The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  ‘I’m Walter Moody,’ Moody said, placing his hand over his heart. ‘Do you—ah—do you remember me?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Ah Sook knuckled his eyes with his fist.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Moody. ‘This is my claim, you see: from this creek here to those yellow pegs on the southern side.’

  ‘Very sorry,’ Ah Sook said. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘No: of course,’ Moody said. ‘In any case, Ah Sook, I’m pleased to see you. Your absence from Kaniere has been noted by a great many people. Myself included. I am very pleased to see you—very pleased, not angry at all. We feared that something had happened to you.’

  ‘No trouble,’ the hatter said. ‘Tent only. No trouble.’ He disappeared from sight.

  ‘I can see you’re not causing trouble,’ Moody said. ‘It’s all right, Mr. Sook: I’m not worried about you making camp! I’m not worried about that at all.’

  Ah Sook clambered out of the tent, pulling his tunic down as he did so. ‘I will go,’ he said. ‘Five minutes.’ He held up five fingers.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Moody said. ‘You can sleep here if you like; it’s of no consequence to me.’

  ‘Last night only,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Yes; but if you want to tent here tonight also, I don’t mind a bit,’ said Moody. His manner was alternating between bluff cheer and clumsy condescension, as it might if he were speaking to someone else’s child.

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Ah Sook. He began to strike his tent. Hauling the canvas fly, still wet with dew, from the rope over which it had been draped, he revealed the flattened square of earth where he had spent the night: the woollen blanket, twisted, and pressed flat with the tangled imprint of his body; a pot, filled with sand; his leather purse; a panning dish; a string bag containing tea and flour and several wrinkled potatoes; a standard-issue swag. Moody, casting his eye over this meagre inventory, was oddly touched.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘but where have you been, Mr. Sook, this month past? It’s been a full month since the séance—and no one’s heard a word from you!’

  ‘Digging,’ said Ah Sook, flattening the canvas fly across his chest.

  ‘You vanished so soon after the séance,’ Moody continued, ‘we rather thought you’d gone the same way as poor old Mr. Staines! No one could make heads or tails of it, you disappearing like that.’

  Ah Sook had been folding the fly into quarters; now he paused. ‘Mr. Staines come back?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Moody said. ‘He’s still missing.’

  ‘And Francis Carver?’

  ‘Carver’s still in Hokitika.’

  Ah Sook nodded. ‘At the Palace Hotel.’

  ‘Well, in actual fact, no,’ said Moody, pleased to be given an opportunity to conspire. ‘He’s begun sleeping at the Crown Hotel. In secret. Nobody knows he’s staying there: he’s kept up the pretence that he’s staying at the Palace, and he still pays rent to the Palace proprietor—and keeps his rooms, just as before. But he sleeps every night at the Crown. He arrives well after nightfall, and leaves very early. I only know because I rent the room above.’

  Ah Sook had fixed him with a penetrating look. ‘Where?’

  ‘Carver’s room? Or mine?’

  ‘Carver.’

  ‘He sleeps in the room next to the kitchen, on the ground floor,’ said Moody. ‘It faces east. Very near the smoking room—where you and I first met.’

  ‘A humble room,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Very humble,’ Moody agreed, ‘but he’s got a vantage down the length of the Kaniere-road. He’s keeping watch, you see. He’s watching out for you.’

  Walter Moody knew virtually nothing about Ah Sook’s history with Francis Carver, for Ah Sook had not had the opportunity, at the Crown Hotel, to narrate the tale in any detail, and had not been seen since, save for his appearance at the Wayfarer’s Fortune one month ago. Moody wished very much to know the full particulars, but despite his best efforts of surveillance and inquiry—he had become an adept at turning idle conversation, discreetly, to provocative themes—his understanding had not developed beyond what he had learned in the smoking room of the Crown, which was that the history concerned opium, murder, and a declaration of revenge. Ah Quee was the only man to whom Ah Sook had narrated the tale in full, and he did not, alas, possess language enough to share it with any English-speaking man.

  ‘Every night, at the Crown Hotel?’ said Ah Sook. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes, he’ll be there tonight,’ said Moody. ‘Though not until well after dark, as I’ve told you.’

