The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

“‘I have been writing it at the same time, Fergins, and with writing paper so rare and dear on the island, I had to conserve my materials and use the backs of my silly novel’s pages. It may be found unwelcome to that great, hulking bullering whale—I mean the public. Nor is it likely to make me any friends; in fact, other dangerous enemies will follow. Still, I must not stand and slouch but do my best. Without my name, perhaps five people would read this. A few hundred people may read this because of my name only. But that is all I need, for those will be the right people, among them statesmen. To have your work read, that is one thing, and I am used to it. To have it read by the right people—well, to modern authors that is positively utopian! There will be no money to be made, and yet there is something far more than that this book will bring to life. The pages in your hands will open the eyes of the Americans, whose hands are not immaculate but are the cleanest of the three powers, to send their forces to counter the Germans who have enslaved and terrorized the islanders.’

  “‘You are trying to start a war,’ I replied, unconsciously echoing the words of the embittered prisoner, Banner.

  “‘Not so. If the German Firm continues its way of overthrowing inconvenient monarchs and oppressing the other consuls, they will be the ones to let loose the dogs of war. I am trying to stop the island from being destroyed, Mr. Fergins. We haven’t much time left before we need Belial to play his part in fulfilling your plan. He must think he has stolen this free and clear, and once he makes it past the other thieves—what did you call that lowest class of scum? The barnacles of the bookaneers—and is arrested in New York, you find a way to copy the Samoa pages from this pile to bring to the publishing house of Scribner’s,’ he urged. ‘As soon as I am well enough, I will ride to the British consulate and telegraph a lawyer I know in Washington so the proper copyright will be registered the moment the law changes on the first of July, before you reach American soil. If the book is to help this island, this scheme must come to pass soon. If they will not publish it, I will pay for it to be printed myself. The best part is, any of your bookaneers still in business whom you encounter before the change in law will not even know what they look for. Even Belial will not know what he has in his own hands. This is what I relish about Samoa: you can be in a new conspiracy every day. Oh, and make sure to burn Newton French, won’t you? I don’t want to risk making money from it.’

  “‘You were working on this all along, knowing this was what mattered, and meanwhile Belial and Davenport chased each other around the island going after a novel that had no consequence to you. This was hiding right in the center of the maelstrom.’

  “‘Unchecked, the island will come to war again; before that to many bankruptcies and profiteering, and after that, as usual, to famine. Here, under the microscope, we can see all history at work. I find it is no fun to meddle in politics, but there comes a day where a man says: this can go on no longer.’”

  Though Mr. Fergins was quoting Stevenson’s words, the bookseller said the phrase with such conviction and clarity, he might have announced his own maxim for life.

  I interrupted: “Then the letter you recited to Davenport in which Whiskey Bill revealed everything to Stevenson . . .”

  “A fiction, Mr. Clover. I invented it as I was ‘reciting’ it to Davenport!” Mr. Fergins said with a gleeful smile. “When I saw Davenport was convinced by it, I knew my entire plan could succeed.”

  There were, he pointed out, certain real and unforeseeable obstacles: His release from prison was quickly arranged by Stevenson, but they had not anticipated the vengeful guards would drop him into the bush. Then there was Vao, discovering him in the mountains—though her help was crucial to return him to Apia, the bookseller now had to find a way to distract her from completing her sworn vendetta against Belial, whom she hated more than ever because of Tulagi’s death, since Mr. Fergins and Stevenson needed Belial to get safely off the island with the manuscript. It was like walking across a tightrope. Had Mr. Fergins tried to divert her by telling her Davenport had contributed to Tulagi’s woes, it might have taken her off Belial’s trail, but she might not have been inclined to help a friend of Davenport’s escape the bush. Meanwhile, Stevenson had promised to tell no one else at Vailima of their secret plan, and after the rescue from the cannibals the novelist abetted him by escorting away Vao and charging John Chinaman and Lloyd with bringing Mr. Fergins to the beach.

