The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  Mannering slapped the table. ‘There you have it. You’re sitting on a pile of ready money, and you haven’t spent a single penny in four weeks. Why? What’s your story?’

  Staines did not answer immediately. ‘I have always considered,’ he said at last, ‘that there is a great deal of difference between keeping one’s own secret, and keeping a secret for another soul; so much so that I wish we had two words, that is, a word for a secret of one’s own making, and a word for a secret that one did not make, and perhaps did not wish for, but has chosen to keep, all the same. I feel the same about love; that there is a world of difference between the love that one gives—or wants to give—and the love that one desires, or receives.’

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then Mannering said, gruffly, ‘What you’re telling me is that this isn’t the whole picture.’

  ‘Luck is never the whole picture,’ said Staines.

  AQUARIUS & SATURN

  In which Sook Yongsheng, having recently taken up residence in Kaniere Chinatown, journeys into Hokitika to outfit himself with various items of hardware, where he is observed by the gaoler George Shepard, known to him as the brother of the man he had been accused of having murdered, and also, as the husband of that man’s true murderer, Margaret.

  Margaret Shepard stood in the doorway of the hardware store, waiting for her husband to complete his purchases and pay; Sook Yongsheng, though not eight feet distant from her, was shielded from her view by the dry goods cabinet. Shepard, coming around the side of the cabinet, saw him first. He stopped at once, and his expression hardened; in a voice that was quite ordinary, however, he said,

  ‘Margaret.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.

  ‘Go back to the camp,’ said Shepard, without taking his eyes from Sook Yongsheng. ‘At once.’

  She did not ask why; mutely she turned and fled. When the door had slammed shut behind her, Shepard’s right hand moved, very slowly, to rest upon his holster. In his left hand he was holding a paper sack containing a roll of paper, two hinges, a ball of twine, and a box of bugle-headed nails. Sook Yongsheng was kneeling by the paraffin cans, making some kind of calculation on his fingers; he had placed his parcels beside him on the floor.

  Shepard was aware, dimly, that the atmosphere in the store had become very still. From somewhere behind him someone said, ‘Is there a problem, sir?’

  Shepard did not answer at once. Then he said, ‘I will take these.’ He held up the paper sack, and waited; after a moment he heard whispering, and then tentative footsteps approaching, and then the sack was lifted from his hand. Nearly a minute passed. Sook Yongsheng continued counting; he did not look up. Then the same voice said, almost in a whisper, ‘That will be a shilling sixpence, sir.’

  ‘Charge it to the gaol-house,’ Shepard said.

  JUPITER’S LONG REIGN

  In which Alistair Lauderback, believing his half-brother Crosbie Wells to be the half-brother, on his mother’s side, of the blackguard Francis Carver, and believing, consequently, that Crosbie Wells had been in some way complicit in the blackmail under which he, Lauderback, surrendered his beloved barque Godspeed, is perplexed to receive a letter with a Hokitika postmark, the contents of which make clear that his apprehension has been quite false, a revelation that prompts him, after a great deal of solemn contemplation, to write a letter of his own.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that the renewed correspondence of Mr. Crosbie Wells comprised the sole reason for Alistair Lauderback’s decision to run for the Westland seat in Parliament; the letter did serve, however, to tip the scales in the district’s favour. Lauderback read the letter through six times, then, sighing, tossed it onto his desk, and lit his pipe.

