The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  He shouldered his way through the diggers to the bankers’ cubicles. Most of the men in the room were present as spectators only, and so parted to admit him; it was in very little time at all, therefore, that Balfour found himself at a barred cubicle, facing a young man in a striped vest and a neatly pinned cravat.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘I’m wanting to know if a man named Francis Carver has ever taken out a miner’s right in New Zealand,’ Balfour said. He removed his hat and slicked back his wet hair, an action without a perceptible benefit, for the palm of his hand was very wet also.

  ‘Francis Carver—Captain Carver?’

  ‘That’s the man,’ said Balfour.

  ‘I am obliged to ask who you are, and why you are requesting this information.’

  The banker spoke without affect, and in a mild tone of voice.

  ‘The man owns a ship, and I’m in the shipping trade,’ Balfour said smoothly, replacing his hat. ‘Tom Balfour’s my name. I’m looking to set up a side venture of a kind—tea-trading, back and forth from Canton. Just canvassing the idea at this point. I want to find out a bit more about Carver before I make any offers of business. Where his money’s spread. Whether he’s ever been bankrupted. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Surely you could just ask Mr. Carver yourself,’ replied the banker, speaking in the same inoffensive tone, so that the remark did not come off as rude, but, merely, as pleasantly offhand. He might have been passing a broken wagon in the street, and observing, quite affably, that there was a very simple way to mend the axle.

  Balfour explained that Carver was at sea, and could not be contacted.

  The banker seemed unsatisfied with this explanation. He considered Balfour, and put his finger against his lower lip. Evidently, however, he could not conjure a further objection that might give him reason to decline to pursue Balfour’s request. He nodded, pulled his ledger towards him, and wrote a note in a thin, precise script. He then blotted his page (a little unnecessarily, Balfour thought, for the ledger remained open) and dried the nib of his pen with a square of soft leather. ‘Wait here, please,’ he said. He disappeared through a low doorway, beyond which lay an antechamber of some kind, and soon returned carrying a large folder, bound in leather and marked on its spine with the letter C.

  Balfour drummed his fingers as the banker untied the clasp upon the folder and opened it. He scrutinised the young man through the bars of the grille.

  What a contrast this young man posed to the Maori in the street! They were rough contemporaries in age, but where Tauwhare had been muscled, tense, and proud, this fellow was languid, even catlike: he moved with a kind of casual luxury, as though he saw no need to spend his strength on swiftness, and nor did he see any reason to conserve it. He was lean in body. His hair was brown in hue, long, and curly at the tips; he wore it tied in a ribbon at the nape of his neck, in the fashion of a whaler. His face was broad and his eyes spaced widely; his lips were full, his teeth very crooked, and his nose rather large. These features conspired to form an expression that was both honest and nonchalant—and nonchalance is a form of elegance, when it demands much, and declines to reveal its source. Balfour considered him a very elegant young man.

  ‘Here,’ the banker said at last, pointing. ‘You see—Carswell, here, and then Cassidy. Your man’s not here.’

  ‘So Francis Carver doesn’t own a miner’s right.’

  ‘Not in Canterbury, no.’ He shut the folder with a soft thud.

  ‘What about an Otago certificate?’

  ‘I’m afraid you will have to go to Dunedin for that.’

  This was a dead end. In Lauderback’s story the gold in the crate had hailed (allegedly, of course) from Dunstan, which was an Otago field.

  ‘You don’t keep records of Otago men?’ Balfour asked, disappointed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if he came in on Otago papers? Would there be a record at the customhouse—from when he first arrived?’

  ‘Not at the customhouse,’ said the banker, ‘but if he made any dust, he’d have to have it counted and weighed before he left. He’s not allowed to transfer it to another province, or out of the country, without declaring it first. So he’d come here. We’d ask to take a look at the miner’s right. Then we’d make a record in this book that he was working under Otago papers, but on a Hokitika claim. There’s nothing in this book; therefore, as I said just now, we can safely assume he hasn’t prospected anywhere hereabouts. As for whether he’s prospected in Otago, I’ve no idea.’

  The banker spoke with the controlled alarm of a bureaucrat who is requested to explain some mundane feature of the bureaucracy of which he is a functioning part: controlled, because an official is always comforted by proof of his own expertise, and alarmed, because the necessity for explanation seemed, in some obscure way, to undermine the system which had afforded him that expertise in the first place.

  ‘All right,’ said Balfour. ‘Now, there’s one more thing. I need to know whether Carver has owned shares in any mining company, or if he took out shares on a private claim.’

  A flicker of doubt disturbed the banker’s mild expression. For the briefest moment, he said nothing, and again it seemed as if he were trying to think of a reason to decline Balfour’s request, to declare it unorthodox, or to press to know the reason why. He looked at Balfour with a gaze that was no less piercing for its mildness—and Balfour, who was always made uncomfortable by scrutiny, scowled very darkly. But, as before, the banker applied himself to the task demanded of his office. He wrote another note upon his ledger, blotted it, and then politely excused himself to pursue this new request.

  When he returned with the shares records, however, he looked openly uneasy.

