by Sarah Lark
“He just left you alone?” Lucas was horrified. “How old were you? Fifteen?”
“Fourteen,” David said calmly. “Old enough to survive on my own, thought my father, though I couldn’t even speak English. But as you can see, he was right. I’m here; I’m alive—and I don’t think I would have made a good whaler. I always felt ill when my father came home smelling of blubber.”
While the two of them got comfortable in their sleeping bags, the boy spoke freely of his experiences among the hard men of the West Coast. Apparently, he felt just as uncomfortable around them as Lucas and had been very happy to find a job as a stable boy. In exchange for keeping the stables neat, he was allowed to sleep there. He worked construction during the day.
“I’d really like to become a carpenter and design houses,” he admitted to Lucas.
He smiled. “To design houses you would have to become an architect, David. And that’s not easy.”
David nodded. “I know. It also costs money. And you have to go to school for a long time. But I’m not dumb; I can even read.”
Lucas decided to give him the next copy of David Copperfield that came into his hands. He felt inexplicably happy when the two finally said good night and curled up in their sleeping bags. Lucas listened to the sound of the boy sleeping, to his even breathing, and thought about the lithe way he moved despite his gangly limbs, his bright, high-pitched voice. He could love a boy like this.
David kept his word and introduced Lucas first thing the next day to the stable owner, who was happy to clear him a place to sleep for free.
“Just help David out a bit in the stalls. The boy works too much as it is. Do you know anything about horses?”
Lucas explained that he knew how to clean, saddle, and ride them, which was true and seemed to be enough for the stable owner. David spent his Sundays cleaning the stalls thoroughly since he could not always get around to it during the week, and Lucas was happy to help him. While they worked, the boy talked the entire time, reporting on his adventures, hopes, and dreams, and Lucas was an enthusiastic audience. He swung the pitchfork with unexpected élan to boot. Never before had work been so much fun.
On Monday David took Lucas along to work construction, and the master carpenter assigned him straightaway to a lumberjack camp. The jungle had to be cleared for the new houses, and the exotic wood they felled was either stored in Westport to be used for building later or sold in other parts of the island or even in England. Wood prices were high and climbing higher; moreover, steamships now crossed back and forth between England and New Zealand, simplifying the export of even the most cumbersome goods.
The Westport carpenters, however, did not think beyond the construction of the next house. Practically none of them had studied his craft, let alone heard of architecture as a discipline. They built simple log houses for which they fashioned equally simple furniture. Lucas regretted the destruction of the exotic trees, and the work in the jungle was hard and dangerous; there were constant injuries due to sawing and falling trees. But Lucas did not complain. Navigating life seemed easier and less troubled since he had gotten to know David, and he found himself in consistently high spirits. What was more, the boy seemed to seek out his company. He talked with Lucas for hours, and quickly realized that this older man was very knowledgeable and could answer considerably more of his questions than any of the other men around him. Lucas often found it difficult not to give away too much about his origins. Outwardly, he could hardly be differentiated from the other Coasters these days. His clothing was ragged, and he had practically no money. It was a feat just to keep himself clean. To his delight, David was also very concerned with his physical hygiene and bathed regularly in the river. The youth seemed not to feel the cold. While Lucas began shivering on the approach to the river, David was already swimming to the other bank with a laugh.
“It’s not that cold!” he teased Lucas. “You should try the rivers in Iceland sometime. I swam through those with our horse when ice blocks were still floating in them!”
When the boy waded ashore, wet and naked, Lucas felt like he was seeing his beloved Greek statues of boys come alive. To him, this was not Dickens’s David: he was Michelangelo’s David. The boy had heard as little about the Italian painter and sculptor as about the English writer. Nevertheless, Lucas could help with that. With rapid strokes, he drew sketches of the most famous sculptures on a sheet of paper.
David could hardly hold back his astonishment, though he was less interested in the marble boy than in Lucas’s drawings themselves.
