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Heart
of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad First
published in Blackwood Magazine in 1899, Feb., Mar., and April and
subsequently published again in 1902 in Youth: A Narrative; and Two
Other Stories 15
(1) (3) The
Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor
without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind
was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to
come to and wait for the turn of the tide. The
sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together
without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges
drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas
sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low
shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above
Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom,
brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town
on earth. The
Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately
watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole
river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot,
which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize
his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within
the brooding gloom. Between
us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides
holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the
effect of making us
tolerant of each other's yarns -and even convictions. The Lawyer- the best of
old fellows- had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion
on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out
already a box (4) of dominoes, and
was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow
sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken
cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with
his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. (2) The Director, satisfied the
anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged
a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some
reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative,
and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a
serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the
sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very
mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the
wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the
gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber every
minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun. And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun
sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and
without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch
of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men. Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less
brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested
unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race
that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway
leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked 17 at the venerable stream
not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is
easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea"
with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon
the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in
its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to
the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all
the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir
Francis Drake to Sir
John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled -the great
knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names (5) are like jewels flashing in the night of
time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of
treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the
gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other
conquests -and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men.
They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith- the adventurers and the
settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals,
the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned
"generals" of East India
fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out
on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the
might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What
greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an
unknown earth! ... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of
empires. (3) The
sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the
shore. The Chapman Lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat,
shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway -a great stir of lights
going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of
the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in
sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. "And this
also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of
the earth." He
was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that
could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a
seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so
express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and
their home is always with them- the ship; and so is their country- the sea.
One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the
immutability of their surroundings, the foreign shores, the foreign faces,
the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery
but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a
seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence
and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a (6) casual stroll or a casual spree on shore
suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he
finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct
simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked
nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be
excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel
but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings
out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. His remark did not
seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence.
No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow -- "I
was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred
years ago -the other day.... Light
came out of this river since- you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running
blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the
flicker- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was
here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine- what d'ye call 'em? -trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered
suddenly to the north run overland across the Gauls
in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries- a wonderful
lot of handy men they must have been, too- used to build, apparently by the
hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here-
the very end of the world, a sea (4)
the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as
a concertina-
and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks,
marshes, forests, savages,- precious little to eat
fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and
there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay-
cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death- death skulking in the air, in
the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes-
he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about
it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his (7) time, perhaps. They were men enough to
face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance
of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna
by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or
think of a decent young citizen in a toga- perhaps too much dice, you know-
coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader
even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in
some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him-
all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the
jungles, in the hearts of wild men. 20 There's
no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the
incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too,
that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination- you know,
imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust,
the surrender, the hate." "Mind,"
he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand
outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes
and without a lotus-flower- "Mind, none of us would feel exactly like
this. What saves us is efficiency- the devotion to efficiency. But these
chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their
administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were
conquerors, and for that you want only brute force- nothing to boast of, when
you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the
weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was
to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great
scale, and men going at it blind- as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which
mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or
slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look
into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of
it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the
idea -something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice
to..." (5) (8) He
broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames, white
flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other- then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the
great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting
patiently- 21 "I
don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he
began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem
so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear; "yet to
understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what
I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap.
It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my
experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about
me- and into my thoughts. It was somber enough, too- and pitiful- not
extraordinary in any way- not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet
it seemed to throw a kind of light. "I
had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian
Ocean, Pacific, China Seas a regular dose of the East- six years or so, and I
was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your
homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was
very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I
began to look for a ship- I should think the hardest work on earth. But the
ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got tired of that game, too. "Now
when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours
at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories
of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and
when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look
that) I would put my finger 22 on it and say, 'When I grow up I will
go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, (9) I remember. Well, I haven't been there
yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered
about the Equator, and in every sort of latitude all over the two
hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and ... well, we won't talk about
that. But there was one yet- the biggest, the most blank,
so to speak- that I had a hankering after. "True,
by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my
boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of
delightful mystery- a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had
become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a
mighty big river, that you could see on the map, (6) resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the
sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in
the depths of the land. And as I looked at the
map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird- a silly
little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade
on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without
using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water- steamboats! Why
shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could
not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me. "You understand
it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a lot of
relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks, they say. "I am sorry to
own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was
not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on
my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself;
but, then- you see- I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I
worried them. The men said 'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then- would you
believe it?- I tried the women. I,
Charlie Marlow, set the women to work- to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see,
the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She
wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything for you.
It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the
Administration, and also a man who has lots of influence with...' etc., etc. (10) She was determined to make no end of
fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy. "I got my
appointment -of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had received news that one of their captains had
been killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made me
the more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards, when I made
the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that
I heard the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens.
