Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

  In the light of his bedside lamp, he finished the book he’d been given by the old schoolteacher.

  The next morning I returned, in company with my worthy companion, the Commissioner, to Fort Gibson, where we arrived much tattered, travel-stained, and weather-beaten, but in high health and spirits. And thus ended my foray into the Pawnee hunting-grounds.

  11

  Bowman worked for two months with Frank and his partner, Stevens. He learned how to be a fisherman.

  It took Stevens a while to accept Bowman. And Bowman kept an eye on him. He had grown stronger again, and he wasn’t afraid of hard work – nor of working long hours. Stevens, though more taciturn than Frank, was not a bad bloke, just more wary. For several weeks, he left Bowman to fend for himself, but in the end he grew to appreciate his stamina and discretion, and was happy to help him out with advice. When they were on board the boat, Bowman was a calm, disciplined presence. After a few weeks, Sergeant Bowman’s past was forgotten; he had a dark side, just like so many other men on the port had, but it was never brought up again.

  After the New Year celebrations, Stevens, Frank and Bowman went back to the hut. Bowman had warmed up the stove and bought a nice bottle of wine. The two fishermen clinked glasses with him in a gloomy silence, and then explained the situation to him. The boat was too small for three men. The pollution of the Thames by London’s factories was forcing them to head out further towards the estuary, with diminishing returns. Bowman deserved to earn a wage, but they couldn’t afford to pay him, not in those conditions, because it would mean their families going hungry. Bowman asked what they could do. The two men shrugged. What they needed was another, bigger boat, a sailing dinghy that was capable of higher speeds, of going out to sea. What they needed was fifty pounds, and no-one was going to lend them that sort of money.

  Bowman went to the Peabody & Morgan bank, which had issued Reeves’s bond. He received a hundred pounds in cash and another bond for four hundred. He offered to pay for half of the boat, without his name appearing on the purchase deed, and promised his partners that he would never mention it. They quickly found the vessel they were looking for, at a ’cost of one hundred and thirty pounds. After selling their old boat, Frank and Stevens had to borrow twenty-three pounds, paying the loan back at six shillings each per month. Bowman paid for the necessary work to be carried out on the sailing dinghy, so that they would be ready to start work in February.

  Rigged up and renamed the Sea Sergeant, the boat lived up to expectations. Frank, Stevens and Bowman went on voyages that lasted two or three weeks, in all weathers, and came back with the hold full of fish, which they sold at auction in Limehouse or to the workers at the Millwall basin. In the estuary, they caught trout and smelt, and they returned from the Channel loaded up with sea bass, herrings and mackerel.

  Bowman did up the cabin, changing the door, repairing the window, patching up the roof. He bought a bed and a wardrobe, where he hung his suit, which he had now swapped for work clothes and a pea jacket. He let his hair and beard grow, though he trimmed them regularly. He controlled his drinking when they were fishing, making do with some wine that they brought with them and a bit of hooch once the hold was full and they were heading back upriver. At home, he continued to drink heavily. While the days were easier now, he could not get through the nights without numbing himself with gin. On the Sea Sergeant, Bowman felt better. There was always something to do, and he was so tired when he went to bed that he slept well for hours. His insomnia accommodated itself to the rhythm of the shifts and the work. When he was on land, he only ever left the hut to meet up with his partners in the port, and occasionally to go into town to buy a book.

  After six months of work and sailing, all that remained of those weeks spent tracking down the men on the list was his appetite for reading. This appetite was only strengthened by his solitude. His two companions he did not consider friends, but simply as men he needed in order to keep going, along with his books and his bottles. He also retained the memory of a woman he often thought about as he was falling asleep, and whose beauty was mixed with grief. And the memory of a man he hadn’t found, and whom Peavish had called his “friend”; though the meaning of this word was uncertain to him, that did not alter its possibility. Lastly, he guarded the memory of a soldier and a copper that he no longer was, not entirely, but which – like the screams and the nightmares – he could not escape completely.

