California and spent more time in prayer and study. One afternoon, he sat on the deck, intent on his Bible, while Philippe, I noticed, hovered about for some minutes, looking at him expectantly. Finally, I touched Jeptha on the shoulder. He looked up, startled, then nodded at the child, explaining patiently that it was time for Philippe to play and for Jeptha to work, and they would play together later on, or perhaps tomorrow.

  About ten minutes after that, just as the wind was starting to rise, we heard Philippe’s mother, Marie Toissante, calling Jeptha’s name. We turned. She pointed up. There was Philippe, clinging to the mizzenmast, above the yardarm of the topgallant, the third above the deck of the ship’s five rows of sails—perhaps he was forty or fifty feet up, several times higher than he had ever gone before with Jeptha’s encouragement. He had climbed there, certainly, to surprise and impress Jeptha; but we could see he had become paralyzed with fear as the ship began to roll.

  For a moment, Jeptha’s face was tight with worry—the wind was blowing stronger, and the sea became rougher as we stood there. Then he smiled and shouted, “Look, Belle! Look how brave Philippe is! Look how well he holds on! How about that!”

  “I want to come down!” Philippe yelled.

  “Of course you do, but stay another moment, my brave lad,” cried Jeptha, as the ship began to roll more violently. “Stay where you are, Philippe! I’ll get you!”

  “Maybe we should get a sailor to fetch him down,” I said.

  Jeptha shook his head. “No time,” he murmured, and called out: “Hold on! I’m coming to get you. There’s nothing to worry about!”

  Jeptha began climbing. “I’m coming! I’m almost there!” Other passengers, including the schoolteacher, the small-town mayor, and two Chilean prostitutes, began gathering below. They were pointing and talking to each other, while Captain Stormfield emerged onto the deck and began shouting advice. Jeptha climbed quickly: before long, he stood close below the boy. Herbert Owen was beside me now, and next to him Marie Toissante, one hand on some rigging and another over her mouth, as still as if carved of wood, as if she were afraid her slightest movement would shake her child off the mast. We heard Jeptha shout, over
the creaking ropes and timbers and the moaning of the wind: “Take a step, Philippe! You can keep your arms around the mast as you do it. It is better if you do it yourself!” But Philippe would not move. Jeptha called down to Herbert Owen to translate for him, but still the boy did not move.

  “All right, then,” called Jeptha. “That’s all right. I’ll carry you.” Rain was beginning to fall, a slick, slanting drizzle, as he maneuvered to the other side of the mast and took the boy’s right arm, intending to wrap it around his own shoulder. Then Jeptha’s foot slipped, and for a moment he teetered on the mast. When we fall, we clutch thoughtlessly at whatever we are holding, and though he had lost his grip on the boy’s shoulder, Jeptha instinctively clutched Philippe’s wrist. Together they fell—for an instant holding hands in the air, as if leaping, not falling. Passengers gasped. I screamed. Marie Toissante shrieked and rushed to the other side of the mast, where her son was falling. Then everyone heard the sickening thud, the sound of Philippe landing headfirst on the deck. Jeptha fell into a sail, then clambered quickly down and sprinted to where the boy lay.

  We crowded around Philippe, rolling him over, listening for breath and heartbeat. The pupils of his black eyes were large. His expression was as empty as a doll’s. The mother fell to her knees, stroking him, kissing him, and repeating his name. The whores from Valparaíso were sobbing and holding each other, and I ran over to Jeptha, who stood shaking, his hand against the mast. Meanwhile, the rain-whipped sky was darkening, the wind wailing, and the ship slanting sharply leeward. We were in a squall. Yes, I thought: Distract us. Wash this away. The first mate shouted. Sailors scrambled up the tilting masts.

  “Bring them into my cabin,” commanded Captain Stormfield, and Jeptha stepped in to lift the boy, whereupon the mother looked up, her face a mask of torment, and shouted, “No! Not you,” and shouted something else in French; she rose to her feet and spat in Jeptha’s face.