Yes, two black hens. Fresleven -that was the
fellow's name, a Dane- thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he
went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh,
it didn't surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be
told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest
creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a
couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and
he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way.
Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his
people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man- I was told the chief's son-
in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab with a
spear at the white man -and of course it went quite (7)
easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population
cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while,
on the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded
left also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to
trouble much about Fresleven's remains, till I got
out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an
opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through
his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The
supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within
the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had
vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through
the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don't know
either. I should think the cause of progress got them, (11) anyhow. However, through this glorious
affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope for it. "I flew around
like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was crossing the
Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours I
arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice
no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It was the
biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of it. They were
going to run an over sea empire, and make no end of coin by trade. "A narrow and
deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with
venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing
carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously
ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened
the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs,
knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me- still knitting with
downcast eyes- and only just as I began to think of getting out of her
way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress
was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and
preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table
in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all
the colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red- good to see at
any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of
a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a
purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly
lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the
yellow. Dead in the center. And the river was there- fascinating- deadly-
like a snake.
Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial (8) head, but wearing a
compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into
the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the
middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness (12) in a frock-coat. The great man himself.
He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of
ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with my French. Bon voyage. "In about forty-five
seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with the compassionate
secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some document.
I believe I undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets.
Well, I am not going to. "I began to feel
slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was
something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let
into some conspiracy- I don't know- something not quite right; and I was glad
to get out. In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and
the 26 younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on
her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a
cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a
wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose.
She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of
that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were
being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of
unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An
eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away
from there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting
black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to
the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with
unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old
knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many
of those she looked at ever saw her again- not half, by a long way. "There was yet a
visit to the doctor.
'A simple formality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking an
immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over
the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose- there must have been clerks in the
business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead-
came from somewhere up-stairs, (13)
and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with ink stains on the sleeves
of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like
the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so I
proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat
over our vermouths, he glorified the Company's business, and by and by I
expressed casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became (9) very cool and collected all at
once. 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato
to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great
resolution, and we rose. "The
old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the
while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then
with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head.
Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got
the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was
an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gabardine, with his feet
in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in
the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there,' he
said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I never see them,' he
remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.' He
smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going out there. Famous.
Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. 'Ever
any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt
very annoyed. 'Is that question in the interests of science, too?' 'It would
be,' he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interesting for
science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but .
. .' 'Are you an alienist?'
I interrupted. 'Every doctor should be- a little,' answered that original,
imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you messieurs who go out
there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The
mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first
Englishman coming under my observation . . .' I hastened to assure him I was
not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like
this with you.' (14) 'What you say
is rather profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid
irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say,
eh? 28 Good-bye.
Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.'
. . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . 'Du calme,
du calme, Adieu.' "One
thing more remained to do- say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I
had a cup of tea- the last decent cup of tea for many days- and in a room
that most soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-room to
look, we had a long quiet chat by the fireside. In
the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me I had been
represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to how many
more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creature- a piece of good
fortune for the Company- a man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens!
and I was going to take charge of a
two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital -you know. (10) Something like an
emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been
a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the
excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off
her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their
horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I
ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit. " 'You
forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she said,
brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth
women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has
never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful
altogether, and if they were to set it up, it would go to pieces before
the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly
with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing
over. (see
The
Intended) "After this I got
embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write
often, and so on- and I left. In the street- I don't know why- a queer
feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I, who used to
clear out for any part of the world at (15) twenty-four
hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street,
had a moment- I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this
commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying that,
for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the center of a continent, I was
about to set off for the center of the earth. "I
left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they
have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing
soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as
it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before
you- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean,
insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find
out.' This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an
aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge
of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with
white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea
whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the
land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish
specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above
them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than
pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped,
landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what
looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost
in it; landed more soldiers to take care of the custom-house clerks,
presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not,
nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there, and on we
went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we
passed various places– (11) trading places with names like
Gran' Bassam, Little Popo; names that seemed to
belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth. The
idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had
no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness of the
coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the (16) toil of a mournful and senseless
delusion. The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive
pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had
its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat
from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled
by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs
glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they
had faces like grotesque masks -these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a
wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as
the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They
were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to
a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long.
Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a
man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she
was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on
thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long
six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung
her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity
of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a
continent. 31 Pop,
would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a
little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble
screech- and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of
insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and
it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a
camp of natives- he called them enemies!- hidden out of sight somewhere. "We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were
dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some
more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes
on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along
the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried
to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose
banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, (17)
thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe
at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long
enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and
oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints
for nightmares. "It
was upward of thirty days before I saw the
mouth of the big river. (12) We anchored off the seat of the
government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther
on. So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher up. "I
had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede,
and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man,
lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the
miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been
living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps- are
they not?' he went on, speaking English 32 with
great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some people
will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it
goes upcountry?' I said to him I expected to see
that soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead
vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took up a
man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking
out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him,
or the country perhaps.' "At
last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by
the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of
excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids
above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people,
mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the
river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden
recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,' said the Swede,
pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope. 'I will
send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.' (18) "I
came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass,
then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and
also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its
wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the
carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery,
a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot,
where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was
steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy
and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff,
and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were
building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this
objectless blasting was all the work going on. "A
slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in
a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small
baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their
footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind
waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, (13) the joints of their limbs were like
knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected
together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.
Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I
had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but
these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were
called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to
them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meager breasts panted
together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily
uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete,
deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the
reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently,
carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off,
and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with
alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a
distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured,
and with a large, (19) white,
rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership
in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of
these high and just proceedings. "Instead of going
up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang
get out of sight before I climbed the hill You know I
am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to
resist and to attack sometimes- that's only one way of resisting- without
counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I
had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed,
and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these
were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men- men, I tell
you. But as I stood on this hillside, I
foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted
with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could
be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles
farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I
descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen. "I
avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the
purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a
sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the
philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don't know.
Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in
the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the
settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken.
It was a wanton smash-up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll
into the shade for a moment; but no sooner (14) within
than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno.
The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise
filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath
stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound -as though the tearing
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible. "Black
shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning (20)
against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming 35 out, half effaced within the dim
light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.
Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil
under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where
some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. "They
were dying slowly- it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not
criminals, they were nothing earthly now- nothing
but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in
the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all
the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on
unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to
crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air- and nearly as
thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then,
glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full
length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and
the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white
flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed
young- almost a boy- but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing
else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in
my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held- there was no other
movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round
his neck -Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge- an ornament- charm- a
propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked
startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas. "Near
the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs
drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an
intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its
forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others
were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a
massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horrorstruck, one of these creatures
rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to
drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat (21) up in the sunlight, crossing his shins
in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste
towards (15) the station. When near
the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of getup that
in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched
collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie,
and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined
parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind
his ear. "I
shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief
accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had
come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.' The
expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary
desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned
the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the
name of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that
time. Moreover, I respected
the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a
hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept
up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up
shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three
years; and later, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such
linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, 'I've been teaching one of the native women
about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste
for the work.' Thus this man had verily accomplished something. And he was
devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie order. "Everything
else in the station was in a muddle- heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with
splay feet arrived and departed; a
stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass wire set
into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory. "I
had to wait in the station for ten days -an eternity. I lived in a hut in the
yard, but to be out of the chaos I would (22) sometimes get into the accountant's
office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together
that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with
narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to see.
It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but
stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and
even slightly scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote.
Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a trucklebed
with a sick man (some invalid agent from upcountry) was put in there, he
exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The groans of this sick person,' he said,
'distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard
against clerical errors in this climate.' "One
day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you will no
doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr.
Kurtz was, he said he (16) was
a first-class agent; and seeing my
disappointment at this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, ‘He is a very remarkable
person.’ Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in
charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, at
‘the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put
together . . .’ 38 He
began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in
a great peace. “Suddenly
there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan
had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side
of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of
the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard ‘giving it up’
tearfully for the twentieth time that day.... He rose slowly. ‘What a
frightful row,’ he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick
man, and returning, said to me, ‘He does not hear.’ ‘What! Dead?’ I asked,
startled. ‘No, not yet,’ he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding
with a toss of the head to the tumult in the station-yard, ‘When one has
got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages –hate them to
the death.’ He remained thoughtful for a moment. ‘When you see Mr.
Kurtz’ he went on, ‘tell him from me
that everything here’ –he glanced at the deck –‘is very (23) satisfactory. I don’t like to write to
him –with those messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your
letter– at that Central Station.’ He stared at me for a moment with his mild,
bulging eyes. ‘Oho, he will go far, very far,’
he began again. ‘He will be a somebody in the
Administration before long. They, above –the Council in
Europe, you know –mean him to be.’ “He
turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in going out
I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent
was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was
making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet
below the doorstep I could see the still treetops of the grove of death. 39 “Next day I left that
station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp. “No use telling you
much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading
over the empty land, through the long grass, through burnt grass, through
thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with
heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had
cleared out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed
with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road
between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels
right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts
would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings (17)
were gone, too. Still, I passed through several abandoned villages. There's
something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day,
with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair
under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a
carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an
empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence
around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums,
sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing,
suggestive, and wild- and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound
of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform,
camping on the (23) path with an
armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive- not to say
drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw
any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a
bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles
farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. 40 I
had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and
with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from
the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat
like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help
asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of
course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had
to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone
I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off
with their loads in the night -quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a
speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs
of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front
all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a
bush- man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned
his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't
the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor- 'It would be
interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the
spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all
that is to no purpose.
