“That remains to be seen,” answered Davenport.
“You made a grave mistake this time, taking on one of your ‘missions’ of greed against what may be the only author on earth who has his own little militia”—another piece of the musical instrument was fitted and twisted in—“armed up to my teeth. When I deal with literary pirates, I do it with gloves off. You know, I suspect there is more that drives your conquests, Mr. Davenport. Love for a woman, perhaps, hindered or lost long ago. Is that so?”
Davenport’s eyes popped.
“What are they still doing here?” It was Fanny, who had just walked in. Her lips trembled after she spoke.
“Never mind, Barkis, I am taking care of it.”
“Taking care! You told me these men came to steal from you. This is no house; it’s an asylum, where our family has come, one by one, to lose their minds, and everyone else looks in on us to make certain it happens!” She was in tears. Lloyd trailed a few steps behind her. “No, don’t take me away! These men must be judged! You”—she pointed right at me—“you were supposed to help convince Louis to take us all back home! Now we are all doomed!”
Lloyd could not manage to pacify his mother at all. But Stevenson extended his hand through the netting and reached hers.
“Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
A fellow farer true through life,
Heart whole and soul free,
The August father gave to me.”
Her hysteria settled down to a low sob as he recited and she squeezed his hand. Lloyd managed to lead her away into another room, leaving us to resume our quiet confrontation.
Davenport, as though he were in the position to make demands, said, “Let us be done with the games. What will you do? What will happen now?”
Stevenson turned his head away without answering. Then he said, almost reassuringly, “Whenever I think of you, I will damn you until the air is blue, and when you think of me, you will damn me until the air is blue, and everything will be all right in the world. Tell me, what happens to ‘bookaneers’ when they must finally leave the little bubble of literary life?”
“I suppose they usually disappear from sight.”
“Then you shall be no different. Men, you are now retired from your business. I suppose I know nothing, except that men are fools and hypocrites, and I know less of them than I was fond enough to fancy.” At a signal from Stevenson, John led us out of the room and through the house as Stevenson began to play a slow, tortured tune in a minor key.
Davenport spoke in Chinese (he later translated the conversation for me). “I will pay you generously to help us.”
“You can speak my tongue,” John answered back in Chinese in utter surprise.
“My profession has brought me many places,” Davenport continued smoothly in the other man’s tongue. “I know you wish to go away from here, to go home. Back to your own people. Where you will not be demeaned any longer as ‘John Chinaman.’ Help us to find Father Thomas and get off the island safely, and I could help you. I will send you money and find your passage.”
John grabbed Davenport by the throat. They had to be separated by native servants. We were then pulled and pushed until we were outside, where we were both thrust into the same empty stall of the paddock inside which Charlie had died in the midst of hallucination and mental anguish. Davenport looked as though he had been dropped into hell, kneeling to examine the ropes and leather straps that had held Charlie down. After a few hours, we heard a commotion outside, and I pressed my face against a slot between two boards.
“What, Fergins?”
I tried to think how best I could tell him what I saw: an entire regiment of Samoan soldiers gathering outside, with a litter that had an iron cage on top, tied to two horses.
XIV
O le Fale Puipei.” That was the inscription over the entrance to the Apian jail, built on the edge of the island’s most miserable swamp. Perhaps I will find a satisfactory translation of this motto one day. Maybe it was some antiquated form of the language that did not match the words as I learned them. “In the Talons of Hope.” Understand, Mr. Clover, that might not be what it means, but that is what it should mean.
We had been there one time before, to visit the man who had tried to steal from Stevenson and whom I had first suspected was Belial. Now that we were the prisoners with that same wretched Banner in a chamber near those we were put in, it seemed the whole place might have been erected for those whom Robert Louis Stevenson perceived to have wronged him at one point or another.
There is a little room in the back of the jail used for interviews. We were taken there separately for interrogations by the authorities. They were not so interested in the bookaneer’s mission and purpose, for after all there were no books on this island except those brought by whites, and certainly the whole notion of stealing one was rather fanciful in the realm of crimes on the island. Instead, it was the issue of presenting ourselves with false identities that appalled their sensibilities. It was the terrible crime, as Stevenson had warned us, they called deception, something bookaneers practiced before eating breakfast.
“What is your friend’s name? Davenport? He called himself Porter, no? You said his name was Porter? But you knew his name? You knew he was Davenport, and called him Porter?”