  I grabbed Jeptha’s arm. “She’s beside herself, she’s hysterical,” I said. “It was just bad luck. It could have happened to anyone, only she would blame you, no one else,” and so on. Jeptha steadied himself with one hand on the mast, and with his other hand he gently touched the spit, wiping it from his face after a delay. She walked to the gunwales, evidently meaning to jump over the side. Owen, Ewell, and some other men struggled with her.

  I led Jeptha belowdecks, where he sat on the edge of his berth, hollow-eyed and wordless. The boy was in a better place now, I said hesitantly. Such a sweet boy had gone straight to heaven, surely. Jeptha didn’t respond. Did I foresee that I would not be a good wife to have in this particular crisis? I don’t remember, but I’ll tell you now I wasn’t. Where faith, steadiness, and conviction were needed, I had only lies and secrets.

  Supper came, night, and at last sleep. I dreamed that Frank was up high in a maple tree—the very tree that Jeptha had been in long ago, when he had called me from it, saying, “Do you dare?” The tree had grown much taller. Its top was hidden in the clouds. Frank had climbed it, much too high for him, and called for help. Jeptha, standing on the ground beside me, said, “I will save him,” but I said, “No, Jeptha, you’re tired, you rest, let me do it,” and I began to climb. I woke up drenched in sweat.

  Jeptha preached one last time on the Juniper. It was his best-attended service. He preached on the death of children, on our ignorance of God’s plan, and the weaknesses of God’s servants, using the example of Jonah, and it was like watching a man flog himself.

  In deference to the mother, who abhorred the prospect of a burial at sea, the boy’s body was packed in ice and placed with some of his toys in a pine box made by the ship’s carpenter. Two days later, we sighted California.

  XLV

  THE EARTH, TO PROTECT ITS VALUABLES, mixes them with sand and mud, heaps mountains on them, hides them in Indian burial grounds. San Francisco it wraps in mist. Now a ship’s prow, now a lone sail, now a sheer rock face emerged from the void. Around nine o’clock on the morning of December 15, 1849, like the colored smoke of a stage magician, the fog dissipated. We beheld the strange, makeshift treasure city, gorged on tribute from every continent, yet still incomplete, not fully incarnate, ready to change its mind and return to elemental chaos.

  Where did the land end and the shore begin? Who could say? The harbor was clogged with brigs, barques, schooners, men-of-war, and Chinese junks. Some vessels had been wrecked to make new land. Others bore painted signs announcing their conversion into warehouses, restaurants, offices, rooming houses, visibly in the process of becoming part of the city’s advancing edge. Beyond that, the flat land and hillsides teemed with houses, tents, shacks, and tens of thousands of diminutive toiling men.

  It was past noon by the time we disembarked. Boatmen charged a staggering sum to row passengers to shore. Most of them turned out to be immigrants from the British penal colony of Australia, either Cockney or Irish in their speech—emancipated convicts, Herbert Owen observed, who had graduated from robbery to extortion. Then we found a cheerful fellow with a New England accent, a plug hat, and a coat with a shoulder seam so torn we could see the white cloth of his soiled shirt through it, who claimed to have been a college professor in Boston. We went with him, though his price was just as high as the others’. He told me it was rare to see a woman here and warned me that my clothes were impractical—it was the rainy season. Until a month ago, it had been all dust here; it got into eyes and mouths whenever people faced the wind. Now they missed the dust. Now it was all mud.

  Ewell, who had bought flour in Chile, asked what it was selling for. The boatman replied, “It is being used for landfill.” Ewell turned away, insulted. We found out later that it was literally true. A passenger said he had ten fresh oranges. “Are they juicy?” asked the boatman, and, hearing that they were, he gave him five dollars he had just collected from the rest of us.

