The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  ‘How?’ said Ah Sook.

  She shook her head. ‘You have to understand it: I’m not the same as I was.’

  ‘Why you come no more to Kaniere?’ Ah Sook said. He did not know how to say that he missed her; that each afternoon before her arrival he used to arrange the cushions on the daybed just so, and tidy his belongings, and make sure his clothes were neat and his pigtail tied; that as he watched her sleep he had often been near-choked with joy; that he had sometimes reached out his hand and let it hover within an inch of her breast, as though he could feel the softness of her skin in that smoky space between his flesh and hers; that sometimes after she took her pipe he would wait some time before taking his own, so that he could watch her, and fix her image in his mind, to remember.

  ‘I can’t come to see you any more,’ Anna said. ‘You mustn’t be here. I can’t come.’

  Ah Sook studied her sadly. ‘No more smoke?’

  ‘No more,’ Anna said. ‘No more smoke, and no more Kaniere.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t explain it—not here. I’ve stopped, Ah Sook. I’ve stopped it altogether.’

  ‘No more money?’ said Ah Sook, trying to understand. He knew that Anna had laboured under an enormous debt. She owed a great deal of money to Dick Mannering, and the debt mounted every day. Perhaps she could no longer afford the drug. Or perhaps she could no longer afford the time to make the journey, to take it.

  ‘It’s not money,’ Anna said.

  Just then a female voice called out Anna’s name, from deep in the well of the house, and asked, in a tone of impatient condescension, to know the name and business of the caller at the door.

  Anna turned her chin to the side but did not move her eyes from Ah Sook’s face. ‘It’s just a chink I used to know,’ she called. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Well, what does he want?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Anna called again. ‘He’s only trying to sell me something.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I bring to you—here?’ said Ah Sook. He cupped his hands together and proffered them to her, indicating that he was willing to deliver the resin himself.

  ‘No,’ Anna whispered. ‘No, you can’t do that. It’s no use. I just—the thing is—I can’t feel it any more.’

  Ah Sook did not understand this. ‘Last piece,’ he said, meaning the ounce he had gifted her on the afternoon of her near-death. ‘Last piece—unlucky?’

  ‘No,’ Anna began, but before she could speak further there were quick steps in the passage, and in the next moment a second woman had appeared at Anna’s side.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘What is it that you are selling? That will do, Anna’—and at once Anna melted back from the doorway.

  Ah Sook had also taken a step backwards—but in shock rather than submission, for this was the first he had seen of Lydia Greenway in nearly thirteen years. The last time that he had laid eyes upon her was—when?—at the Sydney courthouse, she in the gallery, he in the dock; she red-faced, fanning herself with an embroidered sandalwood fan, the scent of which had floated down to reach him, recalling, in a rush of emotion, his family’s warehouse on the Kwangchow waterfront, and the sandalwood boxes in which the merchants packed their bolts of silk, before the wars. She had been wearing a gown of pale green—this he remembered well—and a bonnet covered in lace; she had kept her face perfectly grave, throughout the trial. Her testimony, when she gave it, had been short and to the point. Ah Sook had not understood a word of it, save for when she pointed directly at him, evidently to identify him to the court. When Ah Sook was acquitted of the murder she had betrayed no emotion of any kind: she had only risen, mutely, and left the courtroom without a backward glance. Over twelve years had passed since that day! Over twelve years—and yet here she was, monstrously present, monstrously unchanged! Her copper hair was as bright as ever; her skin was fresh, and hardly lined. She was as plump and buxom as Anna was gaunt.

  In the next moment her features also slackened—which was unusual, for Lydia’s expressions were typically very artfully manicured, and she did not like to show surprise—and her eyes became wide.

  ‘I know this man,’ she said, in a tone of astonishment. She brought her hand up to her throat. ‘I know him.’

  Anna looked from Ah Sook to Mrs. Wells, and then back again.

  ‘How?’ she said. ‘Not from Kaniere!’

  Ah Sook had acquired a film of perspiration on his upper lip. He said nothing, however, and merely bowed; perhaps they would think that he could not understand them. He turned back to Anna, feeling that if he kept eye contact with Lydia Greenway for even a moment longer, she would recall where they had met before. He could still feel her in the periphery of his eye, watching him.

  Anna was frowning too. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking of a different man,’ she said to Mrs. Wells. ‘It’s often hard to tell Chinamen apart.’

