The Last Bookaneer (39 page)

I felt myself riding a wave of suspicion that I was misled again. “No—that can't be right. The novel you spoke of,
The Shovels of Newton French
, was never published. I tried to find it over the years with absolutely no luck.”

He was nodding before I finished. “When Stevenson and I were planning that day what would happen, I talked about how I would help bring
Newton French
, his masterpiece, to light.

“‘That? Really?' Stevenson gave me a humorless laugh under his breath. Then he said, ‘Well, that book. The more I think about it, the less I like the blasted thing.'

“‘It is your masterpiece. You said it was the masterpiece you had been missing from your career. I heard you say it!'

“‘I write two or three novels at a time, Fergins, with two or three more in mind at all times. They come cheaply, and you must serenade them while writing, but all novels are disappointments as soon as they leave your hands. Think of this fact: my reputation will always rest in good part on
Treasure Island
—
Treasure Island
, for goodness sake!—a book for boys written with considerably less labor and originality, and probably more than the usual unconscious plagiarism, than anything else I've written. I do not think it will live beyond me, though I believe
Kidnapped
might. But that thing I've just finished? Why, I've burned far better books that that.'

“He was carried to his bedroom after a fit of coughing during this conversation, and I was bid to follow a few minutes later. ‘Fifteen drops of laudanum, Fergins, that is all it usually takes.' The novelist spit into a silver bowl, where I could see saliva swirled with blood. ‘Pay no attention; I have proven myself incapable of dying. You were correct that I was writing my masterpiece. It was
not
that foolish novel I was referring to.'

“I waited, holding my breath.

“‘Samoa saved me,' Stevenson added in a very serious tone.

“I asked him rather bluntly what that had to do with anything. The novelist blinked like a man who has stood out in the sun after a long sleep. ‘Fergins,' he finally replied, ‘when I lived in Edinburgh with its icy winds and conventions, I spent much of the day lying on my back just how you see me now. How little our friends in Europe know of the ease they might find here in Samoa. Half the ills of mankind can be shaken off without a doctor or medicine here. It was Mark Twain who first told me about the enchantment of the balmy atmosphere of the South Seas—said it would take a dead man out of his grave, and, you know how Twain caricatures things, but he was right. I know what I look like to you, like an old skeleton, but I have become a healthy old skeleton. Now, were I to be deported—that would be a death sentence for me. The German powers that seek my removal must be repelled. My very life, not to mention the future life of the island, depends upon it.'

“‘Then this masterpiece . . .'

“‘There,' Stevenson said, looking at the pillow beside him on the bed, where a thick manuscript rested. It was in rough shape, the edges bent and folded, spotted with tobacco marks, the strained handwriting scribbled almost end to end, the very narrow borders of the paper filled with marginalia and notes. It was an incredible sight.

“It was the same novel he had just said should be burned,
The Shovels of Newton French
. Freshly confused, I was about to ask him again what it all meant, when I remembered how Davenport had found those original pages from
Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde—
the very ones that led to Charlie's death—that had been used as scraps for other writing. I flipped the novel over and found on the backs of some of the pages, scattered among other meaningless and discarded writings, an entirely different narrative. I asked him if this was another novel.

“‘
Here
is my masterpiece, Fergins. The most important thing I have ever written, that in which everything else I have tried culminates. It is no novel, heavens no. A comprehensive chronicle of the turmoil and the injustices of the foreign intervention in Samoa.'