  West Canterbury. June 1865

  Sir you will notice from my postmark that I am no longer a resident of the province of Otago but have ‘upped my sticks’ as the saying goes. You most likely have had little cause to venture west of the mountains so I shall tell you that West Canterbury is a world apart from the grasses of the South. The sunrise over the coastline is a scarlet marvel & the snowy peaks hold the colour of the sky. The bush is wet & tangled & the water very white. It is a lonely place though not quiet for the birdsong is constant & very pleasant for its constancy. As you may have guessed already I have put my former life behind me. I am estranged from my wife. I ought to tell you that I concealed much in my correspondence with you fearing that if you knew the bitter truth you might think less of me. I shall not trouble you with the details of my escape to this place for it is a sorry tale & one that saddens me to recall. I am twice bitten three times shy which is a less admirable ratio than other men can boast but suffice to say that I have learned my lesson. Enough upon that subject instead I shall speak about the present & the future. I mean to dig for gold no longer though West Canterbury is flush with colour & men are making fortunes every day. No I will not prospect & have my fortune stolen once again. Instead I shall try my hand at the timber trade. I have made a fine acquaintance of a Maori man Terou Tow-Faray. This name in his native tongue means ‘The Hundred House of Years’. What poor names we British fellows have compared to these! I fancy it might be a line from a poem. Tow-Faray is a noble savage of the first degree & we are fast becoming friends. I confess it lifts my spirits to be in the companionship of men again.

  Yours &c,

  CROSBIE WELLS

  INHERENT DIGNITY

  In which Emery Staines pays a call upon Anna Wetherell at the Gridiron Hotel, where he begs her, after some preamble, to narrate her version of Crosbie Wells’s escape; and Anna, made curious by the urgency and frankness of his appeal, sees no reason not to recount the tale in full.

  Emery Staines did not recognise the dress that Anna was wearing as one of the five that he had been charged to safeguard, pistol in hand, at the Hawthorn Hotel on the afternoon of the 12th of May. It did strike him, when he first appraised her, that the garment fit her rather oddly—it had clearly been tailored for a woman much more buxom than she—but he put the thought aside just as quickly. They greeted one another warmly, but with mutual uncertainty, and after an awkward pause Anna invited him into the parlour, where they sat down on the straight-backed chairs that faced the hearth.

  ‘Miss Wetherell,’ said Staines at once, ‘there’s something I would like to ask you—something terribly impertinent—and you must knock me back at once if—if you don’t want to give an answer—if you do not want to indulge me, I should say—for whatever reason at all.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Anna—and then she drew a breath, as if to steel herself, and turned her face away.

  ‘What is it?’ said Staines, drawing back.

  Abruptly she rose from her chair and crossed the room; she stood a moment, breathing deeply, her face turned towards the wall. ‘It’s stupid,’ she said thickly. ‘It’s stupid. Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right in a moment.’

  Staines had risen also, in astonishment. ‘Have I offended you?’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry if I have—but what is the matter? Whatever can be the matter?’

  Anna wiped her face with her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still without turning. ‘It came as a surprise, that’s all—but I was stupid to think otherwise. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘What has come as a surprise?’ said Staines. ‘What’s otherwise?’

  ‘Only that you—’

  ‘Yes? Please tell me—so that I can put it right. Please.’

  She composed herself at last and turned. ‘You may ask your question,’ she said, managing a smile.

  ‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Anna said. ‘Please ask.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Staines. ‘Here. It’s about a man named Crosbie Wells.’

  Anna’s expression of misery dissolved into one of shock. ‘Crosbie Wells?’

  ‘He is a mutual friend of ours, I think. At least—that is to say—he has my loyalty; I am under the impression that he also has yours.’
>
  She did not reply; after squinting at him a moment she said, ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that exactly,’ said Staines. ‘He charged me to keep it a secret—his whereabouts, I mean; and the circumstances of our having met. But he mentioned your name in connexion with a gold nugget, and a man named Francis Carver, and a robbery of some kind; and if you don’t think me too impertinent—which I am; I know I am—then I should very much like to hear the whole story. I can’t say that it’s a matter of life or death, because it isn’t, and I can’t say that very much depends on my knowing, because really, nothing at all depends on it; except that I’ve gone into a kind of partnership with Mr. Carver—I was a fool to do it; I know that now—and I’ve got the sense, the awful sense, that I was wrong about him; that he’s a villain after all.’

  ‘Is he here?’ she said. ‘Crosbie. Is he in Hokitika?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Staines.

