ABBOT Kinney stood next to her, a crisp knuckled hand on the doorknob. His sweat smelling of the smoke that made his tobacco fortune. Sarah could barely see his eyes in the darkness of his office, a small adjunct room tucked into the bottom corner of the auditorium that adjoined the pier that bore his name. She could only imagine Kinney’s tall, worldly physique by the stature in his voice.
Bright sunlight streamed in beneath the door. Beyond the dark entrance, the cries of the miniature railroad that circled the distant midway blew along the weathered planks. Heavy sea air rolled down the great incline of the auditorium’s red roof and spilled onto the bustling pier, while a procession of brass entertained the sightseers on the gondolas navigating the replicated canals of Kinney’s dream city: Venice, Italy.
“They’re all out there,” Kinney said. “Waiting for you. Go tell them you don’t care. That’s what you wanted, right?” His crooked finger eerily pointed at the door. The scribes from the Los Angeles tabloids all gathered at the heart of the newly built pier. Keenly aware that the great French actress sat sequestered in the founder’s office. Their shoes tapping faintly. A murmur of voices clipped by the rush of the tide breaking under the quay. There were two quotes that they expected—a flip Sarah Bernhardt denunciation filled with a sardonic yet demure tone about the Los Angeles archdiocese, and one from Kinney that disregarded the Los Angeles culture as a thing of the past, citing as an example Sarah Bernhardt’s pending performance in Venice of America.
The reporters had been waiting outside for nearly a half hour. An event orchestrated by Kinney himself. A self-made publicity man, he was the type who wasn’t nearly as intimidated by reporters as he was by the fear of failure. Certain that with one errant move he could trample his reputation into a fine powdery dust. This town was not kind to damaged careers. Guys like Kinney always needed to keep the business going. And show results. Otherwise it was a long slow road back to Shitbowl, New Jersey.
Kinney had wanted something big to happen with his development. He wanted people to know that he had been the one to draw a line in the beach in 1904 and declare this playland of west Los Angeles as the new entertainment center of the city. Coney Island meets Italy. Canals and Ferris wheels. Venice of America. Ocean Beach. CA. He needed an event to turn a profit for the theater. He told that to his staff every day. Told them he was paying them to make things happen. Not just agree. And last week when those loudmouth Catholics started blowing their traps about Sarah Bernhardt being immoral and unfit for performing downtown, it was Kinney who personally tracked down Max Klein in midtour in New Mexico and made the arrangements to get her here. All within a matter of hours. His next move was to make sure the whole world knew where she was and why.
VINCE BAKER HAD BEEN ORDERED by Graham Scott to wait there on the pier. Normally Scott would have assigned a story like this to an F. T. Seabright, but since the Vienna Buffet debacle, Seabright had become too gun-shy to investigate where his balls went on an cold night. Scott had tried to convince Baker this story was bigger than some petty pugilist shit. “She is as big as all those robber barons that you like to cover. She is powerful. Look at how easily she stirs up guys like Conaty.”
The boycott story had made Baker sick, but the fact that he was brought into the politics of the Vienna Buffet made him even sicker. It was no different than falling for a broad at closing time. But what had really started to gall him was how Sarah Bernhardt became his beat, and his byline. There was no time for this—not when Los Angeles was in the process of turning itself inside out and unfolding into something bigger and larger than it ever might have imagined. And there were greedy millionaires lining up at the gates to claim their shares. That’s where the news was. That’s what he knew. Not this Seabright kind of shit. Scott was wrong—she didn’t have an ounce of their power or their stature.
As he approached the entrance to Kinney’s office, Baker noticed a new crew of reporters gathering. He didn’t know the faces. Seabright probably would. They were the entertainment guys. Downtown boys. The ones who palmed the maître d’ a brand-new bill in order to sit behind a table of celebrities. They pretended to be engaged in other activities while they listened intently, scratching notes under the table, leaning back with staged yawns, practically dropping their ears on the neighboring table when the celebrity talk turned to a whisper. Then they submitted this spying to their editors and it ran in the rags religiously with neither a confirmation nor an opportunity from the celebrity subjects to respond. The reporters never introduced themselves. Kept it cat and mouse. Chicken shit kind of stuff. But the editors loved it. Readers ate up that gossip, and it sold papers. Sold advertising. A constant reminder to all involved in the industry that the newspaper was first and foremost a business.