  ‘Not the Palace.’

  ‘No, not the Palace,’ said Moody. ‘He changed hotels.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook gravely. ‘I understand.’ He went to loose the knot of his guy-rope from the fork of a tree.

  ‘Who was he?’ said Moody. ‘The murdered man.’

  ‘My father,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Your father,’ said Moody. After a moment, he said, ‘How was he killed? I mean—forgive me, but—what happened?’

  ‘A long time ago,’ said Ah Sook. ‘Before the war.’

  ‘The opium wars,’ said Moody, prompting him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook, but he did not go on. He began to reel in the guy-rope, using his forearm as a spool.

  ‘What happened?’ said Moody.

  ‘Profit,’ said Ah Sook, giving his explanation flatly.

  ‘Profit of what kind?’

  Clearly Ah Sook thought this was a very stupid question; perceiving this, Moody rushed on to ask another. ‘I mean—was your father—was he in the opium business, as you are?’

  Ah Sook said nothing. He withdrew his forearm from the loop of rope, twisted it into a figure-eight, and secured it onto his swag. Once it was affixed, he sat back on his haunches, regarded Moody coolly for a moment, and then leaned over and spat, very deliberately, into the dirt.

  Moody drew back. ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured. ‘I ought not to pry.’

  Walter Moody had told nobody at all that Crosbie Wells was the bastard brother of the politician Lauderback. He had decided, in the hours following this discovery, that the intelligence was not his to share. His reasons for this concealment were deeply felt, but vaguely articulated. A man should not be made to answer for his family. It was wrong to expose a man’s private correspondence without his consent. He did not want to perform this exposure himself. But these reasons, even when taken together, did not quite comprise the whole truth, which was that Moody had compared himself to both men many times over the past month, and felt a profound kinship with each of them, though in very different ways: with the bastard, for his desperation; with the politician, for his pride. This double comparison had become the habitual project of his meditations every day, as he stood in the chill water and ran clods of earth and metal through his hands.

  Ah Sook stuffed the last of his possessions into his swag, and then sat down upon it to lace his boots.

  Moody could not bear it any longer. He burst out, ‘You know you will be hanged. If you take Carver’s life, you will be hanged. They’ll take your life, Mr. Sook, if you take his, no matter what your provocation.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I understand.’

  ‘It will not be a fair trial—not for you.’

  ‘No,’ Ah Sook agreed. The prospect did not appear to distress him. He knelt by the fire, picked up a twig, and stirred the damp earth that he had placed over the embers the night before. Below the earth the coals were still warm, dark as matted blood.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said Moody, watching him. ‘Shoot him down?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘When?’ said Moody.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Ah Sook. ‘At the Crown Hotel.’ He appeared to be digging for something beneath the coals. Presently his stick struck something hard. Using the end as a lever, he flipped the object out onto the grass: it was a little tin tea caddy, black with soot. The box was evidently still hot: he wrapped his sleeve around his hand before h
e picked it up.

  ‘Show us your arms,’ said Moody.

  Ah Sook looked up.

  ‘Go on and show us your arms,’ said Moody, suddenly flushed. ‘There are pistols and there are pistols, Mr. Sook: you have to know your powder, as my own father used to say.’

  It was rare he quoted his father in company, Adrian Moody’s habitual phrases being, in general, unsuitable to civil conversation, and Walter Moody being, in general, disinclined to reference him.

  ‘I buy a pistol,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Good,’ said Moody. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘You haven’t bought it yet?’

  ‘Today,’ said Ah Sook. He opened the caddy, and poured a handful of golden flakes into his palm. Moody realised that he must have buried the box in the earth beneath his fire, in case he was robbed during the night.

  ‘What kind of pistol are you going to buy?’

  ‘From Tiegreen’s.’ With his free hand he reached for his purse.

  ‘What manufacturer, I meant. What kind.’

  ‘Tiegreen’s,’ said Ah Sook again. He opened the mouth of the purse one-handed, to transfer the gold into it.

