“Please, everyone, stand closer! Come on!” barked Genthe as he waved his arms.
I stepped out of the picture then, and moved behind Genthe, to take in his view. In one deft adjustment, he’d wiped the Sugarmans from the frame and centered the shot on Tan—Tan, Lifang, and LowNaa, the trio, standing in front of their stove. He’d included Pie, but on the edge. Behind her was Rose’s house, and behind the house, a sky full of fire and smoke.
“Let’s have a photograph that marks us toasting our city.” Sugarman raised his glass and cleared his throat. “Hearts and hills,” he said, his voice thick with feeling.
“Hearts and hills,” we roared.
“Hold that!” Genthe commanded. Even Tan held his breath.
Then Sugarman set down his glass and said, “Shall we?”
We assembled in rows on the steep, grassy banks of Lafayette Square and observed the spectacle coming toward us; our city was on fire and we watched the flames dance from house to house, hill to hill.
Women in hats, their shirtfronts stained with ash, men in suits, as if just home from the office, when in fact their offices were crushed or burning. Children stood beside their parents, hands on little hips, looking eastward. Even the smallest children mimicked the adults and shaded their eyes. The heat was intense. Black smoke puffed skyward. As we looked on, the tongues of fire, having ravaged downtown, reached the top of Nob Hill. The orange of the sky appeared soft and throbbing, as if the earth had returned to what it always was: a star.
And if I saw the ghost of a smile pass across those faces, I understood: For isn’t it a marvel to witness the end of the world?
“Can you believe it?” Pie whispered.
I could. And what was coming, I believed that too.
“I say,” Dr. Sugarman called over the roar. “I say,” he repeated, never finishing his thought. He removed his bowler and passed his hand along its ash-flecked rim, his white hair circling his head.
A banker by the name of Halperin stood beside him. Halperin’s offices had been one of the first buildings to burn. Twenty-five years of work, gone.
As Halperin watched the fire, tears ran down his face onto the lapels of his coat.
“David, my friend,” he said to Sugarman, “I had ten cases in the basement of a very fine Château Margaux.”
“Ah, Margaux,” Sugarman said dreamily. “Excellent.”
“I bought them on the day of Tildie’s birth,” Halperin explained. “We planned to serve them at her wedding. Along with some very nice bottles of Heidsieck.”
“Fine champagne, Heidsieck.”
“This morning, my cellar—”
“Second smashing of the grapes?” Sugarman suggested. “I’m sorry.”
“By some miracle,” Halperin went on, “a few bottles of the Heidsieck made it through unscathed.”
Dr. Sugarman wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I call that a bit of luck.”
Halperin nodded. “Say we pull the cork on them tonight. No telling what the morning will bring.”
“Let’s do it,” Sugarman agreed.
Neither man moved. Not then, not for a long time. I suspect they would have stayed on the banks of the square all night. At last Mrs. Sugarman took her husband’s hand and led him home.
Once again Pie and I entered the house without Rose. It felt strange and wrong to be there, but there we were. And now it was dark.
“Go on up, Pie.”
“You mean to bed? What if the fire—”
“Sugarman said he’d come for us. I trust him, don’t you? In the meantime, I think we ought to sleep, or try. Go on, Pie. I’ll be up shortly.”
She refused to go without me. So, I made sure the rag on her head was changed and helped her with her skirt and blouse and tucked her into bed.
“Stay,” she insisted, and scooted over to make room in the twin bed. We held tight to one another till I was sure Pie was asleep.
It was now past nine o’clock—sixteen hours since the first shake. I put on my boots and took Rogue outside to do his business.
Tan, the old man, and Lifang were out front guarding their kitchen. They were eating rice out of bowls with chopsticks. As I walked by, they stopped their chatter to observe me.
The street was thick with folks fleeing the flames. The bright-orange glow from the fire illuminated their exhausted faces.
I had wrapped a handkerchief around my nose and mouth, but there was no help for Rogue. He snorted and sneezed, then dropped his square head and plowed on. We had gone only a few paces in the road when Sugarman called to me.
“Vera!” he shouted, blasting into the roar. “Where are you going?”
“I’m just taking Rogue here for a walk.”
“A walk!” he gasped. “A walk?” As if nothing could be stranger than a girl taking a walk. “And where did you think you’d take this walk?”
I shrugged. “Maybe that way.” I pointed vaguely at the fire. “Where were you headed?”
“North Beach,” he said grimly. Then, as if just hearing me, he shouted, “Downtown? You can’t.”
“North Beach?” I parroted back, for there was no reason on earth to go to North Beach either. Except if you were Dr. Sugarman, who, in quick fashion, explained that Mrs. Sugarman’s sister and her Italian husband lived in North Beach. Mrs. Sugarman couldn’t sleep for fear they were out on the street.
“But wouldn’t they come to you?” I asked.
“So I keep telling her,” he agreed. “They’ll turn up on high ground, if the fire gets close. And of course, we’d welcome them. But my wife cannot be easily soothed. She is verklempt.”
“Verklempt?”
“Choked up,” he said.
I nodded. He was full of strange words, this Sugarman. He had a way of peering into one with such intensity—it wasn’t exactly curiosity or frankness, more as if he were deciding which, of any number of personalities, lived inside you.
“Downtown is impossible, Vera Johnson,” he said. “You heard Genthe. The fire has eaten everything from the Palace Hotel to the piers. Rose isn’t there. She can’t be.”
Sugarman’s fine, well-worn boots were covered with dust. I