To a passerby, Baker would have appeared the distant one. He stood attentive near the periphery of the crowd, his eyes with the narrow pitch of a wild hunter, the near visible adrenaline pulsating against his temples. Once the action started, these social scribes would launch a couple of empty questions, laugh gratuitously at the responses, ingest whatever Kinney served up, and then turn in the story before deadline with just enough time left to throw back a few at the company watering hole before the suspicious hours loom, where husbands and bartenders are forced into a collusion of silence. But Baker wanted to get his quotes and get out. Then he might find some real news.
SARAH BERNHARDT TUGGED ON HER DRESS, brown batiste cotton with embroidered red polka dots, and an ivory lace hemline that graced the floor of Kinney’s office. Her shirtwaist was a subtle white, blooming out from her straight-front corset that she defiantly wore loose at the torso, revealing the true beauty of her delicate figure. She patted the sides of her hair, and then adjusted the pink sash that adorned her head in the latest style.
“Well, then,” she muttered as she sat down in a thick-framed captain’s chair, the wooden dowels jailing her back. She propped her elbow up on the armrest, and rested her cheek against a loosely closed fist. Sarah looked at Kinney set with a lazy posture, his arms crossed in mock authority. She was inclined to make a pedantic remark designed to waylay his overestimation of himself but instead swallowed her comment, as bitter as the salt air. By this point in her life, she had learned some sense of control. She had met a million Abbot Kinneys before, and found their self-aggrandizing pusillanimity to be personally offensive. They didn’t know what it really took to be at the top. They were usually the types who latched themselves onto some peripheral part of the chain, and hung on tight enough to feel the warmth of the spotlights. So sure that they were in the know. In her younger days she would have said something that reminded him of the difference between them. A quick swipe at his lanky physique, a demand that he shine her dog’s ass, or determine which of her shoes stank worse. But today she didn’t say anything. Once again, the other Sarah had abandoned her.
Abbot Kinney’s face etched an outline shadow, his pointed beard shone in its grayness. “When you walk outside, every Los Angeles reporter is going to be waiting for you to tell him that you couldn’t care less. That the great Sarah Bernhardt could give a damn about what some dementia-brained Catholic thinks about her career.” He dropped his hand from the doorknob and laced it bureaucratically behind his back. Pacing. Calm with purpose. “Because I’ll tell you one thing, the dirty little secret—they’re not sure if you matter anymore. Not sure if the light has faded from the brightest star to ever shine down on the world. That’s what they want to find out—if you still have the moxie to tell them where to go. I told your manager this, and now I’ll tell you: playing in Venice turns their perceptions upside down. Sends them a sign. This is where it is. Where it all will happen. We should both get down on our goddamn knees and kiss the feet of the good bishop for divinely sending you here.” He told her he knew her history of brawling with these maniacs and then advised her to go out there and just shake her head with one-quarter smile, and three-quarters French indignation.
She took a deep breath. Her strength was aged and abused. She was too old for this nonsense. Sixty-one years. Her whole career had been about holding up mirrors, pursing her lips to blow the smoke away, and in the clearing creating a performance that allowed the world a chance to see a reflection of itself. Now she was exhausted. If the goddamn church wants to run her out of town, then maybe she should let them. At least she could use the rest.
“Madame, are you ready?”
She spoke softly. Her accent drowning her words in an inaudible sorrow. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Tell me the script.” She needed Max now. He was the only one who could run through lines with her.
“Okay, Madame,” he said, “here’s what you say. You say, ‘I am thrilled and delighted to have the opportunity to perform at the Chautauqua at Abbot Kinney pier as part of my farewell tour of America. I am’—here comes the subtle kicker—‘a firm believer in promoting culture, not restraining it. I am honored to play in Venice of America, the new center of California’s cultural renaissance.’ What do you think?” Kinney asked. “The beauty of it is that you thumb your nose at the cowardice of the Los Angeles theater world without ever actually thumbing. It can only reflect better on Venice. Plus it’s what those reporters are all waiting to hear from you.” He looked at Sarah, the diluting dark starting to turn his features accessible. The shape of his face looked tired and calculating. “What do you think?” he asked again.
