The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  “No, he said the mission is one of the longest continuously in operation. The man could be new there.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “What better way to the Stevensons’ hearts than through their blasted tobacco?”

  • • •

  WE DISMOUNTED AT VAILIMA and hurried to the front verandah, where a narrow wagon had been pulled by a span of horses. In addition to a traveler’s trunk, the wagon was piled high with crates that Stevenson’s servants were unloading. The top of one of the crates had come loose and opened. There were the holy jars of tobacco. Underneath sat rifles and pistols. John quickly removed the open crate from my sight and said something to me in Chinese, which sounded like a stern warning—though I suppose even a comment on the weather would sound like a warning from John.

  For the moment, my thoughts lingered on the contents of the shipment. I recalled the outlandish accusation that Banner had made against Stevenson. That he was no mere writer—that he was here to start a war. Davenport had believed Hines had been thinking something similar when his eyes landed on Treasure Island in the frigate’s library. My thoughts on the matter were fleeting, for in the next moment we heard the voice of the new arrival, the missionary.

  “It’s Belial,” Davenport whispered to me, then steeled himself as he turned around.

  There he was, the bookaneer who kept himself on everyone’s tongue while keeping himself out of view. Davenport’s rival removed a white pith helmet. He did not have a hair out of place on his large head. Belial’s brow, nose, and chin sat at handsome angles, his eyes bright. He was tall enough for most people to have to look up to him, and his mouth was big and expressive. Everything jutted out prominently. His brow, his chin, his chest. His presence instantly commanded interest and deference. There was something about him that made it hard to believe he was the same individual described to me for years by Davenport and others as so ruthless and remorseless.

  “Apologies, Tusitala, that I was away on business longer than I expected,” the deliverer of the goods was saying in his perfect enunciation when we joined them.

  “We can just thank the heavens that nobody had to face Barkis’s wrath over an empty tobacco jar,” Stevenson said. “Well, you understand how women are. By Jove, no, how can you? Show me the man who does! Thomas, may I present to you an Englishman and an American, recent arrivals to Upolu—Mr. Fergins and Mr. Porter—Mr. Porter, Father Thomas, a missionary we have all come to esteem and even like in his short time serving the people of our island.”

  “Talofa,” Belial greeted us with a nod as we approached. “Tusitala, you know I always get on first rate with the natives on this beautiful island, but I do savor the opportunity to see white faces after these long months.”

  “Talofa,” Davenport said.

  “I trust you gentlemen have settled into our little metropolis,” Belial said as he shook our hands. “Have you grown accustomed to picking the weevils off your bread yet?”

  “Bread? Is that what it is?” Davenport joked.

  The little show of friendliness was interrupted when Mount Vaea rumbled with the vibration of an earthquake. Stevenson enjoyed the concern in our faces. “Life is not so much what happens as what one waits for,” he mused.

  “I see Mrs. Stevenson has expanded her impressive garden with some tall corn since I last visited,” Belial noted.

  “I will take you on a tour of the latest crops, Mr. Thomas,” Davenport said. “I gave Mrs. Stevenson a hand with some new plantings the other day.”

  “Thank you, Porter,” Stevenson replied. “I’ll bring more of the tobacco inside.”

  Davenport began to walk and Belial followed with a light step. I remained behind them by a few paces.

  “Do you wish to yield the mission to me now or later?” Belial asked when we were out of Stevenson’s hearing. “I’m amenable to either.”

  Davenport looked over at the native servant walking at Belial’s elbow.

  “You can talk openly in front of him. He knows only four words of English,” Belial said. “It’s a shame, really; the boy has a devilish sense of humor in his own tongue and would appreciate the strangeness of our situation. Is there anything in that little brown brain of yours, Samu? Go ahead,” he suggested to Davenport as the native turned and nodded reverentially at his master, “test the brute for yourself if you don’t believe me. Say whatever you like to him.”

  Davenport waved away the offer.

  “You have been learning their language, I suspect.”

  “Trying to.”

  Belial nodded. “Its grammar is labyrinthine, but at least the alphabet resembles ours. Never was your strong suit—languages, I mean. How many were you speaking when we met in Zurich? Was it still only eight?”

  “Understanding people’s minds is just as important as their words, Belial.”

  Belial appeared amused. He threw a glance in my general direction.

  “That’s—” Davenport began.

  “Fergins, your shadow, yes,” Belial said, pleasing me very much, even though the bookaneers all kept informed of each other’s associates and it reflected no actual personal interest in me. He stopped to examine me more closely. “Fergins, the bookseller and bibliomaniac. Is it true what they say about you?”

  “What do they say?” I asked eagerly.

  “That you know all there is to know about our profession.”

  I shrugged, since Davenport would not like me trying to impress him. “As much as anyone else, perhaps.”

  “Come, Mr. Fergins. Humility is too often self-deception disguised. Who was it who first coined the term ‘bookaneer’?”

  Davenport nodded permission to answer.

