“Even when the mother is as miserable as I am?” Belle replied to Fanny, then I swear the two women blew smoke at each other.
“Mrs. Stevenson,” Davenport said, “how long did it take to build this fine home?”
“Oh, quite long.”
It was like that between Davenport and Fanny Stevenson. He tried to nurture conversation with her, but she gave him nothing in return. She never told him to call her Fanny. Belle soon felt so warm she would not say more than a word or two at a time. After rolling his own cigarette, which I knew he despised, and smoking a little, Davenport looked over at the piano and said something horrifying.
“My dear Fergins,” he began without looking my way, “why not play a song for us?”
“What?”
“I’m sure the ladies would appreciate a distraction from the heat,” he said. “Mr. Fergins is often asked to play at parties and such. Go on now, Fergins.”
“Please do, Mr. Fergins,” Fanny encouraged me.
“It took eleven of the brown boys eight hours to carry that awful heavy thing up here on poles,” Belle added, always the first to describe any difficulty. “Of course, nobody here plays except me, and I am simply terrible. You must, Mr. Fergins.”
Lloyd patted me on the back and helped me up. I stood there.
“We’re waiting,” Davenport said.
“What would I play?” I asked, barely concealing my misery.
“The latest from London,” came the ridiculous answer from the bookaneer.
I had perhaps been asked to play at a party once or twice in my life, so often was a considerable hyperbole, and my answer when asked would have been a resounding no. I had not played a note in more than two years. I walked over to the old piano, cased in black ivory, and sat on the bench. I tell you I was so troubled by the idea of playing in front of this room of languid, sweaty Bohemians that I closed my eyes as I played. The keys were cold and stiff against my unwilling fingers and I felt myself wanting to melt atom by atom and disappear into the tropical air.
When I stopped, there was some discordant clapping. This sent a flood of fresh humiliation through me.
“More, Mr. Fergins,” said Fanny with a big, loose grin. She was my advocate in all things.
“I mustn’t,” I said, stepping away from the bench to make it final.
Then I heard the slower clapping of a newcomer.
“Excellent. Better than a dig in the eye with a sharp stick, anyway.” Stevenson was looking at me with those all-seeing wide-set eyes from the entrance into the room. “The new men. I remember you. Have you not been served a drink? Even our houseboys are wilting today. I will get it for you myself. A lemon drink, or something stronger?”
I could only bring myself to repeat, “Lemon drink?” He took my question as an answer and returned a few minutes later.
The novelist wore a remarkable costume: a tight-fitting flannel shirt revealing his excessively thin and long arms, and white flannel trousers, which were rolled up and tucked into one brown wool sock and one purple, which had holes, revealing the pale flesh of the bottom of his feet when he walked across the room.
“How about we start a fire?” he asked as he brought me the drink, and handed another to Davenport.
“Too hot,” came the retort from wife and stepdaughter.
“Yes,” said Stevenson, his face falling with disappointment. “Today is probably too hot. Mr. . . .”
“Fergins,” Davenport answered for me.
“Yes, that’s right. Englishman. Mr. Fergins, pray humor us with some more music. Something classic this time.”
I can hardly explain the effect of a direct command from this otherworldly man, but there I was, planting my backside again right on the piano bench, where I had sworn to myself mere moments before I would never return were my life dependent on it, my fingers fumbling into position as I tried to remember a Strauss waltz I was once taught by a piano master in exchange for a rare copy of Longfellow’s first published volume. Stevenson kept time with the song by picking at one end of his mustache with his finger and thumb, swinging a limp cigarette caught between his lips.
• • •
STEVENSON DID NOT STAY in the room very long that morning, but before he exited he bid us to come again soon. Davenport was as pleased on our ride home as a child with a new toy.
“I never knew you played piano, Fergins.”
“That is because I absolutely do not, or at least certainly not well enough to play for anyone but my nieces, who are by now better than I am at eight and ten years old. If you didn’t know, why on earth did you ask me to play?”
“Because I had a line of thought, while we were sitting there languishing in the stillness and heat in that big room. They have wallowed in the South Seas for a few years. They are musically inclined enough to have a piano, not an everyday object on this island, and I have heard a kind of flute in the house that I suspected might be played by Stevenson—since I heard it in the presence of each other family member. Not played well, mind you. Nor did you have to play anything well—and you did not—as long as it was something new. New for them, I mean, having been gone for so long. I thought that in a place like this, novelty might be enough. I do not play a note, and supposed a thorough English gentleman like yourself might. You should be proud, Fergins!”
“Humiliated,” I said quietly. “That’s what I should be. Am.”
“Oh?” Davenport replied as though the point were irrelevant.
Of course, my concern for my own dignity was irrelevant here. We had been brought back to Stevenson’s attention, which meant the real campaign to find the manuscript could begin. Davenport was so pleased with me that he volunteered an answer to a question from days before. “You had asked me whether I ever wanted to be a writer. . . .” But I do not want to forget my place in the story, so remind me to return to that.