“Do you have a back door?”
“Why?”
“I’m ready to go fishing.”
Kinney cracked an understated laugh. A slight tearing at the sides of his mouth that tugged his whiskers. He looked controlled. Always controlled.
“I am hungry,” she said. “Too hungry for all this. I just want to take a fishing pole, drop the line into the ocean, and hook a nice fish for my breakfast…Max said you would…Your chef can prepare it for me, right?”
“Of course.” Kinney paused and leaned back on his desk, scattered in papers and signatures. “But I’m concerned about the press waiting for you.”
“They will follow. Reporters never go away. They are just dogs led by the scent of another dog’s ass. They cannot control it.”
“They can’t sleep until they know that they’re keeping someone else awake all night.” He laughed, looking over at her. “Okay, then, well, to hell with them. They come to us. Yeah? Madame Bernhardt says that she prefers to go fishing now. You show them the beauty of Venice of America. I’ll make the announcements and then join you on the pier. We’re in charge here.”
A pause held the room. It felt the same as the first day she had walked into the Grandchamps convent in Versailles still as Henriette-Rosine Bernard. A scared little girl surrounded by red velvet and brass, a smirking Jesus hanging at the end of the great hall, welcoming and despising. A Mother Superior who played host and talked comforts and hypotheses. She said theories couldn’t replace action. The young freethinking conscripts who came to her convent would have to give in eventually to the peace of conformity. Just be honest with God. He won’t let you down. The church was after Sarah back then, as well. They didn’t even bother to find the Jewish blood that traveled her veins. Maybe because they figured that her father must have money. A bank account answers a lot of prayers, so you don’t even think to ask the questions. Still, she nearly gave in and became a nun. The need for belief and acceptance usually go hand in hand.
When Kinney cracked open the door for a look, Sarah heard the familiar bray of reporters jumping over one another, trying to pitch the big question. What did she think of the bishop? I got an afternoon deadline. Dangling ropes for the hanging. She stood up from her chair. Swallowing. Looking to Kinney. Adjusting the pink sash on her head. Her shoulders squared in a stage posture. Feet tingling. Her hands formed a dramatic pose. She still mattered. “I need to go,” she said to Kinney. “Now.”
Before he left, Kinney picked up the phone and instructed one of his minions that once Sarah had her catch, to bring her back to the dining room at the King George, wrapped fish and all. Louis should gut and fry it for her. Then they would figure their strategy of how to work the press and keep those loudmouth downtown Los Angeles Catholics out of Venice of America. Crucify the lousy pope if need be. He flung open the door, then closed it as quickly, leaving a flash of light that hung in the room like a frozen lightning rod.
SHE SAT WITH A FISHING POLE in her hand. Her bare legs dangled off the Venice pier. The sky was see-through blue, with the stiffed winged gulls like shadows against the horizon. Sarah pretended she sat alone, ignoring the U-shaped crowd that had gathered out of curiosity around the reporters on the dock. No doubt they were craning their necks and bobbing over one another’s heads to steal a glimpse of the star. Looking out into the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, she kept her back to them as they crept up on the auditorium.
Her line sunk far beneath the water’s surface in the hope of seducing an unsuspecting fish. She sometimes swayed the rod from side to side in order to create some variety, feeling the force of the water mass in its resistance. Closing her eyes. The crisp moist air blowing off the waves reminded her how small she really was in the world.
She thought that she felt a tug on the line, and her body tensed in excitement and pleasure. She centered her weight. Braced her arms. Adopted a grimace that was more anticipation than anything else. By the time she gripped her free hand on the handle for support, the line loosened, then as quickly slackened, reinstated to its former free-floating form. Such is the drama of fishing. In this constant give-and-take, unpredictable rhythm, and seat-edged suspense, Sarah felt whole. The performer and the audience at the same moment. The combustible relationship of energy between actor and viewer that sparks the theater is alive in every act of fishing. Here there is no celebrity, no cues, no critics. Here every bit of business is stage business. With no need to jump and shout and lift her skirt bare ass in public in order to be seen. The same wholeness she felt when she would sit on crushed grass at her uncle Faure’s farm in Neuilly, dragging a line across the lake, each little movement breaking and rustling the dried brown stalks, and causing the fish to scatter, leaving only a constellation of bubbles and ripples. She could sit out there all day long without catching a fish. Just gazing into a sky animated by silky clouds, unable to dream a better life.