“I always try to draw houses,” he confided to his older friend, “but they never quite look right for some reason.”
Lucas’s heart raced as he explained to David where his problem lay and then introduced him to the art of perspective drawing. David was a fast learner. From then on, they spent every free minute on these lessons. When the master carpenter saw them at it one day, he promptly pulled Lucas from the lumberjack group and put him on construction. Until then, Lucas had known little about structural analysis and architecture—just the basics that every true lover of art acquired by necessity if he was interested in Roman churches or Florentine palaces. That by itself was significantly more than most of the people involved in construction here knew; added to which, Lucas was a gifted mathematician. He quickly made himself useful by producing construction drawings and formulating the directions for the sawmill much more precisely than the builders had done thus far. True, he was not very adept at working with the wood, but David showed a real talent for that and was soon attempting to make furniture from Lucas’s designs. The future occupants of the new house—the wood trader and his wife—could hardly contain their delight when Lucas and David presented them with the first results of their work.
Naturally, Lucas thought incessantly about approaching his young student and friend physically. He dreamed of intimate embraces and then awoke with an erection or, worse, between wet sheets. But he kept an iron grip on himself. In Ancient Greece a physical relationship between a boy and his mentor would have been completely normal; in modern Westport they would both be damned for such a thing. That said, David became closer to his friend without thinking anything of it. When he lay naked next to Lucas after swimming, drying himself in the paltry sunlight, he often brushed against an arm or a leg. When it grew warmer after the winter and even Lucas would splash around in the water, the boy encouraged him to engage in wild wrestling matches. He did not think anything of gripping Lucas with his legs or pressing his upper body into Lucas’s back. Lucas was thankful that the Buller River remained cold in the summer and that his erections were therefore short-lived. Getting to sleep with David would have represented a consummation, but Lucas knew he could not be too greedy. What he was currently experiencing was already more than he had ever hoped for. To dream of anything more would be presumptuous. Lucas also knew that his good fortune could not last forever. David would eventually grow up, perhaps fall in love with a girl, and forget all about him. Lucas hoped that by then the boy would have learned enough to make a financially secure living as a master carpenter. And he would do everything he could do to make that happen. He tried to inculcate the basics of arithmetic in the boy in order to train him not only to be a good craftsman but also a shrewd businessman. Lucas loved David selflessly, devotedly, and tenderly. He was happy for every day with him and simply tried not to think about the inevitable end. David was so young that they should still have a few years together ahead of them.
David—or Steinbjörn, as he still thought of himself—did not share Lucas’s happiness. The boy was clever, diligent, and hungry for success and life. Above all, he was in love, a secret he had never shared with anyone, not even Lucas, his fatherly friend. Steinbjörn’s love was also the reason he had so willingly adopted his new name and why he used every free moment to fight his way through David Copperfield. He would be able to use it as an excuse to talk to Daphne—naturally and innocently—and no one would ever guess how he pined
for the girl. Of course he knew that he had no chance with her. She would probably not take him into her room with her even if he managed to save up enough money. To Daphne, he was no more than a child, deserving of protection like the girls she took care of, but by no means a customer.
But the boy didn’t want to be just another customer. He did not see Daphne as a whore, but imagined her as a respectable wife by his side. Someday he would make a lot of money, buy Jolanda’s right to the girl, and convince Daphne that she had earned an honorable life. She could bring along the twins—in his dreams, David could support them with ease.
If all that was to happen, David needed money, a great deal of it, and fast. It cut him to the core to see Daphne serving in the pub and then disappearing up to the second floor with some john. She would not be doing that forever; but most importantly, she would not be staying here forever. Daphne cursed the yoke under which Jolanda kept her. Sooner or later, she would vanish and take a chance on a new beginning elsewhere.
Unless David came to her with a proposal beforehand.
