The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  Gascoigne laughed again. ‘But gambling is a vice,’ he said. ‘A blemished apple is not a vice. Forgive me: I do not mean to be dreary, but it seems that your example—like your gambling wheel—is heavily weighted to favour your own position.’

  ‘Of course gambling is a vice,’ said the widow scornfully. ‘Of course it’s a terrible sin and a scourge and it ruins men and all the rest of it. What do I care about that? Try telling a grocer that you do not care for apples! No matter, he’ll tell you—there are plenty of others who like them just fine!’

  Gascoigne saluted her in the military style. ‘I am persuaded of your ability to persuade,’ he said. ‘You are a force to be reckoned with, Miss Lydia! I pity that poor fellow who won that jackpot—who had to come to you afterwards, and demand his winnings.’

  ‘Oh, yes … But I never paid out,’ said Lydia Wells.

  Gascoigne was incredulous. ‘You defaulted—on your own jackpot?’

  She tossed her head. ‘Who’s defaulting?’ she said. ‘I only gave him a second option. I told him that he could have the one hundred pounds in pure, or he could have me. Not as a whore,’ she said, seeing the look on Gascoigne’s face. ‘As a wife, silly. That was Crosbie. He made his choice. And you know which way he chose!’

  Gascoigne’s mouth had fallen open. ‘Crosbie Wells.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the widow. ‘We were married before the night was over. What, Aubert? I certainly didn’t have one hundred pounds to give away. I never dreamed the wheel would ever come to rest upon the bonanza—I had weighted it so that would never happen! I could hardly have made good. I would have ruined myself altogether. I would have been bankrupted. You cannot be shocked!’

  ‘I confess I am, a little,’ Gascoigne said—though his shock was of a most admiring kind. ‘Why—were you at all acquainted with the man?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘What modern notions you have.’

  Gascoigne blushed. ‘I did not mean that,’ he said, and then, rushing on, ‘Of course, if you were preventing your own financial ruin, as you say …’

  ‘We were terribly ill suited, of course, and within the month we could not stand the sight of one another. It was to be expected. Yes: it was the best that either of us could have expected, given the circumstances.’

  Gascoigne was wondering why the pair had not arranged a divorce, but he could not ask this question without offending the widow’s propriety, and merely nodded.

  ‘You see I am very modern about that,’ Lydia added. ‘You must agree with my circumspection on that score—to insist upon a separation, above a divorce! You have been married, Mr. Gascoigne.’

  He noticed the coquettish use of his family name, and smiled at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But let us not talk of the past; let us talk of the present, and the future, and all that lies ahead. Tell me about the conversions you will make to this hotel.’

  Lydia was pleased to be given the stage. She leaped to her feet, and, clasping her hands together in the pose of a chorister, stepped forward around the ottoman. Turning on her heel, she cast her gaze around the parlour—at the mullioned window; the thinly plastered walls; the threadbare Union Jack, no doubt salvaged from a wreck, which was tacked vertically to the wall that faced the window.

  ‘I will change the name, of course,’ she said. ‘It will no longer be the Wayfarer: it will be the Wayfarer’s Fortune.’

  ‘There’s a music in that.’

  This satisfied her. She took a few steps away from the sofa, and spread her arms. ‘I will have drapes—I cannot abide a room without drapes—and fainting-couches, in the modern style. In the drawing room there will be a cubicle with saloon doors, rather like a confessional—very like a confessional. The front parlour will be a waiting room of sorts. The séances I will conduct here, of course. Oh, I have every kind of idea. I will read fortunes, and draw up cosmic birth-charts, and play out the patterns of the Tarot. Upstairs … but what is this? You are still sceptical, Aubert!’

  ‘I am no longer a sceptic! I have recanted,’ said Gascoigne, reaching out to clasp her hand—a movement that was spurred partly because he was trying to smother a smile. (He was a sceptic, through and through, and he could not hear her roll the r of Tarot without wanting to burst with laughter.) Squeezing her hand, he added, ‘I should very much like to be rewarded for recanting.’