  ‘That’s the name of the store,’ Moody said. ‘What kind of pistol are you going to buy? Are you a weapons man?’

  ‘To shoot Francis Carver,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘Tiegreen’s won’t do for you,’ Moody said, shaking his head. ‘You might go there to buy a fowling piece … or a rifle of some kind … but they won’t furnish you with a pistol. A military weapon is what you want. Not every ball of shot will kill a man, you see, and the last thing you want is to do the job by halves. Heavens, Mr. Sook! A pistol is not just a piece of hardware—just as a horse is not merely a … mode of transport,’ he said, rounding off this comparison rather lamely.

  Ah Sook did not reply. He had chosen Tiegreen’s Hardware and Supply for two reasons: firstly, because the store was located beside the Palace Hotel, and secondly, because the shopkeeper was sympathetic to Chinese men. The first consideration no longer mattered, of course, but the second consideration was an important one: Ah Sook had planned to ask Mr. Tiegreen to load the piece for him, in the store, so that the deed could be carried out the very same day. He had never fired a pistol. He knew the basic principles behind the design, however, and he guessed it was not a skill that required a great deal of practice.

  ‘Go to the outfitters on Camp-street,’ Moody said. ‘Right beside the Deutsches Gasthaus. The building that shows the peak of the roof behind the sham. The sign isn’t painted yet, but the proprietors are Brunton, Solomon & Barnes, and the door should be open. When you get there, ask for a Kerr Patent. Don’t let them sell you anything else: it’s a British military piece, very sound, and it will do the job. The cost for a Kerr Patent is five pounds even. Any more than five pounds, and they’re robbing you.’

  ‘Five pounds?’ Ah Sook looked down at the gold in his purse. He had had no idea that a pistol could be got for such a reasonable sum! He had been quoted a figure twice that much. ‘Kerr Patent,’ he repeated, to remember it. ‘Camp-street. Thank you, Mr. Moody.’

  ‘What are you going to do,’ Moody said, ‘when the deed is done? When Carver’s dead? Will you turn yourself in? Will you try to make a run for it?’ All of a sudden he felt absurdly excited.

  But Ah Sook only shook his head. He closed the mouth of his purse and then wrapped the purse tightly in a square of cloth. At last he rose, swinging his swag onto his back as he did so, and tucking the bundled object very carefully into his pocket.

  ‘This claim,’ he said, gesturing. ‘Pay dirt only. Very small gold.’

  Moody waved his hand. ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘No ’bounders here,’ said Ah Sook.

  ‘No homeward-bounders,’ said Moody, nodding. ‘You needn’t spell it out, Mr. Sook: I know the truth of it.’

  Ah Sook peered at him. ‘Go north,’ he said. ‘Black sands. Very lucky in the north. No nuggets here. Too close to town.’

  ‘Charleston,’ said Moody. ‘Yes. There’s fortunes to be made, in Charleston.’

  Ah Sook nodded. ‘Black sands,’ he said. He stepped forward, and Moody saw that he was holding the soot-blackened tea caddy in both hands. He proffered it, and Moody, surprised, extended his own hands to receive it. Ah Sook did not release the gift at once: he bowed low over it, and Moody, copying him, bowed also.

  ‘Juk neih houwahn,’ said Ah Sook, but he provided no translation, and Moody did not ask for one. He straightened, tin box in hand, and watched the hatter walk away.

  SUN IN PISCES

  In which Anna Wetherell is twice surprised; Cowell Devlin grows suspicious; and the deed of gift acquires a new significance.

  What was glimpsed in Aquarius—what was envisioned, believed in, prophesied, predicted, doubted, and forewarned—is made, in Pisces, manifest. Those solitary visions that, but a month ago, belonged only to the dreamer, will now acquire the form and substance of the real. We were of our own making, and we shall be our own end.