  Sometimes they would sail to Wapping with the Sea Sergeant, and when they did, Bowman would pull his hat down over his eyes as he watched the police station pass, trying to glimpse figures behind the windows of the guards’ room. When he walked the streets of London, he kept away from that area. He never went back to the Chinaman’s opium den, though he did sometimes buy a little laudanum – when it rained and he was afraid to fall asleep.

  In the springtime, at the mouth of one of the Thames’s tributaries, Bowman and his partners caught two big salmon. These fragile creatures had deserted the filthy river during the past twenty years. Frank, Stevens and Bowman decided to keep these fish for themselves. Frank suggested they all eat them together, along with their families. Bowman refused this invitation. The next day, Stevens brought him some of the salmon, which he ate alone in his cabin.

  During summer, the fishing was good, and it was even better in the autumn. When winter arrived, Frank and Stevens talked about hiring a ship’s boy, some child from the port who wanted to learn the job and work aboard the Sea Sergeant. Bowman thought for a moment of going to fetch Slim and bringing him onto the river, but it was impossible. In the end, it was Stevens’s nephew, a solid lad of thirteen, who was hired.

  In December 1859, wearing his city suit, Arthur Bowman entered the Mudie bookshop on New Oxford Street. He had accepted Frank and Stevens’s invitation to eat Christmas dinner with their wives and children. Bowman was nervous at the idea of this meeting and, for several days, though not daring to believe in the scenario he imagined, he had thought about Bufford’s widow. In addition to the toys he’d bought for his partners’ children, the presents he’d got for their wives, a nice jacket for Frank and a new pea coat for Stevens, he also wanted to find something special for the widow, so he went to the bookshop. Even if she didn’t agree to go with him, he still didn’t want to turn up at her house empty-handed. A bookseller asked him what he was looking for, but Bowman didn’t know if Mrs Bufford read books.

  “It’s for a woman.”

  The bookseller suggested books on cookery or dressmaking. When Bowman asked for a novel, the bookseller seemed surprised.

  “A novel for a woman? Well, there’s Jane Eyre, of course, by Mrs Brontë. I think we have one copy left. It’s a sort of romance.”

  Bowman weighed up the volume in his hand.

  “A woman wrote it?”

  “Yes, though initially with a male pseudonym: Mr Bell.”

  The bookseller hesitated:

  “I don’t know if it’s an appropriate book for . . . for a woman.”

  Bowman bought the copy of Jane Eyre and asked for it to be wrapped in paper with pale blue ribbon. Before leaving, he asked about new travel books. He was shown a book by Sir Francis Burton, the account of an expedition to India. Bowman shook his head and asked if there were any new books about America. The bookseller said no, but in desperation suggested some newspapers.

  “We receive copies regularly. The news is a little old, of course, but if you’re interested in America, you’ll find a lot of things in there. Though they’re not books, obviously . . .”

  Curious, Bowman bought two month-old copies of the New York Tribune, and finally asked the bookseller what all those people were waiting for in front of the main counter. There had been about twenty bourgeois people standing in a queue since Bowman entered, all engaged in a lively discussion.

  “It’s because we are expecting a delivery, sir: a work from the Murray Press that is causing quite a stir. A scientific treatise.”

  The bookseller gave Bowman a s
mall printed sheet, an advertisement announcing the book’s publication.

  “If sir is interested, we could put you on the waiting list.”

  Bowman left the bookshop and, on the pavement, read the advert.

  Written by Professor Charles Darwin, published by

  John Murray: On the Origin of Species by means of

  Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races

  in the Struggle for Life.

  He crumpled the sheet of paper up in his hand and tossed it in a gutter.

  *

  Back in the cabin, Bowman mused. He could never invite the widow here.

  As he had the means, he decided to find some decent lodging as soon as possible, somewhere close to the port. The fishing was going well. With all the money that remained to him, he could begin to plan a future. If he didn’t spend too much, he could even live on what he was earning.