On
the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the
Central Station. It was on a back water
surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one
side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A
neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first
glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running
that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared
languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me,
and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap
with black moustaches, informed me with great (18) volubility
and many digressions, as soon as I told (25) him
who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was
thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself'
was there. All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'- 'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and
see the general manager at once. He is waiting!' 41 "I did not see the real
significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure not at all. Certainly the affair was too
stupid -when I think of it -to be altogether natural. Still ... But at the moment it presented
itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had
started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on
board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out
three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the
south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a
matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I
had to set about it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought
the pieces to the station, took some months. "My
first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit
down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and
of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold,
and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as
an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the
intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his
lips, something stealthy -a smile -not a smile -I remember it, but I can't
explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though
just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came
at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the
meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a
common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts -nothing more. He
was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. 42 He
inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust -just
uneasiness -nothing more. You have no idea how effective
such a . . . a . . . (26) faculty
can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even.
That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He
had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him -why?
Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of
three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of
constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted
on a large scale- pompously. Jack ashore- with a difference- in externals
only. This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going -that's all. But
he was great. He was great by this little (19) thing that it was impossible to tell what could control
such a man. He never gave that
secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one
pause- for out there there were no external checks.
Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the
station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no
entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had
been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You fancied
you had seen things- but the seal was on. When annoyed at mealtimes by the
constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round
table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the
station's mess-room. Where he sat was the first place- the rest were nowhere.
One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor
uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his 'boy'- an overfed young negro from
the coast- to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking
insolence. 43 "He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on- and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to my explanation, and, playing with a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was 'very grave, very grave.' There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and (27) irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing wax and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage. 'How can I tell?' I said. 'I haven't even seen the wreck yet- some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. "Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the 'affair.' "I
went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. (20) In
that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of
life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this 44 station,
these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it
all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in
their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten
fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A
taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some
corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And
outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth
struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting
patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion "Oh,
these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a
grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else,
burst into a blaze so suddenly (28) that
you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume
all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and
saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when
the stout man with moustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in
his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly, splendidly,'
dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole
in the bottom of his pail. "I
strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of
matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high,
driven everybody back, lighted up everything- and collapsed. The shed was
already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had 45 caused the fire in some
way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw
him, later, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and
trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out- and the
wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I approached the
glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men, talking. I
heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the
words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate accident.' One of the men was the
manager. I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it- eh?
it is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man remained.
He was a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked
little beard and a hooked nose.
He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they on their side said he was
the manager's spy upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him
before. We got into talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing
ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the
station. He struck a match, and I perceived that this young (21) aristocrat had not only a
silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at
that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles.
Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais,
shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business entrusted to this
fellow was the making of bricks- so I had been informed; but there wasn't (29) a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station,
and he could not make bricks without something, I don't know what- straw
maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not likely to be
sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An
act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting all the
sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them -for something; and upon my word it did
not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it, though the
only thing that ever came to them was disease -as far as I could see. They
beguiled the time 46 by backbiting and intriguing
against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting
about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as
everything else- as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their
talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling
was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so
that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated
each other only on that account- but as to effectually lifting a little
finger- oh, no. By heavens! there is something after
all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not
look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it.
Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would
provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick. "I
had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it
suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something -in fact,
pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to
the people I was supposed to know there -putting leading questions as to my
acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered
like mica discs -with curiosity -though he tried to keep up a bit of
superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully
curious to see what he would find out from me. I
couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was
very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full only
of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat
business. It was evident he (30) took
me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and, to
conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned. I
rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing 47 a woman, draped and
blindfolded, carrying a
lighted torch. The background was
somber (22)
-almost black. The movement of
the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was
sinister. "It arrested
me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint champagne bottle
(medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted this- in this very
station more than a year ago -while waiting for means to go to his
trading-post. 'Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?' " 'The chief of the Inner Station,' he
answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing.
'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station.
Every one knows that.' He was silent for a while. 'He
is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity and science
and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim
suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to
speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who
says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some even write that; and so
he comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' 'Why ought I to know?'
I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. Today he is
chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years
more and . . . but I daresay you know what he will be in two years' time. You
are of the new gang- the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him
specially also recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.'
Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were
producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a
laugh. 'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked.
He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued,
severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.' "He blew the candle out
suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. 48 Black
figures strolled about listlessly, pouring (31)
water on the glow, whence proceeded a
sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight, the beaten nigger
groaned somewhere. 'What a row the brute makes!' said the indefatigable
man with the moustaches, appearing near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression-
punishment- bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent
all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed my companion, and
became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of
servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger -agitation.' He vanished. I
went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing
murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs- go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots
gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I
verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the
forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, (23) through
the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went
home to one's very heart -its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of
its concealed life. The
hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and
then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a
hand introducing itself under my arm. 'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I
don't want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz
long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea
of my disposition....' "I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles,
and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him,
and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you
see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man,
and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a
little. 49 He talked precipitately,
and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders
against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of
some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by
Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of
primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black
creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver- over the
rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of (32)
matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over
the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as
it followed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute,
while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the
face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a
menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb
thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that
thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What
was in there? I could see a little ivory
coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in
there. I had heard enough about it, too- God knows! Yet somehow it didn't
bring any image with it- no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend
was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there
are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker
who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for
some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something
about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would -though a
man of sixty -offer to fight you. I would not have gone so
far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to lie. You know I
hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest
of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor
of mortality in lies which is exactly 50 what I hate and detest in the world
-what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.
Temperament, I suppose. (24)
Well,
I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he
liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much
of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the
time I did not see you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see
the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see
the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a
dream -making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the
dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and
bewilderment in (33) a tremor of
struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is
of the very essence of dreams...." He
was silent for a while. ".
. . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the
life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -that which makes its
truth, its meaning its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live,
as we dream alone...." He
paused again if reflecting, then added: "Of
course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you
know. . . ." It
had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For
a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice.
There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I
was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for
the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the faint
uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without
human lips in the heavy night-air of the river. ".
. . Yes -I let him run on," Marlow began again, 51 "and
think what he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there
was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled
steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the
necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you
conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal
genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate tools
-intelligent men.'
He did not make bricks -why, there was a physical impossibility in the way
-as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the manager, it was
because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.'
Did I see it? I saw it.
What more did I want? What
I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work
-to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the
coast cases piled up -burst -split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second
step in that station-yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into (25) the
grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of
stooping down -and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was (34) wanted. We had plates that would to,
but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a lone negro, letterbag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station
for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade
goods- ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass
beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs.
And no rivets. Three
carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat. "He was becoming
confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated
him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I
could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of
rivets- and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted,
if he had only known it. Now
letters went to the coast every week.... 'My dear sir,' he cried, 'I write
from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was a way- for an intelligent man.
He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a
hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day)
I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had
the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the
station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every
rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him.
All this energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he
said; 'but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man- you
apprehend me?- no man here bears a charmed life.' He stood there for a moment
in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little askew, and his
mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt Goodnight, he strode
off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which made me
feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential
friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot
steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my
feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter;
she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had (35) expended enough hard work on her to
make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had
given me a chance to come out a bit -to find out what I could do. No, I don't
like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can
be done. I don't like work -no man does- but I like what is in the work- the
chance to find yourself. Your own reality- for
yourself, not for others- what no other man can ever know.
They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really
means. 53 "I
was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his (26)
legs dangling
over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in
that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally
despised -on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman-
a boiler-maker by trade- a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellowfaced man, with big intense eyes. His
aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his
hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the
new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six
young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out
there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast
and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used
sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his
pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the
steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he
brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he
could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with
great care, then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry. "I
slapped him on the back and shouted, 'We shall have rivets!' He scrambled
to his feet exclaiming, 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't believe his ears.
Then in a low voice, 'You . . . eh?' I don't know why we behaved like
lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously.
'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one
foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came
out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on (36) the other
bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit
up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the
manager's hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the 54 doorway itself vanished, too. We
stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back
again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an
exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons,
motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a
rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to
sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A
deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though
an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After
all,' said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the
rivets?' Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't.
'They'll come in three weeks,' I said, confidently "But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a
visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by
a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes,(27) bowing
from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome
band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the donkey; a lot of
tents, campstools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in
the court-yard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such installments came,
with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable
outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging,
after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an
inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made
look like the spoils of thieving. "This
devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I
believe they were sworn to 55 secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid
buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity,
and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious
intention (37) in the whole batch
of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of
the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire,
with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars
breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't
know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot. "In
exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood, and his eyes had a
look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his
short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one
but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their
heads close together in an everlasting confab. "I had given up
worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is
more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang! -and let things slide. I
had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought
to Kurtz. I wasn't
very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with
moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would
set about his work when there." |
