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06 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad · Adventure Books Library

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Part two of chapter three. When next day we left at noon, the
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crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious
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all the time, flowed out of the woods again filled the clearing, covered
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the slope with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies.
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I steamed up a bit, then swung down stream, and two thousand eyes
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followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river Demon, beating the
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water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In the
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front of the first rank along the river, three men plastered with bright bread
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earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came
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abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, knotted, their
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horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies. They shook towards the fierce river demon,
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a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin, with a pendent tail,
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something that looked a dry gourd. They shouted periodically together strings of amazing
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words that resembled no sounds of human language, and the deep murmurs of the
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crowd interrupted suddenly were like the responses of some satanic litany. We had carried
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Kurts into the pilot house. There was more air there. Lying on the
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couch, he stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the
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mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed
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out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands,
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shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shots and a roaring
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chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance. Do you understand this, I
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asked. He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes,
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eyes with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer,
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but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his
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colorless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. Do not, he said,
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slowly, gasping as if the words had been torn out of him by a
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supernatural power. I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this
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because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their rifles with an air of
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anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech, there was a movement of
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abject terror through that wedged mass of bodies. Don't don't you frighten them away?
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Cried someone on deck disconsolately. I pulled the string time after time.
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They broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they swerved, the
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he dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three red chaps had fallen
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flat faced down on the shore as though they had been shot dead. Only
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the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as flinch, and stretched tragically
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her bare arms after us over the somber and glittering river. And then that
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imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun, and I could see
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nothing more for smoke. The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of
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darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward
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progress. And Courtz's life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing, out
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of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. The manager was very placid,
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He had no vital anxieties. Now. He took us both in with
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a comprehensive and satisfied glance. The affair had come off as well as he
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could have wished. I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone
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of the party of unsound method. The pilgrims looked upon me with disfavor.
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I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange
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how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in
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the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms, Curtz disgorsed a voice.
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A voice. It rang deep to the very last, It survived his
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strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence, the barren darkness of his
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heart. Oh, he struggled, He struggled. The wastes of his weary
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brain were haunted by shadowy images, now images of wealth and fame, roof
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evolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My intended,
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my station, my career, my ideas. These were the subjects for the
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occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original Curts frequented the bedside
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of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the
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mold of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of
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the mysteries it had penetrated, fought for the possession of that soul, satiated
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of primitive emotions, avid of lying, fame of sham, distinction of all
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the appearances of success and power. Sometimes he was contemptibly childish, a desire
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to have kings mete him at railway stations on his return from some ghastly nowhere
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where he intended to accomplish great things. You show them that you have in
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you something it is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to
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the recognition of your ability. He would say, of course, you must
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take care of the motives, right motives. Always the long reaches that were
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like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped
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past the steamer with their multitude of secular trees. Looking patiently after this grimy
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fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade,
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of massacres of blessings. I looked ahead, piloting close the shutter,
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said Curtz. Suddenly, one day I can't bear to look at this.
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I did so. There was a silence. Oh but I will wring your
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heart. Yet he cried at the invisible wilderness. He broke down as I
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had expected, and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an
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island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One morning,
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he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph the lot, tied
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together with a shoe string. Keep this for me, he said, this
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noxious fool, meaning the manager is capable of prying into my boxes when I'm
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not looking. In the afternoon, I saw him. He was lying on
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his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly. But I heard him
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mutter, live rightly, Die die. I listened. There was nothing more.
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Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep? Or was it a fragment
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of a phrase from some newspaper article. He had been writing for the papers
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and meant to do so again for the furthering of my ideas. It's my
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duty. His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peered
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down at a man who was lying at the bottom of a precipice where the
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sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because
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I was helping the engine driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders to straighten,
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a bent connecting rod, and another such matters. I lived in an
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infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers,
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ratchet drills, things I abominate because I don't get on with them. I
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tended the little forge we fortunately had a board. I toiled wearily in a
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wretched scrap heap unless I had the shakes too bad to stand. One evening,
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coming in with a candle, I was startled to hear him say,
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a little tremulously, I am lying here in the dark, waiting for death.
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The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to
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murmur, oh, nonsense, and stood over him, as if transfixed anything
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approaching. The change that came over his features I have never seen before and
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hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated.
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It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that
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ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror,
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of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again?
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In every detailer desired, temptation and surrender. During that supreme moments of complete
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knowledge, he cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision.
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He cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath lo
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horror theora, I blew the candlelights and left the cabin. The pilgrims were
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dining in the mess room, and I took my place opposite the manager,
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who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored.
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He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his, sealing
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the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon
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the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the
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manager's boy put his in slant black head in the doorway and said, in
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a tone of scathing contempt, mister Kurtz, he dead. All the pilgrims
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rushed out to sea. I remained and went on with my dinner. I
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believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.