  ‘Yes—perhaps,’ said Mrs. Wells. But she was still staring at Ah Sook. Whether she had placed him already or not, he could not tell. He cast about for something to say to Anna, but his mind was blank.

  ‘What do you want, Ah Sook?’ said Anna. She did not speak unkindly, but with longing; there was a pleading, almost fearful look in her eye.

  ‘What did you call him?’ said the older woman, quickly.

  ‘Ah Sook,’ Anna said. ‘Mister Sook, I suppose. He’s the dealer at Kaniere.’

  ‘Ah!’ Her gaze sharpened immediately. ‘Opium!’

  So she had placed him. She had remembered who he was.

  At once, Ah Sook changed his tack. He turned to Anna and announced, ‘I buy you. Top price.’

  The widow laughed.

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said. She had flushed very red. ‘No. You can’t do that. I suppose nobody told you. I’m done with whoring now. I’m not a whore any longer. No selling. Not for sale.’

  ‘What you now?’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Miss Wetherell is my assistant,’ said Mrs. Wells—but Ah Sook did not know the word. ‘She lives here now.’

  ‘I live here now,’ Anna echoed. ‘I don’t take opium any more. Do you understand? No more smoke. I—I’ve given it up.’

  Ah Sook was bewildered.

  ‘Well, goodbye,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you for calling.’

  Suddenly Mrs. Wells’s wrist shot out. She grabbed Ah Sook’s forearm in her milky hand, and squeezed it tight. ‘You must come to the séance this evening,’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t have a ticket,’ Anna said.

  ‘An Oriental presence,’ said Mrs. Wells, ignoring her. ‘It will be just the thing! What did you call him again?’

  ‘Ah Sook,’ said Anna.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Just think of it: an Oriental presence, at this evening’s séance!’

  ‘Is a séance an Oriental practice?’ Anna said, doubtfully.

  Ah Sook did not know the word—but he knew Oriental, and guessed that he was the subject of their discussion, and the cause, presumably, of Lydia’s sudden look of greed. It was astonishing to him that she could have changed so little over the course of a decade, when Anna, over the course of a month, had altered so very much. Looking down at her hand, wrapped tight around his forearm, he was surprised to see a band of gold upon her finger.

  ‘Mrs. Carver,’ he said, and pointed to the ring.

  The woman smiled—more broadly this time. ‘I fancy he has a touch of the prophet in him,’ she said to Anna. ‘How is that for a notion?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs. Carver?’ Anna said to Ah Sook. She was frowning.

  ‘Wife of Carver,’ said Ah Sook, unhelpfully.

  ‘He thinks you’re Carver’s wife,’ said Anna.

  ‘He’s only guessing,’ said Mrs. Wells. To Ah Sook she said, ‘Not Mrs. Carver. My husband is dead. I am a widow now.’

  ‘Not Mrs. Carver?’

  ‘Mrs. Wells.’

  Ah Sook’s eyes widened. ‘Mrs. Wells,’ he repeated.

  ‘It is very well his English is so li
mited,’ the widow said to Anna, conversationally. ‘That way he will not get distracted. His composure will not falter. Isn’t he handsome! He will do us very well, I think.’

  ‘He knows Carver,’ Anna said.

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ said Mrs. Wells, with a breezy tone. ‘Captain Carver has a great many Oriental connexions. I expect they’ve done business with each other here in Hokitika. Come into the parlour, Ah Sook.’ She gripped his arm tighter. ‘Come along. Just for a moment. Don’t be a baby; I’m not going to hurt you! Come inside.’

  ‘Francis Carver—in Guangdong?’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘In Canton; yes, it’s very likely,’ said Mrs. Wells, mistaking Ah Sook’s question for a statement. ‘Captain Carver was based in Canton. He was based there for many years. Come along into the parlour.’

  She shepherded Ah Sook into the parlour, pointing to the far corner of the room. ‘You will sit upon a cushion—there,’ she said. ‘You will observe the faces around you, and contribute a cool air of judgment to our mystical séance. We shall call you the Eastern Oracle—or the Living Statue of the Orient—or the Dynastic Spirit—or some such thing. Which do you prefer, Anna? The Statue—or the Oracle?’

  Anna did not have a preference. It was clear to her that Lydia Wells and Ah Sook recognised each other, and that their shared history had something to do with Francis Carver, and that the widow did not wish to speak of it aloud. She knew better than to press the point, however, and asked, ‘What will be his purpose?’