  Jeptha, who was haunted and speechless when he was alone with me, and in public cheerful and voluble, a cheap imitation of his former self, said, “Tell us about conditions here.” No doubt a common request. The boatman answered readily: “You do a month of living in a day. You meet every kind of man. You hear every language. Mining is killing labor.” That was his general wisdom. Next came news items. “A fourteen-year-old boy found an eleven-pound gold nugget and sold it for twenty-eight hundred dollars last Thursday. A Philadelphian was shot by a New Yorker yesterday at the Bella Union. The gamblers didn’t take their eyes off the roulette wheel.” At last, he settled to his chief enthusiasm, prices, and we learned that we had all made the wrong decisions about what to bring along and what to buy once we got here.

  As soon as we reached shore, the boatman began to shout: “Oranges! Sweet, juicy oranges!” He had sold them for a dollar each before the last of us set foot on land.

  By then I understood. Everyday rules were suspended. Things that had hardened into their final shape at home were fluid here. If Alice in Wonderland had been written yet, it would have come to mind now. With a bite of magical cake or mushroom, a ship could become a lodging house, a Yankee teacher a boatman or a fruit vendor, and flour worthless. I could become a good woman.

  The black cast-iron bodies and pipe joints of about a dozen heat stoves waited on the slimy boards at Clarkes Point. Grimacing, with yellow teeth and red faces, suffering men were loading them onto a sinking wagon; the driver was yelling at them to stop. There were buildings of all kinds, many half finished, some mere canvas sheds open in front, covered with signs in several languages, hand-painted with words that in another city would be carved in stone: GOLD EXCHANGE. DRY GOODS. HARTLEY, DAGUERREOTYPES. JONATHAN STODDARD, ATTORNEY. There were gray barrels and crates and lumpy coarse-woven tan sacks, heaps of merchandise. There were men, hurrying, waiting, determined, exhausted, as diverse in character as the houses. They say gold has no magnetic properties, yet look what it had dragged to this spot, all these foreign-looking people, thousands of miles from their customary haunts, their many shades of skin, shapes of noses, angles of eye
s, in pea jackets and oilcloth hats, in ponchos and sombreros, in knee-length blue tunics and pigtails. They all seemed strangely unsurprised to find themselves here, walking in the sticky mud, their images in caramel puddles mingling with bits of cloud and sky and circling birds.

  Red, brown, bluish, green-gray muck, dense as potter’s clay, noisily sucked our steps and gurgled over the tops of our boots. Some fellows were laying planks. Others tried to dig out a frantic mule sunk up to its belly (two hours later, I thought it was sleeping until I noticed the dark stream of congealed blood and the bullet hole). Jeptha, solicitous but distant, pulled me out when I was gripped above the knees. Our predicament was more absurd than dangerous, and he laughed. “Don’t leave me stuck like that mule,” I said, to fan this little flame of laughter. Instead, he grew pensive. His mind had moved from my remark to the general idea of rescue, and thence to the boy’s death.

  Men who had been looking away while we approached were suddenly surprised by the sight of a female, and they removed their dripping hats with wonder writ on their faces. Other men, many yards away, recognizing this sign of a woman’s presence, began trudging toward us. Jeptha introduced himself as a preacher and me as his wife; the men nodded absentmindedly while staring at me as if I were Niagara Falls or a two-headed calf.

  All who had been here over a week spoke like old-timers, eager to disabuse newcomers of foolish Eastern notions about mining, California, and Life. Some, fresh from the hinterlands, looked unhealthy—undernourished, missing teeth, or walking on a leg that had been broken and set improperly by amateurs. We asked if they had seen Lewis or Edward, and I searched each new face, expecting it to belong to one of my brothers. Sometimes I was fairly sure I recognized a face from New York City.

  Around Portsmouth Square were substantial edifices of wood and adobe, and hotels and gambling houses in two-story buildings with wood frames and canvas walls. We were dumbfounded to see men crouching with pans and buckets before the United States Hotel, washing the mud: a Connecticut Yankee told us that, indeed, gold had just been discovered in this mud—whether it was here naturally or some drunken miner had dropped a bag of gold dust, who knew. He offered to sell us the equipment. “You have made up this story to sell pans and buckets,” said Jeptha, and the fellow shrugged. We heard later that he had been playing this trick on greenhorns for months.