  Mr. Fergins went on to explain to me how events transpired while he was operating his temporary book cart in New York. Judge Salisbury had Mr. Fergins assigned to authenticate the manuscript as having been written by Robert Louis Stevenson. As Mr. Fergins spent hours at a time examining the manuscript in a room at the courthouse, the bookseller carefully identified and copied the pages on Samoan history that were interspersed on the opposite side of the novel’s pages. He later brought the transcribed copy to Scribner’s as planned.

  “That little book was published and brought new attention to Samoa, just as Stevenson intended,” Mr. Fergins said. “The American presence was bolstered. Consuls were removed and replaced. Extraordinary, what a little volume no thicker than a penny’s worth of gingerbread could do!”

  “Yet the wars did not end.”

  “No, new men brought fresh arrogance and old hostilities remained. I’m afraid war continues in Samoa, as awful as before,” Mr. Fergins said. “Perhaps it is a good thing Stevenson did not live to see it. He had his hopes that the book might change things once and for all but, in truth, every writer believes that about everything he writes.”

  “And the novel that you all once believed would be his masterpiece? The Shovels of Newman French?”

  “Newton French. Burned. Just as Stevenson wished,” he said with satisfaction. “Once I had the transcriptions I needed.”

  “The fire in the evidence room. You . . . you weren’t caught in it. You didn’t rush in to put it out, nor were you trapped there by some shadowy confederates of Belial. You started the fire yourself!” I cried.

  “Well, naturally, but I did try to put it out, too. It got out of hand, I admit, and spread faster than I imagined. The sensation of burning those pages, the only copy of the work of a master, stopped me cold and was a feeling like none other I had experienced before. It quite literally almost killed me. I certainly did not think I would inhale so much smoke so quickly.” He paused, and seemed embarrassed. “I am eternally grateful to you for nursing me to health, Mr. Clover, whatever the cause.”

  “Whatever the cause, you say! You were the cause! Besides, even if you honored Stevenson’s wishes, you hurt the case against Belial.”

  “That prosecution”—the bookseller stopped and shrugged—“never had a chance. Salisbury knew it as well as anybody. He just wanted to have keelhauled a literary pirate so he could campaign on the idea that he was the champion of authors. People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one. Fire or no fire, Belial eventually would have been released. I just needed it to drag along until I had completed my transcriptions to bring to Scribner.”

  “Where did Belial go after the case against him ended?”

  “From all I heard, after he fled New York he decided to start a new life as a poet. Apparently, it was what he’d always dreamed of doing. But his jaw had been broken in two places by the policeman during the arrest, and it made it hard for him to talk at length, and almost impossible to be understood by an audience at recitations of his verse. He was a diminished man. He never stopped running, and did not stay in any one place for more than a few weeks. He had plenty of money, too, for he had saved and invested it over the years. His problem was not financial. It was a gap that opened between reality and his self-importance. Once he had been touched by the law, Belial thought everyone was trying to follow him, even long after he had become, in actuality, a forgotten man. The poems I saw of his were rather nicely composed, actually, if limited to obvious themes, sailin
g on rudderless ships in the night, that kind of thing. He ended up getting his throat cut in a fight with some men he accused of following him into a poetry recital in Hong Kong.”

  “As soon as Belial heard the fireworks outside the office of Scribner’s,” I said, “he knew you had done him in. It was Samoan, wasn’t it? What Belial said to you when we met him in the courtroom.” When Mr. Fergins nodded, I knew I had finally cracked through the ice. I had unearthed a blatant lie.

  He could tell what I was thinking. “I did tell you the truth, Mr. Clover, when I told you I did not know what he said to me that day in court. I could only assume he was threatening me. He believed I was vengeful and had orchestrated this on behalf of Davenport. Of course, that was not the reason. I vow I did not know what he said when you first asked me, but I do now. Since I returned to the South Seas, I’ve had time to study their languages much more fully. One night, in a dream, I remembered part of what Belial had said to me that day. It was: ‘Ou te le malama lama.’” The bookseller appeared crestfallen as he recited these words. “It means, ‘I do not understand.’

