After sixteen days of questioning, the judge convicted O'Connor, sentencing him to five years in jail for assault and manslaughter. Since it couldn't be proven that he'd intended to kill Giovanni, though no one doubted it, he wouldn't be branded a murderer and hang by his neck until he was dead. But they hadn't expected that. They'd expected him to walk free.
O'Connor roared like a wild animal when the sentence was pronounced.
"Serves you right, you brute!" Gustafsson shouted.
The judge turned and sent him an angry look, the first they'd seen throughout the trial.
They congratulated one another as they left the courtroom, but instead of triumph at the defeat of their enemy, they were filled with simple relief. It was as if they'd been on trial themselves. And now they'd been set free.
"I finally got rid of Isager," Albert said many years later.
"But we don't want to hear about him," we said. "We want to hear about the boots."
THE VOYAGE
I SIGNED ON for Singapore and from there to Van Diemen's Land, to Hobart Town, the last port where my father had been seen. But it wasn't just his final port: it was everyone's dead end—and if it wasn't yours, it soon would be, if you didn't get yourself out in time. Picture the workhouse in Marstal: that's what Hobart was like.
The year was 1862. I met a man with one eye who'd been there since and never had a day of freedom for the better part of forty years. He'd counted every lash they'd given him during his imprisonment: three thousand in total, he said. He was free now, but his will was as broken as the skin of his back, which had more ridges than a washboard. He wasn't the only one. He'd tell you his story in exchange for a glass of gin, and with forty years on the wagon to make up for, he'd happily tell it ten times a day. But in Hobart Town there weren't many to listen. The place was full of outcasts and ex-cons like him, who'd murder for the price of a drink.
Hobart had been a penal colony since the first house was built there in 1803. Now they called it a town of free men, but since everyone was either a former convict or a guard, the distinction didn't mean much. They were all men used to either giving beatings or receiving them. The option of living together like men with their heads held high didn't look like it had occurred to anyone. No one there ever looked me straight in the face. They'd keep their eyes on the ground, and if they looked up, it was to judge the depth of your pocket and whether what you had in it was worth killing for. People said they'd steal the joey from a kangaroo's pouch. Kangaroos carry their young in a pouch, did you know that?
There were plenty of old men in Hobart Town, but few young ones. Anyone who had the strength or the slightest hope left in him fled for greener pastures. Whole flocks of filthy children ran wild, with no sign of any fathers. The mothers were left in peace though, because, they say, convicts lose their appetite for women when they're long in the clink and go for other men instead. Whether that's true or not I don't know and don't care to know. But one thing's for sure: I wasted my wages on those scumbags.
I started my search at the police station, but they just said the same thing that all the other authorities I spoke to said: "If a man wants to lay low and vanish without a trace from the surface of the earth, then he'll pick Hobart Town."
But papa tru hadn't had any reason to disappear, I knew that. The officers just shook their heads and said they couldn't help me.
So I walked up and down Liverpool Street. Every second pub was called the Bird-in-Hand. That made sense to me. In Hobart Town alcohol sang sweeter than any other bird, and if you've nothing else to believe in, then you'll believe in whatever you can grab hold of.
I bought gin for anyone who looked as if he might have a story to tell. And they all did. They'd start by asking me about papa tru: height, nationality, what he looked like. Then, oh yes, they remembered him well, they'd say, and they'd scratch their filthy hair until the dead lice dropped out, and look mournfully into their empty glass and tell you in this humble voice that another gin might just jog their memory. And sure enough, now they remembered him: the tall Dane with the big beard and the distant eyes! He'd stayed at the Hope and Anchor in Macquerie Street. Then he'd signed on to the...
Oh, but the name of the ship escaped them. They'd give their empty glass another wistful look and as soon as they'd had a refill, the name of the ship would come out.
