The Last Bookaneer (3 page)

There were jeers and mutterings, and soon rough epithets tossed from all sides of the crowd. “Scoundrel” and “traitor” could be made out; then, louder, “Pirate!” This last word was taken up by other voices in the room.

The man in question, in the brief intervals in which I had an unobstructed view, appeared unmoved by the near riot. He was tall, a full wave of dark hair on his uncovered head, with handsome features, a grim half smile that never showed his teeth, and a slightly crooked jaw that might have been broken. I could not help but feel a touch of admiration for his imperviousness to the noisy hostility. I moved closer to the front of the room, pulling Mr. Fergins along, even as I began to sense hesitation seize him. Then, as the prisoner passed near us on his way to the dock, his eyes locked on—
me
.

No, I realized almost at once, he stared over my shoulder at my companion. The prisoner stopped. He opened his mouth to speak and the room fell hush. Then the words pulsed and popped from his mouth like the sounds of a drum. Words I could not understand at all. It was a language I had not heard even while strolling the docks of New York City—which to me meant it was not a language.

Ooot-malla malla-malla-malla ma!

The articulate gibberish of Babel, as my father used to say in his sermons on the signs of the devil's language. That was how it sounded to me. As the prisoner spoke, the color of blood filled his face, while all color simultaneously drained from the bookseller's cheeks. The audience seemed to take the man's burst of nonsense as taunting toward them. The jeers increased. I wrapped an arm around Mr. Fergins, using my other arm to battle our way back to the gallery and then to the staircase.

He was walking ahead of me as I peppered him with questions about what we had seen and what had happened. “Ah, here we are,” was all Mr. Fergins said. We had climbed one floor up and now reached a door, painted crimson, that ended a long corridor. The bookseller rapped the point of his umbrella high on the door, and when the door was opened, with an abrupt farewell he left me standing alone. I waited as long as I could but he never returned.

The next few occasions Mr. Fergins passed through our cars I was busy, or he was, and there was no time to discuss the strange turn of events at the courthouse. Another week passed. Then there came an occasion when engine problems disabled a train on our track, and the waiters sat around in the fashion of the leisurely class, wrinkling our fine liveries, alongside the darker-skinned dishwashers and porters. The bookseller, whose grin was wider than usual as his books were snatched at a brisk pace by stranded travelers, brought over an armful of volumes he said he had chosen for me, to which I replied, “No time today, Mr. Fergins.”

His mouth formed a long
o
and his large brown eyes appeared sad beneath the thick lenses I now noticed were etched with elaborate scratches. I asked him to take a table with me in the empty car.

“Excuse my rudeness, Mr. Fergins. But you left me standing there in the courthouse, and you ignored my questions.”

“Quite right!” he said, shaking his head. “You are right about everything. My only excuse is that I was unusually distracted that day. What shall I answer for you?”

“Who was that prisoner we saw being brought into the courtroom?”

He seemed startled by the question. His shoulders relaxed, but he did not speak for another moment until he asked, urgently: “Have you ever heard of a bookaneer?”

I shrugged at the queer word, then shook my head.

“No, I suppose you never heard of such a creature.”

A passenger knocked into the book cart and the slender umbrella tumbled down. Mr. Fergins seemed so proud when he caught it that he might as well have stopped a baby's fall. As though to explain his pride, he added one of his peculiar asides: “This homely thing saved my life, you know.”

“The umbrella?” I replied with a quizzical stare.

“Did you know, Mr. Clover, that there are more patents filed by people set on improving umbrellas than for any other object? Yet they hardly ever change.”

“What has been pricking my curiosity was that you seemed to understand what the prisoner said—that mixed-up balderdash he called to you.”

“I?” His howl-laugh started and then broke apart into smaller, self-conscious giggles.

“Yes.”

“Who am I? Whatever makes you think that? Youthful imagination. I sell books and try to make people happier doing it: that's my life in a nutshell. Let me show you a new novel from London.”