We would learn that as easily as Fanny Stevenson alternated between smiles and sighs, Robert Louis Stevenson alternated between reclusive and public periods, and it seemed around this time he had entered one of his more public moods. When we next went to Vailima, we came upon the novelist and John Chinaman—as the attendant was called whom we met with Stevenson at the stream—clearing an area of tangled brush at the entrance to the property. As before, John followed Stevenson several paces behind, watching without actually helping. Stevenson was covered in mud and dust and carrying his own tools.
When we reached the front verandah, Stevenson let out one of his war whoops, this time serving to call his family and natives over to see to us. Despite the fact that the Vailima servants saw the man every day, they gaped at the gaunt, earth-encrusted, long-legged novelist when he passed, as though he were one of the island’s gods.
“It is time for ’ava,” he said to us with a grin.
We sat crossed-legged in a semicircle on the large front verandah, joined by Fanny and Belle.
I discovered now why Fanny Stevenson was so keen on having an English bookseller in her company. She seemed to think I could convince him to return to civilization.
“Oh, Mr. Fergins has been telling me with what reverence you would be greeted in London or Edinburgh,” she said as the servants passed out lemonade and cookies. “He knows the sympathies of the public as well as anyone. Tell him, Mr. Fergins.”
“Well, in a manner of speaking, I oughtn’t try to claim—”
“Tell him exactly what you told me, Mr. Fergins.”
I repeated my assessment—King Arthur and Avalon, Dickens and Wordsworth, the English language come alive.
Stevenson seemed unaffected. “Barkis worries what the politicians think of me being here, with the British consulate on the island always wrestled into submission by the Germans, who have the most firepower and money,” he said without looking at me. “Barkis,” he called, repeating his curious pet address for his wife. Nobody ev
er bothered to explain it to us, so I assume it was inspired by Dickens’s famous line “Barkis is willing,” now applied to Fanny’s rather amazing willingness to follow the writer to the ends of the earth. “Barkis, my dear fellow, do not concern yourself with politicians. I once thought meanly of the plumber, but how he shines beside today’s politician.”
“It was merely an informed speculation on Mr. Fergins’s part. A welcome one, if you ask me, Louis.”
“Tusitala,” he said, not to correct his wife but to instruct us. He turned to Davenport. “Did my wife tell you that she dislikes Americans?”
“Not yet, but I’d like to hear why,” Davenport said.
“She thinks Americans and Australians are dangerous when they go to foreign lands because they care only about conquest and do not mind what the public will think of their actions. Frankly, I lost my only chance for the public to love me unconditionally by not dying. What do you have to say to that, Mr.”—Fergins, his wife reminded him—“Mr. Bookseller?”
I wilted under Stevenson’s sidelong gaze. “Well, but, in truth . . . I daresay . . . regarding any speculation on my part . . .” I never properly began or ended.
Stevenson clapped his hands together as several bowls of different sizes were brought over. One of these bowls, filled with the roots of a native plant, was carried by a very pretty girl. Her ample bosom was draped with six or seven necklaces of beads, stones, and small animal teeth hanging down; around her neck was a rather beautiful collar made from whale teeth. The exposure of so much skin, like anything else on a primitive island, began to seem normal after a while. Her black hair was oiled tightly over her ears and in three buns around her head, with a few strands falling freely along with a display of flowers down her neck. Her cheeks were round, while her eyes were close together and sharp, suggesting simultaneously a childish angelic nature and a touch of craftiness. Behind her stood a middle-aged dwarf, perhaps three or three and a half feet tall, with long arms and a watchful glance at the whole party.
The scantily clad girl began to chew a piece of the plant root, then added another piece of the root, chewing vigorously, though keeping her lips closed. She added another piece and one more, until I was astounded she could fit anything more in her mouth. She was carefully shifting the already chewed-up roots into her cheeks until finally there was no more room. She spit the masticated roots into the bowl, poured water from another bowl, and then mixed the concoction together. The first serving was poured into a carved coconut shell and passed to Stevenson, who drank it in one draught.
“Here is the ’ava,” said our host in an apparent part of the ritual. “Now let it be shared!”
After the shell was filled again, Stevenson passed it to me. “’Ava is a great tradition here,” he assured me. “The honor of making it is to go to the most beautiful maiden in the village, or, in our case, here at Vailima. Do not worry, she rinses her mouth quite thoroughly first.”
I must have blanched visibly at the thought of drinking the spit-up brew because all at once I saw the following happen: Stevenson laughed, Belle nodded knowingly, the silent dwarf squinted, and Fanny raised impatient eyes.
“You grow accustomed to this life,” Belle said, more a warning than an assurance.
“In some places in Samoa, a visitor would be imprisoned for refusing ’ava,” Stevenson added, enjoying my discomfort, perhaps revenge for complimenting his literary status too highly.
“To tradition,” I said, raising the shell to my lips. The mixture had a strong odor of sand and oil and looked like soapy water. It had a pungent, unpleasant taste. I hoped I would not grow accustomed to it.
Davenport took the next portion that was poured. With his eyes on the girl’s face, he drank the vile liquid down without pause. She cast her head down as each drinker took a turn, though I noticed her gaze kept drifting to Davenport’s.
“Compliments, Tusitala,” he said.
