The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  From the moment Davenport first told me the details of his confrontation and the fascinating revelations about Kitten’s Shelley mission of 1882, my mind returned to Geneva and would not leave it. I was once again in that cottage in the shadow of Lord Byron’s, hearing the word from the weak lips of Kitten, the cry of “Belial.” When Davenport woke, I was there by his side and I unburdened myself. “I must tell you something, my friend,” I said, preparing myself for his fury that I had not told him nearly ten years ago.

  He slowly moved his face toward me and forced his eyes to stay open.

  I blurted out my confession: “It’s about Kitten. When we were in that cottage outside Geneva caring for her in her final weeks, she said his name. Belial’s. She didn’t say anything else about him. Forgive me. I should have mentioned it to you.”

  To my surprise, he did not have the reaction I’d expected. In fact, there was hardly a reaction at all. He rolled his head away from me. “I knew that she said his name. I already knew that. I heard her say Belial, too, once or twice. Much of what she said had no connection to anything in particular, you know, when she was in that state. I also did not think much about it when I heard it.”

  “Now, what do you think she meant?”

  “It is impossible to be sure, Fergins, but now that I know more I believe maybe she came to realize who it was that had led her to the Frankenstein novelette. To conclude who would have had the motivation to take her purpose away while at the very same time appearing to reward her. She understood.”

  He fell asleep and slept another hour or so. I could have been mistaken, but his thoughts stamped a slight grin on his face that remained as he slept. He was pleased, you see, despite all that had happened to Kitten, that she was so sharp-thinking even in the end to have identified the hidden culprit. He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.

  Stevenson and Belle looked in on him later in the morning. I stood up to greet our hosts and give the latest report on Davenport’s condition.

  “Poor fellow,” Belle said, shaking her head as she kneaded his cheeks. “He looks rather pallid, doesn’t he?”

  “You talk about me as though I were part of a waxworks display, Miss Strong.”

  She laughed from the bottom of her stomach. “You know you are a perfectly unusual man, Mr. Porter,” she said.

  Davenport was about to respond when Belial appeared in the doorway, which made Belle jump.

  “I beg your pardon for startling you, Miss Strong. Haven’t you told them your good tidings, Tusitala?” asked Belial, chuckling a little with anticipation.

  Stevenson gave a shrug. “I think Mr. Porter is rather occupied enough with his recovery to care one way or the other what I am doing, Father Thomas.”

  “Nonsense!” Belial said, beaming and holding his gaze on Davenport. It was astounding that even in the company of Stevenson—one of the most beloved writers of the modern age—Belial carried himself as though he were the most important man in the room. “It will cheer him up while he recovers. You see, Mr. Porter, our esteemed friend here is nearly finished with his novel.”

  “By the end of the week.” Stevenson gave up, confirming the news with childish giddiness and crossed fingers. He seemed weightless as he moved across the room to a window. “I’ve been averaging two pages a day. I calculate that makes me only half the man Sir Walter Scott was for pages by the day, yet I still will try my best.”

  “Do not overtask yourself,” Davenport urged. “For your health, Tusitala, you must also rest.”

  “There is no stopping now, Mr. Porter. I feel it all ready to froth whenever the spigot is turned. I shall rest when I am in the grave—or perhaps if we make it to Italy one day. I hope you’ll excuse me if my visits to your room are infrequent during your recuperation, Mr. Porter. Pray give it no thought. Your every need will be attended to in the meantime by my family and my family of natives, and I know Mr. Fergins will inform us if there is anything you need.”

  “Congratulations, Tusitala,” Davenport said, and I echoed the sentiment.

  Stevenson waved this away.

  “Shame that you won’t be up and around in time to celebrate, Porter,” Belial said to Davenport. “But I know you will have plenty of time with Tusitala once you are better. Plenty of time for leisure once the storms have passed and you’ve finally gotten back on your feet. It looks as though I will have to be moving on to business at some of the other islands.”

  “Of course you will,” Davenport said.

  “But I will wait until I have a chance to congratulate Tusitala on a completed book.”

  “Again, of course you will.”

  “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I am late for a prayer circle with some of the pious young brown men and women. We will pray for your health, too, Mr. Porter. I am going to give a sermon on a Biblical figure close to my heart.”

  “Who is that?” I quizzed him.

  “An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, ‘one who cannot be yoked,’ and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.”

  Stevenson watched Belial saunter out of the room, then broke into his own chuckle. “Missionaries. They are always so anxious that we believe in one truth or another. That is their entire calling, I suppose.” He noticed the anxiety I could not hide from my face and he pulled at one of the loose end of his straggly mustache. “Mr. Fergins, are you unwell?”

  “I only fear Mr. Porter may not be in a position to finish his own book that brought him here, before we will have to return. With such an injury to recover from.”

  Stevenson took my hand. “Remember, Mr. Fergins, that there is always a sunny side, if you look for it. And another thing, don’t worry. I have learned one thing in this life. It does not matter much what you accomplish. The only thing that really counts is that you tried.”

