As Flies to Whatless Boys Page 2

  My father had brought a pitch-oil lamp but he hadn’t lit it yet. For now there was only the glow of his cigar. He’d also brought out his leather briefcase, the same one he took every day to work. Which didn’t make any sense to me—what could he want with this briefcase in the dark on the back deck of a ship? And it wouldn’t be until a good while after he’d launched into his story—after he lit the lantern—that he’d open up his briefcase to take out a slightly battered pasteboard cigar box. With a single word handprinted in hard capitals cross the cover: CHAGUABARRIGA. I’d never seen the word before. Didn’t know what language it came from. Or languages. Even the box was a mystery—when my father first took it out I’d thought he wanted to smoke another cigar.

  Inside was a collection of old papers, smudged and ragged-looking round the edges, that he would ruffle through occasionally and select one to illustrate something from his story: maps, letters, clippings from some ancient newspaper I’d never heard of called The Morning Star. He’d take one out and we’d squint together to decipher it beneath the glow of the pitch-oil lamp. But the main thing he wanted to show me—the principal ‘artifact’ as he called them from out of his box—was the little notebook that had once belonged to his own father. It told of the twenty-three days they’d spent together on some estate up on the north coast. A commune where all the labour would be done by machines of Etzler’s own invention. Machines powered by Mother Nature: by wind & water & waves.

  The notebook measured four-by-six inches square. On the tattered cover, printed out by the hand of a grandfather I’d hardly heard of or knew anything about, was the same mysterious word: CHAGUABARRIGA.

  ___________________

  Whatever-the-arse Etzler was doing leading his band of emigrants stumbling round the American West, like Moses leading the lost Israelites, nobody knows. Presumably he was evangelising his machines and ideas. But he couldn’t convince those frontier yankees not-for-nothing, and before long he’d lost he handful of German followers too. They were simple people looking to improve they lives with a few simple creature comforts. They didn’t give a pum about changing the world and turning it into a earthly paradise. But Etzler’s biggest problem beginning-to-end was his inability to accept contrary opinions. Especially when those opinions were coming from people he considered both backwards and boobooloops. He abandoned the West, turning now to explore the South. But there he bounced up face-first with American slavery—which of course his conscience could never condone—and he’d run out of money again.

  He went to Pittsburgh, maybe back to his friend Roebling, to start the first German newspaper in that town. But Etzler’s ego had taken a serious blow, and before long he left America altogether, disappearing again. Now he turned to the Caribbean. He went to Haiti. Possibly during this time he travelled the other islands as far down as Trinidad. Most likely. But whatever he did during that time, Etzler managed to recover heself. At least good enough to write out what would become his first publication, printed upon he return to Pittsburgh.

  And here is where history begins to play she hand. Because that same day that he published Paradise, he travelled to New York for the birthday celebration of a famous Frenchman-socialist by the name of Fourier. And it was at this birthday fête that Etzler met the man who’d become he biggest acolyte ever—C.F. Stollmeyer. (Yes it is, son. The same Stollmeyer who built that big, crazy-arse house round the Savannah, known to us as Killarney Castle. Complete with turrets & towers & Italian stained-glass windows & balustrades of purpleheart-wood lugged out the jungles of Guyana. Same man they used to call ‘Shit-Slinging-Stollmeyer’ because he went round the place collecting up cowshit & horseshit & goatshit & any other kinda caca he could get he hands on, only to compress it into fuel and sell for 5¢-a-brick. But what he eventually made he fortune from was refining pitch he got gratis out the lake at La Brea (that same pitchlake where Columbus heself went to fetch tar to cork the hulls of his ships), and Stollmeyer dug it out & refined it & sold it off as kerosene—what we call pitch-oil. Because that’s the kinda men we talking about here, R-W. That’s the kinda characters peopling this story. Because as it turned out Stollmeyer never followed Etzler back to America, when he went running from Trinidad with he stones shriveled up between he legs. After the TES had gone to hell and the whole bloody thing was dead and done with. Even Stollmeyer had he fill of Etzler by then.)

