The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  In truth Frost was feeling very frightened—and progressively more frightened, as each stroke carried the craft closer and closer to the gorge. What in all heaven had come over him—in saying that he was not yellow, when he was as yellow as a man could be? He could easily have pretended that he was expected back at the bank! Now he was lurching around in three inches of brown water, shivering, unarmed, and unprepared—the ill-chosen second in another man’s duel—and for what? What was his quarrel with the Chinaman Quee? What was his grudge? He had never laid eyes upon the man in all his life! Frost reached up to wipe the brim of his hat.

  The Hokitika River threaded its way over gravel flats, the stones of which were uniformly round and worn. The banks of the river were fringed darkly with scrub, the foliage made still darker by the rain; the hills beyond them crawled with shifting cloud. One had the sense, peering up at them, that distance was measured in stages: the tall kahikatea, rising out of the scrub, were silhouetted green in the foreground, blue in the middle distance, and grey on the crest of the hills, where they merged with the colour of the mist. The Alps were shrouded, but on a fine day (as Mannering remarked) they would have been quite visible, as a sharp ridge of white against the sky.

  The craft bore on. They were passed by one canoe, travelling swiftly downriver, conveying a bearded surveyor and a pair of Maori guides—who lifted their hats, cheerfully enough, and Mannering did likewise. (Frost could not risk the motion.) After that, there was nothing; only the riverbanks, jolting by; the rain lashing at the water. The gulls that had followed them from the river mouth lost interest and fell back. Twenty minutes or so passed, and the craft turned a corner—and then, as a lamp suddenly illuminates a crowded room, there was noise and motion all around them.

  The canvas settlement of Kaniere was stationed as a midpoint between Hokitika and the inland claims. The land around the settlement was fairly flat, rutted by a veritable lattice of gullies and streams, all of them bearing stones and gravel down from the Alps, towards the sea; the sound of moving water was ever-present here, as a distant roar, a click, a rush, a patter. As one early surveyor had put it, on the Coast, wherever there was water, there was gold—and there was water all about, water dripping from the ferns, water beading on the branches, water making fat the mosses that hung from the trees, water filling one’s footsteps, welling up.

  To Frost’s eyes, the camp at Kaniere made for a very dismal picture. The diggers’ tents, terraced in crooked rows, bowed low under the weight of endless rain; several had collapsed altogether. Ropes ran back and forth between them, heavy with flags and wet laundry. Several of the tents had been bricked with a makeshift siding made of schist and clay, and were faring better; one enterprising party had thought to hang a second sheet in the trees above them, as an auxiliary fly. Nailed to the tree-trunks were painted signs advertising every kind of entertainment and drink. (A man needed no more than a canvas fly and a bottle to open a grog-shanty on the diggings, though he would suffer a fine, and even a gaoling, were he to be sprung by the law; most of the liquor sold in this way had been fermented in the camp. Charlie Frost had once tried the Kaniere rotgut, only to spit out his mouthful in disgust. The liquor was oily, acidic in taste, and thick with strings of matter; it had smelled, he thought, very like a photographic emulsion.)

  Frost marvelled that the rain had not driven the diggers indoors; their spirits, in fact, seemed quite undampened. They were clustered at the riverside, some of them panning, knee-deep in the water, others rattling their sluice boxes, still others cleaning their pots, bathing, soaping their laundry, plaiting rope, and darning on the shore. They all wore the digger’s habitual costume of moleskin, serge, and twill. Some of them sported sashes about their waists, dyed the brightest scarlet, in the piratical fashion of the time, and most wore slouch hats with the brims turned down. They shouted back and forth to one another as they worked, seeming to take no notice of the rain. Behind this shouting, one could hear the conventional hubbub of industry—the ringing chop of an axe, laughter, whistling. Blue smoke hung in the air and dispersed over the river in lazy gusts. The sound of an accordion drifted up from deep in the trees, and from somewhere further off came a roar of applause.

  ‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ said Mannering. ‘Even for a Saturday.’

  Frost did not think that it was quiet.

  ‘Hardly a man out,’ said Mannering.

  Frost could see dozens of men—perhaps hundreds.