It was clear to him that he would never earn the necessary money as a construction worker, or even as a luxury furniture maker. He had to get rich more quickly. As luck would have it, new opportunities were popping up right at that moment in that part of the South Island. Gold had been found right next to Westport, a few miles upriver on the Buller. Gold miners were beginning to overrun the town, equipping themselves with provisions, spades, and gold pans and then disappearing into the jungle or the mountains. At first no one took them seriously, but when the first of them returned, chests swollen with pride and a small fortune in gold nuggets tucked into linen bags on their belts, gold fever took hold of even the most established Coasters all around Westport.
“Why don’t we try it too, Luke?” David asked one day by the river as they watched a troop of gold prospectors paddle by them in canoes.
Lucas had just been explaining a special drawing technique and looked up in surprise. “Why don’t we try what? Digging for gold? Don’t be silly, David; that’s not for us.”
“But why not?” The hungry look in David’s big-as-saucer eyes made Lucas’s heartbeat quicken. There was still nothing in them of the greed of the experienced gold panners, those who had already passed through several other stations before news of the new discoveries had driven them to Westport. There was no reverberation of old disappointments, unending winters in primitive camps, blazing hot summers throughout which they dug, rerouted streams, watched endless amounts of sand trickle through a sieve, hoping, hoping, hoping—until once again others found the nuggets as wide as a finger in the river or the rich gold veins in the rocks. No, David looked more like a boy at the toymaker’s. He already saw himself in possession of new treasures—as long as his father, unwilling to make any purchases, did not throw a wrench into his plans. Lucas sighed. He would have been all too glad to fulfill the boy’s wish, but he saw little likelihood of success.
“Davey, we don’t know anything about panning for gold,” he said gently. “We wouldn’t even know where to look. Besides, I’m not a trapper and adventurer. How are we supposed to make it out there?”
If Lucas were honest, the few hours he had spent in the jungle after fleeing from the Pretty Peg had been enough for him. Though the area’s unusual flora fascinated him, the possibility of getting lost made him nervous. At the time, he had still had the river to orient him. If they were to embark on a new adventure, they would have to move farther away from it. It was true that they could follow a stream, but Lucas did not share David’s optimistic notion that gold would simply come pouring down on them.
“Please, Luke, we could at least try it. We don’t have to give up everything right away. Just give it a weekend. Mr. Miller will definitely lend me a horse. We’ll ride upriver on Friday evening, look around up there on Saturday…”
“Where is ‘up there’ supposed to be, Davey?” Lucas asked mildly. “Do you have some idea already?”
“Rochford found gold in Lyell Creek and Buller Gorge. Lyell Creek is forty miles upriver.”
“And the gold panners will probably already be cheek by jowl up there,” Lucas said skeptically.
“We don’t have to look there! There’s probably gold everywhere; we need our own claim anyway. Come on, Luke, don’t be a spoilsport! One weekend.” David resorted to begging—and Lucas felt flattered. The boy could have joined up with any gold-digging troop but wanted to be with him. Nevertheless, Lucas vacillated. The adventure struck him as too risky. The dangers of a ride through the rainforest on unfamiliar paths far from the next settlement stared him too clearly in the face. He might never have agreed, but then Norman and a few other seal hunters appeared in the rental stables. They greeted Lucas good-naturedly—taking the opportunity to refresh everyone’s memory about his night with the twins at full volume. Norman clapped him on the shoulder, pleased. “Boy, and here we thought you didn’t have any spunk in ya! And what’re you doing now? Heard tell, you’re a big man on the construction site. Good for you. But you ain’t going to get rich thataway. Listen up, we’re going up the Buller to find some gold. Don’t you want to come? Try to strike it rich too?”
David, who had just been equipping the mules Norman had rented with saddles and saddlebags, looked at the old man with glowing eyes. “Have you done it before? I mean, panning for gold?” he inquired excitedly.
Norman shook his head. “Not me. But Joe here did somewhere over in Australia. He can show us. Shouldn’t be too hard. Hold the pan in the water, and the nuggets swim on in.” He laughed.
