The Last Bookaneer (14 page)

Davenport threw a grin in my direction. “Teller of tales,” he echoed.

Not long after, the halls were pierced with a strange howling noise. There was a pause, then it rang out again.

“What is that?” I asked after noticing Charlie was reluctant to speak.

He whispered to us with a very different tone, one of trepidation: “
Tusitala
.”

The awful noise—which reached our ears once more—was kind of like how I'd imagine the war whoop of your nation's backwoods Indians. Servants ran from all directions and entered from outside, chasing the sound.

“I'm very sorry for him,” Charlie mumbled. “He does not know what is in store.”

“Who doesn't?” Davenport asked.

The attendant's eyes widened with fright. “Whoever did wrong to Tusitala.”

Charlie joined the stream of servants and we both followed. The natives had collected inside a small, dimly lit room entered through the library, a chamber we would later hear referred to as the master's den or sanctum. Each took his or her place sitting on the floor, forming a semicircle around a narrow bed. Charlie threw a look back that cautioned us not to come closer, so we remained in the library.

Leaning my body toward the French doors, I could see arms, long and gaunt as oars, of the man who was sitting up in bed, wrapped in what appeared to be shawls and blankets, and propped up by pillows. Though his face was obscured from view, I knew at once it was him. That is one thing about Stevenson. Even a fingertip of his was unmistakable. In a pitch-dark room, one would surely
feel
his presence before ever seeing him.

I could also see the profile of Fanny standing by the bed, guarding him like some enchanted dragon beside a medieval king.

Stevenson began a prayer in English, his voice sonorous, commanding. “Our God, look down upon us and shine into our hearts. Help us to be far from falsehood so that each of us may stand before thy face in his integrity.”

The rest of the bizarre session was conducted in the native tongue. Each servant came up to the bed and placed his or her hand on a Bible, which Stevenson gripped with his long fingers, then repeated the very serious and absurd oath stated by their master.

We found Charlie later that day, and he translated the refrain best he could remember: “This is the Holy Bible here that I am touching. Behold me, O God! If I knew who it was that took away the pig or the place to which the stolen pig was taken, or have heard anything relating to the pig, and shall not declare the same—be made an end of by God this life of mine!”

Even before we knew what the words meant, I could make out enough to know that the ritual ensnared a bowlegged young man who trembled and stammered when it came to his turn to recite. After a brief exchange, the bowleg confessed to having eaten the missing pig in question.

“Fiaali'i,” Stevenson intoned after the culprit groveled for forgiveness, the master now switching to English, “your wish to eat was greater than your wish to be a gentleman. You have shown a bad heart and your sin is a great one, not for the pig—I hope you know the damn pig counts as naught—but because you have been false to your Vailima family. It is easy to say that you are sorry, that you wish you were dead: but that is no answer. We have lost far more than food meant for Lloyd's birthday. We have lost our trust in you, which used to be so great, our confidence in your loyalty. See how many bad things have resulted from your first sin? You have hurt all our hearts here, not because of the pig, but because we are ashamed and mortified before the world. I am not your father. I am not your chief. The belly is your chief!”

Lloyd Osbourne would make an offhand remark during our stay in Samoa, capped by the philosophical shrug of his, that I cannot help but recall as I think of that scene we witnessed. “This, Fergus,” he said to me of Vailima, “is the only place where you will ever see Samoans run.”

 • • • 

I
T WAS A BURNING
HOT DAY
on our next call to Vailima. Sitting in the great hall felt like being inside a volcano. A little native girl was fanning one side of Belle's face with a beautiful span of crimson feathers, while Belle fanned her other cheek with a Japanese-style fan. She mentioned to us that her stepfather had been out on the grounds before our arrival but now, yet again, had retreated to the seclusion of his sanctum. I could see Davenport was trying his best to appear unmoved by our continuing bad luck. The more time went on without developing some kind of relationship with Stevenson, the harder it would be to invent excuses to keep calling on them, and I knew he worried that our invitations would run dry before he had a chance to ingratiate himself with the writer.

