The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  ‘Why do you say “must”?’

  ‘Chinese life is cheap in this country.’

  ‘All life is cheap, upon a goldfield.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Today you saw a man strike me, pull my hair, insult me, and threaten me with death—all without consequence. And there will be no consequence. Every man in Hokitika would sooner take Mannering’s part than mine, and why? Because I am Chinese and he is not Chinese. You and I must help each other, Ah Sook. We must. The law is united against us; we must have the means to unite against the law.’

  This was a sentiment that Ah Sook had never heard expressed; he was silent for a time, digesting it. Ah Quee took off his hat, struck it several times with his palm, and replaced it on his head. Somewhere in the bush nearby a bellbird gave its lusty, open-throated cry; the call was taken up by another, and another, and for a moment the trees around them were alive with song.

  It was by preference, and not by necessity, that Sook Yongsheng lived and worked alone. He was not surly by temperament, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced—and friendship, in his experience, nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation. Those men he did choose to call his intimates were those who demanded nothing, and gave much; as a consequence, there were many charitable figures in Ah Sook’s past, and very few upon whom he had expressly doted. He had the sensibility of a social vanguard, unattached, full of conviction, and, in his own perception at least, almost universally misunderstood. The sense of being constantly undervalued by the world at large would develop, over time, into a kind of private demagoguery; he was certain of the comprehensive scope of his own vision, and rarely thought it necessary to explain himself to other men. In general his beliefs were projections of a simpler, better world, in which he liked, fantastically, to dwell—for he preferred the immaculate fervour of his own solitude to all other social obligations, and tended, when in company, to hold himself aloof. Of this propensity, he was not at all unaware, for he was highly reflexive, and given to extensive self-analysis of the most rigorous and contemplative kind. But he analysed his own mind as a prophet analyses his own strange visions—that is, with reverence, and believing always that he was destined to be the herald of a cosmic raison d’être, a universal plan.

  ‘My history with Francis Carver,’ he said at last, ‘is a story with many beginnings; but I hope that it will only have one end.’

  ‘Tell it,’ said Ah Quee.

  Harald Nilssen closed the door of his quayside office, sat down at his desk, and without first removing his hat or his coat, penned a hasty note to Joseph Pritchard. The tone of his letter was frantic, even slovenly, but Nilssen did not care to revise it. Without re-reading his words, he blotted the page, folded the paper, and stamped the sealing wax with the circular matrix of Nilssen & Co. He then summoned Albert, and instructed the boy to deliver the note to Pritchard’s drug emporium on Collingwood-street post-haste.

  Once Albert had departed Nilssen hung up his hat, exchanged his rain-soaked coat for a dry robe, and reached for his pipe—but even after the tobacco was lit, and he had sat down, put up his feet, and crossed his ankles, he did not feel reassured. He felt chilly. His skin was damp to the touch, and the rhythm of his heart would not slow. He stuck the pipe in the corner of his mouth, as he liked to do, and turned his attention to the subject of his disquiet: the promise he had made, earlier that day, to George Shepard, Governor of the Hokitika Gaol.

  Nilssen wondered whether he ought to break his vow of silence and share the details of Shepard’s proposition with the assembly that evening. The matter was certainly relevant to their prospective discussion, principally for the reason that it concerned a percentage of Crosbie Wells’s fortune, but also because, Nilssen suspected, Shepard’s antipathy towards the politician Lauderback was not just a matter of convict labour, gaol-houses, and roads. When one considered that the politician Alistair Lauderback had been the first to encounter Crosbie Wells’s dead body—well, Nilssen thought, it was clear that Governor Shepard was as mixed up in the Crosbie Wells conspiracy as the rest of them! But how much did Shepard know—and whom was he serving, beyond his own self-interest? Had he known about the fortune hidden in Crosbie Wells’s cottage? Had Lauderback known about it, for that matter? Brooding, Nilssen recrossed his ankles, and repositioned his pipe in his mouth, cupping the bowl between the crook of his index finger and the pad of his thumb. Whichever way one looked at it, he thought, there was no denying that George Shepard knew a great deal more than he was letting on.

