Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries

‘Good or bad?’ said Mannering. ‘He’s alive? You’ve seen him?’

Aubert Gascoigne was looking progressively sourer each time Mannering opened his mouth: he had not yet forgiven the magnate for his rudeness that afternoon, and nor was he likely to do so. Gascoigne bore humiliation extremely ill, and he could hold a grudge for a very long time. At this interruption he hissed audibly through his teeth, in disapproval.

‘I cannot say for certain,’ Moody replied. ‘I must warn you, Mr. Mannering, as I must warn you all, that my story contains several particulars that do not (how shall I put it?) lead me to an immediately rational conclusion. I hope you will forgive me for not disclosing the full narrative of my journey earlier this evening; I confess, I knew not what to make of it myself.’

The room had become very still.

‘You will recall,’ Moody said, ‘that my passage from Dunedin to the Coast was a very rough one; you will also recall, I hope, that the ticket I had so hastily purchased did not buy me a berth in any real sense, but only a small space in steerage. This space was pitch-dark, foul-smelling, and completely unfit for human habitation. When the storm struck, gentlemen, I was on deck, as I had been for almost the entire journey.

‘At first the storm seemed little more than a touch of bad weather, merely a lash of wind and rain. As it gathered strength, however, I became progressively more and more alarmed. I had been warned that the seas off the West Coast were very rough, and that upon every journey to the diggings, Death would roll her dice against the lady Nightmare. I began to feel afraid.

‘I had my suitcase with me. I wished to return it to the hold, so that if I were to be washed overboard then my documents would survive me, and I might have a proper funeral service, with my proper name. To the sailors upon the docks I had given a false name, as you will remember: I had shown them identity papers that belonged to another man. The thought of having a false name spoken at my funeral—’

‘Horrible,’ said Clinch.

Moody bowed. ‘You understand. Well, I struggled up the deck, clasping my case against me, and opened the forward hatch with considerable difficulty, for the wind was gusting and the boat was pitching all about. I managed finally to heave the thing open, and threw my case into the hole … but my aim was poor. The clasp struck on the edge of the deck below; the case opened, and the contents burst out. My belongings were now strewn about the cargo hold, and I was obliged to shimmy down the ladder after them.

‘It took me some time to descend the ladder. The hold was very dark; however, with each jibe and yaw, the ray of light through the open hatch would roll about the cargo hold, as a roving glance. There was a diabolical smell. The cases were groaning against their straps and chains with a noise that was positively infernal. There were several crates of geese in the hold, and many goats. These poor animals were braying and honking and sounding their distress in every possible way. I set about gathering my belongings as efficiently as I was able, as I did not wish to spend any longer in that place than was absolutely necessary. Through all the cacophony, however, I became aware of another sound.

‘A kind of knocking was ensuing from inside the shipping crate nearest me—a furious knocking, loud enough to be heard over all the other din.’

Balfour was looking very alert.

‘It sounded,’ Moody went on, ‘as if a man were trapped in there, and thrashing with all his limbs. I shouted hello and staggered over—the ship was pitching awfully—and from within heard a single name shouted over and over: Magdalena , Magdalena , Magdalena . I knew then that it was a man inside, and not a rat or beast of any other kind. I moved to pry the tacks from the lid of the case, working as fast as I could, and in due course managed to lever the lid open. I believe this was around two o’clock in the afternoon,’ Moody added, with delicate emphasis. ‘It was some four or five hours before we landed at Hokitika, in any case.’

‘Magdalena,’ said Mannering. ‘That’s Anna.’

Gascoigne looked furious.

Moody looked at Mannering. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow. Is Magdalena Miss Wetherell’s middle name?’

‘It’s a name to give a whore,’ Mannering explained.

Moody shook his head, to indicate that he still did not understand.

‘As every dog is called Fido, and every cow is called Bess.’

‘Ah—yes, I see,’ said Moody, thinking privately that the man might have produced two more attractive examples, when he was in the whoring business himself.

‘Perhaps,’ said Benjamin Löwenthal slowly, ‘perhaps we can say—with reasonable doubt, of course—that the man inside that shipping crate was Emery Staines.’

‘He took a particular shine to Anna, that’s for sure,’ Mannering agreed.

‘Staines vanishes the very day Carver weighs anchor!’ Balfour said, sitting forward. ‘And the very day my crate goes missing! Of course: there it is! Staines goes into the crate—Carver swipes the crate—Carver sails away!’

‘But for what purpose?’ Pritchard said.

‘You didn’t happen to get a look at the docking slip, by any chance? The bill of lading?’

‘No, I did not,’ said Moody shortly. He had not yet finished his story, and he did not like being interrupted in mid-performance. But the rapt audience in the room had dissolved, for the umpteenth time that evening, into a murmuring rabble, as each man voiced his suppositions, and expressed his surprise.

‘Emery Staines—on Carver’s ship!’ Mannering was saying. ‘Question is, of course, whether he stowed himself away—that’s one option; whether he was brought on board by accident—that’s another; or whether Carver captured him, and chose to lock him in a shipping crate, in full knowledge—that’s a third.’

Nilssen shook his head. ‘What did he say, though—that the lid was tacked down! You can’t do that from the inside!’

‘You may as well call it a coffin. How’s the man to breathe?’

‘There are slats in the pine—gaps—’

‘Not enough to breathe, surely!’

‘Tom: your shipping crate. Was there room enough inside it for a grown man?’

‘How big is a shipping crate, anyway?’

‘Don’t forget that Carver and Staines are business partners.’

‘About the size of a dray-cart. You’ll have seen them, stacked along the quay. A man could lie inside quite comfortably.’

‘Business partners on a duffer claim!’

‘Strange, though, that he’s still in the crate on the way back from Dunedin. Isn’t that strange? Seems almost to point to the fact that Carver didn’t know he was there.’

‘We ought to let Mr. Moody finish.’

‘ That’s a way to treat your business partner—lock him up to die!’

The only men who had not joined this rabble of supposition were the two Chinese men, Quee Long and Sook Yongsheng, who were sitting very erect, with their eyes fixed very solemnly upon Moody—as they had been for the duration of the evening. Moody met Ah Sook’s gaze—and though the latter’s expression did not alter, it seemed to Moody that he conveyed a kind of sympathy, as though to say that he understood Moody’s feeling of impatience very well.

The lack of a common language had prevented Ah Sook from articulating the full story of his dealings with Francis Carver to the assembly that evening, and as a result, the English-speaking company remained quite ignorant of the particulars of this former association, beyond the fact that Carver had committed a murder, and Ah Sook had resolved to avenge it. Moody regarded him now, holding Ah Sook’s dark gaze in his pale one. He wondered at the history the two men had shared. Ah Sook had confided only that he had known Carver as a boy; he had divulged nothing else. Moody guessed that Ah Sook was around forty-five in age, which would mean he had been born in the early twenties; perhaps, then, he and Carver had known one another during the Chinese wars.