  The panorama before them was Charlie Frost’s very first impression of Kaniere—and indeed, his first impression of Hokitika’s environs at large, for in the seven months since he had crossed the Hokitika bar, he had never once ventured inland, nor once along the beachfront further than the high terrace of Seaview. Although he frequently bemoaned the smallness of his circumstances, he knew, in his innermost heart, that his spirit was not well suited to adventure; now, as he watched a man haul a branch onto a puny fire at the river’s edge, and deposit the thing bodily onto the dark bed of ashes, causing a whuff of smoke to engulf him, blackly, so that he began to cough in the terrible, lung-wracking way of a man not long for this world, Frost felt thoroughly justified in his conservatism. Kaniere, he told himself internally, was a wretched, God-forsaken place.

  The ferry pulled into the shallows, and the lifeboat’s keel ground on the stones. The forward oarsmen jumped out and dragged the boat clear of the water, so that Mannering and Frost could clamber out of the craft without wetting their boots—an unnecessary courtesy, for their boots were very wet already. The collie-dog leaped over the gunwale and flopped, belly-first, into the water.

  ‘My word,’ said Mannering, as he heaved himself onto the stones, and stretched his back. ‘I ought to have changed my trousers. Not a day for fine dress—eh, Charlie? Makes a fool out of a dandy. My word!’

  He had perceived that Frost was out of sorts, and was trying to be cheerful. For although he felt that it would do Frost a great deal of good to bear witness to a bit of rough and tumble (Frost’s composure had a priggish quality that aggravated Mannering extremely) he wished to remain, all the same, in the boy’s good opinion. Mannering was competitive by nature, and among the many hypothetical trophies for which he competed daily was one engraved with the names of every one of his associates. Were he ever to be forced to choose between another man’s betterment and another man’s compliance, he would choose the latter, no matter the cost. He would not go soft upon Frost, who was soft enough already, and he would ensure that the boy knew his place, but he was not too proud to extend a hand of kindness—not least because kindness was so patently desired.

  But Frost did not respond. He was appalled to see an A-frame calico tent, barely big enough to fit three men lying side by side, sporting the hand-painted sign ‘Hotel’; he was appalled still further to see a digger unbutton his trousers and relieve himself, in full view of his fellows, onto the stones at the riverside. He recoiled—and then, to his alarm, heard laughter. A pair of diggers, sitting beneath a timber-framed awning not ten yards from the ferry landing, had been observing the lifeboat’s approach. They evidently found Frost’s horror very amusing; one of them tipped his hat, and the other gave a mock salute.

  ‘Come for a gander?’

  ‘Naw, Bob—he’s come to do his laundry in the river. Only problem, he forgot to get his clothes dirty first!’

  The men laughed again—and Frost, red-faced, turned away. It was true that his life had been circumscribed by the twin compasses of duty and habit; it was true that he had not travelled, and would not speculate; it was true that his coat had been brushed that morning, and his vest was clean. He was not ashamed of these things. But Frost had spent his childhood in a place without other children, and he did not understand teasing. If another man made fun at his expense, he did not know how to respond. His face became hot, and his throat became tight, and he could only smile, unnaturally.

  The oarsmen had lifted the lifeboat clear of the water. They agreed to transport the pair back to Hok
itika in two hours’ time (two hours, Frost thought, with a sinking heart), and then drew lots to determine which man would remain with the boat. The unlucky man sat down, disappointed; the rest, rattling their coins, disappeared into the trees.

  The two men opposite were still laughing.

  ‘Ask him for a pinch of snuff,’ the first digger was saying to his mate.

  ‘Ask him how often he writes home—to Mayfair.’

  ‘Ask him if he knows how to roll up his sleeves past his elbow.’

  ‘Ask him about his father’s income. He’ll be pleased about that.’