“It is a hard and unexciting life. Most times the only people there are to talk to around here are the domestics,” Belle complained, her plump pink lips puckered. “And they hardly speak English.”

“New faces must be a welcome sight, then,” Davenport ventured, perhaps hoping she would be our way of ensuring the continuation of our visits.

She looked him up and down, studying him with as much interest and doubt as when she had first met us. “Sometimes,” she said with so little inflection, it might have come from Davenport himself.

Fanny was bent over the spotless but dusty fireplace smoking a cigarette. I still had to swallow down my horror at the sight of the wife of one of the world's greatest novelists smoking in a public room.

“Unexciting?” I wriggled into the conversation. “It seems there is no lack of excitement here, Miss Strong.”

“Yes,” she answered, taking a long puff from a cigarette. “For instance, when I found my husband had taken his opium and his native wife to the other side of the island. The ape, the disgusting ape, the foppish little drunken ape.”

“I see,” I surrendered.

“If you brought Austin home from school, you would be less lonely. A boy should be with his mother.”

“Even when the mother is as miserable as I am?” Belle replied to Fanny, then I swear the two women blew smoke at each other.

“Mrs. Stevenson,” Davenport said, “how long did it take to build this fine home?”

“Oh, quite long.”

It was like that between Davenport and Fanny Stevenson. He tried to nurture conversation with her, but she gave him nothing in return. She never told him to call her Fanny. Belle soon felt so warm she would not say more than a word or two at a time. After rolling his own cigarette, which I knew he despised, and smoking a little, Davenport looked over at the piano and said something horrifying.

“My dear Fergins,” he began without looking my way, “why not play a song for us?”

“What?”

“I'm sure the ladies would appreciate a distraction from the heat,” he said. “Mr. Fergins is often asked to play at parties and such. Go on now, Fergins.”

“Please do, Mr. Fergins,” Fanny encouraged me.

“It took eleven of the brown boys eight hours to carry that awful heavy thing up here on poles,” Belle added, always the first to describe any difficulty. “Of course, nobody here plays except me, and I am simply terrible. You must, Mr. Fergins.”

Lloyd patted me on the back and helped me up. I stood there.

“We're waiting,” Davenport said.

“What would I play?” I asked, barely concealing my misery.

“The latest from London,” came the ridiculous answer from the bookaneer.

I had perhaps been asked to play at a party once or twice in my life, so
often
was a considerable hyperbole, and my answer when asked would have been a resounding no. I had not played a note in more than two years. I walked over to the old piano, cased in black ivory, and sat on the bench. I tell you I was so troubled by the idea of playing in front of this room of languid, sweaty Bohemians that I closed my eyes as I played. The keys were cold and stiff against my unwilling fingers and I felt myself wanting to melt atom by atom and disappear into the tropical air.

When I stopped, there was some discordant clapping. This sent a flood of fresh humiliation through me.

“More, Mr. Fergins,” said Fanny with a big, loose grin. She was my advocate in all things.

“I mustn't,” I said, stepping away from the bench to make it final.

Then I heard the slower clapping of a newcomer.

“Excellent. Better than a dig in the eye with a sharp stick, anyway.” Stevenson was looking at me with those all-seeing wide-set eyes from the entrance into the room. “The new men. I remember you. Have you not been served a drink? Even our houseboys are wilting today. I will get it for you myself. A lemon drink, or something stronger?”

I could only bring myself to repeat, “Lemon drink?” He took my question as an answer and returned a few minutes later.

The novelist wore a remarkable costume: a tight-fitting flannel shirt revealing his excessively thin and long arms, and white flannel trousers, which were rolled up and tucked into one brown wool sock and one purple, which had holes, revealing the pale flesh of the bottom of his feet when he walked across the room.

“How about we start a fire?” he asked as he brought me the drink, and handed another to Davenport.

“Too hot,” came the retort from wife and stepdaughter.

“Yes,” said Stevenson, his face falling with disappointment. “Today is probably too hot. Mr. . . .”

“Fergins,” Davenport answered for me.

