The Last Bookaneer

  In the dark interior, the dead wood all over the forest floor seemed phosphorescent. The glow seemed to come from below the earth, as though from the flames of hell. It only took a few minutes out there alone to believe with all my heart in the ghost stories of the natives.

  There was a cave. I don’t know how I found it when I think back to the thickness of that terrain. I remember I could not even see its entrance at first, feeling the formations of rocks with my fingers through the walls of liana wrapping around me. The cave was big enough to become my temporary shelter while more storms fell. I took stock of the little I had with me. One of the guards, in a fit of compassion, had dropped a burlap sack we had with us when we were taken from Vailima. Davenport had saved pieces of biscuits and other food scraps from Vailima in anticipation of our attempted escape. Among other fairly useless items was my slender umbrella. To supplement the paltry food in the sack, there was the usual plentiful fruit in the portion of forest close to the cave. Here were more berries than coconuts and bananas, making it harder to quell my hunger.

  It was hard to know day from night out there because the jungle, which was all around, was so dark; hard to know how much time had passed. I would spend hours building a fire, keeping the swarms of flying insects at bay, and then count the sparks until it would burn itself out and I would be assaulted by their buzzing. One morning, something new woke me. My eyes opened on a tall, dark shape standing over me, outlined in firelight. I reached for my umbrella, which I had been keeping by my side. Then I jumped to my feet poised to defend myself.

  The stranger held a sharpened spear slightly behind his body and to his side. He easily could have skewered me while I slept, so I calculated that my best chance was to avoid appearing threatening. I slowly placed the umbrella by my feet.

  The man was a head taller than I was, at least. His skin was much darker than that of the Samoans I had met—a deep chocolate color instead of reddish brown—and his muscular arms and bare chest were glistening with sweat and blood. He spoke a few words, and I did not recognize any of them. I had improved greatly in Samoan since our arrival, yet I couldn’t place the sounds that came from this man’s mouth.

  I put up my hands in the universal sign that I meant no harm—at least that’s how I hoped the stranger would interpret it. His gray loincloth appeared strangely European, unlike the usual lavalavas of the natives, which were made of bark. Then I remembered seeing the same gray cloth on a group of laborers from the German Firm who were being taken to a boat on the beach in Apia. Those men had been the Firm’s plantation slaves. The ones whose escaped comrades’ heads we had seen exhibited on stakes while riding with Stevenson.

  Cannibals.

  He took a step closer to me and I stumbled back over an uneven rock formation. I gasped as the cannibal dashed toward me. He caught me and stopped my fall.

  • • •

  WE COULD NOT UNDERSTAND each other except through the occasional very simple exchange, but he was sharp as a needle in knowing what I was trying to say. I had enough clues to feel certain the young man was indeed a runaway from the German Firm and he, in turn, must have guessed that I was also a displaced soul of some sort. This vague connection tied us together. As we spent more time together, I was able to conclude that the islander was no more than sixteen years old, though, remembering Stevenson’s maxim—they grow fast in the South Seas—a Western eye would take him to be closer to your age, Mr. Clover, eighteen or nineteen. His natural timidity, genuine eagerness, and a quick enthusiasm suggested his true age. Our tutoring sessions involved pointing—at a plant, a piece of fruit, a lava rock, the moon, the sun—and saying the words in our respective language. The runaway pointed to himself and said what sounded to me like “No-bo-lo.”

  We stayed together when we went out looking for food and supplies. When we climbed to higher elevations, Nobolo pointed out at the violently choppy ocean beyond the island and I interpreted this to mean he wanted to leave the island to return to his homeland. I pointed toward the Apia shore and Nobolo seemed to understand where I needed to go. The rains had slowed down after the first few days but until they stopped, and until the treacherous mountain paths dried, the safest thing was to stay where we were—we had a brook for water, we had discovered decent supplies of fruit along a belt of trees, even some clumps of oranges, and the cave was suitable for sleeping and sheltering both of us.

