“He is called Tusitala,” said the bookaneer. “Talofa is a Samoan greeting, meaning, more or less, ‘love to you.’ Their tongue has a charming ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“And what does Tusitala mean?”
“Ask the question a few times around the village, my dear Fergins, and we’ll soon earn a reputation for having a singular interest in Stevenson. We’ll learn in time.”
“Never mind the language lessons, Davenport.”
“Fergins, to one author, another author is a comrade, a threat, and a shadowy reflection all at once. If we had been making ourselves conspicuous around the very few shops and offices of Apia, Stevenson would likely have no use for us, but because we have remained quiet and removed, away from the village, he shall feel the need to know more of me, mark my words. Remember that one of his earliest publications was a book about traveling through Belgium and France, so to learn of a man writing a travelogue will give him an itch of nostalgia for a simpler time—a time when his life was ahead of him, a time before illness and the weight of family problems had led him into this exile. In any event, it fits with my having a companion who is a bookseller, and I would not have wanted to force upon you a new name and identity.”
“Something else that confounds me,” I said after considering how the whole explanation somehow turned out to rely on doing me a good turn. “How did you know Stevenson would come to us out there today in the first place? You said you were expecting it. I do not see how that is possible.”
“You were right when you said yesterday that our land is quite far from Vailima—that is, from the novelist’s house. But you were overlooking the fact that the property of Vailima encompasses more than four hundred acres. When we were out at sea and Hines—whose presence was far more useful to us than you realized—showed me on a map the properties he owned on the island, I could see that this one bordered at the very tip the far reaches of Stevenson’s land, hundreds of acres away from the novelist’s library though it might be. It was a speck on the map, but it was just what I needed.”
“That is why we were out riding that same path every day?” I asked, laughing with the realization that all the time heaping bananas had not been wasted along with the bananas themselves.
“On our first day riding the grounds, I noticed some cows—fat cows—at the stream that bordered our property and ran into Stevenson’s. I had learned from the pages of your books on the South Pacific that cows are rare in Samoa and are sequestered so that they are not stolen. Cows are creatures of habit who prefer no disruption to their routines. I suspected these cows were accustomed to complete quiet in their little corner of the universe, and so our little ride each morning began to annoy them and send them farther away. I also suspected that once Stevenson’s servants noticed that this was happening around the same time each morning, they would alert their master, who would take them to inspect the cause sooner or later, and of course find no threat to the cows—but would find us, and in the process would introduce himself. I thought the servants who had seen us would be riding with him, which was why I expected to hear the sounds of more horses approaching. But Stevenson is evidently a man who takes matters into his own hands—a thing to remember.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait again,” said Davenport with some pleasure.
Two days of routine came and went before a houseboy (as they were called even though they were really young men), who was dressed in the same lavalava as the outside boys, but with a fine white livery uniform on top that made me long for English civilization, arrived with a simple note written on a piece of stationery.
FROM THE FIELDS OF VAILIMA
Please do us the honor of your company tomorrow afternoon, for tea and cookies.
VI
Davenport became entirely stoic whenever I would become excited, as happened over the invitation to Vailima.
“We have entrance into the man’s house, where his manuscript will be at arm’s length.”
“Nothing is so simple, Fergins,” Davenport said. “For one thing, Belial is still not accounted for. He could be out there circling us. Circling Vailima, waiting to knock the whole thing on its head. We must have our eyes open at all times to avoid his traps.”
I took in the possibility. I thought about the last time I had seen Kitten, and the word Belial sent a fresh chill through me. “I fear I am at a disadvantage,” I said, trying to hide what I was really thinking about. “With all your history with the man, I never had a chance to see him in person, and now that I think it over you’ve never assigned me to gather information on him. There are times over the years I wondered if the man was a figment.”
“I never assigned you anything on Belial because there is no information to gather. Not really. No one knows where he lives or where he goes when he is not bookaneering. He talks of a wife incessantly, though I’ve never seen her. If she exists, I shall never stop pitying her. He might as well be a figment. Am I understood?”
“Pardon?”
“It’s something he always says. ‘Am I understood?’ He could be telling you that it is noontime, and still finish the sentence with, ‘am I understood?’”
I thought about Davenport often saying, “Wait a minute,” with no regard to how long the so-called minute would actually be, but I nodded. “What exactly does he look like?”
“Like no other.”
“There must be some way to describe him.”
“He looks . . . to be honest . . .” It was rare to find Davenport lost for words and he seemed annoyed by the fact. “I have it, Fergins. He looks like one of those ancient Greek sculptures of a god, just before the Romans knocked off its arms and nose.”
There you have Davenport truly believing he was answering a question.
I thought I had this somewhere on me. Here, Mr. Clover, while I drink my water, I present evidence for my statement about the bookaneers’ practices. See where I have underlined.