“I know what I saw,” I insisted, blocking his hand as he reached for the cart. “He was looking right at you when he began to speak in that strange tongue, and whatever he said troubled you. Mr. Fergins, I was there!”

The bookseller sighed, the bottom of his spectacles fogging for a moment, then clearing again to reveal pained eyes. “That was the first day of the man's trial. I had been asked by the judge, because of long years of examining handwriting and the qualities of paper and ink, and so on, to review some documents related to the case. It is rather a tedious service, but I felt I should agree to the request. I suppose that man you saw is rather cross with anyone who might be asked to assist against him. He is a dangerous sort. I do not know the words he spoke, but I hardly like to think of what he is capable of.”

“Why is he so hated? Did he commit treason? Murder?”

“Murder!”

“Something infamous, I'm sure. Why else would all those people come just to leer at him?”

“No, he is not a murderer, not of men, at least—of books.”

“
Books
, Mr. Fergins?” I responded, too incredulous to complete my thought. “You don't mean . . . A book cannot be . . .”

“The details of this narrative, in which I played a small part, will throw sufficient light on the subject, Mr. Clover, and should you suffer me to tell the story, you may well come to see what I think you have suspected these past months, that books are not dead things.”

That was how the last case of the bookaneers, the existence of which is known by so few, the specifics by none who walk the earth, came to be told to me.

Robbery of a publisher—I said that if he regarded that as a crime it was because his education was limited.

M
ARK
T
WAIN

You meet all kinds in the black arts—I mean printing.

A
PRINTER'S DEVIL AT THE
C
ROWN

I
f you should ever meet people who tell you they know something about the bookaneers, be skeptical. They probably deal in myths and fables. That most people have never heard of the bookaneers and never will stems from the bookaneer's unique position in that long, twisty, and mostly invisible chain of actors that links author to reader. It will be the bookaneers' collective fate to have appeared and disappeared with only traces left in our atmosphere, like so many meteors. The story I have to tell is about a particular bookaneer of the most extraordinary skill—the last true representative, some might say, of that name and tribe. My account is true in all particulars, because I was there.

The story has no beginning—I mean no single obvious starting point—but stories ought to try to begin somewhere. London will do, then. My bookstall in Hoxton Square was near the corner of Bowling Green Lane. I grew it, cultivated it, and—excuse my sentimentality—loved it for years to the exclusion of almost everything else. My stall backed onto a fence, the iron spokes of which were clothed with moss in every variety and shade of green and brown from two hundred years of growth. A church bell tolled periodically from one end of the street, a fire engine clanged from the other, and my books were situated comfortably between these sounds of spiritual succor and earthly warning.

Around people who enjoy books, the bashful disposition of my youth grew into a sociable one. Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long. Had I never learned to like books, I would have become the dullest sort of hermit. When I was younger than you, Mr. Clover, I set myself for the law, persuaded that a profession in which books were carried about and consulted at all times would have to be agreeable. But the harder I tried, the more that discipline's endless doctrines made my head ache. I quit with no plan in sight.

I've never been able to bear asking for help when I need it most, and I needed it then. What a spot to be in, with no prospects and no sympathetic family member. Fortunately there was a bookshop. Every young man's story should have a bookshop. This one was not far from where I was boarded. I spent so much of my time inside—hiding, I suppose, from my friends and my parents' friends, from my landlord, from having to justify my decisions and, high heaven forbid, make new ones—I might well have been counted as an employee. Soon enough I was. Stemmes, the book collector who owned the place, probably felt he had no choice but to invite me to apprentice. For more than three years I slept in a windowless chamber beneath the shop. I packed crates, pushed brooms, and tried to avoid falling from old shop ladders while wielding my duster, but I also learned about book values and imperfections, about which auctions to attend and how to win the best volumes, about how to search for the right book for a customer and, when necessary, the right customer for a book. I enjoyed every minute of the work. Well, that is not quite right. I disliked being closed up in dark rooms all day and growing unused to sunlight while trying to please a gloomy, stubborn man who would spout maxims such as “exaggeration is the octopus of the English language,” which I assumed must mean
something
. When I learned that an outdoor bookstall in a leafy square was shuttered, I gathered every cent I had in this world and purchased the municipal license, its shelves, and its stock.