  I had cuts on my legs and arms from wandering through the bush, and the insects were relentless trying to savage me. Nobolo brought hollowed sticks of rainwater and cleaned my wounds with a careful, precise hand.

  When the rain stopped, the mist was high and soupy. We went hunting together, moving single-file through the thickly wooded, slippery paths. Nobolo had carved a spear for me that looked like his own. The clearer sky and drier earth gave me a feeling of freedom and I sensed that Nobolo was also infused with a new spirit.

  We also spent time drawing in the mud and sand outside the cave. We were sketching maps and the path we would take together and marking where I would ultimately separate from my companion, a fellow I had come to believe was as loyal as Crusoe’s man, Friday. Losing Nobolo was a prospect that I found quite sad, in defiance of any piece of logic I might muster. Having Nobolo nearby, I realized, reminded me somehow of my life before this, when I accompanied Davenport through the great cities in the world. Neither of us knew the island well enough to dictate the plan with full confidence, but between the two of us we possessed a passing amount of information about where we sought to end up and where we ought not to go. Nobolo needed to stay clear of the German plantation and its masters, while I needed to avoid any sighting by Belial.

  The maps made communication with Nobolo easier; more challenging was deciding when to set off on our journey. I felt we had to start at night, so that at the height of the midday heat we would not be locked into a part of the island where water was scarce and sometimes dangerous to find.

  One night before we were to begin, we roasted a pig over a flame and ate more than we had since living on rations inside the cave. Then, Nobolo brought over a knife he had been carving out of cherrywood and animal bone, and gestured toward his hair. I understood that he did not want his hair to get caught or pulled in the brush during our long journey to come and I agreed to cut it.

  As I neared the end of butchering his hair, there was a slight rustle outside the cave. Both of us receded into the blackness to listen. Then there was the light of a torch, held high and in front by one who moved with a slow and purposeful step. I peered into the light, first making out the staring eyes and then a face.

  Before I could speak, Nobolo caught sight of the tip of the rifle and was thrown into a panic. He launched into a run and disappeared into the darkness outside.

  I tried to catch him as he burst out of the cave but he was quick as a spark. “She isn’t here for you!” My cries went unheeded, unheard or simply not comprehended. Another companion was gone.

  XV

  As soon as Vao entered, the setting seemed to change: no longer stranded, I felt all that had happened back in Vailima return to the atmosphere. She looked around before she lowered the rifle. She offered some basic information about how she had found me: Having traveled between several villages after leaving Tale-Pui-Pui with Belle, she had overheard that a white prisoner was about to be released and decided to find out whether it was one of us. As soon as she and Belle had returned to Vailima, she rode back to the prison again on her own. When the guards would not tell her anything, she demanded to see the officials at the prison and eventually discovered where they had brought me in the bush, and from there began tracking my movements. She went on with her explanation, retracing her steps that led to the mouth of this cave, but I could hardly concentrate on any of her words, because the language mesmerized me. English.

  “How on earth did you learn to speak so flawlessly since I saw you?” I interrupted, realizing even as I spoke that
it was foolish. She could not have mastered a language so quickly. We had been keeping our secrets, and she had been keeping her own.

  “When my father was one of the leading chiefs, and I a little girl, I was given tutors. Mostly men from the religious missions, they taught me in the languages of all the foreigners who come to the island: German, English, French, Spanish.”

  “I never heard a word of English come from your mouth at Vailima.”

  “I never speak it in front of white men, or they will not leave me alone.” It was not just the language that was startling, but the heat of her emotions—anger, confusion, loneliness—within the words she spoke, emotions I had not been able to hear in her Samoan. “There have been many attempts to take me since I was quite little.”

  “That is why Tulagi was always with you?”

