The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  “How do you like being on the island?” Davenport asked.

  “We do some good for the people here. Oh, you’ll come across some complaints—maybe you have already from the navy men. I hear the King of Tonga is talking about drafting a constitution so no foreign powers knock on their door. But most of the islands around here would be lucky indeed to have as much interest from more advanced governments as Samoa does.”

  “Even from the Germans?” asked Davenport.

  He cleared his throat, also clearing away Davenport’s question. “Do you fellows need any advice on lodging at the beach during your stay?”

  “No,” was Davenport’s answer. “We have that settled.”

  I was as surprised as the consul appeared to be.

  “We do need transportation to the interior, where we will be staying,” Davenport continued.

  “I can help arrange that,” said the man, after a rather curious expression had crossed his face.

  He told us there were hardly any coaches or buggies on the island because they simply did not fit on the roads. Supplies and belongings had to be tied in bundles to the horses or stored in saddlebags. When we reached the beach, which curved into a half-moon shape, we hired two horses for ourselves and a guide on horseback to lead us. During our ride, Davenport told me that he had already rented a cottage.

  “From whom? We have spoken to nobody else since landing.”

  “Hines.”

  Hines, that hateful enemy of mine from the frigate, turned out to own a significant amount of land in Samoa. After riding almost an hour across uneven terrain through lush, monotonous jungle, we reached the “cottage,” a simple but sturdy oval hut with two rooms, a verandah that ranged three sides of the structure, and an iron roof that caused a ruckus with the alighting birds or raindrops. Out there we were entirely alone with the exception of a sunny native, Cipaou, whose service came with the lease.

  “You will find the Samoan boy honest and even hardworking,” Hines told us when he called on the cottage on the second day. “Though, like all the natives, he can behave like a child, and may decide one day he is done with his labor for you, and move away to the opposite side of the island without remembering to collect wages!”

  I had tried to ask Davenport why he would have accepted an arrangement with such a loathsome man as Hines. I was certain he gave us as remote a location as possible to spite me. But the bookaneer had become all but silent—discourteous, even—since we’d reached the harbor, and made it perfectly clear he was not about to give me any explanation, at least not a meaningful one.

  Our morning ritual began the day after our arrival. We took our horses out along a narrow stream until reaching a group of trees heavy with bananas and coconuts. Occasionally we could spot a Samoan boy or two in the distance across the stream, sometimes tending a herd of a few dozen cows. The boys, like our own man Cipaou, seemed strong and agile and wore colorful kilts, called lavalavas, made of island bamboo and whatever other materials they had learned to obtain from tree bark. Davenport would indicate to Cipaou what he wanted, at which point Cipaou would pull himself up on the tree with terrific strength and use a large blade to slash down the selected fruit. We would then store these in our baskets.

  On the fourth morning, I woke with a momentary confusion about where I was. Sleeping on a pile of soft mats on the floor, in the style of the natives, did not help my patience, nor did Samoa’s stifling humidity. I stumbled across the room and opened the door because leaving it open every few hours was the best way to give the cockroaches, spiders, and death’s-head moths egress, since they found ways inside regardless. Davenport was lying facedown on the floor on two of the other mats, which served not only as our beds but also as our dining surface, our writing desks, and, well, the entirety of our furniture.

  “Davenport,” I called softly, tapping his shoulder.

  I had to nudge him twice more before he lifted his head. “The boy is here?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to talk before Cipaou arrives.”

  He pushed himself up on his elbows and worked against a tiger’s yawn. “Talk then, Fergins.”

  I was interrupted by Cipaou’s whistle, announcing that he was waiting on our verandah. A half hour earlier than the day before, but then again, the natives did not have watches or clocks. Whites often return to Europe or America from Samoa and say the natives do not know how to work. This is not so. They do their work, and well. They merely do not work on a schedule and see no reason to.

  “Ready the horses, if you will,” Davenport called out to the servant, who knew a little English. “What is it you wanted to say, Fergins?”

  “I was only thinking. We have bananas to feed the whole British consulate of Samoa, Davenport. Yet we hardly stray from our strip of land and have only been in the village of Apia twice since our arrival, without making any inquiries either time about Stevenson or learning anything about anything. Perhaps if you send me on an errand to the village today, I can see what I can gather.”

  “Maybe you believe I have contracted island fever.”

  I changed my approach. “Davenport, you were the one who wished me to observe this mission with great attention, in order to record your methods. Right?”

  He would admit nothing of the kind, but did give me a more satisfying reply. “If we seek out Stevenson and he learns we did, then he is far more likely to scrutinize us and our purpose. A white man secluded in a land like this must keep a suspicious and careful outlook to protect himself—an island on an island, as Hines described Stevenson. That is why we must have him find us instead of the other way.”

  “But how would he find us? Why would he bother? We have hardly seen another human being since our arrival, besides our dear Cipaou, have barely talked to those we have seen, and this blasted cottage Hines stuck us in is nowhere near Stevenson’s house.”