  “I tried,” Davenport said sadly. “Yes, Tusitala, I tried.”

  • • •

  AN INCAPACITATED DAVENPORT could never outmaneuver and outrun Belial. The fact is, by the time Stevenson and Belial left the room, I was already in a panic, and as my nerves grew Davenport’s steadied.

  “There is nowhere for Belial to go as long as these heavy rains continue,” Davenport tried to assure me after we listened to their footsteps descend the stairs. “There’s that on our side.”

  The incessant rain pelted the roof above us. I was pacing the floor. I spun around to look at him, my eyes wider after taking in his statement. I was at my wit’s end with his calmness. “Forgive me for violating the rules of bookaneers’ assistants and questioning you. The whole mission hangs in the balance, and you will hope for thunder and lightning? We will rely on the barometer as our weapon?”

  He blinked lazily and rolled his shoulders back with a sigh. “What plan would you prefer, Fergins?”

  I had to admit I could not think of anything better. Every time I alluded to the urgency of the situation his passivity increased. By the end of the day, his leg was causing him greater discomfort and we spoke less of the impending crisis of Stevenson completing the book and more about his pain. I confess a bit of irrational impatience toward Davenport over his injury, and annoyance at the fact that Vao had to be sent for repeatedly to change his bandages, breaking up our deliberations.

  All the hurricane shutters were in use in the house and Vailima was as safe as possible, but airless and dark. The atmosphere was suffocating and had a way of dividing the human mind against itself. By this point, it seemed to me there were only two possible paths to success that remained for Davenport’s mission: we either had to find a way to hin
der Stevenson’s writing, or a way to prevent Belial from being inside Vailima once the book was finished. Our lone advantage was that we were ensconced inside the house, however limited by Davenport’s condition, while the other bookaneer, though having essentially free access to the estate at all times, had to go back and forth to the Marist mission to keep up appearances.

  Consumed by unriddling our predicament, I could hardly sleep. If the bookaneer requires assistance on a mission, the assistant must never question anything that may occur. Davenport’s rule kept repeating itself in my ears, but using the freewheeling logic that comes to man only in the middle of the night in the middle of a roaring storm, I convinced myself I was not questioning what had occurred, but what would occur, and so shook off all restraints. I put on my dressing gown and stepped quietly and quickly through the hall back to Davenport’s door, ready to wake him up if I had to, in order to settle once and for all on a successful revision of our plans.

  I cannot say what it was that prevented my knocking. I rolled my fingers into a fist but something stayed my hand. Had I heard some slight sound, a tapered breath, an unfamiliar sigh, warning me away?

  I wrapped my arms around my chest as though to protect myself from a biting wind, and turned away. Before I was able to go very far, I heard the creak of Davenport’s door opening. I told myself not to look back but I could not stop. I watched as she stepped out and closed the door behind her. Vao was not holding any bandages or medical supplies. Her skin was shiny as always from the oil the natives covered themselves in; framed by my candlelight in that dark hall she actually glowed. Her big brown eyes met mine and she showed surprise, but no shame, no concern; no, there was a hint of elation and intrepidness. She remained still and I could not help doing the same—out of some instinct of politeness not to turn my back on a lady, or from a desire to communicate some thought, again at the time I could not have really said what it was. The entire experience was so novel, I could not guide my face and body to an appropriate response. “He rescued me from the Beast. Now I will rescue him,” I imagined her saying, but she did not say a word in any language, much less in English. I felt myself floating over the scene, looking down and wishing to take her by the arm to remove her before anyone else realized what had happened.

  My chin thrust downward, my lips retreated into my head in an embarrassed smile, and with that I turned on my heel and began the walk to my chamber. I did not hear her walking and wondered why. Then I saw. Tulagi had come. In a primitive woven robe of green and brown, he looked like a kind of magical elf, and his breathing was labored as though he had come from far away after a long search. His eyes then searched and found mine. His strong, soulful face crumbling, I was certain the dwarf was about to break into sobs. I opened my door and returned to bed, not wanting to see more.

  I kept my distance from Davenport the next day. Tulagi must have been doing the same to Vao, for I saw her several times around the house but did not see the diminutive shadow usually extending from her own. The worst of the rain had left us but the winds remained mighty and dangerous, and occasional lightning, thunder, and showers still fell. Except for some of the outside boys who had to make necessary excursions for the welfare of the livestock or horses, we were all confined to the house.

  I did happen to cross paths with Tulagi. It was that evening. He was smoking tobacco wrapped in a banana leaf, looking out at the black sky on one of the verandahs. All of it added up to a sight. For one thing, we were told to stay away from the verandahs for the duration of the storm, and for another the natives were not known for smoking cigarettes. He suddenly appeared to me to be a different sort of man; perhaps it was the lighting produced by the tropical sky, but he was neither native nor white in my eyes—not the garden elf, this time, but a sort of otherworldly and oracular entity. Suddenly, his mission to protect Vao seemed the most worthy in the world to me. It did not occur to me to wonder why he was not overseeing her now. I fell into a spirit of camaraderie.