  Her hands had moved to her belly. ‘You don’t need to tell me where he is,’ she said. ‘But I need you to take him a message. An important message—from me.’

  THE ASCENDANT

  In which Te Rau Tauwhare declines to mention Francis Carver’s name to Crosbie Wells, much less to describe the circumstances of their brief interaction one month prior, an omission that owes in equal parts to a deeply private nature and to a certain cunning when it comes to financial profit; the next time he sees Francis Carver, Tauwhare thinks, he will make an easy shilling, perhaps more.

  Crosbie Wells had bought four panes of glass for a quartered window, but he had yet to cut the hole, and set the sill; for the moment, the panes were propped against the wall, reflecting, faintly, the flickering lamplight, and the square grating of the stove.

  ‘I knew a man who lost an arm in the floods at Dunstan,’ Wells was saying. He was lying on his bolster, a bottle of spirits on his chest; Tauwhare sat opposite, nursing a bottle of his own. ‘Got caught in a rapid, you see, and his arm got trapped, and they couldn’t save it. He had a plain name. Smith or Stone or something like that. Anyway—the point is—he talked of it afterwards, the incident, and his real sorrow, he said, was that the arm he’d lost had been tattooed. A full-rigged ship was the picture—a present to himself, after coming round the Horn—and it bothered him extremely that he’d lost it. For some reason it stayed with me—that story. Losing a tattoo. I asked him if he mightn’t just tattoo the other arm, but he was strange about it. I’ll never do that, he said. I’ll never do it.’

  ‘It is painful,’ said Tauwhare. ‘Ta moko.’

  Wells looked over at him. ‘Is it sometimes a shock,’ he said, ‘to see yourself? After you haven’t been near a looking glass in a while, I mean. Do you forget?’

  ‘No,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Never.’ His face was shadowed; the lamplight accented the lines around his mouth, giving his expression a hawkish, solemn look.

  ‘I think I would.’

  ‘We have a saying,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Taia a moko hei hoa matenga mou.’

  ‘I cut a man’s face with a knife,’ Wells said, still staring at him. ‘Gave him a scar. Right here. Eye to mouth. It bled like anything. Did yours bleed like anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever killed a man, Tauwhare?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ said Wells, turning back to his bottle. ‘Nor have I.’

  SATURN IN VIRGO

  In which Quee Long brings a complaint before the law, and George Shepard, whose personal hatred of Sook Yongsheng has grown, over time, to include all Chinese men, declines to honour it, an injustice for which he does not, either then, or afterwards, feel any compunction.

  ‘I do not understand what you are saying.’

  Ah Quee sighed. He pointed a third time to his certificate of indenture, which lay between them on Shepard’s desk. In the box marked ‘present site of employment’ was written the word Aurora.

  ‘Duffer,’ he explained. ‘Aurora is duffer claim.’

  ‘The Aurora is a duffer claim, and you work the Aurora, yes. That much I understand.’

  ‘Mannering,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Mannering make duffer not duffer.’

  ‘Mannering make duffer not duffer,’ Shepard repeated.

  ‘Very good,’ said Ah Quee, nodding. ‘Very bad man.’

  ‘Which is he—very good or very bad?’

  Ah Quee frowned; then he said, ‘Very bad man.’

  ‘How does he make the duffer not a duffer? How? How?’

  Ah Quee took his purse and held it up. Moving very deliberately, so that the action would not be lost on Shepard, he extracted a silver penny, which he then transferred to his left pocket. He waited a moment, and then he took the penny from his pocket, and returned it to his purse, as before.

  Shepard sighed. ‘Mr. Quee,’ he said. ‘I see that the term of your indenture will not expire for some years; the term of my patience, however, reached its expiration some minutes ago. I have neither the resources nor the inclination to launch an investigation into Mr. Mannering’s finances on the strength of a half-articulated tip. I suggest you return to the Aurora, and count yourself lucky that you have any kind of work at all.’

  JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS

  In which Alistair Lauderback, having now officially announced his intention to run for the Westland seat in the Fourth New Zealand Parliament, an ambition that, in addition to furthering his already illustrious political career, will take him over the Alps to Westland proper in the coming months, thus granting the interview his bastard brother has so long desired, now turns his mind to practical matters, or, more accurately, entreats an old associate to turn his mind to practical matters on his, Lauderback’s, behalf.

  Akaroa. 22 Aug.

  My dear Tom—

  I expect you know already of my ambition to run for the Westland seat; but if this news comes as a surprise to you, I have enclosed an article from the Lyttelton Times that explains the announcement, and my reasons for it, in more detail than I have time for here. You can be sure that I am eager to see the fine sights of West Canterbury with my own eyes. I plan to arrive in Hokitika by 15 January, an estimate dependent upon weather, as I will make the journey overland, rather than by sea, in order to follow and inspect the future Christchurch-road. I prefer to travel light, as you know; I have arranged for a trunk of personal effects to be transferred from Lyttelton in the last days of December. Might the Virtue collect the trunk in Dunedin prior to her departure on the 10th of January, and convey it to the Coast? As a West Canterbury foreigner I shall defer to your expertise on questions of Hokitika lodging, dining, coach hire, club membership &c. I trust fully in your good taste and capability, and remain,

  Yours, &c.,

  A. LAUDERBACK

  MOON IN LEO, NEW

  In which Mannering, driving Anna Wetherell to Kaniere, perceives in her a new quality, a hardness, a kind of distance; an observation that moves him, internally, to pity, though when he speaks, some three miles after this observation is first made, it is not to console her, the intervening miles having wrought in him a hardness of his own.

  ‘Misery won’t do. Misery is bad for business, whatever the business. A man won’t bet on it, and a man won’t bet against it—and it has to be one or the other, you see, in our line of work. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘I see.’

  He was driving her to Chinatown, where Ah Sook was waiting with his resin and his pipe.

  ‘I’ve never had a girl murdered, and I’ve never had a girl beat,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘So you can trust me,’ he said.

  SUN IN LEO

  In which Staines confides in Mannering to the extent that he admits regret in having entered into a sponsorship agreement with Mr. Francis Carver, explaining that the initial opinion that he, Staines, formed of Carver’s character and history was and is grievously in error, his opinion now being that Carver is a villain of the first degree, and one not
at all deserving of good fortune; to which Mannering, chuckling slightly, proposes a somewhat thrilling, because dastardly, solution.

  ‘There’s only one true crime upon a goldfield,’ said Mannering to Staines as they stamped through the undergrowth towards the southern edge of the Aurora claim. ‘Don’t you bother your head about murder, or theft, or treason. No: it’s fraud that’s the crime of crimes. Making sport of a digger’s hopes, you see, and a digger’s hopes are all he has. Digger fraud has two varieties. Salting a claim is the first. Crying a duffer is the second.’

  ‘Which is considered to be the more grievous?’

  ‘Depends on what you call grievous,’ said Mannering, swiping away a vine. ‘Salt a claim and get caught, you might get murdered in your bed; cry a duffer and get caught, you’re liable to get lynched. Cold-blooded, hot-blooded. That’s your choice.’

  Staines smiled. ‘Am I to do business with a cold-blooded man?’

  ‘You can decide for yourself,’ said Mannering, throwing out his arm. ‘Here it is: the Aurora.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Staines, stopping also. They were both panting slightly from the walk. ‘Well—very good.’

  They surveyed the land together. Staines perceived a Chinese man, squatting some thirty yards distant, his panning dish loose in his hands.

  ‘What’s the opposite of a homeward-bounder?’ said Mannering presently. ‘A never-going-homer? A stick-it-to-Mr.-Carver?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Staines.

  ‘That’s Quee,’ said Mannering. ‘He’ll stay on.’

  Staines dropped his voice. ‘Does he know?’

  Mannering laughed. ‘“Does he know?” What have I just told you? I’m not keen on getting murdered in my bed, thank you.’