  “When a village chooses a tapo, she is assigned a guardian, usually a dwarf or a hunchback, since they cannot start families or fight in our wars. My father was the chief of one of the villages burned to the ground by the Germans for not accepting Tamasese, the king installed by the power of the Firm. Father did not survive the flames, but Tulagi did, and he swore he would protect me until the day when I was married, when my husband assumes the responsibility. Except I never agreed to the potential marriages. Tulagi was unusual, for though he was impatient with my refusals, he respected my decisions. Now with Tulagi wandering the spirit realms looking for rest, everything left of my birthright has been taken from me.”

  I was careful with my next question for her. “That is why you have come here?”

  “I have come for vengeance against the man who led Tulagi to his death.”

  I held my breath, expecting her to speak against Davenport—and perhaps, by extension, me. She may not have come to rescue me at all, but to exterminate me, and here I was trapped, at her mercy.

  Before my fear revealed itself she went on: “The man you call Belial. From the moment he stepped foot on Tusitala’s grounds calling himself a missionary, I saw the devil in him. His humiliation of Tulagi, beating him in front of you, ripped Tulagi’s heart in two.”

  She returned my stare and I tried to shake away any outward sign of confusion. It was the sight of Davenport leaving her chambers—not Belial’s earlier attempt to seduce her, and his ruthless beating of Tulagi—that finally dragged Tulagi down to despair. I resolved I could never tell her.

  —Wait a minute, Mr. Fergins. Wait. How did you come to know the true cause of Tulagi’s suicide?

  Well, I did not know, Mr. Clover. Nobody can really know what had been in Tulagi’s mind and heart that day. You are absolutely right to wonder about that. But if you saw Tulagi’s face as I had, after he watched her emerge from Davenport’s chambers, you might think the same way I do.

  —Then why did you not tell Vao what you suspected?

  I felt myself prohibited personali objectione, as the lawyers say, from telling her. To reveal it to her could place me in danger, because a grudge against Pen Davenport would probably have fallen on me, too. She might have believed leaving me there to die would give the dwarf peace in the spirit world. I had to keep quiet about it, you see.

  —Forgive me, but I do not think that is the only reason. You saw she could serve you, no different than Cipaou served you and Mr. Davenport, or Charlie served Mr. Stevenson. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fergins? It benefited you to ensure that she believed it was Belial’s fault, because it meant she would help you hunt for him—so you could find the manuscript—using knowledge of the island that only a native has.

  Good fellow! You see it clearly enough. And, don’t forget, it was to her advantage for her purposes that I knew Belial better than she did.

  I asked her: “You will help me find him, then?”

  “I will and when we do, I will take his head.”

  There is something immense about watching a person—a woman, especially—you have seen speaking in one language speak in a different tongue. When she spoke Samoan, it was soft and warm, yet in English she was imperious. She seemed not only transformed but transformative, as though by being in her presence you crossed boundaries, geographical and metaphysical. I speak lyrically of the sensation, but that is how I recall it struck me as she sat cross-legged in the cave as if some ancient goddess. There was a beauty to her speaking English that was independent of her physical attractiveness, and I had to wonder if Davenport had the same experience in his time alone with her. Speaking of her beauty, I had taken this long on the island to appreciate just how radiant she was. Perhaps this is one thing that distinguishes a bachelor from gentlemen who marry—by the point at which we truly recognize a lady’s charms, the time for a natural courtship has passed.

  She was made an even more striking vision by her changed appearance since I had last seen her. She was wearing a ceremonial costume, draped in animal skins and multicolored leaves, her hair lined with small purple flowers and pinned back in a cocoon. This, I gathered, Samoan women used as a warrior garb.

  She had already done some investigation that eased my mind. None of the larger ships had departed from port, and the waters remained too rough from the ongoing storms for Belial to have hired a canoe or other smaller ship without great risk to his life. Vao had also stopped in several villages along the way to my shelter. While some tribes were strictly loyal to the king and would not speak to a member of a tribe that was not, there were still many who had common cause with the rebels and felt affection toward a former tapo. Through these exchanges, she learned that Belial had traded information he had about Stevenson, a supporter of the exiled chief Mataafa, the king’s greatest enemy and threat, in exchange for the king’s protection and sanctuary.