  He acknowledged my facts to be true and, raising his puckish eyes, seemed about to say more when Cipaou whistled again. “Wait a minute while I dress,” he said to me, “then I will finish explaining myself.” But he never did finish; whether forgetting or never intending to, I could not say. We spent the afternoon strolling the clearings of the forest, slicing coconuts and storing the milk before helping Cipaou prepare a fire for dinner, which would consist of pink crayfish caught from our stream. That was the closest thing we had to meat. I nearly choked to death trying to get it down. I was too exhausted at the end of the day to make any further complaint.

  The next morning we were in the same fields when there was a distant sound, the sound of galloping. Having isolated ourselves, and having passed the time by listening to Cipaou’s stories of thieves, evil ghosts, and runaway cannibals populating the island, the very idea of other beings now caused me alarm. Even Cipaou seemed to have his ears pinned back.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Peace, Fergins,” Davenport said, then: “Cipaou, good fellow, do not worry, all is well. Continue without us, if you please; we will catch up soon.” Cipaou reluctantly left us alone. Davenport now turned to me and said, “I expected three or four horses, and from the sound of it, there are only two.”

  “You expected?”

  He gave a brief grin.

  On the opposite side of the stream that ran along our property, two riders were approaching. One wide-shouldered man who had coffee-colored skin cut a strong figure; he was thin-lipped and steady, his head wrapped up in a red and white bandanna. As he came closer, I was surprised to notice that he appeared Chinese, for his garments were a strange mix of European and native Samoan, with a white shirt and a long loincloth made of tree bark. The second rider was gaunt and tall, with long, dark hair straggling out from under the brim of an old yachting cap. His mustache hung in low waves, matching his flowing hair. He was, in short, as odd-looking and long-limbed as his bony, odd-looking horse.

  It was Robert Louis Stevenson. Unlike
other authors, who looked nothing in person like the faces that were claimed as their likenesses for the purpose of promotion, his face was instantly distinctive as his frontispiece portrait. His years of illness made him appear far older than forty. He rode a piebald horse of white with patterns of light brown spots and a shaggy mane; the creature, who had a face like a donkey’s, seemed old and his legs a little bowed, his back bent. The Chinese rider waited for Stevenson to step down from his horse before he did the same. Time seemed to slow as the novelist positioned two thick branches across the stream as a temporary bridge.

  While I had pictured this to myself, there was something more incredible about the sight of the famous author, the invalid in exile, than I had anticipated. First, there was his physical appearance. His head. You have never seen eyes so far apart in your life. Unusual eyes, too. They appeared as though they were carrying some just-seen secret and were busy scanning for another. The sheer width of the man’s brow was remarkable. If Samoa really had been another planet, we surely would have assumed this was the king of its life forms.

  These were the words spoken by Stevenson after he crossed over to our side of the stream: “Do either of you know today’s date?”

  “The seventh, I believe,” offered Davenport.

  “Month?”

  I answered March.

  “Well! I thought it might be April. Thank you. Americans?”

  “Yes,” said Davenport. “That is, I am. My friend, Mr. Fergins, is a thorough Englishman.”

  The man extended a long, unsteady arm to me and then to Davenport. His fingers and big palm were cold to the touch. It was startling in the hot, moist tropics. His eyes and hands had the nervous movement of sickness.

  “Tusitala is what I am called here. John Chinaman is over there”—he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb—“and, of course, Jack.”

  I looked for the other member of their party, until I realized he meant the bowlegged horse.

  The novelist continued. “What brings you gentlemen to Upolu?”

  “A book, actually,” Davenport said enthusiastically. “I am hoping to write a book about traveling the South Seas. The ones I’ve encountered have been lacking. Life, customs, and so on.”

  “It is hard to reach the truth in these islands,” Stevenson said cryptically.

  “You must appreciate the place to be here.”

  “After being through most of the South Seas, I can tell you this is my favorite island.”

  “Is it?”

  “Without a doubt,” said Stevenson cheerfully, glancing at his companion for affirmation. “Hawaii is nice, yes. This is better. It is far more . . . savage. There is more of the savage in me than Honolulu can satisfy.”

  We both replied with polite laughter, but Stevenson did not join in, nor did his implacable companion. On past missions when I accompanied Davenport, I would spend most of my time doing research on his behalf in libraries and museums, delivering or receiving messages, transporting books, and making his sleeping arrangements. I was usually at a distance from the heart of things. Now I kept my eyes on Davenport for hints on how I should behave, while through it all the quick glances of Stevenson’s silent Chinese companion traced our slightest movements. The murky brown orbs of the novelist, meanwhile, betrayed no sign of any particular feeling toward us—neither friendship nor suspicion, and certainly no great curiosity.

  The whole conversation must have been only three or four minutes, with brief exchanges about the plant life and the roads, or lack of them, and about the land near the cottage, before Stevenson and his companion took their leave and crossed the stream. “Death on a pale horse,” the novelist called out of himself, with a grim laugh, when he returned to his saddle.