My natural gifts for salesmanship may have been lacking, but they grew with the delight I had in my humble enterprise. I kept five sets of stacking compartments of shelves, with my chair in the middle, and an inventory tailored to the enduring loyalists who came by several times a week. Unlike other bookstall keepers, I never chased anyone away for wanting to read a chapter or two under the shelter of my awning on a hot or rainy day. In fact, readers too poor to make a purchase had been known to come to my stall every afternoon for two weeks until a novel was finished.

My parents never recovered from my dropping out of the law. Once, I overheard them speaking in their garden, my mother remarking to my father that at least I had my books—I will never forget how these words sounded in her voice. “At least he has his books,” as though without them I was nothing. They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready rescued me.

I should mention that in the course of having the bookstall, I met a few handsome women now and again who were as interesting as they were affable. And my thoughts turned to starting a family whenever I would see Veronica and Emily, my beautiful little nieces, who lived in the country and kept me on my toes during my visits. But books are jealous mistresses. As soon as I was back in London my time was consumed to the point that the pursuit of anything more than cordial friendships was always cut short. Before long, I had lost my youth and my patience for indulging others. Books were everything in life; books were better than wine.

Yes, you could say I had all I ever hoped for. Before the age of thirty, I was blissfully self-sufficient, earning enough to live on and attracting notice for skills that carried special value in our trade. For example, I was unusually adept at deciphering handwriting that was deemed illegible scrawl by others, even though my own eyesight was never better than mediocre, and that only by being glued to spectacles. My abilities were useful in identifying markings made inside books by previous sellers or readers and by authors themselves on proofs or in rare first editions. I could imitate a particular person's handwriting, as well, so that samples of the style and appearance could be mailed outside of London to potential buyers instead of waiting for photographic reproductions. I always had a penchant for remembering what I read, and for reading a wide range of subjects in literature and history alike, which allowed me to date proof sheets or other materials discovered unbound and waiting to be priced. It helped that I spent long days at my stall dipping into every sort of book imaginable in between serving customers. The worthy bookseller must know not only the details of Spencer's childhood but also the history of papyrus in ancient Egypt.

Most readers mistakenly believe books are creations of an author, fixed things handed down from high into their waiting hands. That is far from true. Think of the most interesting, the most alarming and brilliant choice made by a writer in literature; now consider that equally interesting, alarming, and brilliant maneuvers were made by people you will never hear about in order for that work to see the light of day. The path is never without obstructions, even more so when the publication proves influential or controversial. After years of keeping my stall, I grew more conscious of such hindrances. I noticed other shadows over the literary kingdom I had been too naive to see, and had occasion to encounter some of the denizens of these shadowlands: shameless autograph hunters and forgers, collectors who tried passing off third editions as firsts, publishers who gave false discounts and fabricated advertising costs, customs officials who sought graft on expensive editions imported from abroad. There is a verse I write in my notebook from memory once a year: “Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print, and you can't think what havoc these demons sometimes choose to make.” Thomas Moore meant the printers' devils, the name for those men with the thankless and tedious tasks of dwelling in a printing press. But the devil has taken many forms in our trade.

Among the various mischief makers and profiteers who have besieged books from time immemorial, there arose the bookaneers. Their origins go back to the first American laws to govern copyrights. That legislation, passed in 1790 by high-minded and arrogant legislators (the usual politicians, in other words), deliberately left works of foreign authors unprotected, which caused other countries to retaliate by withdrawing protection for American works. This opened doors to various kinds of pirates and black markets, European literature plundered by Americans and vice versa. Publishers did their best to shut those doors—at first. But you will find in life that greed for profits is too strong for even good men to resist.

