“Her! Come on, look at her!”
I obliged him, then quickly looked away again. “You mean Vao?”
The dwarf pursed his lips with severe irritation. His head was big in proportion to his body, his face expressive and quick to redden. From my limited experience with little men and women who came to my bookstall, I would have guessed he was forty-five. “Where did you hear her name?”
“I’ve been told you can read most of the girls’ names between their wrists and elbows, in their tattoos. Charlie taught me.” I gestured at her long forearm, which had the three letters running down the inside in ornate script.
“Charlie thinks he’s white and to prove it speaks too much. Don’t look at her again.”
“I was trying not to.”
“Why don’t you just go in another room while Vao goes about her work?”
“Cannot she decide if she wishes me to leave?” I rose to my feet. “My dear, would you like me to move?”
“Don’t bother with sweet talk. Taller men have tried. She speaks no English,” the dwarf barked at me.
“I can try it in native, but I’m afraid I might start a war.” I thought for a moment that Vao smiled a little at my joke before she paused, wiped her neck with the back of her hand, and stood up straight as though to show us the full extent of her beauty. This time I had no choice but to look, before she moved to the next room. In the eyes of an old bachelor bookseller, accustomed to examining surfaces for any aberration, I could see right away that her feet pointed too far outward, to eleven o’clock and two o’clock, marring her grace slightly; that when her mouth opened the illusion of a docile maid was erased by sharp teeth not so different from the ones on her necklaces; and that her strong hands were slightly rigid. But the ordinary man would burn with lust for the sum of her all-consuming appearance and charm.
When I returned to my chair, the book I had been reading was missing. Looking for it in the next room, I found that a few of the younger houseboys had taken the book and were throwing it to each other, then trying to make it fly, the pages wings. It was such an entirely uncertain object to them. Could a writer really survive in a land where books, for all practical purposes, never existed and never really could? I could not decide whether I had been transported to a time before literature was born, or had been offered a bleak window into some outlandish future that was bookless, readerless. My instincts are to stop any abuse of a book, but I was too fascinated to ask for it back.
“Fool!” It was the dwarf, stepping into my view of the scene. His face molded itself dramatically, and it now rearranged into a complete picture of anger. “You fancy she takes a liking to you, I suppose.”
“You’re still talking to me about Vao? You’ll have to excuse me.” I’d had enough of the fiery little man.
“She was only watching you to make sure you don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you. Take care, or you’ll end up like the other one who came here trying to claim what was not his.”
I paused my step. “What other one do you mean?”
“Last month. The other white man. Arrested after sneaking around the grounds one night. He rots in jail now like he deserves.”
“Who was he?”
“Some thief.” He seemed unsure of the details and had to strain to remember. “Man named Banner, if that was really the scoundrel’s name. Probably one of the beachcombers who wander around looking to find profit from our shores.”
My mind turned at once to Belial, but I tried to hide the train of my own thoughts from this perceptive pest. “Thieves prefer not to use their names. Do you know exactly what it was he did?”
“No, there were errands to attend to in the village the day it happened. Most of us who work at Vailima mind our business, but my business is to know what everyone is doing and why. There is nothing that calls down Tusitala’s wrath like an invader in Vailima, who seeks what does not belong in his hands. Doubt not. The gods themselves would be no less forceful than Tusitala when he stomps out an offender.”
He left me standing alone in the stomach-churning heat, consumed with this ominous vision of Stevenson grinding us down against his heel, with the old Samoan gods watching behind him, all the while wondering if I had just inadvertently located Davenport’s enemy.
VII
CLOVER
Hail, King! Tomorrow thou shalt pass away. Farewell! There is an isle of rest for thee.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
My luck has run against me again.
E. C. FERGINS
Take seats, take seats!”
Interrupted mid-thought, Mr. Fergins raised gently blinking eyes. From his throat came the sounds that older men make when silencing themselves, the way a venerable machine set to a heavy motion drags to a halt. He pinched his white spectacles at the end of his fingers as he polished them, and returned them over his ears with care. Looking across at me, he asked, “What’s happened, Mr. Clover?”
“Take seats, all passengers, train going to start! Make haste!”
Disappointment gnawed at me while we listened to the conductor’s cries as he stomped his way through the dining car, where the bookseller and I were seated. We overheard that the disabled train blocking our way was finally repaired, and suddenly each man and woman aboard our car was in an uproar to begin moving as quickly as possible. I guess I’d been imagining that every last soul on the train had been listening to the bookseller’s tale just as I was, but how jarring to realize that nobody knew and nobody cared about the extraordinary lives of the bookaneers; there were so many ordinary and pressing things all around.