  My father paused here a minute. And as if he’d orchestrated it himself, at the end of that minute we were shaken from out our solitude by the clanging of the captain’s bell down below—ca-clang ca-clang ca-clang ca-clang. Now we heard Captain Vincent call out—

  Last ferry ashore till mornin!

  Yet even as I heard the captain’s hoarse voice I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t have a chance to escape. Not a chance. I was here for the night. Thing is, only the other day I’d asked my father to tell me this story of how the Tuckers ended up here in Trinidad. My family. It was the first time I’d made the request. Oddly enough, before I turned eighteen, I’d never even thought to ask. Suddenly I had this itch that wanted to be scratched. But my father put me off, giving me some excuse, like he didn’t feel I was ready. Then, a few nights ago, he asked me to help him writeover a couple letters concerning his impending trip to London—not exactly business letters, either—and those letters made my itch scratch me even worse.

  Now, despite my curiosity, I was the one who wasn’t sure. Suddenly my itch was gone. Washed away clean. Suddenly I wanted to be someplace else—out liming with my friends, busting bamboo round the Savannah, or down in the pit at Roxy Theatre. I did not want to be sitting here listening to this. But I’d asked him for it, and now I was hearing it. My story. In the most unexpected of places—on the back deck of this ship, reclining against some big coils of weathered rope. Because my father hadn’t even begun yet.

  Stollmeyer was a fellow German who’d emigrated to Philadelphia a few years before. He was a publisher and he edited a German newspaper too—which only leads you to wonder how he hadn’t run into Etzler already. But that was history taking in a deep breath. Getting sheself ready. Because now at this birthday fête in New York he not only met him, he read Etzler’s Paradise. Stollmeyer became a instant convert. More important, he became Etzler’s business-partner. Stollmeyer brought him back to Philadelphia, and there the two began to scheme. The place, they decided, for Etzler to propagate his ideas, was England. Not America amongst a bunch of backwards country-bookies and racist slave-owners. England was the place. But that was only the first step. And here Etzler added the twist: he’d get his British followers to emigrate to the Caribbean. To they own West Indies. A place where land was available, free for the asking, closer to the equator where the powers of Mother Nature were a hundred times more potent. Only waiting to be harnessed by Etzler’s machines. And now it was as if he reached into he hat or a sack-of-pommeracs and pulled one out—Trinidad, he decided. With its unlimited natural resources and expanses of available fertile land. Perfect for cultivation with he own Satellite.

  That’s what snagged Stollmeyer. And eventually it would snag the whole of England too. That’s the difference between Fourier’s airy philosophizing and Etzler’s practical plan—machines. Understand, like all these men we talking about here, this Stollmeyer fancied heself a scientist and mathematician too. And although he didn’t have no formal university training in engineering like Etzler did, he saw the potential for he new friend’s machines. Whether or not it was potential to make them a bloody fortune, or save the labouring-masses from toil and starvation, or both, I go leave up to you to decide. Thing is, here was Etzler with he machines already proven. Not practically, mind you—not in real life—but mathematically. And that’s all that mattered: numbers speak the truth. They could not lie. And let me tell you, Etzler had plenty plenty numbers propping him up.

  Within days of arriving in London they formed a joint-stock company called the Tropical Emigration Society. Now not only the British aristocracy and wealthy capital
ists could pour they pounds into Etzler’s open purse, but the destitute labourers could dump they handful of sticky pennies in as well. At last Etzler had the two things he’d always needed. Two things he always dreamt about: a disenchanted populace ready to embrace his ideas for change and emigration, a people anxious to line he pockets too. Everybody-and-he-brother only buying up shares of the TES like tanyafritters, one-penny-at-a-time, with hopes of immediate emigration to Trinidad.

  Here, son, in a relatively minor way, is where the Tuckers enter into the picture. But via a circuitous and rather unprecipitated route. Understand, my father, together with his closest friend—a Scotsman-ironmonger named Thomas Powell—Papee and he friend were former members of a underground group based in London known as the Chartists. They’d been radical & militant & until the end, secret. Fighting down the Crown for all these charters to improve working conditions for the labouring poor, in addition to voting rights. But the movement had been crushed by the government. And Powell heself—their spiritual and elected leader—Powell turned informer in the middle of the scrimmage to save the skins of he comrades. The authorities turning round soon as the deal was brokered & busting him & tossing him in jail. Papee only narrowly escaping Newgate by the skin-of-he-tail heself.