“I scanned the pages, which contained dense descriptions of the islands' political and military conflicts. I remembered Davenport had come across similar scribblings during his first searches at Vailima but never gave them a second thought. It had some potential titles written in a list, including
A Footnote to History
. I looked back up at Stevenson and he continued explaining to me:

“‘I have been writing it at the same time, Fergins, and with writing paper so rare and dear on the island, I had to conserve my materials and use the backs of my silly novel's pages. It may be found unwelcome to that great, hulking bullering whale—I mean the public. Nor is it likely to make me any friends; in fact, other dangerous enemies will follow. Still, I must not stand and slouch but do my best. Without my name, perhaps five people would read this. A few hundred people may read this because of my name only. But that is all I need, for those will be the right people, among them statesmen. To have your work read, that is one thing, and I am used to it. To have it read by the right people—well, to modern authors that is positively utopian! There will be no money to be made, and yet there is something far more than that this book will bring to life. The pages in your hands will open the eyes of the Americans, whose hands are not immaculate but are the cleanest of the three powers, to send their forces to counter the Germans who have enslaved and terrorized the islanders.'

“‘You
are
trying to start a war,' I replied, unconsciously echoing the words of the embittered prisoner, Banner.

“‘Not so. If the German Firm continues its way of overthrowing inconvenient monarchs and oppressing the other consuls, they will be the ones to let loose the dogs of war. I am trying to stop the island from being destroyed, Mr. Fergins. We haven't much time left before we need Belial to play his part in fulfilling your plan. He must think he has stolen this free and clear, and once he makes it past the other thieves—what did you call that lowest class of scum? The barnacles of the bookaneers—and is arrested in New York, you find a way to copy the Samoa pages from this pile to bring to the publishing house of Scribner's,' he urged. ‘As soon as I am well enough, I will ride to the British consulate and telegraph a lawyer I know in Washington so the proper copyright will be registered the moment the law changes on the first of July, before you reach American soil. If the book is to help this island, this scheme must come to pass soon. If they will not publish it, I will pay for it to be printed myself. The best part is, any of your bookaneers still in business whom you encounter before the change in law will not even know what they look for. Even Belial will not know what he has in his own hands. This is what I relish about Samoa: you can be in a new conspiracy every day. Oh, and make sure to burn
Newton French
, won't you? I don't want to risk making money from it.'

“‘You were working on this all along, knowing this was what mattered, and meanwhile Belial and Davenport chased each other around the island going after a novel that had no consequence to you. This was hiding right in the center of the maelstrom.'

“‘Unchecked, the island will come to war again; before that to many bankruptcies and profiteering, and after that, as usual, to famine. Here, under the microscope, we can see all history at work. I find it is no fun to meddle in politics, but there comes a day where a man says:
this can go on no longer
.'”

Though Mr. Fergins was quoting Stevenson's words, the bookseller said the phrase with such conviction and clarity, he might have announced his own maxim for life.

I interrupted: “Then the letter you recited to Davenport in which Whiskey Bill revealed everything to Stevenson . . .”

“A fiction, Mr. Clover. I invented it as I was ‘reciting' it to Davenport!” Mr. Fergins said with a gleeful smile. “When I saw Davenport was convinced by it, I knew my entire plan could succeed.”

There were, he pointed out, certain real and unforeseeable obstacles: His release from prison was quickly arranged by Stevenson, but they had not anticipated the vengeful guards would drop him into the bush. Then there was Vao, discovering him in the mountains—though her help was crucial to return him to Apia, the bookseller now had to find a way to distract her from completing her sworn vendetta against Belial, whom she hated more than ever because of Tulagi's death, since Mr. Fergins and Stevenson needed Belial to get safely off the island with the manuscript. It was like walking across a tightrope. Had Mr. Fergins tried to divert her by telling her Davenport had contributed to Tulagi's woes, it might have taken her off Belial's trail, but she might not have been inclined to help a friend of Davenport's escape the bush. Meanwhile, Stevenson had promised to tell no one else at Vailima of their secret plan, and after the rescue from the cannibals the novelist abetted him by escorting away Vao and charging John Chinaman and Lloyd with bringing Mr. Fergins to the beach.

