It was as though I had struck the man. “Did you understand what I said to you?”
I explained myself the best I could at the time, knowing how quickly the bookaneer could be enraged. “I came to Samoa with Pen Davenport to help him with his mission and to chronicle his final success. He failed, of course, and in his failure, I also failed. If I read the novel before the rest of the world, I would do so with the sneaking knowledge that I did not earn it—in fact, that I earned no privilege like it.”
He held his gaze on me for another moment before dropping his chin in thought, then giving a heavy nod, as though in mourning for me. “You are an honorable man, Mr. Fergins. I am thankful that we have become such fast friends, and I know Christina would adore making a big feast for you. Do you like a brace of grouse, fried with truffles and butter? Of course you do. That is what it shall be.”
My racing heart slowed. I knew I was never going to meet his wife and eat grouse alongside his four daughters, yet the offer to do so felt generous beyond description. I had a sudden feeling as though I had betrayed Davenport, my lost master, by engendering such feelings of friendship from his rival. I thought back to what Davenport had once asked me in the smoking room of the Garrick Club, so many worlds removed from the strangling jungle and the swamp-bound prison of Upolu, through the more civilized suffocating air of his cigars. If he and Belial had both offered me a place beside them, what would I do?
Belial popped his lips, as he did when he seemed to have a thought that impressed him. “You said you came to chronicle Davenport’s mission to Samoa.”
“Yes,” I answered, “though that plan became waylaid by, well, all the complications, in many cases because of you.”
“You must have come to finally realize what poor Davenport’s biggest flaw was.”
“I have not stopped to think about it.”
“He was a professed misanthrope, yet he had this need to know that people recognized him and knew him as a great bookaneer.”
“You speak as if he were not still alive.”
“Take his missions, for instance. When he was not on a mission, he was rather lethargic and sluggish, lying around in hotels and brothels and concert halls for weeks at a time. But when he was on a mission, he was bigger than life. When he secured a prize, for instance, a manuscript or proofs to sell, he marched in plain view to the publisher to sell it.”
“So?”
“You see, he disappeared at the wrong time. The time to disappear, utterly and completely, without a trace, is as soon as one has a prize, and if you think nothing of the literati, then they will think of nothing but you.”
I nodded.
“There is more for you to learn and witness if you’d wish,” he said, the familiar self-satisfied grin on his face. “I mean it’s not over, our journey, even when we reach port. They will be after the thing, you know.”
“Who? You mean bookaneers? But they—” I stopped myself. I knew why he had been so urgently concerned with the calendar, and I understood the relief that possessed him after examining the dates. On July 1, the new copyright laws would finally be in effect.
“You needn’t shy away from talking about it. Speaking of the death of our profession is like eulogizing an old friend. True, as you consider, that most of the bookaneers have run for the hills before now. It is the barnacles I speak of—the lowest of our line—they are minor fellows and rather ordinary, that is true, but with all this time they would have heard of our mission and be expecting my return. These bottom-feeders are without vision or philosophy but possess certain skills—in gathering intelligence, in smuggling. If you wish, you may accompany me off the ship and watch me scrape them away.”
In the depth of his vanity, I saw traces of Davenport. It should have been no surprise, at the end of this, that I found these two men possessed twin souls, however differently expressed, separated into enemies by the cosmos. I accepted Belial’s invitation to be by his side when we disembarked.
He was right about the so-called barnacles waiting for him. When we arrived in New York, having switched from the merchant ship to a packet in the tiny port of Halifax, he sent his trunk up with one of the porters who came onboard; the trunk disappeared before we reached the docks. Belial was carrying a bundle of papers in a valise; I turned and saw him jostled as we entered the crowds. After a passing few seconds in which my view was blocked, when the crowds cleared a bit, his valise was gone. He gave me a meaningful look free of any concern. I knew the papers inside the valise were actually worthless ledgers that had been left in his berth by a businessman on a previous voyage. More jostling and every item from the inside pockets of his coat had been removed in a flash. Meanwhile I had not been able to identify a single one of the barnacles among the crowds, as though these bandits were invisible and operated by black magic.
A sculpture of the look on Belial’s face as we walked down the street—the creased eyebrows, the wide black nostrils, the tight pucker in his mouth—would seem to say, “Is that all you can manage, you fools?”
“You see, my dear Fergins, that barnacles are merely that. Thieves. Pickpockets and launderers. A true bookaneer is another breed altogether, one the world will now be emptier without. You may write that in your chronicle, if you like, but attribute it to me.”
I abandoned any written chronicle long before this, but didn’t want to bruise his ego. “Of course. But where is the manuscript?” I whispered.
He had, as far as I could tell, run out of any places to hide it. His golden cane might have been hollow but was too narrow. Then I noticed I had to look higher up to meet his face than in the past. His boots. They were wider around than necessary and much taller.
We were separated as we entered another throng of people crossing the street. Then, just as his trunk and the valise had vanished, the man himself vanished from my sight.