  So as you can well imagine, this group of just-defeated and still hotted-up Chartists fell straight into Etzler’s hands. All-in-a-sudden Papee and he friend began talking about nothing more than the TES and emigration to Trinidad. In they minds they’d left England already. But son, Papee would be the fortunate one—if you want to call it that. Because whilst he was picked by Etzler to help construct the Satellite, Powell was chosen to edit the journal that would become the voice of the TES in England, The Morning Star. So time as Etzler was ready to depart for Trinidad with he first group of thirty-seven pioneers, he had no choice but to leave the thoroughly disappointed Powell behind to edit the Star. On the other hand, Papee and the rest of us—Mum & me & my three sisters; the Tucker clan; you family—we got to go.

  My father had reached the end of his cigar. He took three last pulls to send the tip glowing red. Then he touched it to the wick of the pitch-oil lamp, closed the glass, tossed the zoot over the stern. It was so quiet we heard it hiss as it plopped down into the water. And as the pitch-oil lamp flared to a dim glow, he took out his old-fashioned pocketwatch, fastened to his vestcoat buttonhole by a long goldchain. He clicked it open—

  Almost eight o’clock already.

  He nodded his chin at the watch—

  I might have mentioned to you, son, that this pocketwatch once belonged to a gentleman named Mr. Whitechurch. A close friend of Papee’s. He came over with his wife & niece & the rest of us on this same ship with Etzler.

  My father paused a beat—

  That niece became my first love. Marguerite. Only woman besides you mum I’ve ever been bazodee over my whole life.

  He paused again—

  You never imagine telling you own son such intimate details that took place even before he was born. But I couldn’t give you this story without telling you about Marguerite. I couldn’t make a start. Couldn’t finish neither.

  My father clicked the cover shut and slipped the watch back into his pocket, reclining quiet a moment. By now more lights had come on, tinkling round the curve of the bay. More lights in town and the hills and up in the mountains too. Plenty stars in the sky. But the moon wouldn’t rise from behind those mountains for another hour. Cut with a knife down the middle into a perfect half. So somehow you saw the reflection of the moon’s other side, even though that half was caught in the earth’s shadow and blanked out completely. You saw it. Even though it wasn’t there. But that wouldn’t happen for another hour. Now there was only the pitch-oil lamp glowing faintly at my father’s feet, there beside his briefcase containing the still-unopened cigar box, the lights onshore reflecting across the flat water and the stars. As the Condor hung on her anchor ready to go to sea, nothing left to do but wait for morning and the tide. And I had nothing to do but listen.

  We are on the eve of the most eventful moment of humankind.

  —J.A. Etzler

  I

  At Sea

  13 October 1845

  1

  Aboard the Rosalind

  We’d been at sea five days already, and I’d yet to catch a glimpse of Marguerite. Not even a glimpse. Despite my untiring, solitary wanderings of the deck allotted to the third-class passengers. In all weather and at all hours of the day and night. Despite my continually bouffed attempts to gain access to other parts of the ship. Son, no sooner was this voyage underway than it was made clear that each class would be restricted to those areas of the ship that coincided with we rank and privilege. Not only deck space and sleeping quarters. But also the designated dining halls, saloons and parlours for recreation and relaxation, in addition to washrooms and privy facilities. The third- and first-class passengers not only did not intermingle—socially nor for any other reason a-tall—we were, for the most part, oblivious to each other’s existence. There was even a steerage class that I’d remain ignorant of till Papee exposed them to me towards the end of the journey.

  I soon came to realise this ship wasn’t nothing more than a miniature floating replica of the city we left behind: everybody had they place. With the wealthy passengers congregating forward and nearer the main deck in they elegant cabins, reclining beneath butler-held parasols on the cushioned lounges of they sundecks. And the farther astern and deeper into the ship’s bowels you descended—like the basements and sewers of London—the more decrepit the environs and they inhabitants.