Lucas, for his part, sighed. He could already guess what was coming his way.
“You see, Luke; everyone says it’s easy,” David remarked predictably. “Let’s try it, please.”
Norman saw the earnest look in the boy’s eyes and laughed equally at Lucas’s and David’s expressions. “Well, the boy’s got fire! Won’t be able to hold on to him much longer, Luke. So what do you think, you two going to come with us, or do you still need to think about it?”
If there was something Lucas had not been counting on, it was a gold-seeking expedition with the whole group. On the one hand, it was certainly attractive to pass off the organization to others, or at least to share them among the group. A few of the men might even have experience as foresters. But they doubtless had no knowledge of mineralogy. If they found gold, it would be by pure chance, and then infighting was guaranteed. Lucas declined.
“We can’t just leave here whenever we want,” he explained. “But sooner or later…I’ll be seeing you, Norm!”
Norman laughed and parted with a handshake that made Lucas’s fingers ache afterward for several minutes.
“I’ll be seeing you, Luke. And who knows but maybe we’ll both be rich by then!”
They set out before first light. Mr. Miller, the owner of the rental stables, had lent David a horse, but since there had been only one available, he just tossed the saddlebags over its bare back and mounted behind Lucas. Although it slowed them down a bit, the horse was strong, and the forest of ferns was so thick that trotting or galloping was out of the question. Lucas, who had been so reluctant at first, soon began to enjoy the ride. It had rained over the last few days, but now the sun was shining. Banks of fog descended over the jungle, hiding the mountaintops and wrapping the land in a strange, surreal light. The horse was sure-footed and calm, and Lucas enjoyed feeling David’s body behind him. Forced to sit tightly pressed against him, the boy had put his arm around Lucas’s waist. Lucas could feel the movement of the boy’s muscles, and his breath on the back of Lucas’s neck gave him pleasant goose bumps. The boy eventually dozed off, his head sinking onto Lucas’s shoulder. When the fog cleared, the river shimmered in the sunlight, sometimes reflecting on the stone walls that now rose up close to the riverbanks. Ultimately, the rocks narrowed so that it was no longer possible to continue alongside it, and Lucas had to ride back a ways to find a way up and over. Finally he discovered a sort of mule path—w
hich may have been trampled down by Maori, or by earlier gold panners—along which he could follow the river’s course from above the cliffs. Thus they slowly made their way inland. Earlier expeditions had discovered gold and coal deposits in the area. Where and by what means, however, remained a riddle to Lucas. It all looked the same to him: a mountainous landscape, consisting mostly of hills overgrown with ferns. Here and there, rock walls led up to a high plateau, and they were frequently interrupted by streams, which occasionally emptied out into the Buller River as charming waterfalls, big and small. They occasionally came upon small strands of sand along the riverbanks, which invited them to dally. Lucas wondered whether the excursion would not have been better carried out with a canoe than on a horse. It was possible that even the sand in the strands held gold, but Lucas had to admit that he had no knowledge of these matters to fall back on. If only he had taken an interest in geology or mineralogy instead of plants and insects. No doubt the earth formations, the soil, and the types of rock could have indicated where they might find gold deposits. But no, he had simply had to draw wetas. Lucas gradually came to the conclusion that the people around him—Gwyneira most of all—had not been entirely wrong. Unprofitable arts had defined his interests; without the money his father made from Kiward Station, he was nothing, and his chances of managing the farm successfully himself had always been slim. Gerald had been right: Lucas had failed in every way.
While Lucas dwelled on his gloomy thoughts, David was waking up behind him.
“Hey, I think I fell asleep,” he reported cheerfully. “Oh man, Luke, what a view! Is that Buller Gorge?”
Below the mule path, the river wound its way between the rocky cliffs. The view over the river valley and the mountains around it was breathtaking.
“I suppose so,” said Lucas. “But whoever found gold here didn’t put up any signs explaining how.”