“Yes, that's right. Englishman. Mr. Fergins, pray humor us with some more music. Something classic this time.”

I can hardly explain the effect of a direct command from this otherworldly man, but there I was, planting my backside again right on the piano bench, where I had sworn to myself mere moments before I would never return were my life dependent on it, my fingers fumbling into position as I tried to remember a Strauss waltz I was once taught by a piano master in exchange for a rare copy of Longfellow's first published volume. Stevenson kept time with the song by picking at one end of his mustache with his finger and thumb, swinging a limp cigarette caught between his lips.

 • • • 

S
TEVENSON DID NOT STAY
in the room very long that morning, but before he exited he bid us to come again soon. Davenport was as pleased on our ride home as a child with a new toy.

“I never knew you played piano, Fergins.”

“That is because I absolutely do not, or at least certainly not well enough to play for anyone but my nieces, who are by now better than I am at eight and ten years old. If you didn't know, why on earth did you ask me to play?”

“Because I had a line of thought, while we were sitting there languishing in the stillness and heat in that big room. They have wallowed in the South Seas for a few years. They are musically inclined enough to have a piano, not an everyday object on this island, and I have heard a kind of flute in the house that I suspected might be played by Stevenson—since I heard it in the presence of each other family member. Not played well, mind you. Nor did you have to play anything well—and you did not—as long as it was something new. New for them, I mean, having been gone for so long. I thought that in a place like this, novelty might be enough. I do not play a note, and supposed a thorough English gentleman like yourself might. You should be proud, Fergins!”

“Humiliated,” I said quietly. “That's what I should be. Am.”

“Oh?” Davenport replied as though the point were irrelevant.

Of course, my concern for my own dignity
was
irrelevant here. We had been brought back to Stevenson's attention, which meant the real campaign to find the manuscript could begin. Davenport was so pleased with me that he volunteered an answer to a question from days before. “You had asked me whether I ever wanted to be a writer. . . .” But I do not want to forget my place in the story, so remind me to return to that.

We would learn that as easily as Fanny Stevenson alternated between smiles and sighs, Robert Louis Stevenson alternated between reclusive and public periods, and it seemed around this time he had entered one of his more public moods. When we next went to Vailima, we came upon the novelist and John Chinaman—as the attendant was called whom we met with Stevenson at the stream—clearing an area of tangled brush at the entrance to the property. As before, John followed Stevenson several paces behind, watching without actually helping. Stevenson was covered in mud and dust and carrying his own tools.

When we reached the front verandah, Stevenson let out one of his war whoops, this time serving to call his family and natives over to see to us. Despite the fact that the Vailima servants saw the man every day, they gaped at the gaunt, earth-encrusted, long-legged novelist when he passed, as though he were one of the island's gods.

“It is time for 'ava,” he said to us with a grin.

We sat crossed-legged in a semicircle on the large front verandah, joined by Fanny and Belle.

I discovered now why Fanny Stevenson was so keen on having an English bookseller in her company. She seemed to think I could convince him to return to civilization.

“Oh, Mr. Fergins has been telling me with what reverence you would be greeted in London or Edinburgh,” she said as the servants passed out lemonade and cookies. “He knows the sympathies of the public as well as anyone. Tell him, Mr. Fergins.”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, I oughtn't try to claim—”

“Tell him exactly what you told me, Mr. Fergins.”

I repeated my assessment—King Arthur and Avalon, Dickens and Wordsworth, the English language come alive.

Stevenson seemed unaffected. “Barkis worries what the politicians think of me being here, with the British consulate on the island always wrestled into submission by the Germans, who have the most firepower and money,” he said without looking at me. “Barkis,” he called, repeating his curious pet address for his wife. Nobody ever bothered to explain it to us, so I assume it was inspired by Dickens's famous line “Barkis is willing,” now applied to Fanny's rather amazing willingness to follow the writer to the ends of the earth. “Barkis, my dear fellow, do not concern yourself with politicians. I once thought meanly of the plumber, but how he shines beside today's politician.”