  We rode behind Cipaou in silence on the way back to the cottage, though I was bursting to speak. Reaching our destination, I immediately retrieved my notebook and flipped through it.

  “Here!” I said, stretching out the word.

  “What?”

  “You said to me shipboard, Davenport, during our discussions of the history of the profession—I shall quote you, my friend, so you do not allege that my memory grows faulty with old age. Yes, the sixth rule of the trade: ‘The bookaneer avoids, whenever possible, in crafting a disguised identity, the appearance of any interest in publishing or books in order to leave their subjects unsuspecting of their intentions.’”

  “I must have said something to that effect.”

  “You told Stevenson you’re an author.”

  “If you think I violate my own law, you misunderstood. I was telling you how typical bookaneers behave, but, in that instance, they would be decidedly wrong. Those bookaneers believe they are being inconspicuous. But the writer is a peculiar breed. A man or woman whose very profession and trade is built upon the elevation of his or her own ego as capable of a task most others are not. An author is an author because people cannot do what he does, not because they do not want to.”

  “Did you ever want that? To become an author, I mean,” I said. When Davenport did not like a question, or did not want to answer, he pretended he did not hear it. Given that as the only response, I reverted to the earlier subject: “Stevenson—or Talofa, or whatever it was he called himself—parted from us without an invitation or suggestion of any reunion. If you presented yourself as a politician, a dignitary, a missionary, a merchant, even a census taker—surely you could contrive some reason to enter his home and start to gain the intelligence you will need to see the mission through. I’m afraid to say, Davenport, that your claim to be a writer failed to excite any feeling in him at all.”

  “Tusitala.”

  “What?”

  “He is called Tusitala,” said the bookaneer. “Talofa is a Samoan greeting, meaning, more or less, ‘love to you.’ Their tongue has a charming ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  “And what does Tusitala mean?”

  “Ask the question a few times around the village, my dear Fergins, and we’ll soon earn a reputation for having a singular interest in Stevenson. We’ll learn in time.”

  “Never mind the language lessons, Davenport.”

  “Fergins, to one author, another author is a comrade, a threat, and a shadowy reflection all at once. If we had been making ourselves conspicuous around the very few shops and offices of Apia, Stevenson would likely have no use for us, but because we have remained quiet and removed, away from the village, he shall feel the need to know more of me, mark my words. Remember that one of his earliest publications was a book about traveling through Belgium and France, so to learn of a man writing a travelogue will give him an itch of nostalgia for a simpler time—a time when his life was ahead of him, a time before illness and the weight of family problems had led him into this exile. In any event, it fits with my having a companion who is a bookseller, and I would not have wanted to force upon you a new name and identity.”

  “Something else that confounds me,” I said after considering how the whole explanation somehow turned out to rely on doing me a good turn. “How did you know Stevenson would come to us out there today in the first place? You said you were expecting it. I do not see how that is possible.”

  “You were right when you said yesterday that our land is quite far from Vailima—that is, from the novelist’s house. But you were overlooking the fact that the property of Vailima encompasses more than four hundred acres. When we were out at sea and Hines—whose presence was far more useful to us than you realized—showed me on a map the properties he owned on the island, I could see that this one bordered at the very tip the far reaches of Stevenson’s land, hundreds of acres away from the novelist’s library though it might be. It was a speck on the map, but it was just what I needed.”

  “That is why we were out riding that same path every day?” I asked, laughing with the realization that all the time heaping bananas had not been wasted along with the bananas th
emselves.

  “On our first day riding the grounds, I noticed some cows—fat cows—at the stream that bordered our property and ran into Stevenson’s. I had learned from the pages of your books on the South Pacific that cows are rare in Samoa and are sequestered so that they are not stolen. Cows are creatures of habit who prefer no disruption to their routines. I suspected these cows were accustomed to complete quiet in their little corner of the universe, and so our little ride each morning began to annoy them and send them farther away. I also suspected that once Stevenson’s servants noticed that this was happening around the same time each morning, they would alert their master, who would take them to inspect the cause sooner or later, and of course find no threat to the cows—but would find us, and in the process would introduce himself. I thought the servants who had seen us would be riding with him, which was why I expected to hear the sounds of more horses approaching. But Stevenson is evidently a man who takes matters into his own hands—a thing to remember.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We wait again,” said Davenport with some pleasure.

  Two days of routine came and went before a houseboy (as they were called even though they were really young men), who was dressed in the same lavalava as the outside boys, but with a fine white livery uniform on top that made me long for English civilization, arrived with a simple note written on a piece of stationery.

  FROM THE FIELDS OF VAILIMA

  Please do us the honor of your company tomorrow afternoon, for tea and cookies.

  VI

  Davenport became entirely stoic whenever I would become excited, as happened over the invitation to Vailima.

  “We have entrance into the man’s house, where his manuscript will be at arm’s length.”

  “Nothing is so simple, Fergins,” Davenport said. “For one thing, Belial is still not accounted for. He could be out there circling us. Circling Vailima, waiting to knock the whole thing on its head. We must have our eyes open at all times to avoid his traps.”