Within a few weeks it was clear there'd been a thousand Laurids Madsens in Hobart Town, and my papa tru had signed on to a thousand ships sailing to a thousand destinations. I didn't have a single bird in my hand, but I had thousands in the bush. Laurids Madsen wasn't a man. He was an entire race.
Even so I went to the Hope and Anchor to ask about the lost man. I'd come this far and I wasn't ready to give up. The man behind the bar was called Anthony Fox. He was an ex-con like the rest of them, but unlike them, he'd thrived—by making a profit from their misery. He stood behind his brass counter, rubbing it with a cloth until it shone. When I leaned over it to question him, I could see my face in it and I wondered if it had ever reflected my father's beard.
I ordered a gin—for myself this time—and mentioned my father's name. That was all I did mention, because by now I'd learned my lesson. I could have said that Laurids was a Hottentot with fiery red, woolly hair that stuck out on all sides and three legs instead of the usual two and they all would have said yes, we remember that Dane well. So I left it at the name.
He stood there for a while. "What was that name again?" he asked. "And the year?"
"Fifty or fifty-one," I said.
"Just a minute."
He ordered a waiter to take over behind the bar and disappeared into a backroom, returning with a large ledger tucked under his arm.
"I never remember a face," he said, "but I do remember a debt."
He put the ledger on the counter and started leafing through it.
"There!" he exclaimed triumphantly and pushed the book across to me. "I knew it."
He pointed to a name. Laurids Madsen, it said.
I can't claim I recognized my father's signature. I still hadn't learned to read when he disappeared, and he wasn't a man to write his name down too often.
"What does he owe you for?" I asked.
"He owes me for two beers," Anthony Fox said.
I found the money and paid him.
"We're quits now."
"Don't tell me you traveled halfway around the world to pay Madsen's debt?"
I shook my head.
"He's disappeared. I'm looking for him."
"Sailor or convict?"
He gave me a searching look.
"Sailor."
"Then I suppose he must have drowned, like sailors do. Or jumped ship."
He flung out his arm in a vague gesture that might encompass the Pacific Ocean, with its tens of thousands of islands, as well as the ice-covered pole south of us, where no one had ever set foot.
"It's a big world. You'll never find him."
"I found his debt," I said.
"People who disappear don't always want to be found. Where does a sailor belong? On deck, or with his missus and kids? Sometimes he gets confused. Then he starts living like his life's a spinning top that he can spin again and again. He drowns ten times, and he comes back ten times—and each time he's got a new woman in his arms. Back home, his family's mourning him, while he's sitting next to a cradle on another continent, chuckling away. Until he gets fed up with that family too. Trust me. I've seen it happen."
"I didn't know that sages tended bar here in Hobart Town."
He grinned at me. "You're his son. Am I right?"
"I thought you said you never remember a face. Do I look like Laurids Madsen?"
"I've no idea. I don't remember him. But I recognize an offended man when I see one. Only a son would pull a face like that when his father's accused of being a cheat."
I turned to leave.
"Wait," Anthony Fox said. "I'm going to give you a name."
"A name?"
I stop
ped in the doorway of the Hope and Anchor.
"Yes, a name. Jack Lewis. Remember it."
"And who's Jack Lewis?"
"The man your father drank a beer with."
"And you remember that man ten years on? I suppose he owes you for a beer too."
"He owes me for a lot more than a beer. Find him for me, and jog his memory about that debt."
I turned back to the bar, where my half-empty glass of gin was still waiting. Fox hadn't cleared it away. He'd known he could pull me back. It was early in the day, and I was the only guest at the Hope and Anchor.
"Do you want something to eat?" he asked.
"Not if it's lamb." I was sick of lamb. It was the only meat they ate in Hobart Town.
"I've got sea bass." We sat down at a table. "There's plenty of room here," he said. "Australia's bigger than Europe and it's still needing more citizens. The Pacific Ocean takes up half the globe. I call it the fatherland of the homeless."
"Did you ever sail?"