  ‘In this matter I am the expert, and you are the layman,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘You ought to remember that—no matter your poor opinion of realms.’

  Her arm was extended between them limply, as a lady extends her rings to be kissed, and Gascoigne repressed the urge to snatch it up, and kiss it.

  ‘You are right,’ he said, squeezing her hand again. ‘You are quite right.’

  He released her, and she moved away to the mantel.

  ‘I will reward you with a fact,’ she said, ‘but on the condition that you must take me very seriously—quite as seriously as you would take any other man.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gascoigne murmured, becoming solemn. He sat back.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Next month will be a month without a moon.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Gascoigne.

  ‘It will never wax completely full, is what I mean. February is a short month. There will be a full moon just prior to the first, and another just after the twenty-eighth—and so, no full moon in February.’

  Gascoigne smiled at her. ‘And does it fall so—every year?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lydia. ‘The phenomenon is very rare.’ She ran her finger along the plaster moulding.

  ‘Rare implies a value, does it not? Or a danger—?’

  ‘It happens only once every score of years,’ Lydia continued, straightening the carriage clock.

  ‘And what does it prophesy, Miss Lydia—a month without a moon?’

  Lydia Wells turned to him, and placed her hands upon her hips. ‘If you give me a shilling,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you.’

  Gascoigne laughed. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t yet have proof of your expertise. I shall have to test you before I part with any money, or anything else that belongs to this realm. The cloud will be down tonight—but I will check the Monday papers, and look up the tides.’

  The widow gazed at him, impenetrably. ‘I’m not mistaken,’ she said. ‘I’ve an almanac, and I am very skilled at reading it. The moon is waxing now, above the cloud. It will be full by Monday night, and on Tuesday it will begin to wane. Next month will be a month without a moon.’

  CONJUNCTIONS

  In which poor impressions are restored; the invitations multiply; and the past rolls forward to touch the present hour.

  The Reverend Cowell Devlin had remained in the dining room of the Palace Hotel until the middle hours of the afternoon, whereupon he began to feel thick-headed and slow, and his reading ceased to be profitable. Judging himself to be in need of fresh air, he drained his coffee, stowed his pamphlets, paid his bill, turned his collar up against the rain, and set off along the beachfront, heading north. The afternoon sun was bright above the cloud, lending to the scene a silvery glow that leached the sea of colour and picked out points of white light in the sand. The very raindrops seemed to shimmer in the air; the wind, blowing chill from the ocean, carried with it a pleasant, rusty smell. All this did much to dispel Devlin’s torpor, and in very little time at all he was red-cheeked and smiling, his wide-brimmed hat clamped tight to his head with the palm of his hand. He decided to make the most of his perambulation, and return to Hokitika via the high terrace of Seaview: the site of the future Hokitika Gaol, and Devlin’s own future residence.

  Upon gaining the crest of the hill he turned, panting slightly, and was surprised to see that he was being pursued. A young man, clad only in a twill shirt and trousers, both of which were plastered wetly to his body, was ascending the track to the terrace at a great pace. The man’s head was down, and he was not immediately identifiable; it was not until he came within twenty yards of Devlin that the lat
ter recognised him. Why, he thought, it was the man from the Arahura Valley: the Maori man, friend of the late Crosbie Wells.

  Cowell Devlin had not trained as a missionary, and had not journeyed to New Zealand for that purpose. It had been quite to his surprise when he discovered that the New Testament had been translated into Maori some twenty years prior to his arrival; he was even more astonished to learn that the translation was available for public purchase at the stationer’s on George-street in Dunedin, at a very reasonable price. Turning the pages of the translated document, Devlin had wondered how the holy message had been simplified, and at what cost. The unfamiliar words in their truncated alphabet seemed infantile to him, composed of repeating syllables and babble—unrecognisable, like the nonsense of a child. But in the next moment Devlin chastised himself; for what was his own Bible, but a translation of another kind? He ought not to be so hasty, or so prideful. In penance for his unvoiced doubt he took out his pocketbook and made a careful note of some key verses from the Maori text. He aroha te Atua. E Aroha ana tatou ki a ia, no te ea ko ia kua matua aroha ki a tatou. Ko Ahau te huarahi, te pono, te ora. Hone 14:6, he wrote, and then, marvelling, from the epistles of Paora. The translator had even changed the names.