  Harald Nilssen was used to commanding public attention, an authority he achieved through the use of wit, declamation, and comical self-styling. He became very quickly bored when he was required, for whatever reason, to inhabit the periphery of a crowded room. His vanity required constant stimulation, and constant proof that the ongoing creation of his selfhood was a project that he himself controlled. He was vexed, now, to think that he had been played as a fool, not because he believed himself undeserving of such treatment (Nilssen knew very well that he was an impressionable type, and often joked about this very fact) but because he could not perceive Shepard’s motivation in having treated him so.

  He puffed at his pipe, conjuring in his mind the prospective gaol-house, the asylum, the scaffold of the gallows, built high above the drop. All of it would be built with his commission, and by his leave. Hang Governor Shepard, he thought suddenly. He had no real obligation to keep Shepard’s secret—why, he did not even know, exactly, what that secret really was! He would share Shepard’s request with the assembly that evening, and he would share his own suspicions about the man, to boot. He was not yet contractually bound to keep his silence. He had not yet signed his name to any document. What did that matter, anyway? A gaol-house was not a private property. It belonged to all of Hokitika. A gaol-house was built by the government—and on behalf of the adherents of the law.

  Presently Nilssen heard the door in the outer office open and close. He leaped up. It was Albert, returning from Joseph Pritchard’s drug hall. His jacket was very wet, and when he stepped into Nilssen’s office, he carried with him the earthy smell of rain.

  ‘Did he burn the letter?’ Nilssen said anxiously. ‘Did you watch him burn it? What’s that you’ve got there?’

  ‘Pritchard’s reply,’ said Albert. He held up a folded piece of paper.

  ‘I said there wasn’t to be a reply! I said that!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Albert, ‘and I told him—but he penned one anyway.’

  Nilssen eyed the document in Albert’s hand. ‘Did he burn my letter, at least?’

  ‘Yes,’ Albert said, but then he hesitated.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Well,’ Albert said, ‘when I said he had to burn it—he laughed.’

  Nilssen narrowed his eyes. ‘Why did he laugh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Albert. ‘But I thought I should tell you that he did. Maybe it doesn’t matter.’

  The muscle beneath Nilssen’s eye began to pulse. ‘He laughed when he read the letter? When he read the words?’

  ‘No,’ said Albert. ‘He only laughed before. When I said he had to burn it.’

  ‘He found it amusing, did he?’

  ‘That you’d told him to burn it,’ said Albert, nodding. He was fingering the edges of the letter in his hand. He wanted very much to ask his employer what all of this to-do was on account of, but he did not know how to ask without risking a rebuke. Aloud he said, ‘Do you want to read the reply?’

  Nilssen held out his hand. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You didn’t read it, did you?’

  ‘No,’ Albert said, looking wounded. ‘It’s sealed.’

  ‘Oh, yes, so it is,’ said Nilssen. He took the note from Albert’s hand, turned it over, and broke a
part the seal with his fingers. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he said, before he unfolded the paper. ‘You can go.’

  ‘Home?’ said Albert, in a voice of great regret.

  ‘Yes—home, you idiot,’ said Nilssen. ‘And you can leave the key on the desk before you do.’

  But the boy lingered. ‘On the way back,’ he said, ‘when I passed the Prince of Wales, I saw there’s a new show opening tonight: a foreign spectacle. Mr. Mannering’s giving away tickets for free—on account of the opening—and I got one for you.’ He had spoken all of this very quickly; now he screwed up his face, and looked away.

  Nilssen had not yet unfolded Pritchard’s letter. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Sensations from the Orient,’ the boy said. ‘It’s a gallery ticket—front and centre. The best. I asked for it special.’

  ‘You use it yourself,’ Nilssen said. ‘You go yourself. I don’t want a ticket to the theatre. Get along, now.’

  The boy scuffed his shoe upon the boards. ‘I got myself one too,’ he said. ‘I thought—seeing as it’s Saturday—and the races have been postponed—’

  Nilssen shook his head. ‘I can’t go to the theatre tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Albert. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m feeling poorly.’

  ‘Just for the first act,’ the boy said. ‘There’s supposed to be champagne. Champagne’s good if you’re feeling poorly.’

  ‘Take Henry Fuller with you.’