Her line pulled again. Jerky in stilted movements. She didn’t feel the usual tugging and fighting. Almost as though the catch had given itself up in a desperate attempt of hopelessness and soulless resignation. Then came a sudden force that lightened momentarily before turning heavy again. She leaned back, rolling her shoulders toward the pier. The ends of her dark hair caught in the breeze. She opened her legs for balance and strength. Stomach muscles taut and ready. Slowly cranking the fly. Reeling it in. Hoisting the catch above the surface, a fish in sequin scales, oddly content, with barely a trace of distress or fight. At least a foot long, and plump with fat.
Behind her a staccato of hands clapped from the mouth of the pier. A whoop and holler. But she didn’t look back, this was not her audience. Instead, Sarah reeled in the fish, watching it come closer and closer. And as she looked into the rainbow prisms of its skin, Sarah remembered a dark winter afternoon when the Mother Superior held a manuscript that the old woman herself had handwritten. A play. A parable. Tobie Recouverant la Vue. Where the son of a blind man kills an evil fish. An ever-watchful angel then descends to tell the son to gut the fish and to pray religiously over the innards. In the final act, at the direction of the angel, the fish’s entrails are rubbed over the eyes of the blind father to give him sight, and the angel, having turned evil into a good purpose, ascends back to heaven. Mother Superior had read her play out loud with spite and vengeance, smiling piously at the end when the goodness of God’s work was brilliantly revealed through the angel’s deed.
ABBOT KINNEY HAD WANDERED BACK to the crowd, rubbing elbows with the reporters, addressing the ones he knew by their first names, and nodding feigned smiles to the unfamiliar. He reiterated all the pabulum that had comprised his announcement about Venice’s defining moment, leaving little time for questions about Sarah Bernhardt and why she was on the pier, other than to say, “You would be too. Like everything else, the fishing is great here in Venice.” Baker stood back and listened. He had read Kinney as being smart, certainly more so than most of the reporters surrounding him. He had a stature similar to Edward Doheny, powerful and firm, with a presence that commanded attention. However, unlike Doheny, Kinney clearly wanted the spotlight.
Kinney was shooting the breeze with an Examiner reporter named Johnson, bragging how he had hired a couple of wetback kids to tread water beneath the pier, then swim out and hook a fish from the King George kitchen onto Bernhardt’s line. He didn’t want her leaving empty-handed, nor with any regrets about Venice of America. He laughed when he said that it didn’t cost him anything. They were a couple of Mexican dishwashers from the hotel; the rest was implied. He lowered his voice as he leaned closer to Johnson, “I don’t want to see any of this in print. If Bernhardt were to find out…She’s a real ballbuster, that one.”
Just then Kinney caught Baker’s eye. “Well, I’ll be. Vince Baker. Venice of America ought to pay you a commission for sending Bernhardt our way. You and the goddamn bishop. We might still be struggling if it weren’t for your story.”
Baker thought of saying something like “glad I could help” but resisted anything other than a perfunctory smile. There was often a power struggle between reporters and subjects as to who was going to subjugate themselves first, all dependant on how badly one needed the other. But these battlegrounds had their own castes, and while Baker and Doheny might engage in the ongoing gentlemen’s duel, Baker was not inclined to lower himself to a second-tier upstart like Kinney. But still he tried to be polite. At this point Kinney was the more likely to get him the facts for an over-and-done-with story.
Baker nodded. “Is she giving interviews today? You letting her talk for herself?” He tried to keep his tone matter-of-fact. He did not want any suggestion of deference, or worse, that they were equals setting the abacus for a future of tabulated negotiations.
“She’s a little busy, can’t you see? You have the quotes.”
“Still I’d like to hear what she has to say.”