  The Maori man looked up; seeing Devlin standing on the ridge above him, he stopped, and from a distance of several yards they regarded each other, saying nothing.

  A sudden gust of wind flattened the tussock around where Devlin stood, blowing his hair back from his temples. ‘Good afternoon,’ he called.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ returned the other, squinting slightly.

  ‘I see that we are neither of us deterred by a spot of foul weather!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The view is rather compromised; that’s the only shame,’ Devlin added, throwing out his arm to include the shrouded vista before them. ‘It seems that we might be anywhere on earth, when the clouds come down—do you not think? I fancy that when they clear again, we shall find ourselves in an altogether different place!’

  The terrace of Seaview, aptly named, had a singular prospect of the ocean, which, from this height, was a featureless expanse, a fat band of uniform colour, with the sky a lighter shade of the same. The shoreline was not visible from the terrace, owing to the steepness of the cliff below—the edge gave out abruptly into a scree of loose stones and clay—and the blankness of this vista, trisected into earth, water, air, with no trees to interrupt the level, and no contour to soften the shape of the land, alarmed one’s senses to the point that one was soon compelled to turn one’s back upon the ocean altogether, and to face the eastern mountains instead—which were obscured, today, by a shifting curtain of white cloud. Below the terrace, the clustered roofs of Hokitika gave way to the wide brown plain of the Hokitika River and the grey curve of the spit; beyond the river, the coastline bore away southward, blurring with haze and distance until it was swallowed absolutely by the mist.

  ‘It is a good vantage,’ said the Maori man.

  ‘It most certainly is; though I must say that I have yet to come across a view I did not like, in this country.’ Devlin descended several steps, thrusting out his hand. ‘Here: my name is Cowell Devlin. I’m afraid I don’t remember yours.’

  ‘Te Rau Tauwhare.’

  ‘Te Rau Tauwhare,’ Devlin repeated solemnly. ‘How do you do.’

  Tauwhare was not familiar with this idiom, and paused to puzzle over it; while he was doing so, Devlin went on. ‘You were a very good friend of Crosbie Wells, I remember.’

  ‘His only friend,’ Tauwhare corrected.

  ‘Ah: but even to have one good friend, a man should count himself lucky.’

  Tauwhare did not respond to this at once. After a moment he said, ‘I taught him korero Maori.’

  Devlin nodded. ‘You shared your language. You shared the stories of your people. It is a fine friendship that is built from that kind of stone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You called Crosbie Wells your brother,’ Devlin went on. ‘I remember it: you spoke the very word, that night at the Police Camp—the night before his body was interred.’

  ‘It is a figure of speech.’

  ‘Yes, it is—but the sentiment behind it is very fine. Why did you say it, if not to say, simply, that you cared for the man, and loved him, as you would love your own? “Brother” is another word for love, I think. The love we choose to give—and gladly.’

  Tauwhare thought about this, and then said, ‘Some brothers you cannot choose.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Devlin. ‘No indeed. We cannot choose our blood, can we? We cannot choose our families. Yes: you draw a nice distinction there. Very nice.’

  ‘And within a family,’ Tauwhare went on, encouraged by this praise, ‘two brothers can be very different men.’

  Devlin laughed. ‘Right again,’ he said. ‘Brothers can be very unalike. I had only sisters, you know. Four sisters—and all of them older. They made quite a pet of me.’ He paused, meaning to give Tauwhare the opportunity to volunteer information about his own family, but Tauwhare only repeated his observation about brothers a second time, seeming well pleased with his own perspicacity.

  ‘I wonder, Te Rau, if I might ask you something about Crosbie Wells,’ said Devlin suddenly.

