Latest / Classic Adventure Books Library / 04 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Transcript
- Chapter two, Part two of Heart of Darkness. No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long, uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high steep bank, heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush, the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon. The face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we steamed up very slowly. As you may imagine, I shared her well inshore, the water being deepest near the bank. As the sounding pole informed me, one of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the boughs just below me. This steambut was exactly like a decked scow. On one deck there were two little teak wood houses with doors and windows. The boiler was in the fore end, and the machinery right astern. Over the whole there was a light roof supported on stanchions. The funnel projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot house. It contained a couch, two campstools, a loaded martini henry leaning in one corner, tiny table, and the steering wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open. Of course, I spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore end of the roof, before the door. At night I slept or tried to on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass ear rings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist of the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of swagger while you were by, but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat to get the upper hand of him. In a minute, I was looking down at the sounding pole and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river. When I saw my poleman give up on the business suddenly and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold on it, though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time, the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks were flying about, thick They were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot house. All this time, the river, the shore, the woods were very quiet, perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows. By jove, we were being shot at. I stepped in quickly to close the shutter. On the land side. That fool helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth like a reined in horse con found him, and we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me, very fierce and steady. And then, suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes. The bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening of bronze color. The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled. The arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to steer her straight, I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid, face forward, but his eyes rolled. He kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently. His mouth foamed a little. Keep quiet, I said, in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out below me. There was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck, confused exclamations. A voice screamed, can you turn back? I caught sight of a V shaped ripple on the water ahead. What another snag? A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their winchesters and were simply squirting lead into the bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now. I couldn't see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they couldn't kill a cat. The bush began to howl. Our woodcutters raised a warlike whoop. The report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot house was yet full of noise and smoke. When I made a dash at the wheel, the fooled nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room to turn, even if I had wanted to. The snag was somewhere very near ahead. In that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank, right into the bank where I knew the water was deep. We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes and a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting whiz that traversed the pilot house in at one shutter hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running, bent, double, leaping, gliding, distinct incomplete evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter. The rifle went overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little campstool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore, he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away. We were clear of the snag, and looking ahead, I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to shear off away from the bank. But my feet felt so vage, very warm, and wet, that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me. Both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that either thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side, just below the ribs. The blade had gone in out of sight after making a frightful gash. My shoes were full. A pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark red under the wheel. His eyes shone with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid that I would try to take it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand, I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle and jerked out screech after screech Hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair, as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush. The shower of arrows stopped, A few dropping shots rang out sharply, then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a starboard. At the moment when the pilgrim in pink pajamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway, the manager sends me. He began in an official tone and stopped short. Good God, he said, glaring at the wounded man. We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance envelop us both. I declare. It looked as though he would presently put to us some questions in an understandable language. But he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle, only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see to some whisper we could not hear. He frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black death mass, an inconceivably somber, brooding and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. Can you steer, I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious, but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once. I meant him to steer, whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. He is dead, murmured the fellow, immensely impressed, no doubt about it, said I, tugging like mad at the shoelaces. And by the way, I suppose mister Kurtz is dead as well. By this time, for the moment that was the dominant thought, there was a sense of extreme disappointments, as though I had found out that I had been striving after something altogether without a substance. I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with mister Kurtz. Talking with I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to. A talk with Kurts. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to myself, now I will never see him, or now I will never shake him by the hand, But now I will never hear him. The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course, that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Had I been told, in all the tones of jealousy and admiration, that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together. That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts, the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence was his ability to talk, his words, the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. The other shoe went flying into the devil God of that river. I thought, by jove, it's all over. We are too late. He has vanished. The gift has vanished by means of some spear, arrow or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all, And my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of those savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief, or had missed my destiny in life? Why do you sigh in this beastly way? Somebody absurd? Well absurd? Good Lord, mustn't a man ever? Eh, give me some tobacco. There was a pause of profound stillness. Then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared hollow with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention. And as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, which seemed to retreat and advance out of the nights in the regular flicker of tiny flame, the match went out. Absurd, he cried, this is the worst of trying to tell you here. You all are each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites and temperature normal. You hear normal from year's and to year's end, and you say absurd, absurd, to be exploded. Absurd, My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who, out of sheered nervousness, had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now I think of it, it is amazing. I did not shed tears. I am upon the whole proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted kurts. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh yes, I heard more than enough, and I was right too. A voice, he was very little more than a voice, and I heard him it this voice, Other voices, all of them were so little more than voices. And the memory of that time itself lingers upon me impalpably, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense, voices, voices, even the girl herself now he was silent for a long time. I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie. He began suddenly, Girl, What did I mention a girl? Oh? She is out of it completely. They, the women, I mean, are out of it. Should be out of it. We must help them stay in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of mister kurt saying, my intended You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bow of mister Kurtz. They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this specimen was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and behold it was like a ball, an ivory ball. It had caressed him, and lo he had withered. It had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite ivory. I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it, the old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. Mostly fossil. The manager had remarked disparagingly, It was no more fossil than I am. But they call it fossil when it is duga. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes, But evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough. To save the gifted mister Kurtz from his fate, we filled the steamboat with it and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favor had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, my ivy, Oh yes, I heard him. My intended, my ivy, my station, my river, my everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him, But that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible. He was not good for one either, trying to imagine he had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land. I mean literally, you can't understand. How could you, with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums. How can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet made take him into by the way of solitude, utter solitude without a policeman, by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard, whispering of public opinion. These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone, you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course, you may be too much of a fool to go wrong, too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it no fool if it made a bargain for his soul with the devil. The fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil, I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place. And whether to be like this is your loss or your gain, I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smiles too, by Jove, breathe dead hippo, so to speak, andnot be contaminated. And there, don't you see? Your strength comes in the faith, in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff, in your power of devotion, not to yourself but to an obscure, backbreaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind. I am not trying to excuse or even explain. I am trying to account to myself for for mister Kurtz, for the shade of mister Kurtz, this initiated wraith from the back of nowhere honored me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurts have been educated partly in England, and as he was good enough to say himself, his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half English, his father was half French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurts, and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report for its future guidance, and he had written it too. I've seen it, I've read it. It was elegant, vibrating with elegance, but too high strong, I think seventeen pages of close writing had found time for. But this must have been before his, let us say, nerves went wrong and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rights, which, as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times, were offered up to him. Do you understand? To mister Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, However, in the light of later information strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, must necessarily appear to them savages in the nature of supernatural beings. We approached them with the might of a deity, and so on and so on. By the simple exercise of our will, we can exert a power for good, practically unbounded, et cetera, et cetera. From that point he soared and took me with him. The periation was magnificent, though difficult to remember. You know, it gave me the notion of an exotic immensity, ruled by an august benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence, of words, of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases. Unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment, it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of light in a serene sky, exterminate all the brutes. The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because later on, when he, in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of my pamphlet. He called it, as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things. And besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it if I choose for an everlasting rest in the dust bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch dance in his honor. He could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings. He had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary, nor tainted with self seeking. No, I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman, awfully. I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange, this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see he had done something he had steered for months. I had him at my back, a help, an instrument. It was a kind of partnership he steered for me. I had to look after him. I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. Poor fool, if he had only left that shutter alone, he had no restraint, no restraint, just like Kerts a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers. I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little doorstep, his shoulders were pressed to my breast. I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh he was heavy, heavy, heavy, heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then, without more ado, I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it forever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning deck about the pilot house, chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies. And there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about? For? I can't guess embowm it maybe, But I had also heard another and a very ominous murmur on the deck below. My friends, the woodcutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason, though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh quite. I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first class temptation and possibly caused some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel the man in pink pajamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business. This I did directly. The simple funeral was over. We were going half speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the station. Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burned, and so on and so on. The red haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kerts had been properly avenged. Say, we must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Say what do you think? Say? He positively danced the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar, and he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man. I could not help saying, you made a glorious lot of smoke. Anyhow, I had seen from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew that almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the shoulder. But these chaps fired from the hip with their eyes shut. The retreats, I maintained, and I was right, was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot kurts and began to howl at me with indignant protests. The man stood by the wheel, murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all events. When I saw in the distance a clearing on the river side, and the outlines of some sort of building. What's this, I asked, He clapped his hands in wonder. The station, he cried. I edged in at once, still going half speed through my glasses, I saw the slope of a hill, interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long, decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass. The large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar. The jungle in the woods made a background there was no enclosure or fence of any kind, but there had been one, apparently for near the house. Half a dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed and with their upper ends ornamented with drowned carved balls. The rails or whatever there had been between had disappeared, of course. The forest surrounded all that. The river bank was clear, and on the water side I saw a white man under a hat like a cartwheel, beckoning persistently with his whole arm examining the edge of the forest above and below. I was almost certain I could see movements human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. We have been attacked, screamed the manager. I know, I know it's all right, yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please, come along. It's all right. I am glad. His aspect reminded me of something I had seen, something funny I had seen somewhere. As I maneuvered to get alongside, I was asking myself, what does this fellow look like? Suddenly I got it. It looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown, horland, probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow patches on the back, patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees, colored binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers. And the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance, like sunshine and shadow on a wind swept plane. Lookout did he replied, there's a snag lodged in here last night. What another snag? I confess, I swore, shamefully, I had nearly holed my cribble to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin on the back turned his little pug nose up to me. You English, he asked, All smiles are you, I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. Never mind, he cried encouragingly. Are we in time? I asked, He is up there, he replied, with a toss of the head up the hill and becoming gloomy. All of a sudden, His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next. When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, gone to the house, this chap came on board. I say, I don't like this. The natives are in the bush, I said, He assured me earnestly, it was all right. They are simple people. He added. Well, I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off, but you said it was all right. I cried, Oh they meant no harm, he said, And as I stared, he corrected himself, not exactly, then, vivaciously, my faith, your pilot house wants a clean up. In the next breath, he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of trouble. One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles. They are simple people, he repeated. He rattled away at such a rate. He quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing that such was the case. But don't you talk with mister Kurtz, I said, you don't talk with that man. You listen to him, he exclaimed with severe exultation. But now he waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye, was in the outermost depths of despondency. In a moment, he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously while he gabbed A brother sailor, honor, a pleasure delight, introduced myself, Russian son of an archpriest, government of timeboff What tobacco, English tobacco, The excellent English tobacco. Now that's brotherly smoke. Where's a sailor that does not smoke? The pipe soothed him. Gradually I made out he had run away from school and had gone to sea in a Russian ship, ran away again, served some time in English ships, was now reconciled with the archpriest. He made a point of that. But when one is young, one must see things gathered experience, ideas enlarge the mind here, I interrupted, you can never tell here I met mister Kurtz, he said, youthfully, solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods, and started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and everything. I am not so young as I look. I am twenty five, he said. At first, Old von Schechten would tell me to go to the devil. He narrated with keen enjoyment. But I stuck to him and talked and talked till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind leg off his favorite dog. So he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told me he hoped he would never see my face again, good old Dutchman von Scheten. I've sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago so that he can't call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it, and for the rest I don't care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old house, did you see. I gave him Towson's book. He made as though he would kiss me, but restrained himself. The only book I had left, and I thought I had lost it, he said, looking at it ecstatically. So many accidents happened to a man about alone. You know, canoes get upset sometimes, and sometimes you've got to clear out so quick when the people get angry. He thumbed the pages. You made notes in Russian, I asked. He nodded. I thought they were written in cipher, I said. He laughed, then became serious. I had lots of trouble to keep these people off, he said. Did they want to kill you? I asked, Oh no, he cried and checked himself. Why did they attack us? I pursued. He hesitated, then said, shame facedly. They don't want him to go, don't they? I said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom, I tell you, he cried, This man has enlarged my mind. He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round end of chapter two,