  ‘By the players’ door I saw a lady with a parasol.’

  ‘Take Henry.’

  ‘She was Japanese,’ said Albert, mournfully. ‘It didn’t look like greasepaint. It looked like she was really Japanese. Henry Fuller’s up the beach. Why won’t you come?’

  ‘I’m very ill.’

  ‘You don’t look ill. You’re smoking.’

  ‘I’m sure you can find someone to go along with you,’ Nilssen said, with mounting irritation. ‘Go down to the Star and wave that ticket around. How about that?’

  Albert stared at the floorboards for a moment and worked his mouth. At length he sighed and said, ‘Well, I expect I’ll see you on Monday, Mr. Nilssen.’

  ‘Yes, I expect you will, Albert.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye. You’ll have to tell me all about the show. All right?’

  ‘Maybe we can go again,’ Albert said. ‘Only the ticket’s for tonight. But maybe we can go again.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nilssen said. ‘Next week, perhaps. After I recover.’

  He waited until the disappointed subordinate had padded from the room, and closed the door quietly behind him. Then he unfolded Pritchard’s letter, and stepped towards the window, for a better light.

  H.—Can confirm. But listen: something odd happened this afternoon at Anna’s. Pistols involved. Will explain in full in person. Event witnessed by A.G. courthouse clerk. Perhaps you should speak to him, if you’re playing the detective. Whatever Anna’s mixed up in, I’m sure that A.G. knows about it. Do you trust him? Can’t say that I do: well, the jury’s still out, as the saying goes. Destroy this letter!—J.S.P.

  Thomas Balfour had returned, in the late afternoon, to the Palace Hotel, with the intention of finding Cowell Devlin—the chaplain who had overheard his conversation with Lauderback that morning. He wished to apologise for his earlier rudeness, but also (and rather more urgently) to ask the chaplain about his connexion to the vanished prospector, Emery Staines. He was sure that Devlin’s inquiry at the office of the West Coast Times was connected, somehow, to the Crosbie Wells affair.

  Devlin was not at the Palace Hotel, however; the kitchen staff informed Balfour that he had left the dining room several hours before. He was not in his tent upon the beachfront, nor at the Police Camp gaol-house, nor in any of the churches; he was not in any of the stores or billiard-halls, and he was not on the quay. Balfour wandered about Hokitika for several hours, dejected, and was about to give up and go home when he spied Devlin at last. The chaplain was walking down Revell-street, his hat and coat quite saturated; walking next to him was another man, a good deal taller and larger than he. Balfour crossed the street. He was already raising his arm to flag the other down when he recognised Devlin’s companion: it was the Maori man with whom he had also spoken, earlier that day, and to whom he had also been rather unforgivably rude.

  ‘Hi there,’ he called. ‘Reverend Devlin. Would you believe it! The very man I was looking to find! Hello, Ted: I’m glad to see you again, too.’

  Tauwhare did not offer a greeting; Devlin, however, smiled. ‘I see that you have found out my surname,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I still do not know yours.’

  Balfour thrust out his hand. ‘Tom Balfour,’ he said, beaming, and they shook hands. ‘Yes: I went to see Ben Löwenthal, over at the Times, and we had some words about you. Matter of fact I’ve been trying to track you down these past few hours. To ask you something.’

  ‘Then our meeting is doubly fortuitous,’ said Devlin.

  ‘It’s a question about Emery Staines,’ Balfour said, interrupting him. ‘I hear you’ve been asking after him, you see. Wanting to know who placed that notice in the paper, advertising his return. Ben told me that you’d been by. I’m wanting to know why you’re asking after him—Staines, I mean—and what’s your connexion to the man.’

  Cowell Devlin hesitated. The truth, of course, was that Emery Staines was one of the three names written upon the deed of gift that he had taken from the ash-drawer of Crosbie Wells’s range, the day after the hermit’s death. He had not showed that deed to anyone, however, and he had resolved not to do so, until he knew a little more about the people it concerned. Ought he to lie to Balfour? He did not like to utter falsehoods, but perhaps he could tell a partial truth. He bit his lip.