Mr. Fergins went on to explain to me how events transpired while he was operating his temporary book cart in New York. Judge Salisbury had Mr. Fergins assigned to authenticate the manuscript as having been written by Robert Louis Stevenson. As Mr. Fergins spent hours at a time examining the manuscript in a room at the courthouse, the bookseller carefully identified and copied the pages on Samoan history that were interspersed on the opposite side of the novel's pages. He later brought the transcribed copy to Scribner's as planned.

“That little book was published and brought new attention to Samoa, just as Stevenson intended,” Mr. Fergins said. “The American presence was bolstered. Consuls were removed and replaced. Extraordinary, what a little volume no thicker than a penny's worth of gingerbread could do!”

“Yet the wars did not end.”

“No, new men brought fresh arrogance and old hostilities remained. I'm afraid war continues in Samoa, as awful as before,” Mr. Fergins said. “Perhaps it is a good thing Stevenson did not live to see it. He had his hopes that the book might change things once and for all but, in truth, every writer believes that about everything he writes.”

“And the novel that you all once believed would be his masterpiece?
The Shovels of Newman French
?”

“
Newton
French.
Burned. Just as Stevenson wished,” he said with satisfaction. “Once I had the transcriptions I needed.”

“The fire in the evidence room. You . . . you weren't caught in it. You didn't rush in to put it out, nor were you trapped there by some shadowy confederates of Belial. You started the fire yourself!” I cried.

“Well, naturally, but I did try to put it out, too. It got out of hand, I admit, and spread faster than I imagined. The sensation of burning those pages, the only copy of the work of a master, stopped me cold and was a feeling like none other I had experienced before. It quite literally almost killed me. I certainly did not think I would inhale so much smoke so quickly.” He paused, and seemed embarrassed. “I am eternally grateful to you for nursing me to health, Mr. Clover, whatever the cause.”

“Whatever the cause, you say!
You
were the cause! Besides, even if you honored Stevenson's wishes, you hurt the case against Belial.”

“That prosecution”—the bookseller stopped and shrugged—“never had a chance. Salisbury knew it as well as anybody. He just wanted to have keelhauled a literary pirate so he could campaign on the idea that he was the champion of authors. People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one. Fire or no fire, Belial eventually would have been released. I just needed it to drag along until I had completed my transcriptions to bring to Scribner.”

“Where did Belial go after the case against him ended?”

“From all I heard, after he fled New York he decided to start a new life as a poet. Apparently, it was what he'd always dreamed of doing. But his jaw had been broken in two places by the policeman during the arrest, and it made it hard for him to talk at length, and almost impossible to be understood by an audience at recitations of his verse. He was a diminished man. He never stopped running, and did not stay in any one place for more than a few weeks. He had plenty of money, too, for he had saved and invested it over the years. His problem was not financial. It was a gap that opened between reality and his self-importance. Once he had been touched by the law, Belial thought everyone was trying to follow him, even long after he had become, in actuality, a forgotten man. The poems I saw of his were rather nicely composed, actually, if limited to obvious themes, sailing on rudderless ships in the night, that kind of thing. He ended up getting his throat cut in a fight with some men he accused of following him into a poetry recital in Hong Kong.”

“As soon as Belial heard the fireworks outside the office of Scribner's,” I said, “he knew you had done him in. It
was
Samoan, wasn't it? What Belial said to you when we met him in the courtroom.” When Mr. Fergins nodded, I knew I had finally cracked through the ice. I had unearthed a blatant lie.

He could tell what I was thinking. “I did tell you the truth, Mr. Clover, when I told you I did not know what he said to me that day in court. I could only assume he was threatening me. He believed I was vengeful and had orchestrated this on behalf of Davenport. Of course, that was not the reason. I vow I did
not
know what he said when you first asked me, but I do now. Since I returned to the South Seas, I've had time to study their languages much more fully. One night, in a dream, I remembered part of what Belial had said to me that day. It was: ‘Ou te le malama lama.'” The bookseller appeared crestfallen as he recited these words. “It means, ‘I do not understand.'