Kinney pursed what little lips he had between his mustache and beard, and nodded. “If you want to hear from her, then I’ll be glad to set you up with a good seat on opening night. Do you prefer orchestra or balcony? I don’t need the kind of news that you make.”
Baker ignored him and looked out at Bernhardt, sitting almost childlike on the pier. Her shoulders slightly hunched, head dropped, with her hands gripped high on the pole. Except for the brilliance of the scarf on her head, she appeared ordinary, without mystique or fascination. A woman in her sixties who seemed as likely to single-handedly demolish the mores of Los Angeles as she was to lick her fingertips and reach out over the horizon to extinguish the sun. “Look at this crowd,” Baker said. “There must be fifty people lined up behind us. Just to watch her fish. Incredible what some people will buy into.”
“And you can see that she is most delighted to be here. That downtown boycott may have done her a favor, but the people of Venice are the beneficiaries.”
“Come on, Kinney. Just give me five minutes.”
“Orchestra or balcony?”
Baker watched Bernhardt fish. Her body swaying slightly with the breeze. She looked solid. Firmly rooted to the dock. Balanced. But one errant gust, Baker figured, could topple her over and shatter her into a thousand pieces.
KINNEY STRODE TO THE END of the dock, following his slap and tickle with the reporters. He wore straight-legged linen trousers that bunched full at the waist, a white shirt that clung to the bloat of his body, and an understated tie that traveled the contours of his midriff. He knelt beside Sarah, as much as his legs would allow. Eyes squinting in the sunlight.
She looked up at him, then turned away from the immediate boredom that he inspired, and finished bringing in her fish.
“I see you caught one,” Kinney said, sounding not fully surprised.
“You are a very astute man. I should think you’ll go places.”
He smiled and then coughed to clear his throat. “We’ll get that fellow cooked up for you right away. You’re quite an angler.”
The fish lay still on the deck. No flopping or fighting. One black eye round and protruding, looking upward. The end of the glistening silver hook poked through the side of its cheek, stained by a patch of blood. Sarah dropped the pole to her side. “I have never seen a fish so resigned before,” she said.
“I’d say you caught yourself a sea bass,” Kinney said. He leaned forward a little more to inspect the catch. “That would be my guess.”
She ignored him.
“Chef Louis can do amazing things with a fish.”
She propped herself up on her knees and crawled to the bass, pulling on the line to drag the fish closer to her. She crooked her index finger into its limp mouth, delicately wriggling the hook, then slid it out like a jeweled earring. The thin steel dropped against the wood. In silence.
“Madame Bernhardt, you don’t need to trouble yourself with the messy stuff. Chef Louis…”
She took out her room key from the King George. Long and thin, with sharp jagged cuts, and hooked to a metal-banded slip of paper with the number 511 handwritten in the middle. She rolled the fish to the side. Then placed the tip of the key just below its neck. Catching the sunlight.
“No need to soil yourself.” Abbot Kinney’s voice trembled for the first time. His hands grabbed with no true sense of purpose or direction. He looked back to the crowd at the end of the dock.
Sarah pierced the skin with her key. The flesh popped, and a thin clear fluid washed over her hands. A stale, saltwater smell followed an outpouring of heavy syrup. She drew in a deep breath. Her grip tensing around the makeshift blade. To imagine that anybody would challenge the morality of her life. Especially in the name of God. The same God that she had nearly married. Prayed to. Paid penance. And even had her soul, half Jewess and all, cleansed in his holy water. Accusations destroy and damage. Like a stray bullet fired from hatred straight into her heart.
She drew her hand forward, ripping an incision that seemed more of the genus mutilation.
“Madame Bernhardt, there are reporters back in the crowd.” His pleas were lost against the siren chirps of vigilant gulls.
“It is amazing that they can see the dimness of this star.”
She wasn’t originally cast in Tobie Recouverant la Vue those fifty-odd years ago. But she had begged. The Mother Superior told her that she was too pure and withdrawn to get on a stage and act. That her meekness was a virtue. Something she had interpreted as recognition of her closeness to God. “I could play the fish,” she had suggested with a trace of desperation in her tone. “You can wrap me in paper. Paint it. I can bring it to life so that the angel’s work seems more meaningful.”