  For he had not forgotten the story that he had overheard, that morning, in the dining room of the Palace Hotel. The politician Alistair Lauderback had been convinced, for some mysterious reason, that the late Crosbie Wells and the blackmailer Francis Carver had been brothers, despite the fact that they did not appear to share a name; why Lauderback believed this, however, he had refused to say. Perhaps Tauwhare, as Wells’s great friend, knew something about it.

  Tauwhare was frowning. ‘Do not ask me about the fortune,’ he said. ‘I know nothing of the fortune. I have been questioned already, by the Magistrate, and by the police, and by the keeper of the gaol. I do not want to give my answers another time.’

  ‘Oh no—I’m not interested in the fortune,’ Devlin said. ‘I wanted to ask you about a man named Carver. Francis Carver.’

  Tauwhare stiffened. ‘Why?’

  ‘I heard that he was an old acquaintance of Mr. Wells’s. Apparently there’s some unfinished business between the two of them. Something—criminal.’

  Tauwhare said nothing. His eyes were narrowed.

  ‘Do you know anything about it?’ Devlin said.

  When, on the morning of the 14th of January, Te Rau Tauwhare had told Francis Carver, for a price of two shillings, where Crosbie Wells was living, he had not felt as though he were placing his friend in any kind of danger. The offer itself was not unusual, and nor was the manner of its expression. Men often offered rewards for news of fellows who had been lost upon the goldfields: not only brothers, but fathers, uncles, sons, debtors, partners, and mates. There was the missing persons page in the newspaper, of course, but not every digger could read, and still fewer had the time or the inclination to keep abreast of the daily news. It was cheaper, and sometimes more efficient, to offer a reward by word of mouth instead. Tauwhare collected his two shillings quite happily; when, later that same evening, he saw Carver approach Wells’s cottage, knock, and enter, it did not occur to him to be suspicious. He decided that he would sleep the night on the ridge beside his snares, so that Carver and Wells might conduct their reunion in private. He assumed that Carver was an old associate from Wells’s years in Dunedin, and did not speculate beyond this assumption.

  The following morning, however, Wells was found dead; on the day of his funeral, a phial of laudanum was discovered under his cot; some days after that, it was revealed that Carver’s ship, the Godspeed, had departed on the night of the 14th of January, off schedule, and under the cover of darkness. Tauwhare was horrified. All evidence seemed to point to the fact that Francis Carver had played a part in the hermit’s death—and if this was true, then it was Te Rau Tauwhare who had equipped him with the means to do so, by telling him explicitly where Wells could be found! Still more horr
ible: he had received payment for his betrayal.

  Tauwhare’s sense of self-mastery, integral to his self-conception, did not permit unwitting action. The knowledge that he had betrayed his friend for money was deeply shaming to him, and this shame manifested as a disgusted outrage that was directed both inward and outward at once. He spent the days following Wells’s burial in a very black humour, grinding his teeth, pulling on his forelock, and cursing Francis Carver with every step.

  Devlin’s inquiry prompted a renewal of this ill humour. Tauwhare’s eyes flashed, and his chin lifted. ‘If there is unfinished business between them,’ he said angrily, ‘it is finished now.’

  ‘Of course,’ Devlin said, raising his palms to pacify the other man’s temper, ‘but here: I heard a rumour somewhere that they were brothers. Crosbie Wells and Carver. It might only be a figure of speech, as you put it, but I wanted to make sure.’

  Tauwhare was bewildered by this; to cover his bewilderment, he scowled at the chaplain very darkly.

  ‘Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘No,’ Tauwhare said, spitting out the word.

  ‘Wells never mentioned a man named Carver to you?’

  ‘No.’

  Devlin, perceiving that Tauwhare’s mood had soured, decided to try a different approach. ‘How did Crosbie Wells get on, then—learning Maori?’

  ‘Not as good as my English,’ said Tauwhare.

  ‘That I do not doubt! Your English is extremely good.’