The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  One evening as I was preparing to exit the house, the landlady stopped me in the receiving room, which was dimly lit at this hour and smelled faintly of cinnamon.

  “Well, I should think your visits are coming to an end about now,” she said.

  I was surprised as much by her words as by the fact that after ignoring me for so long she was now addressing me again. “Ma’am?”

  She raised her voice as though I could not hear. “Certain young men, coming and going at all hours, it is frightening some of the ladies who board with me.”

  For a moment my mind stumbled, but then I remembered the reports I had seen in the newspaper just days earlier about a young lady in another part of the city who, when found in a state of undress in the middle of the night, had alleged two colored men had tried to abduct her from her chambers. I had noticed more wary and warning expressions since then.

  “Ma’am, if I may . . .”

  Her face was coloring red. “When I ask you a question, I suggest you jump to answer. Now, I shall ask you, young man, once more, how long you believe I ought to welcome you here.”

  “Mr. Clover will be welcomed by you however long I board here, Mrs. McGrath.”

  We turned and saw Mr. Fergins standing at the entrance to the receiving room, which was around the corner from his rooms. His body was bent over, one hand on the wall, while on the other side his weight was supported by his feeble umbrella. I had thought the bookseller was asleep when I’d slipped out of his room. He asked sternly if she understood him and waited until the landlady murmured that it was so. I hadn’t felt so grateful since I had come to New York City.

  Mr. Fergins worried that I was wasting all my free time in the two weeks since his accident tending to him. I was a young man, he would say. I suppose he was implying that my calendar should be filled with amusing adventures and romances. I did not want to say what I really thought: that I could see there was no one else who would be at his side, and anyway, with the cold weather curtailing my walks, I would be nowhere else but my dismal room.

  One afternoon, I brought him some warm blueberry cake the landlady’s daughter had handed me with a shy smile when I entered.

  As had become my habit, I sat in a chair by his bed reading to myself while he rested, sometimes sleeping, at other times sighing musically.

  He sat up on the mass of pillows. “My luck has run against me again. Anyway, that’s how I feel when I lie awake at night. But do you know, I’m beginning to feel stronger than I have in a long time.”

  He gestured for his spectacles case and I helped him put them on. “That is excellent to hear, Mr. Fergins.” The truth was, I was concerned by his appearance. He was pale and seemed frailer.

  “What are you reading?”

  “I hope you don’t mind me taking it down,” I said, showing him the book in my lap. “All the talk of Stevenson—”

  “Kidnapped,” he said with a nod.

  “I had read Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and of course Treasure Island, but never this. What do you think of it?” I asked.

  “Strange Case.”

  “What?”

  “No ‘the’ in the title, except in misprinted or pirated copies. What do you think of Kidnapped, Mr. Clover?”

  I closed it, as though examining the book’s form would give me a better sense of its whole meaning. “Its story makes me think, no matter where you go, wherever you are taken by life’s events, the one thing you cannot escape is family.”

  “You know something, Mr. Clover? You seem too preoccupied for a young man,” he said, and for the moment I imagined those repaired spectacles gave him the power to read my thoughts.

  “Mr. Fergins, I have not wanted to disturb you while you are recovering. However, I feel I ought to tell you that when I visited the courthouse I asked someone—an ex-publisher—where I could find you.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “A slight man with thinning white hair, a neatly groomed mustache, with an old-fashioned cravat.”

  “Chisholm. G. R. Chisholm.”

  “He is a friend?”

  “Publishers do not have friends.”

  “He said that he didn’t know your name.”

  “In my years of helping Pen Davenport, it became my obligation to know people who would never know me. But please, go on.”

  “Well, I mentioned to him you were sometimes reviewing evidence in Belial’s trial.”

  He waited. “I see. Did Mr. Chisholm have something to say about it?”

  “Oh, I think he was hardly listening to me once he saw I was colored. But when I looked up I saw that Belial was being led away by the bailiff near our seats, and it seemed to me the bookaneer was looking at me. He might well have heard what I was saying, heard me describing the room where the evidence was. I cannot help but fear that he had something to do with the fire that caused your suffering, and that because of what I said he knew where you’d be. Could he have managed such a thing from a jail cell?”

  Mr. Fergins wore a brave and impassive face that prevented my guessing how my words affected him. Finally he replied, “Who can say with certainty what a great bookaneer cannot manage?”

  “Would he have the motivation to try to harm you, to stop you from assisting the prosecution?” I could not miss my chance. “Mr. Fergins, if it would not exhaust you too terribly, perhaps you can tell me more about the bookaneers.”

  “Certainly,” he said immediately. “There’s a book that will illustrate a point, if you don’t mind.”

  I followed his directions and retrieved a volume from his collection. I would not have even called it a book, but rather a loosely bound sheaf of old papers in a thick yellow hide.