In the new era—not just to publish, but to publish first and cheaply—the publishers had to find individuals with particular sets of skills who could obtain manuscripts and proof sheets through persuasion, bribery, extortion, and, at times, outright theft, then transport them from one country to another. After a while, the publishers and these covert agents expanded beyond trying to secure foreign books; assignments were handed out to spy on rival publishing houses and execute any errands that had to be accomplished out of view.

In short: a bookaneer is a person capable of doing all that must be done in the universe of books that publishers, authors, and readers can have no part in—
must
have no part in. Bookaneers would not call themselves thieves, but they would resort to almost any means to profit from an unprotected book. Take the pocket Webster's from the bottom of my cart and open to “B”—it would go right there, between “book” and “bookish.” No, you will not find “bookaneer” in any dictionary, but pay attention and we will fill one in.

You wonder, no doubt, how from my modest perch as a keeper of a stall and a hunter of books I would have any view at all of such a shadowy crevice in the literary universe. I admit to feeding a special fascination with the subject from the first time I became aware of it. When an acquaintance would point out one of these bookaneers to me at a social club or hotel tavern around the city, a bolt of excitement would shoot through me. It was not the same sort of thrill as one's first glimpse of a long-read author—in that case, a personal encounter usually renders the subject more human, but in the case of the bookaneers, who were by nature secretive and remote, an encounter inspires a rather opposite effect. Of course, my own dealings with bookaneers were rare and brief, and I would never have anticipated that was about to change.

 • • • 

“
I
HAVE A BOOK
for you.”

Those words reached my ears while I was pulling a wagon down a bumpy sidewalk from a storage room to my bookstall. I remember it as a hot and muggy afternoon. I protected the books from the humidity and sun with a light blanket. The man who addressed me had a confident gait and a wide build that commanded attention. I shielded my eyes from the bright sun for a better look. He had a bushel of red hair shooting out from under a formal hat, dancing eyes, and a thick but well-combed mustache.

A glance told me the book in his hand was not mine, for I make it a point to know every one of my volumes on sight. “Not one of my collection, but I thank you nonetheless.”

“I have
this
book”—the red-haired fellow said more slowly, revealing a wide gap between his front teeth on both the bottom and top, then held it close to me with both his hands—“for
you
, Mr. Fergins.”

With that, he let the book drop spine-first to the sidewalk, where it tumbled into the street. I hurried to pick it up before it could be trampled or knocked into the gutter. By the time I stood again, he was gone. I could not help but wonder if this stranger had known that I would never under any circumstances leave a book—even the ugliest, most neglected tome—abandoned in the street. I cleaned off the cover with my handkerchief. Inscribed on it in small lettering was the title
Develin's Leister
.

Sometimes a customer would inquire whether I might sell a book on consignment, and I agreed whenever I could. I would subtract a small commission from a sale, and the whole transaction contributed to the reputation of the bookstall. But if this really was a request for a consignment account, never had I received a proposition so vague. After deliberation, I decided to add the book to my shelves and see what happened. When the stall opened the next day, there was a businessman whom I had never seen before, unmemorable in every way except for a small purple flower over his buttonhole, who browsed quietly for a few minutes before he purchased three books—including the one dropped by the flame-haired stranger, which I had placed on a low shelf beside two other volumes of similar color. I was somehow unsurprised by this strange turn in the strange circumstance. When I went to put the money handed over by the businessman in my strongbox, there was a five-pound note folded in my hand. I trembled with . . . confusion, amazement, excitement. My fingers, my hands, my entire body, were electrified.

You want to know more about the book that caused all of this disturbance. I'd put my palm to Gutenberg's Bible that I never opened it. Right away I recognized that odd title:
Develin's Leister
. The old farmers of England, trading tall tales, would often tease each other, “You picked that story up in
Develin's Leister
!” The legend goes that Develin had been some poor farmer who was always promising to write a book but, like most people who talk too much of writing one, never wrote a word of it. Nobody ever determined where the title of the book came from or exactly what it meant, but the book itself never existed—it was pure myth, an emblem of all the books in the world that would never be written, which is a great deal.