  ‘Merely to observe us!’

  ‘Yes, but to what end?’

  The widow waved her hand. ‘Didn’t you see the spectacle at the Prince of Wales? Nothing sells tickets like an Oriental touch.’

  ‘He’s not unknown in Hokitika, you know,’ Anna said. ‘He’ll be recognised.’

  ‘As will you!’ Mrs. Wells pointed out. ‘That won’t matter a jot.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Anna Wetherell,’ said Mrs. Wells, with pretended annoyance. ‘Do you remember last Thursday, when I proposed hanging the sketch of the Bagatto at the top of the stairs, and you protested, claiming that the print would be shadowed by the attic landing, and then I hung it anyway, and the light was quite as perfect as I promised it would be?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said.

  ‘Well—there,’ said Mrs. Wells, and laughed.

  Ah Sook had not understood a word of this. He turned to Anna and frowned very slightly, to show her that she needed to explain.

  ‘A séance,’ Anna said, uselessly.

  Ah Sook shook his head. He did not know the word.

  ‘Let’s try it,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Come—come to the corner—Anna, get the man a cushion to sit upon. Or would a stool be more ascetic? No, a cushion: then he can fold his legs as the Eastern men do. Yes, come here—further—further. There.’

  She pushed Ah Sook down upon the cushion, and took several quick steps backwards, to appraise him from the other side of the room. She nodded with delight.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you see, Anna? Do you not think it fine? How solemn he is! I wonder if we might ask him to smoke a pipe of some kind—for the curling smoke around his head would be rather nice indeed. But smoke indoors makes me ill.’

  ‘He has not yet given his consent,’ Anna observed.

  Mrs. Wells looked faintly irritated; she did not protest this observation, however, but advanced upon Ah Sook, smiled, and peered down at him, her hands on her hips. ‘Do you know Emery Staines?’ she said, enunciating clearly. ‘Emery Staines? Do you know him?’

  Ah Sook nodded. He knew Emery Staines.

  ‘Well,’ the woman said, ‘we are going to bring him here. Tonight. And speak with him. Emery Staines—here.’ She pointed at the floorboards with a lemon-scented hand.

  A ray of understanding passed over Ah Sook’s face. Excellent: the prospector must have been found at last—and found alive! This was good news.

  ‘Very good,’ he said.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Here, at the Wayfarer’s Fortune. In this room. The party will begin at seven; the séance, at ten.’

  ‘Tonight,’ said Ah Sook, staring at her.

  ‘Precisely. You will be here. You will come. You will sit, as you are sitting now. Yes? Oh, Anna—does he understand? I can hardly tell; his face is such a perfect statue. You see what gave me the idea—the Living Statue!’

  Slowly, Anna explained to Ah Sook that Lydia was requesting his presence, that evening, at a meeting with Emery Staines. She used the word séance several times; Ah Sook, who had no reason to have ever learned that word, deduced by context that it was a gathering or meeting of some scripted kind, which Emery Staines had been invited to attend. He nodded to show that he understood. Anna then explained that Ah Sook was invited to return, that evening, and take his place upon the cushion in the corner, exactly as he was sitting now. Other men had also been invited. They would sit in a circle, and Emery Staines would stand in the centre of the room.

  ‘Does he understand it?’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Does he understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook, and then, to show her: ‘A séance with Emery Staines, tonight.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mrs. Wells, smiling down at him in the same way that one might smile at a precocious child after the recitation of a sonnet—which is to say, with an admiration that was a little distrustful, and somewhat contrived.

  ‘A whore in mourning and an Eastern mystic,’ she went on. ‘It is quite perfect; I am chilled simply thinking of it! Of course a séance is not an Oriental tradition’—in response to Anna’s earlier question—‘but have I not said every day this fortnight that in this business, the ambience is half the battle? Ah Sook will do us very well.’

  Anna looked away, and said, lightly, ‘Of course he must be recompensed.’

  The widow turned upon Anna with a very chilly look, but Anna was not looking at her, and could not receive it; in the next moment, her expression cleared again. Carelessly she said, ‘Of course! But you ought to ask him how much he thinks he deserves for such easy work. Ask him, Anna; seeing as you are his special friend.’

