The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  “Have you ever read it?”

  I was looking at about half a dozen books with the same title: editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

  “Read Frankenstein? No, sir. Reverend Millens would have barred it from coming near his library. I have never seen it with my own eyes, actually. Is it a proper book?”

  “After Sir Walter Scott read it, he wept, for he knew that even he, the finest writer in the history of Scotland, could never write a romance as original as a twenty-one-year-old girl had done. Does that answer your question?”

  I was not sure it had. “Scott I’d borrow from a friend and smuggle it inside my house. That and Stevenson.”

  “There is nothing as lovely as a borrowed book. Those two Scottish geniuses’ books share a particular quality—I mean Scott and Stevenson. When you begin to read them, you feel like a boy again, and when you close the book you’ve turned into a better man.” Mr. Fergins went on, smiling and extending his arms wide, as though to embrace the room: “Now that you have made a closer inspection, what do you think is the single most valuable book in here?”

  I told him I could not guess.

  “Try.” The warmth of the room made his forehead bead with sweat and his spectacles slip down the bridge to the pointy tip of his nose.

  He seemed so pleased at the idea of me picking out a book. Not wanting my ignorance to shine through, I took my time to weigh my choices, then I selected a large volume bound in heavy black calf leather.

  “Excellent. That is one of the first folios of Shakespeare, but it is sadly incomplete. You see?” He brought it to a desk—where there was just enough free space between stacks of books to open the big volume—and showed me that pages were missing before pointing out other imperfections that remained invisible to me after he described them. “I purchased this for just two hundred shillings from the estate of a deceased lawyer in London some four years ago, and it is worth at least three hundred and fifty. Can you believe that? More remarkable than any original edition of Shakespeare is the fact that today for a shilling you can buy a fantastic modern edition of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. No, this is not one of my gems, but it is a clever guess, Mr. Clover. Now, hand me that one, if you please—yes, the second shelf down, two-thirds of the way across, the one that looks like a scared kitten who has been dragged from a river by its scruff.”

  It was a small, worm-eaten thing. He waited for my assessment.

  “It appears to me to be a collection of poems,” I said. “It is in tatters, I’m sorry to report, Mr. Fergins. It is missing a title page, which I suppose ruins the ability to resell it. And on top of that, it has been defaced—there is writing in pencil on many of the pages.” Words had been circled, underlined, drawn over with arrows into the margins, where there were illegible markings.

  “Good, good. That is a volume of John Donne’s poetry. It is not a first edition, nor a rare one, and the thing presents no particular features of bibliographical interest. Yet, in my estimation, that would be worth in today’s market more than a thousand dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this copy belonged to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Those marks you noticed written in pencil are the notes Coleridge made on Donne’s poems. Imagine! It is the real power of a book—not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature. It reminds one of the quote from Francis Bacon about books.”

  I did not know the quote, never having read Bacon. But I was too timid to ask that or much else as he paraded me through the rest of his temple of books and excitedly showed me his favorites. He taught me what “signatures” could be used to identify a first edition, and how to most efficiently compare editions of the same books for changes and imperfections. He showed me books that other collectors or sellers had tried to repair only to further injure the edges of the papers, a problem, he explained, that booksellers referred to colorfully by saying the book had been “bled.” He discussed prices of the books, contrasting what he paid with the actual or current value. I was flattered because his tone suggested I, too, could learn a trade in books if I desired. But it was disorienting to hear these names—Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, my own sacred Milton—coupled with the crude sounds of numbers. “Now, if you remember only two things from my lessons, promise me it will be these: do not follow the latest fashions of Parisian collectors, and never pass up the chance to buy a book of English poetry dated before 1700.”

  “I promise, Mr. Fergins.”

  Through all of this, a small but persistent clicking sound could be heard, then another simultaneous clicking over the first. The bookseller let out one of his sudden laughs. Imagine an old wolf howling for the last time before lying down to die, and there you have his memorable style of laugh. “You are looking around for a clock, I take it. No, there are many things that have become dearer to me since the day I left London, young Mr. Clover, but time is not among them. In fact, I have no use for it outside the timetable for your railroad. The sound you are hearing comes from inside there.”

  He led me to a large glass case and pried open its iron cover. The floor of the case was filled with pine and buttonwood leaves. On top of this soft bedding were elaborately constructed compartments with strips and squares of various materials—leather, cloth, paper. There were two ventilation windows on the sides of the case, and a petroleum lamp burning hot, with a saucer of water over it that created a mist you had to squint through. I stepped back, startled by an unexpected movement. The case was filled with an assortment of translucent worms. He told me a professor of one of the city colleges had loaned him all of it in order to observe the creatures inside. Then he handed me a magnifying glass to look through.

  “What are they?”