  ‘Francis Carver has speculated in this area,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t call it a portfolio: it’s only one claim. Looks like a private agreement. Carver takes home a return to the tune of fifty percent of the mine’s net profit every quarter.’

  ‘Fifty percent!’ Balfour said. ‘And only one claim—that’s confidence for you! When did he buy?’

  ‘Our records show the date as July 1865.’

  ‘That far back!’ Balfour said. (Six months ago! But that was after the sale of the Godspeed—was it not?) ‘Which claim is it? Who’s owning?’

  ‘The mine is called the Aurora,’ said the banker, enunciating very carefully. ‘It is owned and operated by—’

  ‘Emery Staines,’ Balfour finished for him, nodding his head. ‘Yes, I know the place—up Kaniere way. Why, that’s capital news. Staines is a great friend of mine. I’ll go and talk to the man myself. Thank you very much, Mr.—?’

  ‘Frost.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Frost. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful.’

  But the banker was looking at Balfour with a strange expression on his face.

  ‘Mr. Balfour,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you haven’t heard.’

  ‘Something about Staines?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Balfour stiffened. ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘No,’ said Frost. ‘He vanished.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Two weeks ago.’

  Balfour’s eyes went wide.

  ‘I am sorry to be the one to break the news—if you are his great friend.’

  Balfour did not notice the barb of emphasis in the banker’s remark. ‘Vanished—two weeks back!’ he said. ‘And no one’s talking? Why haven’t I heard about it?’

  ‘I assure you that many men have been talking,’ said Frost. ‘A notice has been published in the Missing Persons column every day this week.’

  ‘I never read the personals,’ said Balfour.

  (But of course: he had been with Lauderback, this fortnight past, facilitating introductions up and down the Coast; he had not been frequenting the Corinthian, as he habitually did in the evenings, to share a mug of beer with the other camp followers while they exchanged the local news.)

  ‘Perhaps he found a strike,’ he said n
ow. ‘That could be it. Perhaps Staines found a paying seam, up in the bush somewhere, and he’s keeping it quiet—until he’s staked the ground.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the banker said courteously, and would not say more.

  Balfour chewed his lip. ‘Vanished!’ he said. ‘I can’t understand it!’

  ‘I rather wonder whether this news will be of import to your partner,’ said Frost, smoothing the open page of his ledger with his palm.

  ‘Who’s my partner?’ Balfour said, with some alarm—thinking that the banker was referring to Alistair Lauderback, whose name he had been careful not to use.

  ‘Why—Mr. Carver,’ Frost said, blinking. ‘Your prospective partner in business—as you have just informed me, sir. Mr. Carver has a joint investment with Mr. Staines. So if Mr. Staines is dead …’

  He trailed off with a shrug.

  Balfour narrowed his eyes. The banker seemed to be implying, however vaguely, that Carver was in some way responsible for Emery Staines’s disappearance … an implication for which he surely did not have any proof. His attitude was very clear, and yet he had not really expressed an opinion of any kind, upon which he might be faulted. The tone of his voice implied that he did not like Carver, even though his words expressed sympathy for the man’s possible loss. Balfour, feeling the cowardice of this equivocation, almost became angry—but then he remembered that he was shamming. He was not going into business with Carver, and need not take his part in an argument against him.

  But then young Frost smothered a smile, and Balfour saw, with a sudden rush of indignation, that, in fact, the younger man was mocking him. Frost had not believed his false story for a moment! He knew that Balfour was not going into business with Carver; he knew that this falsehood had been fabricated to mask some other purpose—and then he added the insult of diminishment to the injury of exposure, by finding Balfour amusing! It rankled Balfour to be second-guessed, but it rankled him still more to be ridiculed, especially by a man whose days were spent in a three-foot-square cubicle, signing cheques in another man’s name. (This last was Lauderback’s phrase, half-remembered from earlier that morning; it came to Balfour’s mind as his own.) Suddenly angry, he leaned forward and curled his hands around the bars of the grille.

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘You listen. I’m no more going into business with Carver than you are. I think the man’s a thug and a crook and all the rest of it. I’m up against him, d—n it. I’ve got to get a twinkle on him: something I can use.’

  ‘What is a twinkle?’ the banker asked.

  ‘It’s stupid—never mind it,’ Balfour snapped. ‘The point is that I’m looking to round him up. Give him over to the law. I think he skimmed a fair fortune out of some other fellow’s claim. Thousands. But it’s only a hunch, and I need hard evidence. I need a place to start. All right? That investment story I gave you just now was a bunch of guff. Cock and bull.’ He glared at the banker through the bars of the grille. ‘What?’ he said after a moment. ‘What, then?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Frost. He squared the papers on his desk, and gave a cryptic, tight-lipped smile. ‘Your business is your own. I wish you only luck, Mr. Balfour.’

  The news about Emery Staines had rattled Balfour severely. Shipping crates and blackmail was one thing, he thought, but a person disappearing was quite another. That was a sombre business. Emery Staines was a good digger, and much too young to die.