  Papee seemed the sole passenger able to sidestep all this vigilant segregation. After taking his breakfast with us of porridge tasting like shredded pasteboard, tea concocted from used leaves stirred into lukewarm water—a dollop of coagulated milk plopped in if we were lucky—he’d return to the cabin he shared with Mum to change his outfit. Now Papee put on he new white linen shirt. Suspenders, embroidered vest, pinstripe pants. Silk cravat & frock coat & gloves & tall top hat. Son, I had my own set of fancified clothes too—newly tailored for the selfsame reason as Papee’s—but on Mum’s orders those garments lay packed up in the trunk with the rest of the Tuckers’ luggage, who-the-arse-knew-where down in the hold. Papee then made his way forward, past the deck-steward posted behind the galley, to the first-class saloon. Where he spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon too, conversing with Mr. Whitechurch and a handful of other gentlemen. I also knew Papee visited the Whitechurches in they first-class cabin, located below the forecastle deck. Adjacent to the cabins of the Etzlers and the Stollmeyers. Those accommodations, Papee assured us—with they private sitting rooms, four-poster beds, and bathrooms with full-length porcelain tubs—were superiour even to Captain Damphier’s own.

  For me those parts of the Rosalind seemed as far away as Marguerite’s Knightsbridge had from my old East End borough. And just as out of reach.

  Son, you got to realise that the sole reason I’d looked forward to this voyage with such excitement was so Marguerite and me could be together. Much as we could want. And nobody could stop us neither. Yet now the passage was underway, after all the setbacks, I didn’t even know for sure if she was aboard ship. Even if she was the fact that she’d be travelling in upper class made her perfectly inaccessible.

  But after five days I’d had it up to my nostril-holes. And that same afternoon I spied for two long hours on the deck-steward stationed behind the galley. Till I watched him step-way from he post a few seconds to weewee over the leeward rail. Now I hurried past he turned back, leaping a low railing, descending a short flight of steps. Bouncing up face-first with a set of elegant passengers, all dressed to the nines in full feather. Stylish couples promenading the deck arm-in-arm, one-behind-the-next in circular fashion—like the entire operation was orchestrated only so the ladies didn’t decapitate each other with the brims of they bloody hats—hot toddies holding in they whitegloved hands. An el
derly couple even accompanied by they primped-up poodle, the dog wearing a red velvet vest just like Etzler.

  A few minutes later I happened to glance through a window into one of plush parlours, my heart beating out a warm hole inside my chest the same instant: there sat Mrs. Whitechurch, together with a half-dozen other fancy ladies and young maidens. At one end of the room stood an upright piano, with a pair of portly little women sitting on the bench, playing a duet and giggling. A large silver bowl of strawberries-and-cream on the table behind Mrs. Whitechurch, together with an ample tray of biscuits & pastries & finger-sandwiches. Livery-clad steward to pour out they tea or coffee from shining silver pots, holding in each of he whitegloved hands. Needless-to-say, my own lunch a couple hours earlier had included a single boiled potato and a piece of stewed bullbeef so impregnated with salt, I’d spit it back in tin plate in one. And there wouldn’t be no blasted afternoon tea for the likes of none of us.

  Yet it wasn’t all these lavish victuals adorning the lace-covered table behind Mrs. Whitechurch that had me so defeated. It wasn’t even that Mum and my sisters were barred all entrance to this particular parlour. It was the fact that Marguerite wasn’t sitting on the Chesterfield couch beside she aunt.

  I turned round and walked straight back to my own deck, in my own third-class portion of the ship—hopping the railing and striding boldface past the deck-steward—like I was daring he arse to give me some kinda backbite.

  ___________________

  The following morning, as I stood at the rail staring-way at a dirty-looking, whitecap-littered sea, I got an idea. Caper. The beginnings of a plan. Son, by this point I was so desperate to see Marguerite, I never even stopped to contemplate just how vie-kee-vie this caper could be. Nor how dangerous. That’s how bazodee I was—too-tool-bay, assassataps, third degree of tabanca. And you got to remember that I was a restless fifteen years of age too. Reckless.