The Last Bookaneer (30 page)

B
y the time I had returned to Davenport, I could hardly keep from talking over my own sentences, there was so much I needed to say—I suppose the same is true as I recount the story to you now. I told him how the letter had been written on the other side of a page ripped from a book, which, as it turned out, was a page from a Bible. Whiskey Bill's Bible.

“As best I can remember, Davenport,” I said, “the letter began like this.” I recited:

My dear Mr. Stephenson
(I interrupted myself here to explain to Davenport that any letter spelling Stevenson with “ph” was usually torn up without reading any further, but for some reason the novelist made an exception),
justly celebrated author, sir,

I write to warn you of two visitors to expect to Samoa, or who have already arrived by the time you receive this letter depending on the speed of the mails to no man's land. I speak of one man called Belial and another named Penrose (Pen, to friends, like me) Davenport. They will both enter your life, separately, in ways that might seem natural but are in actuality highly calculated. Belial will likely come to you first, is a man standing six feet one or two inches in height, and seeming taller than a man with greater height, teeth like diamonds in the sun, his hair like a clump of pretty seaweed, and his voice like the thunder and trumpets that might greet the day of judgment. Davenport? Well, he is the one somewhere near you intent on being intent, always tormenting himself about one trivial thing or another as if he were Christ himself, and who has a face as serious as a dead German, as Heine says. Make no mistake. He is as scheming, in his way, as the other one. I'll wait a moment while you wonder who they are, for of course they come with false names and purposes.

Davenport might've brought his inseparable caddie, his shadow, if you will, though a rounder and shorter and balder shadow. A whistling, book-lugging fool. Second thought, I'd wager he was wise enough to leave disloyal old Fergins the bookseller behind this time, like a train needing to move faster would unhook its rusty caboose.

Finished? Know everyone we're talking about? Excellent. These two snakes come from the line of men and women known as Bookaneers—a brave and necessary and dying breed, alas—and they come to you to steal your latest masterpiece for the sake of profit and glory. The high seas of literature swarm with plunderers. Certainly, if I could have I would have been there, too, and I would have been so honored, sir, so much so I cannot tell you. Not since Lord Byron nearly became King of Greece, had he not had the misfortune of dying instead, has a literary man exiled himself so grandly as you. If I had come, I would have presented myself as a doctor with the newest cures from Europe, to try to tempt you in your state as an invalid, but those fools might not have thought of that. Feed them to the cannibals, if you permit suggestions.

Your servant,

William Perkins Richmond

P.S. In your position as an esteemed author, if you should ever be made privy to the whereabouts of a novel called
Life of an Artist at Home and Abroad,
supposedly once printed anonymously in a French newspaper, written by Edgar Poe but wrongly attributed to Eugene Sue before being lost forever and forgotten, please order a copy to be left on my grave, and from the spirit-world I should be thankful.

“We have to get out of here!” I cried after finishing. “Stevenson knows all. He knows who you really are. We have to leave now!”

“Belial.” Davenport cringed while grabbing his leg. “Where is Belial?”

I shook my head. “Stevenson called John Chinaman into his sanctum after reading the letter to me and ordered him to immediately protect the manuscript and hunt for Belial. That is when I slipped out of the room.”

For the second time since our arrival in Samoa, the first being the death of Charlie, I saw what I would describe as absolute fear reflected in the deep green of Davenport's eyes. “What does he plan to do, Fergins?”

“I couldn't say. Stevenson fell into one of his uncanny fits—you know how he does. He was speaking so quickly in Samoan, I could hardly understand any of it. Are you well enough to move, Davenport?”

I tried to help him but he remained on the bed. I knew he understood he had no choice and minutes, maybe seconds, to act. Yet he could not help groping for some other way out than flight. He knew, as I knew, that the moment he rose from that bed and snuck out of the room, this mission was lost. That his career, in essence, was over. That he could never match Kitten's achievement nor—in some profound way—reverse its consequences to her.

“Davenport. Now is the time. All is up; he knows everything. We haven't another moment to spare. We must get away from Vailima and to the American consulate to beg for protection.”

He nodded. The nod itself seemed to cause him as much pain as his mangled leg. After he accepted my hand, I pulled him to his feet.

His leg was leaden, dragging behind him. We progressed slowly to the door. I opened it and Stevenson was waiting on the other side, holding a cigarette out in one hand, inspecting us, first him and then me. His wide-set eyes had a kind of mesmerizing effect.

The novelist put the cigarette back to his mouth. “Look at me, I almost forgot to smoke just then.”

“I suppose there is nothing I can say to satisfy you, Tusitala,” Davenport spoke quietly, the respectful tone of a truehearted soldier captured in war. “Whiskey Bill seems to have made certain of that.”

“I see your co-adventurer has already relayed news of the letter. There is something you can do. It will not help you much, but I still recommend complying. You can satisfy my curiosities. Did you ever steal from me before, in this storied so-called vocation of yours, Mr. Davenport?”

Davenport took a few unsteady steps back into the room. “It's not so simple as that.”

“Grown men, hunting books like pheasants in the wild. Lord in heaven! Now, did you steal from me before you came here or not?”

“Not really.”

“Indirectly, then?” Stevenson's question really did seem to contain more curiosity than anger, as if speaking about someone other than himself.

“You will remember a map you drew to be printed in
Treasure Island
.”

“I ought to; it took a great amount of my time and strength. My publisher lost it, after all that, and engaged an illustrator to do the far inferior one printed in the book.”

“The publisher did not lose it,” Davenport said.