  After remaining the night in the cave, we had an early start looking for clues to where Belial had been concealed. There is a strange fact about a place as rainy as Upolu. The ground does not seem to absorb the raindrops, so that long after a storm has vanished there are still torrents of water rushing down the island toward the coast. Streams that were usually ankle-deep became powerful rivers. We went on foot down one treacherous precipice after another, each one seeming to end at the horizon, until we finally reached the place where she had tied her horse. I shared Vao’s horse but the animal was not strong enough for the two of us and began to rebel under our combined weight, at one point stopping in protest and stomping, and other times audibly groaning; we would not have been able to go much farther but for the fact that we reached the outskirts of a small village outpost. There I bartered my downtrodden umbrella and some kava root we had collected along the way in exchange for another animal. Much like the other natives who had seen the object, my trading partners grasped for the umbrella with awe on their faces and, in spite of its wear, seemed pleased by the multicolored stripes as they took turns twirling it. Without this second horse, the young woman would have had to go without me, and I would have been left to plod through the fickle elements of the island until means were presented to allow me to try to find her again—a risky proposition to body and soul, as you have seen, which is the reason to this day I call that umbrella a lifesaver.

  The hurricane had scattered giant branches and tree trunks the size and girth of temple pillars that slowed our progress. After another night in the mountains, with two crashing waterfalls in my ears as I tried to sleep, I watched the clouds dissolve and the mountaintops above light up orange and purple with the new day.

  Vao built a temporary abode for us out of banana leaves. We had simple meals collected from the surrounding forest: breadfruit and pigeon cooked fa’a Samoa, that is to say wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over hot stones. I told her about prison and she spoke more of Tulagi, more about her life at Vailima.

  “He is our chief and our father,” she said of Stevenson, with a glow to her cheeks. “Tusitala sheltered me and Tulagi after my village was burned, but now it is time that I left,” and there she paused, fear and exhilaration in the treble
of her voice. “I cannot always be protected: first my father, then Tulagi and Tusitala and, one day, a husband. This is all Tulagi wanted, was for me to marry, but every time I tried, every time I tried to tell him. . . This time, I must protect myself. I must finish Belial for myself.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Tusitala that Belial tried assaulting you?” I asked.

  “I knew Pope Thomas—Belial—was a conniving man. For a smile from him my people bow at his feet. I tried to arrange that Tusitala would find Belial trying to force himself on me, but you came instead.”

  “You mean you did try to seduce Belial?”

  “He had taken every opportunity he could to lean in close to me and brush against me every time he was at Vailima. I did nothing to invite that. I did lure him to me that day, hoping Tusitala would hear me and catch him in the act and have him expelled from Vailima, yes.” Seeing my expression, she gave me a wise half smile, amused by a white man’s shock. “But Tusitala had gone outside, and Tulagi was closer to the room than I thought he was, and then it all went wrong.”

  Her little smile disappeared, replaced by a quivering lip. Davenport must have heard all of this from her, too, when they were alone together, and I could envision a grin curving onto his face, as he would have admired her resourcefulness. I understood the weight of her guilt at her own actions, as much as Belial’s beastly behavior, drove her determination to punish Belial—then again, the extent and weight of our guilt drives so much of what we do.

  In one corner was the banana leaf I used as a bed; in the other, Vao’s. Though as far as I could tell she never slept, but sat, once again cross-legged, staring. She said nothing was wrong, but I knew, in addition to mourning Tulagi, she worried how we were to succeed. The fact is, the little information we had was too flimsy for us to ever hope to find Belial among the vast places he could be hidden on the island—we wished we were simply looking for a needle in a haystack, but the fugitive bookaneer was a needle in a flaming haystack. Still, a flicker of faith rekindled in me as I listened to the incessant murmur of one of the nearby streams. We had moved closer to Apia and, I hoped, to my ultimate goal. I could leave nothing to chance.