“A pleasure,” Stevenson said. “You see that I have gone into far lands to die, and here will I stay until buried—unless, of course, we can manage one more visit to Italy; I always wanted to return there one day. But I imagine the reality is obvious to outsiders like you gentlemen. The word is out, and my doom is written.”
Fanny squirmed at this declaration, one repeated on a regular basis, to judge by its delivery. Stevenson did not appear to be suffering, but at the same time he was far from healthy. No loose style of clothing could hide how emaciated he was. He also stifled harsh coughs, which clawed their way out as extravagant wheezes.
As we prepared to ride to our cottage that afternoon, Fanny chased after us. We were nearing the stables. She threw a look over her shoulder back at the house. Then she let out a quick sigh that itself sounded like a plea. “Gentlemen, please say you will stay for supper tonight.”
To my surprise, Davenport protested.
“Our man Cipaou wished to cook a special tiffin at our own modest table. We shall have to return or risk wounding his pride.”
“Please, we will send a messenger to tell him. I have made mutton curry, a dish I learned from an East Indian cook in Fiji. You will like it. Louis will not talk so much of the island politics when guests are present. He does not eat when he is agitated, and the talk is not good for his health. There are rumblings of more interference by Herr Becker and the Germans against the natives who oppose the puppet king. The whole attitude of the Germans here is so excessively English.”
“Of course we shall stay, if it is a help,” Davenport said.
“Thank you,” said Fanny, her face softening with gratitude—and, more so than any other as I look back, that was the moment we secured our places at Vailima.
• • •
“MY WHITE GENTLEMEN” was how Stevenson referred to us, while we were Fergins and Porter (Davenport’s assumed name) to the rest of the family, and interchangeably White Chief to most of the Vailima natives. It was clear that Davenport’s first hope—that Stevenson’s isolation and his vanity as a writer would make him inclined to want to know another writer—had been misguided. Stevenson was vulnerable to our presence, but his vulnerability was of a different nature. It was precisely how seriously he took his life on the Samoan islands. He had not come to the island for an exotic escape into a kind of monastic writerly solitude; that much was now obvious. He was fully entrenched. He had brought his whole family, even his elderly mother. She was my favorite member of the household, and when she ventured down from her sewing machine to the ground floor, which was rare, the sunny old woman would never fail to speak in clever aphorisms. The novelist’s whole life had been transplanted into Samoan soil. With help from his stepson, he even seemed to thrive on overseeing the very large staff of servants and dealing with the complexities of maintaining and improving the grounds of what he mischievously called his “plantation.” As far as I could tell, he weeded as much as he wrote.
Because he cared so much about Samoan life, it made perfect sense that Stevenson would want to ensure Davenport portrayed the island in a favorable way for his supposed book of travel stories, and that resulted in more meals and more time. Davenport declined as many of the invitations that came to our cottage as he accepted. He explained to me that, once establishing our foothold, we must not appear overly inquisitive about the Stevensons or riveted by Vailima. Still, the more time we were there, the more clues Davenport gathered. Stevenson was actually quite open in talking about his writing. Hines had once told us that all whites were instant friends with each other in these lands of islanders, and perhaps that phenomenon contributed to Stevenson’s willingness to share.
The novelist would stop in mid-conversation—mid-sentence, to be more precise—while walking, for example, down the paths that ran along Fanny’s elaborate flower gardens, to dig out a piece of paper when he had an idea. He would then write a paragraph or a page right in front of us.
“Yes,” he would mumble, “yes, just so!”
Then, looking up at one of us with the wildness of creativity in his eyes, he would say, “One of you hold this, won’t you?” He would pass over his ever-present cigarette, and Davenport or I would take it. We came to understand that the thing was meant to be preserved, however pitifully short, and there one of us would stand tending to the smoldering cigarette while Stevenson wrote in a mad dash.
On that occasion in the garden, it was Davenport tending to the cigarette. Stevenson, pausing from his scribbling, suddenly spoke of the virtues of their tobacco, which was called Three Castles.
“We are slaves to our brand, I’m afraid. They must be imported, like everything in Samoa. Do you know even the wood we used to build the house was brought from America? Trees all around us, but the natives know nothing of how to harvest wood and—this is crucial to understand, if you wish to grasp Samoa and its people for your travel book—do not want to know how to do it.”
All of this while he was writing. It was as though the concentration came only at the moment of generating an idea, while the actual writing was a formality. There was a deep generosity that came across. Even while doing his own writing, he was trying to help the writing he believed Davenport was doing.
“It is quite foreign to you, isn’t it, Mr. Porter?”
“What is, Tusitala?” replied Davenport.
“The idea of a man leaving behind civilization for what our esteemed literati back in Europe or America would look askance at. You come here to record the exotic, to see butlers with bare feet, precisely because you cannot believe it possible for a white man to belong here.”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that way.”
“It is a hard and difficult place. But I am quite interested to see if you gentlemen will find, as I think you will, that this life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires. This is paradise, so close to heaven that to be really ill is almost impossible. This is the way it should be,” he said, suddenly returning his pencil to his paper with brightened eyes. “Yes, this is what I wanted to say!”