  “This,” he started, taking hold of it as though it were a child, “is a handwritten copy of the Royal Portrait, better known by its Greek title, Eikon Basilike. Charles I is said to have dictated the book while he was in prison, only days before Cromwell beheaded him. This is a copy believed to be transcribed from the original pages by Sir Jeremy Whichcott. Sir Jeremy transcribed the first seventeen chapters and returned the book to the king’s rooms when it became too dangerous.”

  “Then what you hold there is incomplete?” I asked.

  “Yes. Oh, there are later printed copies of the whole Eikon Basilike, but this one means more to me because Sir Jeremy’s position reminds me of the modern bookaneers. When everyone around a book, including the author, is helpless, that is when the bookaneer must step in to act. Of course, if it had been a true bookaneer, he would have been able to do more.”

  “You mean to save the king?”

  He seemed amused by me. “To save more chapters. But I see your way of thinking. Yes, if a bookaneer had gotten ahold of it, and circulated the book sooner and to more people, perhaps there even would have been enough agitation to stop the execution, though, on the other hand, I suppose that would make us all very Catholic today. Pray be a good fellow and put it back in its place for me? Gentle with it.”

  “I notice it is an unusual sort of leather,” I said, running my finger along the deteriorated yellow hide. “Sheepskin,” I declared, gratified to show how much I had learned from our conversations about books.

  “No, no. Didn’t I say? Human skin.”

  “What?”

  “Do be careful handling it. It’s quite valuable.”

  I wanted to throw the thing out of sight but I juggled the horrible creation until it landed on a table. “Human skin! How is that possible? What are you doing with it?”

  “Oh, there have been various examples of such a thing in the history of bookbinding,” he said with a professorial air. “In this case, the binder was also a student at the local medical college and thought it fitting that a book written by a dead man should be covered by dead skin. It’s rather a glorious thing, isn’t it? I should like my own flesh to be p
ut to such good use when I have died.”

  I stared at his face but could not tell from his expression whether he was joking. I washed my hands furiously at the basin, wishing I had turpentine.

  “But you asked to hear more about the bookaneers, Mr. Clover. Have I ever mentioned to you the time Molasses, the sneakiest of the old bookaneers, got his greedy hands on Thackeray’s last work? The look on Whiskey Bill’s face when I told him what had happened . . . Well, never has a fellow, even a ginger-topped one, turned so red as a ruby! What neither of them knew, however, was that a craftier bookaneer from Krakow, by the unlikely name of Baby, already had a scheme to take it.”

  He stopped when he saw the disappointment form on my face as I took my usual place at his bedside. “Mr. Fergins, couldn’t you say something about what happened after you and Pen Davenport found Belial in Samoa? Also, I have been wanting more details of Kitten’s demise.”

  “Those tales have very dark turns, Mr. Clover.”

  “If Belial did try to harm you at the courthouse, Mr. Fergins, he might try again. I know it’s awfully hard for you to ask for help, and I can be bashful about that, too. But I believe I can help you. I can even go to the police on your behalf. My mother’s cousin is acquainted with important men in the department. But I must know more.”

  He seemed to be weighing in his mind what might come of not telling the rest of the story, and what could come if he did. “If you really wish it . . .” he said finally.

  “I would not want to tire you out, of course,” I added, though my eyes surely betrayed me.

  “As one of the only female practitioners of bookaneering, certainly its most successful example, Kitten inspired extreme reactions from the other members of the trade. Many were hostile toward her presence, threatened by a woman’s position among them. Others were intimidated, still others paternalistic. Almost every practitioner, to a man, was envious of Davenport for having earned her affections. To protect his relationship with her, he had to wall himself in. It created an isolated situation for him, especially once she was gone.

  “But back to Samoa. Did I describe to you the way Robert Louis Stevenson’s brown eyes, usually so genial, were always . . . what’s the word I want . . . busy? Tulagi—that was Vao’s dwarf. Yes. His warning to me, I believe that’s near where we left off when we were on the train together. The rainy season coming. Davenport and I are about to make a quest to the mangrove swamp to visit jail. To find Belial and ensure he would not interfere with . . .” He paused, then spoke very slowly to me. “I will tell you what happened, Mr. Clover, but only so you understand why you must not involve yourself any deeper with Belial or the aftermath of the Samoa affair, no matter what happens to me. Do you promise that the rest of the story will appease your cravings?”

  I raised my right hand and swore the same by God.

  VIII

  FERGINS

  The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

  HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

  You might as well join me.

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  With the Stevenson household distracted by the anticipation of having their tobacco replenished, I set off with Davenport the following morning to investigate the dwarf’s story about the white man arrested at Vailima prior to our arrival. I sent Cipaou to the German consul with a letter to arrange for our tour of the native prison, officially an institution of Samoans but unofficially—like everything that was part of the ruling regime—under the thumb of the Germans. In the meantime, Davenport had asked Charlie and some other servants for information and learned that the man in question, “Banner,” had visited Vailima at least twice asking for work, but was told Stevenson only hired natives as labor. Some of the servants later caught him trying to break into the house. He remained locked up until the native authorities could sit in judgment.