  “There are several versions, actually, but the one I find most convincing involves a notoriously parsimonious publisher active in the 1820s and ’30s. After he agreed to terms with a member of the earliest crop of agents to uncover closely guarded information about a serial novel starting in a rival magazine, he found out that the same fellow, two months earlier, had swiped a valuable manuscript out from under his own nose. ‘Never again will I give a penny to these nasty bookaneers!’ he was said to have groused. Whatever the veracity of this, the name spread with the anecdote.”

  “You forgot the best part, which is that the same publisher found need to hire a bookaneer again only a few months later.” He turned back to my companion. “What next? I know you are not armed and so do not plan to assault me.”

  “Are you certain?” Davenport asked.

  “The intelligence I’ve gathered indicates that you are—stupidly, if you permit my opinion—posing as a gentleman of letters writing about travel. Were the Subject to notice you with a dagger or pistol, or anything more than a bush knife, even by happenstance, you would risk exciting his curiosity and foreclose your access. It is ever more pressing to protect your identity for a mission than to protect your body.”

  Davenport tried to remain stone-faced, but could not hold back his irritation at the veracity of Belial’s description.

  “You know,” Belial continued, “I am always unarmed. You remember my philosophy on that topic, I suspect, from the old days.”

  “The armed man is always more feared, and therefore less dangerous than the unarmed man.”

  “You have heard my philosophy, as well, Mr. Fergins.” Belial nodded at my recital of his rule. “I have been in the South Seas for three months already, Davenport. I miss Christina dearly, of course, but it is worth it for the greater good of the mission. However comfortable you think you and Sancho Panza back there have become here, I am more so. You know, it is not a bad thing, playing the role of a missionary. Their missions are not so different from our missions, for what do we do as bookaneers but go among the heathen world and spread our higher purpose? I have become a veritable bishop in Upolu and at Vailima. I have fully prepared my groundwork for
this triumph. For every ten facts you’ve learned, I have a hundred. If you even attempt a single move against me, your purpose will be instantly revealed.”

  “You may have been here first, but I can expose you just as quickly.”

  Belial gave an order to his man, who passed him a cutlass. “Thank you, Samu,” Belial said in Samoan, then turned back to Davenport. He ran his finger along the sharp edge of the weapon. “I am never armed, as your Mr. Fergins correctly remembered. But the barbarians are—they must be, if not to protect themselves from the elements then from each other, or the runaway blacks in the forest.”

  “Runaways?” I asked.

  “The cannibals,” Belial clarified. “The Germans import them from the Solomon Islands to work their plantations, which cover thousands of acres. It is because of the profits from those lands that the Germans have so much more money and influence than the British or Americans. But sometimes the cannibals escape, so one must be leery. Look at me, schooling the two of you to my own detriment.”

  I could see Davenport ready to lunge for the deadly weapon but the other man put it down in the low neck of a tree.

  “Please,” Belial said, taking a step back.

  Davenport gripped the handle of the blade lightly, anticipating a trick, then released it.

  Belial watched him, ending his demonstration with a smug speech. “Exactly right. If either of us were to attack the other, we would be exposed. You would be exposed and the Subject will know you are not who you say you are. And I can see you have acclimated yourself just enough that I cannot easily rid myself of you without also provoking unhealthy curiosity in the Subject. So we have a sort of balance between us, you and I, am I understood? This may be the last mission remaining for our kind, Davenport. If you are anything like me, nothing would make you give it up.” He extended his hand toward the other bookaneer. “Let us have honor enough to fulfill our mission. Let us call this what we know it must be: a truce. Your shadow shall be our witness.”

  “Had you been here ten years, it would make no difference to me. I will have what I came for.”

  “Well! I fancy you must be pleased I am here, then.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It gives you the chance you have been waiting for. To try to prove you can surpass me as a bookaneer and justify sweet little Kitty’s faith in you. Doesn’t that satisfy you as much as any ugly amount of money?”

  “I surpassed you years ago,” Davenport said.

  “You’ll have to be able to control your emotions, all those feelings eating at your soul since she’s gone. Do you think you’re capable?”

  My pulse raced at the mention of Kitten, hoping Davenport would not lose his composure.

  “When I’m finished here, carrying Stevenson’s masterpiece in my hands, you’ll see what I am capable of.”

  “Tusitala,” Belial said, correcting Davenport. “Tusitala’s masterpiece. Take care you’re not so reckless around him or this will be too easy for me. Could you ever have dreamed it? Delicious prospect.” He passed the cutlass back to Samu. “If we are not going to kill each other today, let us return to work. I will give you one last piece of information about Tusitala, about why we must be here now.”

  “I know his health is grave.”

  Belial shook his head. “Oh, he is dying, yes—that is obvious, no matter what he says—but that is not what his time in Upolu is about. His deepest wish is that he were not a writer.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Belial ignored the question. “It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself. Tusitala’s soul decays and withers, and all his regrets come out that he lived a life of words rather than bravery. He will do what he can to rectify that. You have been warned.”

  He and his native companion walked at a crisp pace back toward his wagon. The very march of his boots cried out that he had so much to do to outwit us that he could not spare another second.