"I've done everything. Farming, carpentry, sailing, being a con. Because that's a trade too. Two kinds of men come to the Pacific. The ones who just want to lie under a coconut palm and never do a day's work, and the ones who are following the money."
"The money?"
"Jack Lewis was one of them. Opium from China, arms, human trafficking, name whatever vice you can think of—and I don't just mean cargo that can be weighed and measured—and Jack Lewis will step forward as your humble supplier. If you follow the money, you need to stick to certain routes. On one of those routes you'll find Jack Lewis."
"Give me the name of his ship."
"The Flying Scud. But you need to make up your mind about something before you start. You need to decide what kind of man your father was. Was he the coconut palm type, who wanted to spend his life lying on his back in the shade, or was he after money? If he was a coconut man you'll never find him. Melanesia, Gilbert Islands, Society's Islands, Sandwich Islands: ten lifetimes aren't long enough to visit them all. But if he's the other kind, you've got a chance. Jack Lewis doesn't come here anymore. But he's out there somewhere."
"And how do I find him?"
"Not in any register. Jack Lewis is the kind of man the authorities don't know about. But he's lodged in a lot of men's memories. Including mine."
"Tell me about his debt."
"Just mention my name. Anthony Fox. And the sum of one thousand pounds."
"One thousand pounds!" I exclaimed. "But why did you give a thousand pounds to a notorious swindler?"
"Greed is the correct term, I believe," Anthony Fox said without flinching. "Besides, I hadn't acquired the money lawfully myself. Call it a loan between swindlers. Nowadays I wander the narrow path of virtue. But purely due to lack of means."
"It's a topsy-turvy world," I said. "Most men become thieves out of necessity."
"As did I once. Well, I was more than a thief. I'll leave you to guess what. Today I live an honest life. People keep their eye on an ex-con. The Flying Scud. Now you've got the man's name—and the ship's too."
"And if I find it?"
"I can't promise that you'll find your father. But you'll find Jack Lewis. I've no hope of seeing my money again. But now you know that Jack Lewis is a crook. Do whatever you want to him, and you'll have my blessing."
That was how men in Hobart Town spoke to each other: as one con man to another. I thought of the vast surface of the Pacific Ocean, which I'd already crossed once. Who could keep an eye on what happened on a deck thousands of miles from shore—or on an island no bigger than a ship?
The word freedom was something the world had taught me recently and I'd had to sail far to grasp its meaning. In Hobart Town I heard that word from men who'd chained themselves to their own greed. Freedom had a thousand faces. But so did crime. The thought of what a man might do made me dizzy.
"Honolulu," Anthony Fox said. "I suggest that you start your search in Honolulu."
"If you know where I can find him, why don't you go there yourself and collect your money?"
"I've become an honest man. Only the stupid steal from the rich. The clever steal from the poor. The law usually protects the rich."
"So you're not stealing from the poor?"
"No, I'm just exploiting their weakness." He pointed to the bar and its battery of bottles.
"It's more profitable and less risky. A bottle in the hand is better than money in the bank. That's how the poor think."
"Ah! So you own all the Bird-in-Hand pubs?"
"Indeed I do."
I got up to leave.
"One moment." It was a trick he had, holding back information until the end. "I do remember one thing about your father." I looked at him. My heart was pounding in my chest. "He looked like a man who'd lost something. Do you have any idea what that might be?"
"No," I said, my heart still banging. "I was only a child when he disappeared."
I went out the door and heard Anthony Fox's voice for the last time.
"You forgot to pay!" he called out. "You're going in my book."
I WAS ONLY too pleased to be leaving Hobart Town. I'd slept with my head on my sea chest with the door locked, but even so, on more than one occasion I'd had unexpected visitors and had to fight someone off in the dark.
Now I was headed for Honolulu. It took me a year to get there. I had to sign on and sign off several times: no routes led directly from Hobart Town to Hawaii. I saw a lot on that journey, and there was more than one shore where I was tempted to settle. If Anthony Fox was right about there being two kinds of men who came to the Pacific Ocean, I knew which kind I was: the kind looking for the shade of a coconut palm and a view of a blue lagoon.