  “You must see the pathos of it, Mr. Clover. He was the greatest bookaneer of our day. I rather hate to think of him so . . . bewildered.”

  “It was you,” I repeated, fighting back a flash of anger. “You were the last bookaneer. Not Davenport or Belial, but you. You took it away from them.”

  He laughed. “Who am I?”

  “You’re as disloyal as you dare. Whiskey Bill was right about you. Why did you do it? Belial might have deserved to be tricked, but why betray your closest friend? Why did you decide to arrange for Belial to bring the pages to New York instead of letting Davenport succeed? If what you say now is true, you did not even stand to profit from any of this.”

  He straightened his spectacles and looked away. “I should think the why of this would be the most obvious part,” he said, mumbling his words with a tone of disappointment.

  “So it is, Mr. Fergins.” I was ready to meet his challenge. “Davenport brought you to Samoa without your consent, and in the process you lost your bookstall, the one place, as you’ve said, that was really your home. He never respected you and that showed in how he treated you. What he did to Charlie was the same thing he had done to you, only the poison killed this time—you could not forgive him for that, and for contributing to Tulagi’s despair and self-murder by corrupting Vao out of—well, some kind of perverse bitterness that Kitten had been taken away from him by Belial.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes as I cataloged Davenport’s actions, but that passed, quickly replaced by surprise. “Say again? I did this for Davenport! For his own good!”

  “What?”

  He furrowed his brow and then began to pace up and down the chamber. “Yes, naturally, Mr. Clover. Think of it. Once Davenport’s foot and leg were badly injured in the storm, I knew Belial would defeat him. It was a matter of hours once Stevenson finished the book. What could a hobbled and stubborn bookaneer do against an able-bodied one? The only way to avoid this, to preserve the legacy of this final mission, was to use Belial to our advantage—to allow him to take the manuscript but then upend him. However, I knew Davenport as a man too vain to allow Belial’s triumph, especially after his discovery that Belial had been responsible for seducing Kitten into her final, fatal mission. When I realized this, I vowed to remove the mission from him altogether, from both of them. In the process, I would also do right by Stevenson, who had been kind to us. I saved Davenport’s most important mission the only way I could, by tricking him out of it. I saved his legacy, and that of all bookaneers!”

  “Do you think Davenport sees it that way? What does Frankenstein think of his monster?”

  Mr. Fergins lowered himself back onto the mat on the floor, folding his chin into his hands and sighing wistfully.

  This seemed to perplex him, so I tried a different line of questioning: “Where is he? Where did Davenport go from here?”

  “He was held in Tale-Pui-Pui for about a month before being released. Soon after leaving the prison he found passage back to London. I saw him frequently in that period after I left New York and went back to England. He even stayed in my rooms for a while. ‘You, my dear Fergins, are my greatest friend in the whole world, or at least in London,’ he’d say with rare affection and his usual obliviously insulting tone. He never did suspect that I had been the one to deceive him, and though I do not know if he would have sympathized with my reasons, I’m not certain he would have cared by that point. There was nothing behind his eyes anymore, and now he lies beneath the earth.

  “When a great author dies, it is cried out by the newspapers and the newsboys who sell them. But when a bookaneer left us, what memorial did he ever have? Davenport was unmoored, perhaps not so different from how Belial himself became after turning poet. Davenport drank and drank. Unlike Belial, Davenport had never been able to keep a penny in his pocket, especially after Kitten’s death. He owed a large sum of money to an infamous printer in Paris, and when he did not profit from the Samoan affair he could not pay his debt. He eventually had to work for the man in France, delivering messages and packages. When he could be found, I ought to say. I heard from one French binder that Davenport disappeared for seven days straight once on a binge. One day he was asleep in the woods, and when he woke, not knowing where he was, he tried to cross a frozen lake, but he fell in and drowned. Ovid once wrote that suppressed grief suffocates and multiplies its strength.” He was silent for a long time. “I warned you not to involve yourself in the story I would tell you, that it would lead to dark passages. Mr. Clover, why dwell on any of it now?” His expression cleared itself of concern and I saw the face of eager, open friendliness I remembered, though I could hardly enjoy it.