  Balfour had perceived the chaplain’s hesitation, and had mistaken it for reproof. He put up his hands. ‘Hark at me,’ he exclaimed, ‘asking questions in the street—and in the weather—when we’re getting wetter all the time! Look here. How about we share a meal together? Something hot. There’s no sense in talking out of doors—not when there are warm hotels on either side of us, and good cheer to be had.’

  Devlin glanced at Tauwhare, who, despite his dislike of Balfour, had brightened considerably at the prospect of a meal.

  Balfour coughed, and then thumped his chest with his fist, wincing. ‘I wasn’t myself this morning—out of sorts; I wasn’t myself. I’m sorry for it—and I mean to make it up—to both of you. I’ll stand us all a plate of something, and we’ll have a drink together—as friends. Come: let a man say he’s sorry, when he asks.’

  The threesome was soon established at a corner table at Maxwell’s. Balfour, who was always very happy to play the role of the munificent host, ordered three bowls of clear soup, a round of bread, a fat black pudding, a hard cheese, sardines in oil, hot buttered carrots, a pot of stewed oysters, and a demijohn of stout. He had the prescience to delay any talk of Crosbie Wells or Emery Staines until both his guests were sated with food and drink, and talked instead of whaling, a subject of which all three men had a most romantic conception, and much to share. When Benjamin Löwenthal found them some three-quarters of an hour later, they were a very merry party.

  ‘Ben!’ cried Balfour, when he saw Löwenthal approaching. ‘But what about your Sabbath?’

  He had become, for the second time that day, rather drunk.

  ‘Ends at starlight,’ Löwenthal said shortly. To Tauwhare he said, ‘I believe that we have not yet been introduced. I am Benjamin Löwenthal; I publish the West Coast Times.’

  ‘Te Rau Tauwhare,’ the Maori man replied, and shook his hand very firmly.

  ‘He also goes by Ted,’ said Balfour. ‘Very good friend of Crosbie Wells.’

  ‘Were you?’ said Löwenthal to Tauwhare.

  ‘His finest friend,’ said Devlin.

  ‘Better than brothers,’ said Balfour.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said Löwenthal, ‘my business concerns all three of you
.’

  Benjamin Löwenthal had no authority to widen the invitation to the Crown Hotel council to include Devlin and Tauwhare. But as we have observed already, Löwenthal could be very forbidding when his ethical code was affronted, and Charlie Frost had affronted him, that afternoon, by suggesting that the Crown assembly ought to be restricted to an exclusive few. Löwenthal felt the need to rectify what he perceived to have been Frost’s moral error, and he extended the invitation to Tauwhare and Devlin now as an obscure act of reproach.

  ‘Capital,’ Balfour said. ‘Pull up a chair.’

  Löwenthal sat down, placed the palms of his hands together, and, in a low voice, explained the purpose of the meeting that evening—to which Balfour acquiesced immediately, Tauwhare gravely, and Cowell Devlin after a long, judicious pause. The chaplain was thinking about the deed of gift that he had taken from the hermit’s stove, currently stored in his Bible, between the Old Testament and the New. He resolved to bring his Bible with him to the council that evening, and to produce the deed, if the occasion moved him, and the timing was right.

  There was smoke issuing from Gascoigne’s chimney, and upon Mannering’s knock, the door opened promptly, and Gascoigne peered out. He was holding a freshly lit cigarette, and had exchanged his formal jacket for shirtsleeves and a woollen vest.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘I have it on good information that you’re holding on to some money,’ Dick Mannering said. ‘That money’s mine, and I’ve come to collect it.’

  Aubert Gascoigne looked at him, then put his cigarette to his lips, inhaled, and blew a stream of smoke over Mannering’s shoulder, into the rain. ‘Who is the source of your good information?’ he said mildly.

  ‘Miss Anna Wetherell, by way of Mr. Edgar Clinch,’ Mannering said.

  Gascoigne leaned against the doorframe. ‘And how did Miss Anna Wetherell, by way of Mr. Edgar Clinch, imagine that you would act, upon receiving this good information?’

  ‘Don’t play clever with me,’ Mannering said. ‘Don’t do it. I’ll only tell you once: I don’t like cleverness one bit. She says the money’s hidden under your bed.’