  It was desperately unfair, Frost thought—when he had never even been to Mayfair—when his father was a poor man—when he was the New Zealander! (But the appellation sounded foolish; one did not say ‘Englander’.) His own income was paltry when one considered the enormous portion of his wages that he diverted into his father’s pocket every month. As for the suit he was currently wearing—he had bought it with his own wage; he had brushed the coat himself, that morning! And he very frequently rolled his sleeves above his elbows. His cuffs were buttoned, as were the diggers’ own; he had purchased his shirt at the Hokitika outfitters, just as they had. Frost wanted to say all of this—but instead he knelt down and held out his hands, palm upward, for the collie-dog to lick.

  ‘Can we move?’ he said in an undertone to Mannering.

  ‘In a moment.’

  Having replaced his purse in his inner pocket, Mannering was now fussing over the buttons of his great coat—for he could not decide whether to leave all but the bottom button undone, which would give him the best ease of access to his pistols, or all but the topmost button undone, which would do best to conceal his pistols from sight.

  Frost shot another nervous look around him—avoiding the gaze of the diggers beneath the awning. The track from the ferry landing forked away through the trees—one spoke bearing eastward, towards Lake Kaniere, and the other southeast, towards the Hokitika Gorge. Beyond the south bank of the river lay a rich patchwork of claims and mines that included, among others, the goldmine Aurora. Frost did not know any of this; in fact he could hardly have pointed north, had he been asked. He looked about for a sign that might direct them to Chinatown, but there was none. He could see no Chinese faces in the crowd.

  ‘That way,’ Mannering said, as if hearing his thoughts; he nodded his head to the east. ‘Upriver. None too far.’

  Frost had caught the dog between his knees; he now began kneading her wet fur, more for his own reassurance than for the dog’s pleasure. ‘Ought we to agree on—on a plan of some kind?’ he ventured, squinting upward at the other man.

  ‘No need,’ said Mannering, buckling his belt a little higher.

  ‘No need for a plan?’

  ‘Quee doesn’t have a pistol. I’ve got two. That’s the only plan I need.’

  Frost was not entirely soothed by this. He freed Holly—she bounded away from him immediately—and stood up. ‘You’re not going to shoot an unarmed man?’

  Mannering had decided upon the top button. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s best.’ He smoothed his coat over his body.

  ‘Did you not hear me?’

  ‘I heard you,’ said Mannering. ‘Stop fretting, Charlie. You’ll only draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘You might answer me, if you want to ease my fretting,’ Frost said, in a voice that was rather shrill.

  ‘Listen,’ Mannering said, turning to face him at last. ‘I’ve paid Chinamen to work my claims for the past five years, and if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s this. They go after that smoke like a hatter for a whore, and no exceptions. By this time on a Saturday, every yellow man this side of the Alps will be laid out limp with the dragon in his eye. You could walk in to Chinatown and round up every one of them with one arm tied behind your back. All right? There’ll be no need for violence. There’ll be no need for any guns. They’re only for show. It’s all stacked to our advantage, Charlie. When a man’s full of opium it’s like he’s made of water. Remember that. He’s useless. He’s a child.’

  SUN IN CAPRICORN

  In which Gascoigne recalls his first encounter with the whore; several seams are unpicked with a knife; exhaustion takes its toll; and Anna Wetherell makes a request.

  Perceiving Anna and Gascoigne through the chink in the doorway, Joseph Pritchard had seen only what he himself most craved—love, and honest sympathy. Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere. In that moment—as Anna’s body folded against Gascoigne’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her, and placed his cheek against her hair—Pritchard, his hand cupped limp around the cold knob of the door, would not have been consoled to know that Aubert Gascoigne and Anna Wetherell were merely, and very simply, friends. Loneliness cannot be reassured by proportion. Even friendship would have seemed to Pritchard a feast behind a pane of glass; even the smallest charity would have wet his lip, and left him wanting.

  Pritchard’s assumptions about Gascoigne had been formed on very limited acquaintance—on one conversation only, as a matter of fact. Judging from his haughty manner and the impeccable standard of his dress, Pritchard had supposed that Gascoigne occupied a position of some influence at the Magistrate’s Court, but in truth the clerk’s responsibilities there were very few. His chief duty lay in the collection of bail each day from the gaol-house at the Police Camp. Besides this task, his hours were spent recording fees, policing receipts for miner’s rights, fielding complaints, and on occasion, running errands on the Commissioner’s behalf. It was a lowly position, but Gascoigne was new in town; he was content to be employed, and confident that he would not take home a lackey’s wage for long.