Yet I always moved on. I had nothing on my mind but the name Jack Lewis.
I had to wait fourteen days in Honolulu, and if I hadn't been looking for Jack Lewis, I would have stayed there for the rest of my life.
The women wore red ankle-length dresses with bare shoulders, and they wriggled their hips in a way Marstallers would have called indecent. But their lives were governed by a different, more fertile kind of nature than the one at home. The air was thick with perfume. At first I thought it was the ladies, tempting my nostrils in the same way they tempted the rest of me. But the scent came from the flowers. Jasmine and oleander were the only ones I knew the names of, but they grew everywhere—in front of the houses, in the shade of the trees, and along the roads. Instead of gin, the drink of choice here was bourbon, and I'd down it on a shady terrace, watching life go by on the promenade in front of me, listening to the surf.
The houses in the town were white with green shutters, and the roads were straight and wide. Instead of cobbles, I walked on a carpet of crushed coral, shaded by tall trees with leaves that grew so thick, no sunlight came through. The men wore the color of the town: white jackets, white waistcoats, white trousers. Even white shoes—they'd chalk the canvas every morning. And the women wore gypsy hats decorated with flowers.
The Micronesians have light skin, and they like to tattoo their faces. It was the men who struck you the most. They shave their heads and they're tattooed from the neck up, so their faces are just blue shadows, lit up by lightning flashes of white from the glint of their eyes.
Hobart Town and Honolulu lie at opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, and I've never been to two places more different. I'd first heard Jack Lewis's name in Hobart, but every time I mentioned it here, it was as if I'd brought some of its filth with me. People would eye me suspiciously and make me feel like undesirable company. One man even spat on the ground and turned his back on me altogether. It felt like the whole of Honolulu was shunning me.
An American missionary shot me a look of pity from beneath his broad-brimmed straw hat. He said to me in a fatherly tone, "You look like an otherwise decent young man. Why do you want to talk to that dreadful person?"
I couldn't explain my business, so I just stood there mute. He misunderstood my silence and thought I had something to hide. He wa
lked away, shaking his head.
I felt unclean.
In the end, though, I got the information I was looking for. I learned that Jack Lewis was expected within the next few weeks. But I paid a price for my interest in the Flying Scud. I drank my bourbon alone.
The Flying Scud dropped anchor outside Honolulu, and I was waiting on the beach when Jack Lewis was rowed ashore by his crew, which consisted of four Kanaks. Their faces were covered in blue tattoos and I noticed one had an ear missing. I took the fact that Jack Lewis chose to surround himself exclusively with natives as a sign that he didn't trust anyone. I reckoned this was the kind of company a man preferred if he had a secret to keep. What did he talk to these blue-faced men about? Nothing, I guessed. They had their goals in life, and he had his—and their paths need never really cross.
Jack Lewis was a small, withered man, with skin burned the color of mahogany by the trade winds and the noonday equator sun. His face was wrinkled and his eyes were set deep, like an old monkey's. He wore a washed-out cotton suit with stripes that had all but faded away. A straw hat kept his face in shadow, except when he tilted his head back to look at whomever he was talking to, which he did with the air of a nabob holding court.
At first glance he seemed unremarkable. He didn't look like a captain: far from it. A modest merchant, maybe. And yet all sorts of rumors stuck to him. I'd already learned that just the mention of his name made you untouchable.
His crew pulled the boat up onto the beach, and he stood next to it, studying the sand, seemingly deep in thought. I went over to him and told him my name. He looked up at me. I watched his face, but it seemed my name rang no bells—or if it did, he wasn't letting on.
Then I mentioned Anthony Fox, and he turned his back to me. His men didn't seem to be listening to us, but they were clearly waiting for I orders.
"I'm not here for the money," I said. "I'm here for something else."
We, the Drowned Page 14