  “Is that how Belial would go about this?” I asked on our ride to the prison. Cipaou was ahead of us, showing us the way.

  “Presenting oneself as a poor white beachcomber and laborer would be rather clever,” Davenport said. “If hired, you would be on the grounds by rights, but ignored by the people who live there. Ingenious, really.”

  “It did not work, though.”

  “That is the problem with ingenuity.”

  Tale-Pui-Pui was the native name for the island’s prison. There was a central passage running through the building with a number of cells on each side. In the courtyard, the guards, armed with rifles, sat talking with each other.

  There were no bars on the cells—they were small rooms with doors that seemed to be left open. We were led through the humid, murky central passage. The guard who walked ahead of us told us about some of the prisoners, rebellious natives who had defied King Tamasese and the Germans’ governing initiatives. There were about twenty or thirty prisoners altogether, I would estimate, and they seemed on the whole happy to see visitors, if only to break up the monotony of their days. Some stopped to speak with us. Justice operated quite slowly in Samoa. Some had been there for months, others for years, without so much as a trial. We reached a room at the end of the passage where we were told we could find the man we sought. At first, we could only see the prisoner’s feet, callused and yellow, as he was lying flat on some coarse mats, very different from the fine material and brilliant colors of those in our own cottage or at Vailima. His arms blocked his face from the particles of dirt and grime blown into the prison through the window.

  “Belial,” Davenport called out in a voice that made me jump.

  The man slowly lifted his head, which was rather bullet shaped with an open mouth full of drool. “Who are you?”

  “No,” Davenport whispered to me, disappointment and a little embarrassment in his voice. “It’s not him.”

  “I said, who the plague are you?” The man whined rather than spoke. After his sentences he would make a loud noise through his nose and then pinch the bridge of it, as one who has taken too much snuff.

  “Excuse the interruption, sir. Our mistake,” I said.

  “Tusitala sent you, didn’t he?” The prisoner had light brown hair and a flabby face made more misshapen by a patchy beard. “Damn him down to hell.”

  Davenport paused and turned back to the man without any sign of understanding the question. “Who?”

  “Stevenson. That Scotch scribbler. I wrote him asking for work and he wrote back promising it. Then he reneged, accused me of smelling like liquor. I lost the letter, but if I hadn’t, it would prove his promise. He looked in my eyes and said I could not be trusted. I was just trying to get what was owed me, see!”

  “I believe it,” Davenport said. “Where do you come from?”

  “New South Wales before this.”

  “Tusitala did not send us, but I can carry your message back to him,” Davenport said. I knew he was trying to end the exchange without the man causing a scene that would call attention to us.

  He sniffed harder. “He’s no mere writer like he claims.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He’s here to start a war, you know. To set this whole island on fire. I’m white, as you fellows are, you have to help me out! You can’t leave me here like this!”

  By that point, Davenport lost patience and the bullet-headed man started spitting furiously in our direction when we began our exit again. I felt rather confounded by the encounter, and my companion appeared unusually flustered.

  “What do you think?” I asked as we walked the long passage to the gates of the prison.

  “We’ve wasted time.”

  Our horses had to be kept back beyond the swampy land around the prison. As we walked, I flung open my umbrella to keep the wind off my face.

  “Well,” I commented, “at least you know Stevenson will not have made much progress completing the book in our absence, with all the preparations they ar
e doing for the storm, and for the arrival of the missionary and their precious tobacco.”

  As I spoke, I noticed a group of natives following behind us; then there were natives to the left, to the right. I slowed and they slowed. I paused and swung around to Davenport, but he seemed to be in a mood of deep contemplation and had not noticed.

  “Davenport, I think we are in some kind of trouble.”

  He followed my gaze.

  Now a native called out an unfamiliar word at me, then another repeated the same word, pointing. I realized what had excited them.

  “This?” I asked, twirling my umbrella.

  The movement elicited a round of cheers; perhaps they had never seen an umbrella before, or at least not a striped one.

  Davenport’s contemplation suddenly broke, revealing his thoughts. “The tobacco,” he said under his breath. “Cipaou, the horses!” he shouted to our man, who was waiting by some trees on more solid ground. He rushed to untie them.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed by the change in the bookaneer’s demeanor.

  “Put that blasted thing away.”

  I folded the umbrella and the disappointed natives drifted away.

  “The missionary,” Davenport continued, “the one who is delivering the Stevensons’ tobacco, this Father Thomas. He’s expected at Vailima, isn’t he?”

  “Any minute,” I said.

  “What do you know of him?”

  “He’s from the Marist mission. Stevenson said he is one of the longest-serving missionaries.”