  Gascoigne had been in Hokitika for less than a month when he first encountered Anna Wetherell lying shackled on George Shepard’s gaol-house floor. She was sitting with her back against the wall, and her hands in her lap. Her eyes were open, and shone with fever; her hair had come loose from its clasp and stuck damply to her cheek. Gascoigne knelt before her, and on impulse extended his hand. She gripped it and pulled him closer still, out of sight of the gaoler, who was sitting by the door with a rifle on his knees. She whispered, ‘I can make my bail—I can raise it—but you have to trust me. And you can’t tell him how.’

  ‘Who?’ Gascoigne’s voice, too, had dropped to a whisper.

  She nodded towards Governor Shepard, without taking her eyes from his. Her grip tightened, and she guided his hand to her breast. He was startled; he almost snatched his hand away—but then he felt what she was guiding him to feel. Something was packed around her ribcage, beneath the cloth. It felt, Gascoigne thought, like chainmail—but he had never touched a piece of chainmail.

  ‘Gold,’ she whispered. ‘It’s gold. Up and down the corset-bones, and in the lining, and all the way about.’ Her dark eyes were searching his face, pleading with him. ‘Gold,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how it got there. It was there when I woke up—sewn in.’

  Gascoigne frowned, trying to understand. ‘You wish to pay your bail with gold?’

  ‘I can’t get it out,’ she whispered. ‘Not here. Not without a knife. It’s been sewn in.’

  Their faces were almost touching; he could smell the sweet aftertaste of opium, like a plummy shadow on her breath. He murmured, ‘Is it yours?’

  A desperate look flashed across her face. ‘What’s the difference? It’s money, isn’t it?’

  Shepard’s voice rang out from the corner. ‘Does the whore detain you, Mr. Gascoigne?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Gascoigne said. She released him and he straightened, taking a step away from her. He pulled his purse from his pocket as a way of feigning nonchalance, feigning purpose. He weighed the pouch in his hand.

  ‘You may remind Miss Wetherell that we do not take bail on promise,’ Shepard said. ‘Either she produces the money here and now, or she stays here until someone raises it for her.’

  Gascoigne studied Anna. He had no reason to
heed the woman’s request, or to believe that the hard plating he had felt around her corset was, as she claimed, gold. He knew that he ought to report her to the gaoler immediately, on the grounds that she had attempted to distract him from his duty. He ought to break apart her corset with the hunting knife he carried in his boot—for if she was carrying pure gold about her person, it surely did not belong to her. She was a whore. She had been detained for public intoxication. Her dress was filthy. She stank of opium, and there were purple shadows underneath her eyes.

  But Gascoigne surveyed her with compassion. His code was one of innate chivalry; he had a deep sympathy for people in desperate circumstances, and the wide-eyed anguish of her appeal had stirred both his compassion and his curiosity. Gascoigne believed that justice ought to be a synonym for mercy, not an alternative. He also believed that merciful action answered to instinct before it answered to any law. In a sudden rush of pity—for that emotion always came upon him as a flood—he was moved to meet the girl’s request, and to protect her.

  ‘Miss Wetherell,’ he said (he had not known her name before the gaoler used it), ‘your bail is set at one pound one shilling.’ He was holding his purse in his left hand, and his ledger in his right; now he made as if to transfer the ledger to the other hand, and, using the latter object as a shield, extracted two coins from his purse and tucked them against his palm. Then he transferred both purse and ledger to his right hand and held out his left, palm upward, with his thumb crossed across the palm. ‘Can you raise that sum from the money you have shown me in your corset?’ He spoke loudly and clearly, as if addressing a halfwit or a child.

  For a moment she didn’t understand. Then she nodded, reached her fingers down between the bones of her corset, and drew out nothing. She pressed her pinched fingers into Gascoigne’s hand; Gascoigne lifted his thumb, nodded, as if satisfied with the coins that had appeared there, and recorded the bail on the ledger. He dropped the coins audibly into his purse, and then moved on to the next prisoner.