  “Bookworms. Well, that name itself has always been wrong. There is no actual species called a bookworm. We who have an interest in books imagine these pests all fit into one type of category because it grants them unified purpose. We prefer a villain we can’t see to at least have a name. They are not even worms, actually, but the larvae that become certain types of insects. There are types of moth and death-watch beetle, for instance, that feed in the larval stage on all the materials used to make a book—glue, cloth, paper, leather. Take Anobium bibliothecarum. They produce the clicking you heard. These little creatures range from one twenty-fifth to one quarter of an inch and bore holes from cover to cover. Once they grow into adults, they have no use for these sorts of food. Think of it. They are raised on our books, then must leave them behind forever. The mouths of these little fellows are the most terrible things you’ve ever seen—all teeth and muscle. Observe for yourself through the lens. But make sure none get out—imagine the Judgment Day that could come of that, in this little room of all places on earth.”

  He showed me sketches he had made of each type of larva and indicated which ones the book hunter should most fear.

  • • •

  RAIN WOKE THE CITY after a cool and still night the one other time I chanced to meet the bookseller in the streets. Walking through City Hall Park, I noticed my friend among the sea of faces. I had to look twice, because he was without his book cart, because he held up that poor umbrella of his, and lastly because he was partially blocked from view by a man in a heavy wool coat and a beaver hat. I had previously supposed Mr. Fergins was fifty-odd years old, as a sort of average of his saggy eyelids, his elastic mouth, his delicate porcelain skin, his sturdy head and limp body, each of which, on its own, suggested a slightly different age. This time, his posture seemed more bent than I had noticed before, and as the raindrops rolled off the warped wings of the umbrella, onto his shoulders and hat, and filled his lenses with drops of water, he grew older before my eyes. The two men were standing midway up the white marble steps to the magnificent courthouse.

  I hailed my acquaintance once he was alone but he did not hear; as he climbed towa
rd the massive columns I called again. He turned to look for the source. For a moment, an uncharacteristic sternness came over him.

  “Mr. Clover,” he said to me, his customary cheer creeping in. The other man had just departed, marching down the steps. I wondered if he could have been a lawyer discussing some sort of trouble. Even with his easy smile in place, the bookseller seemed pensive.

  “I could help push your cart today. I needn’t report to the station for hours.”

  He tucked the umbrella under his arm and was rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth. “Believe it or not, I’ve left my cart behind in my rooms today. I must look like a mermaid absent her fish tail without it. I fear I must excuse myself, for I need to go in the courthouse. Pray come if you like, Mr. Clover.”

  I knew the invitation was probably made out of politeness, but having only ever seen the outside of the building, I accepted anyway.

  We walked through the gallery in front and down the corridor, where there was some commotion at the entrance to one of the rooms. A throng of people jostled each other and talked loudly, reminding me of the time I had visited the horse races outside the city between trains. The big double doors to the room had just been opened and the crowd flowed inside.

  “What’s going on in there?” I asked.

  Mr. Fergins peered up at the clock above the end of the hall. “Ten minutes to spare. Very well. Let us enter the madness.”

  The room was filling with men and some brave women, most in fine clothes and holding expensive hats in their hands or under their arms, away from the crush of bodies. The bookseller’s hands and umbrella were more effective tools for clearing a path than I could have guessed. The room suddenly seemed to hold its breath, then exhaled with even greater excitement. I positioned myself at a height to see the source. A prisoner had just been brought in at the front of the chamber. He had irons around his wrists and a bailiff steered him toward the front table. There was a man near us, evidently a physiognomist, who stood on a bench and dictated observations to an assistant: “Head and brow, showing an excess of animal passions . . . Jaw and high cheeks, a force of nature . . . In profile, a fearful intellectual capacity is revealed in the front lobes—have you gotten that down?”

  Turning away, I suddenly felt a hand on my head.

  “Nice, quite nice,” I heard.

  “Pardon me!” I cried out, brushing the intruding fingers off.

  The physiognomist pulled back. “Very sorry there, boy.” Then, to his assistant, he said in a quieter voice, “take this down. As previously observed in my notes of their race, the present mulatto contains features of the Caucasian in the cerebral area, explaining the greater capacity for intellectual growth over the common Negro.”

  “See here—” Fergins began, getting between us, but the eager scientist had already pranced away to try to get closer to the prisoner.

  There were jeers and mutterings, and soon rough epithets tossed from all sides of the crowd. “Scoundrel” and “traitor” could be made out; then, louder, “Pirate!” This last word was taken up by other voices in the room.

  The man in question, in the brief intervals in which I had an unobstructed view, appeared unmoved by the near riot. He was tall, a full wave of dark hair on his uncovered head, with handsome features, a grim half smile that never showed his teeth, and a slightly crooked jaw that might have been broken. I could not help but feel a touch of admiration for his imperviousness to the noisy hostility. I moved closer to the front of the room, pulling Mr. Fergins along, even as I began to sense hesitation seize him. Then, as the prisoner passed near us on his way to the dock, his eyes locked on—me.

  No, I realized almost at once, he stared over my shoulder at my companion. The prisoner stopped. He opened his mouth to speak and the room fell hush. Then the words pulsed and popped from his mouth like the sounds of a drum. Words I could not understand at all. It was a language I had not heard even while strolling the docks of New York City—which to me meant it was not a language.