The Mother Superior had bowed her head. Her eyes softened then turned strict. Almost manlike. “You will not be given a part in the play. We have assigned a dog to play the part of the fish. He’ll walk on, then walk off. It is that small.”
“But I want to—”
“You don’t need to be in the spotlight. Stay fragile for God.”
Sarah could not make eye contact with the nun. She had turned on her heels and walked down the red stretch of carpet that rolled atop the marble floor. The eyes of a dozen Jesuses looking down on her. Knowing the Mother Superior didn’t understand. She didn’t get it. Sarah did not want to be cast in the play from vanity, or even as a public declaration of her faith. She wanted to feel the power of the angel. To experience the true strength of God that poured through that fish into the blind man’s eyes. To feel some connection of spirit. That’s all.
Abbot Kinney’s complexion turned pale. He edged back a step and averted his stare away from the fish carnage. “Madame Bernhardt, please. The kitchen staff has graciously offered…”
She looked up at him. Her hands still hewing the fish. A thumb slipped beneath the skin, reverently stroking. “Then help me gather my things, would you. Be a good boy.”
Kinney straightened up and looked back to the crowd slowly inching their way up the pier in line with the auditorium. His hands turned jittery. He scooped up the fishing rod. The line swung. The silver hook glowed, then dangled capriciously at his loafers.
“You’re not doing me much good just standing there.” She spoke without looking at him. Her hands now cleaving the fish’s belly into two halves.
Kinney wrapped the line around the pole, securing it with the hook. He tapped the butt of the rod against the pier, and then checked back to the crowd. He sighed. He looked down to see Sarah cradling her face in the fish’s innards. Her nose and mouth engulfed. The bass’s body spread like open wings across her cheeks. “For the love of god.”
The insides were warm against her skin. She swore the heart still pumped. Stomach grinding. Its lungs pressing for air. Blood and fluids that reeked of life on the edge of decay pooled across her cheeks, then leaked in slow streams down to her neck. Nearly fifty-three years later she has finally played in Mother Superior’s Tobie Recouverant la Vue. But she has been cast as neither the fish, nor the angel, nor the blind man, nor his son. Instead she has played all the parts in a one-woman show. Rocking back and forth on her knees. The eviscerated bass held taut to her face as she tries to gain sight. To understand some face of God.
THE CROWD GASPED. Boots and shoes inched forward. One could almost hear the scribble of reporters’ pencils. There was a contemplative silence, as though most people were still trying to decipher what they were witnessing. Maybe the light was playing tricks. Baker stood on his tiptoes, vying for more detail. He watched as Abbot Kinney fruitlessly positioned himself between the heathen and the onlookers. A stupidly long eclipse with a fishing pole in his hand, looking helpless and unusually voiceless.
But Sarah obviously heard the anticipation of the audience. She twisted her torso so that her face had peered around Kinney’s frame, the fish mask cupped over her nose. Then she rolled her eyes with a tragicomic smile up to the sky where just a wisp of cloud hung lightly, in order to both bring about a laugh, and also to reassure her fans of her character’s confidence.
Baker almost laughed out loud at the defiant clown who at once mocked and acquiesced. The precision timing, the exact body language, an expression contorted for effect without being prey to exaggeration. He had never seen her before, hadn’t ever really known much about her before the bishop’s wrath, but he always had a slight admiration for public defiance. In her small act, he could see her commitment to her art, and her extreme confidence in herself. In watching her on the pier, one wouldn’t ever suppose the intense controversy surrounding her and its cancerous effect on body and soul. But as she turned slightly to the right, Vince Baker was able to see both her eyes, shaped like turned acorns, pupils like wilted buds, and in them he recognized the gem of celebrity. One that twirls in the spotlight of the sun, hoping to catch all the rays that will burst it into one startlingly magnificent light for all the world to see. He almost left. He didn’t have time for that shit.
WITH A SLIGHT CHUCKLE from the crowd, followed by some scattered hand-claps, Kinney exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, you’re killing me with this craziness,” in the same voice of all those self-indulgent, where-are-they-now directors who schemed to keep her off the stage because true talent always threatens the stability of mediocrity.