  • • •

  DAVENPORT KEPT OUR PRESENCE around Vailima inconspicuous, coming and going with little notice or fanfare, but Belial’s strategy was dramatically different. He’d interjected himself deeply into life at the estate. He had made himself noticeable and indispensable, an unorthodox choice for a man who was there to spy and plot. When “Pope Thomas,” as the servants called him, was on the grounds, the entire household knew. The conch shell would be blown to announce him, as though something was happening, like a meal or an earthquake.

  Belial ministered regularly to four or five of the Stevensons’ domestics. The previous missionary had been there for twenty years before retiring to England, Belial worming himself into the position at just the right time to pursue Stevenson’s impending masterpiece. Among their beads and fish bones, the Samoans who’d converted to Catholicism also wore crucifixes around their necks to distinguish themselves from the Protestant converts, as well as from the savages who had not been taken by one of the white religions and still worshipped their own deities. Belial led group prayers in the mornings, clutching his big, polished cane to his heart; at other times he heard their private confessions, a clever way of learning about life at Vailima without ever asking. Vao was the only servant who seemed opposed to his popularity. I noticed when Belial came from one direction, the beautiful girl left the other way, then the diminutive attendant of hers, who would frown and puff to keep up with her quick steps, fire and smoke in his eyes for anyone who made the mistake of looking at her.

  Belial also had an effect on the other Stevensons. Though not a Catholic, Stevenson’s mother, Margaret, would sit with a look of utter joy across her face as she listened to his Bible discussions. Lloyd would consult with “Pope Thomas” about how to best manage a recalcitrant outside boy. Belle would blush and stammer and twirl her hair while telling him about her terrible ex-husband. He did not exactly flatter her, but his whole manner was flattering to women. She had so intently studied Davenport since our arrival, trying to decide whether she fancied him, but now forgot he was there. The household had changed with the return of the supposed missionary.

  I was listening to Belial lead a prayer in the next room on one occasion when I noticed Charlie staring out a window over the grounds, his face tight and fearful.

  “Charlie, what is the matter?” I asked.

  “There,” he said in a gasp.

  It appeared the stout islander with the kind eyes was looking into the forest bordering Vailima. I could see nothing but the trees blowing in the wind.

  “They’re out there!” Charlie exclaimed, blinking rapidly. “In the bushes.”

  “Who?”

  “My family.”

  Still I saw nothing and nobody. Charlie seemed more frightened every second. He clutched at the wooden crucifix hanging in the middle of his chest.

  “Do you need help, Charlie? Charlie, can you hear me?”

  “They must not find me. Tusitala is my family now; he is my chief, no other. They do not like the new God. If they find me here, Tusitala will—” Charlie stopped his sentence and took long strides out of the room before I could find out more.

  Later, I ran across Stevenson in the fields. He was chopping away at the liana that grew across and over other vegetation and strangled the pathways. I suppose his body was set up rather badly. His chest, which was exposed in his loose garments, was flat as a board, but his limbs were so long they made it seem as though there would need to be a great effort to stay upright. I started to walk toward him to suggest he look in on Charlie, but something gave me pause. Watching the surprisingly powerful motion of the novelist’s arm bringing the blade down on the vines, I thought about the servant’s insinuation of Stevenson’s potential for anger if he found out Charlie’s family was looking for him.

  “Fergins?” he asked, watching me watch him.

  “Apologies, Tusitala, ju
st wondering if you need a hand.”

  He waved my offer away and used the interruption to flick the sweat from his hair. “Our strangling enemy, this endless liana. Do you know something? When I ply the cutlass and make the equivalent of sixpence, idiot conscience applauds me. But if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds by writing, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. No, to come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush. To change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, that makes for a quiet conscience.”

  The fact was, I had plenty to dwell on without becoming involved in Stevenson’s dealings with his domestics. For one thing, Davenport was slamming doors on me and generally giving me the cold shoulder. I’m afraid he believed I was just as overly charmed by the newcomer as most of the household. To be perfectly honest, I had heard about Belial for so many years, had followed his exploits so closely as one of the top-notch bookaneers, that I could not help finding his presence fascinating.

  Belial also seemed to read my interest as admiration. In a clear ploy to annoy his great rival, when we crossed paths at Vailima, he would wrap his meaty hand around my arm and regale me with stories of various predicaments encountered in spreading the word of God throughout the South Seas. Belial made an art of laughing when the person with him laughed, of smiling when the other person did, and then his laugh was the cause of the other’s laugh, his smile the kindling for the other’s.

  Davenport would not admit to it, but he was eager to know my opinion on Belial and on Belial’s power over even complete strangers. Even complete strangers, in the case of many of the Samoans, who did not speak English. I began to catalog what I saw as Belial’s strengths for him—his refined face, his elegant company, his confident posture—but Davenport could not listen. He grew especially warm with me one day when he found me using my umbrella as a walking stick.

  “What on earth is that?” Davenport asked with absolute horror.

  “What?”

  “You know damn well. That . . . umbrella.”