A Wild Surmise

The City Beneath the City

84 The City Beneath the City I own a print of cows on a green hill, brown-and-white cows like peaceful wooden cutouts who dream me through the wall, through my neighbor’s house, straight back to old Pasadena—Rancho San Pasqual, Rancho Santa Anita, and the wild cows with arching horns, their spines knobbed and hairy, 3-D and mean. Their hides, I know, became chairs a century ago, the hair reddish brown and white wore smooth. The extra hides shipped down to the harbor were traded for furniture carted home to the main house on the two-wheeled carretas up the track that’s now the Harbor Freeway out the ravine to Pasadena. Little black olives pocking the dust were picked and pickled in brine. In the zanjas, horses drank and scum floated on the water green as neon. From los ranchos to Sonora, young ladies traveled in society. The population of Chinese workers was kept small—no women allowed—but under the Governor’s mansion, while his daughter gave piano recitals and sang, the Chinese dug tunnels north from Olvera Street where their wives would live in hiding. Under the cover of night they spread out the secret earth to dry. 85 Some days still the ground shivers, splits open the face of an unmined seam. The city beneath the city dances like a calavera in the ballroom of the dead. The old bones shake when a shovel strikes an amber bottle or excavations uncover stone canals mysterious as the mountains on the moon. ...