Sarah fell out of view from the crowd with the drama of Hamlet’s last breath. Her fall braced by her free hand. The fish was turning deadly and rancid. Its soul long ago risen. The scales turned stiff and prickly. She slid the bass from her face, wiping its grayish remains with the sleeve of her blouse, and threw the spent carcass at Abbot Kinney’s dancing feet. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to the purity of the Pacific. The rich blue. Staggered whitecaps stapled across the water top. Mother Superior’s parable had come true. It took all those years to finally find the truth in her play beyond the dramatic verisimilitude. But here she lay, evil turned pure, and the blindness gone. Finally able to see.
She closed her eyes again to imagine herself now walking back into the Grandchamps convent in Versailles. The reds are still brilliant. Despite the age in her legs she still feels the same sense of fear and anticipation that she had the first time she entered as the nearly nine-year-old Henriette-Rosine. Mother Superior strides down the corridor. She hasn’t changed. A nose too large for her face. Cursory black eyes set back beneath the wrinkles. A figure stout and resolute, both womanly and sexless at once. She comes up and takes her pupil’s hand. “You understand what it is to see now?” she asks.
Sarah nods her head.
“What it means to anticipate what other people think of you.”
Again she nods.
“That you don’t need to think about those people, because God won’t let you down.”
Sarah moves back in nimble steps. Her bones ache. Her jaw is tired. She bites down on her lip. She can almost taste blood.
“You look unsure, Henriette-Rosine.” Mother Superior’s voice echoes through the great hall. “You can demur to his embrace.”
Sarah’s fingers roll into a clenched fist. She feels her carotid artery start to fill her neck in pride and valor. The wind takes hold of her chest in a stopped-up bellow. “I suppose I don’t believe it anymore,” she declares. “And I’m not sure I ever did.”
The Mother Superior places her hand over her mouth, for one moment looking damsely.
Sarah kneels beneath the Mother, fixed in the spotlight. Keenly aware of the hush over the room. Her eyes welling between the fine line of performance and depth of character. Her voice is calm and modulated, almost a whisper, but at once projected from the strength of her chest. “I don’t play fragile and meek very well.” She looks up with a sad smile that trembles off her bottom lip. “I have only ever been successful by my strength. My truth is strength. And I cannot demur nor diminish myself on the trial of faith. It has never worked for me, and it still doesn’t.”
Mother Superior leans forward and cradles Sarah’s head against her breasts. “God will still watch over you. And wait.”
The image of the convent quickly faded away as Sarah opened her cleansed eyes to see the crisp blues and browns of the pier. The warmth of the Mother’s bosom turned to the cheek-slapping chill of Abbot Kinney’s face in horrid disproportion with the gutted fish at his feet, flies crawling along the innards.
Yes, God is watching over her. In the form of Bishop Thomas Conaty from the Cathedral of our Lady of Angels on Second and Main in downtown Los Angeles. Holed up in the dark rectory, no doubt a thin white candle streaming shadows along the redwood walls, transcribing the messages of evil and debauchery that face the world. Clearly led by the challenge of the demon immorality of Sarah Bernhardt and her French depravities, which have come to pollute the United States, and maybe the rest of the world, and how to ensure them from not scathing the soul of Los Angeles. At least not under his watch. Now the good bishop has taken this eye of God and entrusted its vision to his flock. And as a weapon he has instituted the League of Decency, loaded with sins and purgatories to control the insurgents. Keep the entire Los Angeles basin pure.
Bishop Thomas Conaty.
The League of Decency.
The Los Angeles Herald.
Abbot Kinney.
God is surely watching over Sarah Bernhardt. Waiting.
“Let’s go,” she ordered Kinney. Her eyes teared in defiance. She marched past him, nearly knocking the pole from his hand. Her face shining from the glaze of fish guts. Her bangs matted to her forehead. Thick tears of bloodied fat smeared along her blouse. Her stare trained above the crowd that was at once horrified and respectful. Past the reporters who held impotent pencils and would save their questions for one another over tumblers of scotch at a late-afternoon lunch, who by day’s end would look willing to crawl away into the darkness and die alone.
Sarah Bernhardt turned to Abbot Kinney, who lagged conspicuously behind as she passed through the silent procession. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”