  “Good evening, Tulagi,” I said, struggling against the rainy gusts.

  He whispered back, but I could not hear, could not make out whether it was English or Samoan.

  I moved closer and asked him to repeat himself, but then I realized he was not paying any mind to me; he was once again reciting the island’s history to himself.

  “Then the god of heaven sent down his daughter, Turi, in the form of a bird. She could find nothing but ocean so she returned to her father and told him so. He sent her back and she flew until she found some land in the water. So she returned to her father and told him so. He sent her back with a plant, which she put into the earth. The plant grew and grew, and when she had returned, it was swarming with maggots, and when she returned again, the maggots had become men and women.”

  If it had not seemed as though it would be a rude thing, I would have sat next to him and listened. He seemed to disappear into the peculiar myths, most of which had been banned by the missionaries in favor of Christian doctrine. As he spoke, he became as big as the god of heaven and as lofty as the bird flying from land to sea and back again. There was a tranquility coming from this man as he repeated the stories to himself, maybe because there was nothing of all the madness involved in the rest of the world of stories as I knew it: the search for customers, the impatience of readers, the brittle egos of authors, the publishers’ and the bookaneers’ jousts over profits. Here was a man and a story.

  When his eyes met mine he repeated: “The plant grew and grew, and when she had returned, it was swarming with maggots, and when she returned again, the maggots had become men and women.”

  How unreal the memory seems when I think about what was to unfold only hours later.

  Half the house was woken by the shouts of the outside boys; one of them, raising the hurricane shutters, had seen a small child running through the fields with a torch. Even with the downpour having passed, the property was littered with dangers, fallen trees and branches, sliding mud and overfilled streams, not to mention the violent winds. Two of the servants searched, thinking it might be the child of one of the runaway cannibals, and instead found a small broken body at the rocky bottom of a deep ditch.

  Davenport and I came out a few hours after the discovery, the book- aneer leaning his body on my arm. Vao had collapsed on the ground nearby, her face hidden in her hands and the rest of her lit dramatically by the torches held nearby as different members of the household took turns to comfort her. Davenport—perhaps to protect her, perhaps because he could not bear it—did not go near her. Stevenson watched over all of it, stricken.

  “The poor man must have fallen!” moaned Belle, who tried to comfort her wailing mother, and Stevenson sighed. But there was nothing for Tulagi to trip over near the ditch, and no good reason for him to have been outside in the first place. He was far enough toward the middle that he had to have made as big a leap as his short legs could manage. I leaned out over the ditch as far as I could without risking my life. I needed to see him. The dwarf’s body looked like a girl’s doll, twisted out of its form.

  “This will distract Stevenson from his writing,” I whispered to Davenport, then gasped at myself. “I’m sorry. That was an awful thing to say.”

  Whispered Davenport, “You always wanted to know what it was like to think like a bookaneer.”

  XII

  Vailima was abuzz at dawn with news. First, the burial. Though many things in Samoa were done at a leisurely pace, burial of the dead was not among them. The humidity would not allow delay. Tulagi’s body was wrapped in decorative mats and we all sat on the ground, men on one side and women on the other, as Belial delivered yet another eulogy. After his speech, the women filled the open grave with smooth black pebbles gathered from the ocean into baskets. As the company of mourners dispersed, I began to hear whispers. Only once we were all back inside could I understand what else happened overnight.

  Stevenson had been up all night after the trage
dy, but he had not been grieving mindlessly; I know this because there came the announcement we originally had been waiting for so long to hear, and now dreaded. His masterpiece was finished. Finished. It was whispered and repeated among the household, the staff and servants, in Samoan and in English, by those family members who depended on his books and those natives who never saw a book outside the Vailima library and the writer’s sanctum.

  With the storm subsided, visitors to the house were coming and going one after another on various business and personal errands that had been delayed. Mail was distributed, brought in a trunk from a merchant ship that had come in just at the tail end of the storm.

  I was on my way to find Davenport when I was stopped on the stairs by John Chinaman. He greeted me with his usual glare of belligerence and handed me several letters.

  At first I could not understand how there could be letters with my name on them, then remembered that Davenport had left word with the post office in London that I could be reached in Samoa, and separately told various associates of his that he could be reached through me. I tucked them under my vest for later and continued on, eyeing Belial, who was conducting a prayer circle in memory of Tulagi. The natives sat in a semicircle around him with heads bowed, and he held his hands high like a tableau of Christ with his disciples. John, meanwhile, gathered up an entire trunkful of letters that I guessed were for Stevenson.

  “Davenport!” I called when I found him in the great hall practicing putting weight on his bad leg. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “What is that?” he asked, looking at the bulge in my vest.

  “Oh, letters. Just arrived on a merchant ship of some kind. John Chinaman was carrying a whole trunk of them to Stevenson.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “Here.” I switched to a whisper. “Davenport, forget those, he’s finished! Did you hear what I said?”