  He turned the gift-wrapped book between his fingers, trying to remember every detail of the face of Bufford’s widow. He carefully placed the present on the table, next to his own few books, the inkwell and some sheets of paper. He had not written anything since his visit to the preacher, one year earlier.

  Bowman walked over to the mirror and took a good look at himself. His body was now the way it had been before his captivity. He was muscular, heavier, and his face had grown rounder and softer with the years. The scar on his forehead looked more discreet, his skin lightly tanned from his work at sea. He stretched his lips in front of the mirror, in training for Bufford’s widow, and saw that he had a pleasant smile. His teeth had been solid since childhood. Fifteen years of being well-fed by the Company had given him teeth able to withstand a year of famine in the forest, and his alcohol and opium consumption had only slightly spoiled them. He was thirty-six years old.

  When Frank knocked at the door of the cabin the next day, he found Bowman sitting on the floor, surrounded by empty bottles. When he spoke to him, the sergeant did not respond. His face was white and his eyes blank. Frank crouched down in front of him but Bowman did not seem to see him.

  “Arthur?”

  III

  1860

  New World

  New York Tribune

  A Funeral in Reunion

  by Albert Brisbane

  21 November, 1859

  Readers, friends, brothers and sisters. In this column, devoted for so many years to the most wonderful of accomplishments, we, associationists, heirs and reformists of a dream born in countries too old for it and now being built on the earth of our new nation, we, the people of tomorrow, have never hidden any of our goals, our hopes or our difficulties. It is a question of trying to change Man. Think of those governments, incapable, for all their power, of harmonizing relations between their fellow citizens, and then think of us, with nothing but our ideas to help us succeed. It would be dishonest of us to claim that we have not known failure. But we are not giving up, absolutely not, because we believe that it is possible for mankind to be happy. Freed from the yoke of sterile work, of an education that prepares one only for duty and obedience when responsibility and free will shall be, with our passion and our creativity, the only guides we acknowledge in a world at peace.

  It is here, in this newspaper, for a long time now, that we have told you about this new world. With more and more believers.

  And yet today, if not a failure, we must tell you about something shocking, something deeply sad.

  It was five years ago, on the banks of the Trinity River in Texas, very close to Dallas, that 300 men, women and children, led by our friend Victor Considerant, had come from France, Switzerland and Belgium to build a new town, Reunion, the first step towards the city of our ideals. They, too, encountered difficulties, because, in addition to the problems that confront all this country’s pioneers, they also had to face up to those of a land that was still uncultivated and of a humanity in the process of transforming itself. Their hearts are pure and their determination is magnificent.

  Among them, in this town of Reunion where everyone is good, Mr Kramer merited the name of gentleman. The most gentle of the gentle.

  It was at the heart of their dream that the thunderbolt struck, on their lands, open to all, and in their houses built to welcome everyone. With them, today, we are in mourning. For the death of our dream? No. Because we are not giving up. But for the death of a man who represented what we love.

  It is the hope that Mr Kramer carried within him that was murdered.

  A murder of indescribable violence, as if the killer had known that, with this man, it was not the body that had to be destroyed, but his spirit. What was inside him and could not disappear with his earthly remains.

  The monster failed. Because we remain. Let us celebrate the spirit of Mr Kramer today, and continue to keep it alive.

  The murderer, on the run, left behind a message. He signed his vile crime. Not with his name – no, he did not have the courage for that! But with a word, one single word, written in the victim’s blood, and on which we must meditate.

  Survive.

  Is this message addressed to us? I don’t think so. Because we live for a greater dream, we fight for a better life.

  This word reflects the human beast that committed this crime. Because an individual capable of such things does not live, he merely survives, at a level of humanity so far below the one we wish to reach. While we are climbing, step by step, towards a superior state, this murderer is at the foot of the ladder. An animal, without a conscience, that seeks only to survive.