  Ooot-malla malla-malla-malla ma!

  The articulate gibberish of Babel, as my father used to say in his sermons on the signs of the devil’s language. That was how it sounded to me. As the prisoner spoke, the color of blood filled his face, while all color simultaneously drained from the bookseller’s cheeks. The audience seemed to take the man’s burst of nonsense as taunting toward them. The jeers increased. I wrapped an arm around Mr. Fergins, using my other arm to battle our way back to the gallery and then to the staircase.

  He was walking ahead of me as I peppered him with questions about what we had seen and what had happened. “Ah, here we are,” was all Mr. Fergins said. We had climbed one floor up and now reached a door, painted crimson, that ended a long corridor. The bookseller rapped the point of his umbrella high on the door, and when the door was opened, with an abrupt farewell he left me standing alone. I waited as long as I could but he never returned.

  The next few occasions Mr. Fergins passed through our cars I was busy, or he was, and there was no time to discuss the strange turn of events at the courthouse. Another week passed. Then there came an occasion when engine problems disabled a train on our track, and the waiters sat around in the fashion of the leisurely class, wrinkling our fine liveries, alongside the darker-skinned dishwashers and porters. The bookseller, whose grin was wider than usual as his books were snatched at a brisk pace by stranded travelers, brought over an armful of volumes he said he had chosen for me, to which I replied, “No time today, Mr. Fergins.”

  His mouth formed a long o and his large brown eyes appeared sad beneath the thick lenses I now noticed were etched with elaborate scratches. I asked him to take a table with me in the empty car.

  “Excuse my rudeness, Mr. Fergins. But you left me standing there in the courthouse, and you ignored my questions.”

  “Quite right!” he said, shaking his head. “You are right about everything. My only excuse is that I was unusually distracted that day. What shall I answer for you?”

  “Who was that prisoner we saw being brought into the courtroom?”

  He seemed startled by the question. His shoulders relaxed, but he did not speak for another moment until he asked, urgently: “Have you ever heard of a bookaneer?”

  I shrugged at the queer word, then shook my head.

  “No, I suppose you never heard of such a creature.”

  A passenger knocked into the book cart and the slender umbrella tumbled down. Mr. Fergins seemed so proud when he caught it that he might as well have stopped a baby’s fall. As though to explain his pride, he added one of his peculiar asides: “This homely thing saved my life, you know.”

  “The umbrella?” I replied with a quizzical stare.

  “Did you know, Mr. Clover, that there are more patents filed by people set on improving umbrellas than for any other object? Yet they hardly ever change.”

  “What has been pricking my curiosity was that you seemed to understand what the prisoner said—that mixed-up balderdash he called to you.”

  “I?” His howl-laugh started and then broke apart into smaller, self-conscious giggles.

  “Yes.”

  “Who am I? Whatever makes you think that? Youthful imagination. I sell books and try to make people happier doing it: that’s my life in a nutshell. Let me show you a new novel from London.”

  “I know what I saw,” I insisted, blocking his hand as he reached for the cart. “He was looking right at you when he began to speak in that strange tongue, and whatever he said troubled you. Mr. Fergins, I was there!”

  The bookseller sighed, the bottom of his spectacles fogging for a moment, then clearing again to reveal pained eyes. “That was the first day of the man’s trial. I had been asked by the judge, because of long years of examining handwriting and the qualities of paper and ink, and so on, to review some documents related to the case. It is rather a tedious service, but
I felt I should agree to the request. I suppose that man you saw is rather cross with anyone who might be asked to assist against him. He is a dangerous sort. I do not know the words he spoke, but I hardly like to think of what he is capable of.”

  “Why is he so hated? Did he commit treason? Murder?”

  “Murder!”

  “Something infamous, I’m sure. Why else would all those people come just to leer at him?”

  “No, he is not a murderer, not of men, at least—of books.”

  “Books, Mr. Fergins?” I responded, too incredulous to complete my thought. “You don’t mean . . . A book cannot be . . .”

  “The details of this narrative, in which I played a small part, will throw sufficient light on the subject, Mr. Clover, and should you suffer me to tell the story, you may well come to see what I think you have suspected these past months, that books are not dead things.”

  That was how the last case of the bookaneers, the existence of which is known by so few, the specifics by none who walk the earth, came to be told to me.

  II

  FERGINS

  Robbery of a publisher—I said that if he regarded that as a crime it was because his education was limited.

  MARK TWAIN

  You meet all kinds in the black arts—I mean printing.

  A PRINTER’S DEVIL AT THE CROWN

  If you should ever meet people who tell you they know something about the bookaneers, be skeptical. They probably deal in myths and fables. That most people have never heard of the bookaneers and never will stems from the bookaneer’s unique position in that long, twisty, and mostly invisible chain of actors that links author to reader. It will be the bookaneers’ collective fate to have appeared and disappeared with only traces left in our atmosphere, like so many meteors. The story I have to tell is about a particular bookaneer of the most extraordinary skill—the last true representative, some might say, of that name and tribe. My account is true in all particulars, because I was there.