  Anna did so, explaining to Ah Sook that the widow was willing to pay him a fee for his contribution to the séance that evening. Ah Sook, who had not yet understood that Emery Staines was going to be present in spirit only, thought this a wonderful proposition. He was rightly very suspicious of the offer, and made his suspicion known. A rather absurd negotiation followed, and at length Ah Sook agreed, more for her sake than for his own, to receive a fee of one shilling.

  Ah Sook was no fool. He knew very well that he had not really comprehended what was to happen that evening. It was very strange to him that Anna had placed such a high emphasis upon the fact that Emery Staines would stand in the very centre of the room, with all the others ranged around him, and it was even stranger still that the widow was willing to pay him a wage for doing nothing at all. He concluded that he was to play a part in a scripted drama of some kind (in which guess, of course, he hit very close upon the mark) and reasoned that whatever humiliation he might suffer as a consequence, it was surely worth it, to get a chance to speak to Mr. Staines. He accepted the widow’s invitation, and her promise of payment, in the certainty that his uncertainties would resolve themselves in time.

  With this, their negotiations were concluded. Ah Sook looked at Anna. They held one another’s gaze a moment, Ah Sook steadily, and Anna—it seemed—with a cool detachment that the hatter did not recognise at all. But was that even detachment? Or was he simply unused to the clarity of her expression, now that her features were not overlaid by opium’s thick veil? She was so changed. If he had not known her better he might have almost called her expression haughty—as though she fancied herself a cut above Chinese society, now that she was no longer a whore.

  Ah Sook decided to take her cool expression as a cue to leave, and rose from his cushion. He had calculated that he had time enough to walk to Kaniere and
back again before the sun went down, and he wished to inform his compatriot Quee Long that Emery Staines would be present, that very evening, at the Wayfarer’s Fortune on Revell-street. He knew that Ah Quee had long desired an audience with Staines, wishing to interrogate the young prospector upon the matter of the Aurora gold; he would be very pleased to discover that Staines was alive.

  Ah Sook bowed to the widow, and then to Anna. Anna returned his bow with a shallow curtsey, the kind that bespoke neither longing nor regret, and then turned away at once, to straighten the lace on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘You’ll be back tonight—for the séance. Tonight,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Say six o’clock.’

  ‘Six o’clock,’ Ah Sook echoed, and pointed at the cushion he had just vacated, to show that he understood. He glanced one last time at Anna, and then Lydia Wells gripped his arm and ushered him into the foyer. She reached around him and opened the door, flooding the space with the sudden light of the day.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Ah Sook, and stepped over the lintel.

  But the widow did not close the door behind him, as he had expected; instead she reached for her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and followed Ah Sook out on to the veranda. To Anna she said, ‘I am going out for a spell; I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

  Anna, from the parlour, looked up in astonishment. Then her expression closed. She nodded woodenly, crossed the parlour, and came to the door to latch it in Mrs. Wells’s wake.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Wells,’ she said, her hand on the frame. ‘Good afternoon, Ah Sook.’

  They descended the steps to the street, where they parted ways: Ah Sook to the south, towards the river, and Lydia Wells to the north. After several steps Mrs. Wells cast a look over her shoulder, as if to appraise the building from the street, and Anna hurriedly moved to close the door.

  She kept her hand upon the knob, however, and did not turn it; after a moment she opened it again, very quietly and carefully, and put her eye to the crack. Lydia was walking swiftly now; she had not turned, as Anna had expected she might, to pursue Ah Sook, and demand a private audience with him. Anna pulled the door open a little wider. Would she double back? Surely that was why she had left so abruptly—to talk in private with the man she so very plainly recognised! But presently Ah Sook rounded the corner on Gibson Quay and disappeared, and Lydia Wells, at almost the same moment, stepped over the ditch at the side of the road, and mounted the steps of—Anna squinted—which establishment? A two-storeyed building—beside Tiegreen’s Hardware and Supply. One of the saloons, perhaps? Evidently there was someone on the porch, for Lydia Wells lingered for a moment, exchanging words, before she opened the door of the establishment, and disappeared inside—and as the door swung to, Anna caught a flash of pale blue paint, and recognised the building. So Lydia Wells had gone to pay a social call. But upon whom? Anna shook her head in wonderment. Well, she thought, whoever it was, he was not a common digger by any measure. He must be a man of some consequence, for he was lodging at the Palace Hotel.