  He leaves behind him a shocked, saddened community, but a community that will still be there when the memory of his crime has long since disappeared. Mr Kramer was buried in the earth of his dreams, and there will still be someone there to visit his grave when the animal responsible for his death dies in some deserted corner of the world. Let him dig his own hole and vanish down it! We will remain beside the gentleman, Mr Kramer.

  We are not in mourning for our ideas, and our sadness will soon fade before the happiness that we are building. Let this column, today, be an opportunity for us to gather our thoughts, readers and friends, and to regain our strength so that we may continue. The dream is not destroyed.

  1

  “He scares me.”

  Frank put on his pea jacket and his hat, standing in the entrance hall of the apartment.

  “All you have to do is take him some food. You don’t have to talk to him.”

  “That’s not the point, Frankie. You know I don’t like him.”

  Mary had thrown a shawl over her shoulders. In her hand she carried a basket of food for her husband. The Sea Sergeant was stocking up for a week-long voyage.

  “Just go to the hut once a day, leave the food there and check that he’s alright. That’s all.”

  Mary lowered her head. She was upset.

  “I don’t like it when you go away for a long time, and now you’re asking me to look after him. You’re the only one that can’t see he’s not normal. He’s going to bring us trouble.”

  “Arthur’s not a bad bloke, he’s just had a few bad experiences. He’s been through things we can’t even imagine. Anyway, don’t forget he paid for half the boat. We don’t have to worry anymore, and that’s thanks to him.”

  His wife handed him the basket, and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “What does the pastor say to you when you go to church, eh? That you should help others, right?”

  “If he’s suffered, it’s because he made other people suffer. He’s a bad man.”

  Frank looked at her reproachfully.

  “You’re judging him, Mary. That’s not like you.”

  “He scares me. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Frank was becoming impatient. Stevens must already be waiting for him at the port.

  “I’m going to say it one last time! Just leave the food and check that he’s alright. He hasn’t spoken a word for two weeks anyway. He doesn’t even hear people when they talk to him. If yo
u can’t do it for him, do it for me. If it wasn’t for him, we’d still be counting our money at the end of every week.”

  Mary’s face flushed.

  “Alright, I’ll do it. But I don’t like it.”

  Frank kissed her on the cheek again and opened the door.

  “Frankie! Go and kiss the children!”

  Groaning, he turned on his heel, kissed the children, who were sitting at the kitchen table eating soup, and dashed back through the entrance hall. Mary watched him go downstairs, forcing herself not to wish him good luck. She didn’t hold with these sailors’ superstitions, and wanted every time to tell him to be careful, to wish him good fishing and a swift return. But she bit her tongue and listened to his footsteps thunder down the stairs until he reached the ground floor. In the still-dark kitchen, she watched the children eat, her shawl wrapped tight around her. Bowman had only been here twice. The first time was when he’d started working with Frankie and Stevens, more than a year ago. He had been thin, with a sickly complexion and shifty eyes. The second time was a few weeks before Christmas, when he came to say he that he accepted their invitation for the New Year meal and to ask if he could bring someone. A woman. This time, Bowman had been sturdier and healthier-looking and he’d looked less ill at ease. He was tall and strong, silent, and still disturbing.

  She dressed the children for school and waved goodbye to them on the landing, listening to them walk downstairs. Then she put on warm clothes, filled a shopping bag, and went outside. She walked through the streets of Limehouse in the direction of the port, turned towards the warehouses and headed down the path – through the tall grass, yellowed by frost – traced by the comings and goings of Stevens, Frank and Bowman. A few puffs of smoke escaped the hut’s chimney. She knocked and, receiving no response, entered. At first, unable to make out anything in the darkness, she advanced carefully to the shelf and placed the food there. The ex-soldier was lying on his bed, rolled up in blankets. His eyes were open and he was staring straight ahead, showing no reaction to her presence. Mary retreated to the door. Outside, she crossed herself and walked back home. All day, she felt guilty for not having added coal to the stove and for not having asked Bowman how he was. He might even have been dead, the way he was staring like that. That evening, she was in a foul mood. She yelled at the children, who were playing up, and sent them to bed early.