“
You
—”

“No, I was not involved in taking it, but it passed through my hands sometime later, and I commend you on the quality. There was another mission I was involved in. I need not tell you, of all people, the prelude,” Davenport continued. “The autumn of '88 your
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was whispered about in the streets of London. Those who blamed it—and the stage version of your novel then underway—for unleashing the murders in Whitechapel feared an army of Rippers would emerge in London. All from the influence of your slim book. I believe you were in San Francisco with Mrs. Stevenson at the time, so it was said.”

Stevenson gave a guttural agreement.

“There were publishers seeking to capitalize on the frenzy, who ordered shipments of pirated editions of your novel to sell. I was engaged to protect the shipment from another bookaneer hired by a consortium of committees trying to keep them away from the public.”

Another grunt.

“Do you think it possible, Tusitala?” I ventured into the exchange. “For a book about a changeable man actually to change a man into something he is not?”

“What is your opinion, Mr. Davenport?” Stevenson asked, still fixated on the bookaneer.

“I once believed books could start wars or end them,” he began, phrases from a speech I had heard him make about his profession more than once. This time his voice broke off.

“I suppose you believe books made you into the criminal being you are today.”

“The laws of your land and mine left creative works made outside its borders unprotected. That was not our doing. There was chaos and confusion. We were needed because we were able to do what nobody else could—not authors, not publishers, not lawmakers—to control the chaos. So the literary world relied on us and resented us for it, named us bookaneers, began to shout that we were criminals, to write poems and books against so-called pirates, until the laws finally started to change and now we are about to be left to wither and die in order to purify the rest of you. Did a book make me into this? No, Tusitala, I made many books into what they've become.”

“Well, you might be surprised that I should
not
be inclined to thank you for protecting my ‘slim book,' as you call
Jekyll and Hyde
, from destruction by the amateur society of censors. In fact, I would have been happy to see the copies destroyed, not only because the piratical publishers selling them were stealing from me. It is a thing I have often thought over—the problem of what to do with one's talents. Some writers touch the heart; I suppose I tend to clutch at the throat.
Jekyll and Hyde
was the worst thing I ever wrote. My brightest failure.”

I tried to assess if this was one of his momentary fancies. “That book made you rich,” I blurted out.

“And was that one of your responsibilities, Mr. Fergins? To know how much money every book made every author?”

“To the penny,” I admitted.

“You are wrong, Mr. Fergins. It did not make me rich. It made me richer. Financed our voyage here and, indeed, some of the construction of this house. Wealth beyond a certain point is only useful for two things, if you ask me: a yacht and a string quartet. The fact remains, and I repeat,
Jekyll and Hyde
is the worst thing I ever wrote. But you and Mr. Davenport would not understand. For you gentlemen, it's only about money.”

I felt myself blush and would have tried to defend against the accusation, but my companion reacted as you might expect, by fighting back.

“As it has been for you authors from the moment when man stopped telling their stories for pleasure and honor, and began to forget it was the readers who made them what they were.” After a moment, he added, “You were able to intercept Belial. Please. Tell me that at least that one consolation remains for me.”

“Thomas—the man you gentlemen and Whiskey Bill call Belial—is gone, my manuscript spirited away with him. It seems he entered the house and disappeared shortly before I read the letter I shared with Mr. Fergins. I had just collected the pages all together. I suppose we will never see him again. He is a man with luck on his side.”

“Damn his luck. Send some of the natives to track him down before he leaves the island. I will pay the expenses and more. Do what you want with me, but do not let that man get off this island!” Davenport's throat sounded hoarse and tight, his words unspooling wildly. Pleading was not part of his nature. It was heartbreaking. “Please, Tusitala—”

“I am one of the foremost men of letters of the day, and you and that false missionary come here to steal the labors of my brain?” Stevenson interrupted, then swallowed down his fury. “You know, I liked you down to the soles of your boots. I did.” His eyes darkened and he could not stand still—shifting from the bed to the table to the door and all along the perimeter like an animal circling his prey. “In the future I would recommend you employing a different false identity.”

“Tusitala?”

“A real author would never introduce himself as an ‘author,' Mr. Davenport. Why, if we had to walk around calling ourselves authors, remarking upon meeting a new acquaintance—‘Greetings, I'm an author. And you?'—we'd never consent to write in the first place. When I used to be asked my business, I would answer only: ‘I sling ink.' Lord, I should have known from that very first meeting . . .” The novelist finished by murmuring under his breath, “Bookaneers!” Then, with a dark laugh to himself, he shouted an order in Samoan to someone unseen and stalked out through the door.

“Tusitala! Please! Stevenson!” begged Davenport. I held him back from trying to follow, seeing at once it was fruitless.

Stevenson only glanced back with a glare at the sound of his name, then continued on.

Stationed in a chair in the hall was one of Stevenson's larger Samoan men, a rifle slung over his shoulder with a strap.

There was a thump from inside the room. I turned back to find my companion had fallen to the floor against the wall. He did not move from that spot for the next three or four hours. During the night, our guard was relieved by a tall, strapping Samoan named Sao, who looked in on us. Davenport seemed to take a little interest in this new arrival. Neither of us knew Sao, but had seen him doing his grueling work on the grounds chopping through encroaching liana with a bush knife in the impossible task of trying to keep paths clear of the ever-growing forest. He wielded an ax with grace. His legs were covered in tattoos that represented battles fought. Davenport called for assistance from Sao several times toward the end of the night shift, and Sao came in a state of utter exhaustion. Later, I could hear the Samoan curse his relief guard, the carefree and handsome Laefoele, for arriving fifteen minutes late, at least that was what I surmised from the part of the conversation I could translate. Davenport, I would discover, understood it all very well.