  Outside the courthouse Balfour stood and breathed heavily for a moment. The small crowd outside the bank had dispersed to their luncheon, and the Maori man was gone. The rain had thinned to a persistent drizzle. Balfour cast his eye up and down the street, somewhat at a loss for where next to go. He felt excessively dejected. Vanished, he thought. But one did not simply vanish! The boy could only have been murdered. There was no other explanation for it—if he had not been seen for two weeks.

  Emery Staines was easily the richest man south of the black sands. He owned more than a dozen claims, several of which had shafts that descended to depths of thirty feet, at least. Balfour, who admired Staines exceedingly, would have guessed his age at three-or four-and-twenty—not so young as to be unworthy of his luck, and not so old as to suggest that he might have acquired it by some less than honest means. In fact such a suggestion had never crossed Balfour’s mind. Staines had been gifted with a thoroughly good-natured beauty, the kind that is earnest and hopeful without ever declaring itself to be so; in temper he was affable, optimistic, and delightfully quick. Even to think him dead was hateful. To think him murdered was worse.

  Just then the Wesleyan chapel bell struck half past twelve, releasing a flurry of birds: they burst out of the makeshift belfry and scattered, dark against the sky. Balfour turned his face to the sound, feeling as he did so a sudden ache in his temple. His senses were turning from dull to sharp—the effect of the spirits he had consumed that morning—and the responsibilities of his situation had begun to weigh heavy upon him. He no longer felt inclined to ask questions on Lauderback’s behalf.

  He wrapped his coat around his body, turned on his heel, and began walking towards the Hokitika spit—a place that was, for him, a habitual refuge. It was his pleasure to stand on the sand in foul weather, clutch his coat across his body, and look out past the clustered masts of the ships at anchor, swaying en masse, impelled variously by the river’s rushing current, the surf, and the wind—the howling Tasman wind, that stripped the bark from the trees at the beachfront, and bent the scrub to crippled forms. Balfour enjoyed the fierce indifference of a storm. He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.

  As he slithered down the muddy bank to the quay, the wind suddenly dropped. Smiling, Balfour peered into the mist. The rain had stolen all chance of a reflection from the wide mouth of the river, and the water was as grey and opaque as a pewter plate. The bucking masts had slowed their motion when the wind died away; Balfour watched them, calmed by their weighty roll, back and forth, back and forth. He waited until they were almost still before moving on.

  The quay curved around the mouth of the river to meet the spit, a narrow finger of sand that was battered on one side by the white surf of the open ocean, and lapped on the other by the confused wash of the river, its waters mingled now with salt, and stripped of gold. Here, on the calm side of the spit, a short wharf projected from the quay. Balfour stepped down onto it, landing with a flat sole, and the structure shuddered beneath his weight. Two stevedores, quite as sodden as he was, were sitting on the wharf some twenty feet away; they started at the jolt, and turned.

  ‘All right, chaps,’ said Balfour.

  ‘All right, Tom.’

  One was carrying a brass-capped boathook; he had been using it to swipe at the gulls, which were diving for their supper on the rocks below, and now he resumed this idle purpose. The other was keeping score.

  Balfour strolled up behind them, and for a time nobody spoke. They watched the moored vessels pitch back and forth, and squinted out, through the rain.

  ‘You know what the trouble is?’ Balfour said presently. ‘Down here, any man can make himself over. Make himself new. What’s an alias, anyway? What’s in a name? Pick it up as you pick up a nugget. Call this one Wells—this one Carver—’

  One of the stevedores glanced around. ‘You got a quarrel with Francis Carver?’

  ‘No, no.’ Balfour shook his head.

  ‘Quarrel with a man called Wells?’

  Balfour sighed. ‘No—there hasn’t been a quarrel,’ he said. ‘I’m wanting to find out a thing or two, that’s all. But quiet—on the sly.’

  The gull returned; the stevedore swiped again, and missed.

  ‘Foul-hooked through his wing, nearly,’ said the second man. ‘That’s five.’

  Balfour saw that they had dropped a square of biscuit on the gravel below.

  The stevedore who had spoken first nodded his head at Balfour and said, ‘Are you wanting to chase up Carver, or chase up the other one?’

  ‘Neither,�
� Balfour said. ‘Never mind. Never mind. I’ve got no quarrel with Francis Carver—you remember that.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ said the stevedore, and then, ‘I say, though: if you’re wanting dirt—and on the sly—you ought to ask the gaoler.’

  Balfour was watching the gull circle closer. ‘The gaoler? Shepard? Why?’

  ‘Why? Because Carver did time under Shepard,’ said the stevedore. ‘On Cockatoo Island, for all of ten years. Carver dug the dry dock there—convict labour—with Shepard looking on. If you’re wanting dirt on Carver, I’d make a bet that Gov. Shepard is the man to dig it up.’

  ‘At Cockatoo?’ Balfour said with interest. ‘I didn’t know Shepard was a sergeant at Cockatoo.’

  ‘He was. And then the very year after Carver gets his leave, Shepard gets a transfer to New Zealand—and follows him! How’s that for bad luck?’

  ‘The worst,’ agreed his fellow.

  ‘How do you know this?’ Balfour said.

  The stevedore was addressing his mate. ‘That’s a face I’d never want to see again—my gaoler, day in and day out, for ten years—and then, as soon as I’m free—’