  And after Pisces? Out of the womb, the bloody birth. We do not follow: we cannot cross from last to first. Aries will not admit a collective point of view, and Taurus will not relinquish the subjective. Gemini’s code is an exclusive one. Cancer seeks a source, Leo, a purpose, and Virgo, a design; but these are projects undertaken singly. Only in the zodiac’s second act will we begin to show ourselves: in Libra, as a notion, in Scorpio, as a quality, and in Sagittarius, as a voice. In Capricorn we will gain memory, and in Aquarius, vision; it is only in Pisces, the last and oldest of the zodiacal signs, that we acquire a kind of selfhood, something whole. But the doubled fish of Pisces, that mirrored womb of self and self-awareness, is an ourobouros of mind—both the will of fate, and the fated will—and the house of self-undoing is a prison built by prisoners, airless, doorless, and mortared from within.

  These alterations come upon us irrevocably, as the hands of the clock-face come upon the hour.

  Lydia Wells had not hosted a séance a second time. She was well apprised of the charlatan’s motto that one must never repeat the very same trick to the very same crowd—but when she was accused, because of this, of being a charlatan herself, she only laughed. She had admitted, in an open letter in the West Coast Times, that her attempt to communicate with the shade of Mr. Staines had been unsuccessful. This failure, as she reported, was unprecedented in her professional experience, an anomaly that suggested to her that the afterlife had been unable, rather than unwilling, to produce him. From this, she wrote, one could only conclude that Mr. Staines was not dead after all, and she signed off expressing her confident anticipation of the young man’s eventual return.

  This statement confounded the men of the Crown considerably; it had the effect, however (common to all of the widow’s strategies), of enhancing the value of her enterprise, and following its publication the Wayfarer’s Fortune began to do a very good trade. The establishment was open every evening between the hours of seven and ten, offering cut-price brandy and conversation of the speculative sort. Fortune telling happened in the afternoons, by private appointment only, and Anna Wetherell, in continuance with former policy, was not seen.

  Anna only left the Wayfarer’s Fortune to take her daily exercise, in which she was accompanied, invariably, by Mrs. Wells, who was not insensible of the myriad benefits of daily perambulation, and who often said that there was nothing she liked better than a stroll. Together, arm in arm, the two women walked the length of Revell-street every morning, setting out to the north, and returning down the opposite side. They examined the contents of each window box as they passed, purchased milk and sugar, when milk and sugar could be got, and greeted the Hokitika regulars very blandly and impassively indeed.

  That morning they had taken their daily walk earlier than usual, for Lydia Wells had an appointment at the Hokitika Courthouse at nine. She had been summoned to appear before the Magistrate about a legal matter pertaining to the estate of
her late husband, Crosbie Wells, and the wording of the summons had intimated that the news was likely good: at ten minutes before nine, the front door of the Wayfarer’s Fortune opened, and Lydia Wells, her copper hair shining splendidly against a gown of midnight blue, stepped out into the sunshine.

  Cowell Devlin watched Mrs. Wells exit the hotel and descend the steps to the street, drawing her shawl tightly around her shoulders, and smiling at the men who paused in their daily business to stare at her. He waited until she had disappeared into the throng of the crowd, and then waited five minutes more, to be safe. Then he crossed the street to the Wayfarer’s Fortune, mounted the steps to the veranda, and, after glancing back at the blank façade of the Courthouse, knocked upon the door. He was holding his battered Bible against his chest.

  The door opened almost at once.

  ‘Miss Wetherell,’ Devlin said, removing his hat with his free hand. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cowell Devlin; I am the resident chaplain of the Hokitika Gaol. I have in my possession a document that I expect will be of great interest to you, and I hope to gain a private audience with you, in order to discuss it.’

  ‘I remember you,’ said Anna. ‘You were there when I woke up in gaol after my blackout.’

  ‘Yes,’ Devlin said.

  ‘You prayed for me.’

  ‘And I have prayed for you many times since.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Fervently,’ the chaplain replied.

  ‘What did you say you wanted?’

  Devlin repeated his intentions.

  ‘What do you mean, a document?’

  ‘I would prefer not to produce it here. May I come in?’

  She hesitated. ‘Mrs. Wells is out.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Devlin said. ‘In fact I saw her entering the Courthouse just now, and hastened here with the precise hope that I might speak with you alone. I confess I have been waiting for just such an opportunity for some time. May I come in?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to receive guests when she’s not here.’