  “How is it you came to be on this storm-blasted little island, of all places on earth?”

  “Now, that’s a sensible topic. When I was first on Upolu with Davenport, I had overheard that the King of Tonga was seeking to devise and print a constitution that could be shown to interlopers in order to prove Tonga was free and self-ruled, and prevent the foreign powers that had fragmented so many nations in the South Seas. When I was back in London without my bookstall and without even the occupation of helping Davenport, I did not know what to do, but I knew what I would not do. I would not be left with nothing. I would not feel myself wither and fade away. I began to corresponded with the King of Tonga and made my arrangement with him. I would help write and print his constitution, in return for his financing my own ambitions here.”

  He was about to continue, but the tall native returned and whispered something in the bookseller’s ear. Mr. Fergins nodded. He turned back to me, saying, “Rest, Mr. Clover. You have had a tiring expedition here. I must tend to some business, and then will return.”

  I wanted to ask exactly what ambitions and what business he had on this island, but he and the other man were already resuming their conversation in the soft language of this region, and exited. I followed at a distance, as quietly as possible. I heard them leave the building and so found an open window where I could look for them. They were standing outside with a dark-skinned man, dressed in ragged clothes, balanced on a wooden crutch to compensate for a missing leg. He had a simple haversack with him. Mr. Fergins raised his right arm in the fashion of an oath taker and the crippled man did the same. I could hear the bookseller say: “I am the keeper . . .” but he spoke the rest of his statement in a whisper, or maybe it was the strong southeast winds that prevented me from hearing what else he said. The other man seemed to repeat the saying.

  I returned to the parlor and laid my head down on a white mat to wait.

  My skin and hair stuck to the woven surface of the mat. It was dark outside the windows, but the darkness was starting to lift. A palm leaf of food was on a shelf in the corner of the room. A pig lay on its side and snored rhythmically. Realizing I had slept the night, I jumped to my feet. Outside, I fou
nd an older native man cooking over a stone fire pit. I explained to him that it was urgent I return to the shore and see if the guides I had hired were still there. He did not seem to understand a word, but took his leave to fetch someone at an unhurried pace. A few minutes later, Mr. Fergins appeared, once again in a formless suit that looked like a sack, decorated with a string of shells around his neck, and a crown of leaves.

  “Do not worry at all, my dear friend,” he said, interrupting me as I stated my concerns. “I took care of everything. When we found that you had fallen into such a deep sleep, I had one of my boys release your vessel and explain that I would arrange for your transportation whenever you needed to go. I hope you feel better rested?”

  I said I did.

  “Good fellow. It is such a rare pleasure to have a visitor here. Please”—he gestured—“have your breakfast and I will show you what I’ve been doing.”

  “Is that . . . ?” I began, staring at the selection before me as a native unwrapped a palm leaf from it.

  “Turtle. Baked in its shell,” said my host proudly. “Some gannet’s eggs and some nuts.”

  Being around him was like being around a young boy. After breakfast, we went to a quiet lagoon, where he plunged in for a morning bath with a giant splash. I tried again to ask about what business he was conducting on the island, but his reply was that such things could wait. After bathing, we gathered crabs into a basket for an afternoon meal, and continued on our way. He was almost galloping.

  The island was of such a narrow and curving shape, and had so many glittering rock and coral formations around it, we were always near some shoreline. But the breakers did not create the usual rhythmic, back-and-forth flow of the ocean. Instead, the noise of the waves was constant, like the engines of the trains where I used to dwell.

  Unlike the terrain in Samoa, there were no mountains here. It was mostly low and flat, with some small hills throughout. When we gained enough ground to have a new view of one of the inlets, Mr. Fergins pointed out a surprising sight: a warship, rusty but upright and armed, basking in the light.