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There was a lamp in there, light, don't you know, And outside
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it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable
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man who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth,
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The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am
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of course aware that next day the Pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole,
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and then they very nearly buried me. However, as you see, I
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did not go to join Kurtz there, and then I did not. I
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remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty
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to Kurtz once more. Destiny, my destiny, droll thing. Life is
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that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can
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hope from it is some knowledge of yourself that comes too late, a crop
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of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting
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contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing
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underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory,
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without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in
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a sickly atmosphere of tapidy skepticism, without much belief in your own right,
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and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of
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ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it
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to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement,
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and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.
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This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He
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had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the
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edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare that would not see
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the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe,
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piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He
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had summed up, He had judged the horror. He was a remarkable man,
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after all. This was the expression of some sort of belief. It
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had candor, It had conviction, that had a vibrating note of revolt in
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its whisper. It had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth, the strange
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commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity. I
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remember best, a vision of grayness without form, filled with physical pain and
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a careless contempt with the evanescence of all things, even of this pain itself.
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Now it was his extremity that I seemed to have lived through. True,
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he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge,
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while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in
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this is the whole difference. Perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth,
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and all since crity are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which
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we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps I like to think my
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summing up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry
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much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory, paid for by
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innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfaction. But it was a
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victory. That is why I have remained loyal to Carts to the last and
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even beyond. When a long time after I heard once more, not his
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own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence, thrown to me from
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a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal. No, they did
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not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember mistily
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with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no
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hope in it. No desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city,
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presenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filter little money from
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each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer,
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to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They
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were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I
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felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing,
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which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the
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assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me, like the outrageous flauntings of
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folly in the face of a danger. It is unable to comprehend. I
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had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining
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myself from laughing in their faces. So full of stupid importance, I dare
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say I was not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets
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there were various affairs to settle, grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I
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admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these
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days, my dear aunt's endeavors to nurse up my strength seemed altogether beside the
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mark. It was not my strength that wanted nursing. It was my imagination
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that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers given me by Kerts,
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not knowing exactly what to do with it. His mother had died lately,
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watched over as I was told by his intended. A clean shaved man with
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an official manner and wearing gold rimmed spectacles called on me one day and made
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inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing about what he was pleased to
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denominate certain documents. I was not surprised, because I had had two rows
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with the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up
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the smallest scrap out of that package, and I took the same attitude with
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the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last, and with much heat,
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argued that the company had the right to every bit of information about its
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territories, and said he mister Curtz's knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily
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extensive and peculiar, owing to his great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in
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which he had been placed. Therefore, I assured him mister Kurtz's knowledge,
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however extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration. He
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invoked, then the name of science. It would be an incalculable loss if
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et cetera, et cetera. I offered him the Report on the Suppression of
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Savage Customs, with the post scriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly,
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but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt. This is
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not what we had a right to expect, he remarked. Expect nothing else,
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I said, there are only private letters. He withdrew upon some threat
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of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more. But another fellow calling
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himself Kurtz's cousin, appeared two days later and was anxious to hear all the
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details about his the relative's last moments. Incidentally, he gave me to understand
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that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. There was the making of an
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immense success, said the man who was an organist. I believe. With
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lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coat collar, I had no reason to
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doubt his statements, and to this day I was unable to say what was
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Kurtz's profession, whether he ever had any, which was the greatest of his
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talents. I had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers,
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or else for a journalist who could paint. But even the cousin who took
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snuff during the interview could not tell me what he had been exactly. He
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was a universal genius on that point. I agreed with the old chap,
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who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a large cotton handkerchief, and withdrew in
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senile agitation, bearing off some family letters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately,
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a journalist, anxious to know something of the fate of his dear colleague,
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turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz's proper sphere ought to have been in
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politics on the popular side. He had very straight eyebrows, bristly hair,
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crop short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive,
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confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn't write a bit, But heavens how that
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man could talk. He electrified large meetings. He had faith, don't you
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see? He had the faith he could get himself to believe anything anything.
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He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party. What party,
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I asked? Any party, answered the other. He was an an extremist.
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Did I not think so? I assented, Did I know? He
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asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity, what it was that had induced
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him to go out there? Yes, said I, and forthwith handed him
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the famous report for publication if he thought fit. He glanced through it hurriedly,
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mumbling all the time, judged it it would do, and took himself
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off with his plunder. Thus I was left at last with a slim packet
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of letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful. I mean,
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she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made
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to lie too. Yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could
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have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon these features. Seemed ready to listen
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without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I concluded
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I would go back and give her back her portrait and those letters myself curiosity,
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yes, and some other feeling. Perhaps all that had been Curtsy's had
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passed out of my hands, his soul, his body, his station,
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his plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only his memory and
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his intended And I wanted to give that up too, to the past,
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in a way, to surrender personally all that remained of him with me,
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to that oblivion, which is the last word of our common fate. I
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don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really
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wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the fulfillment of
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war, one of those ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence.
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I don't know. I can't tell, but I went. I thought
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his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulated in every man's
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life, a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on us
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in their swift and final passage. But before the high and ponderous door between
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the tall houses of a street, as still and decorous as a well kept
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alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher,
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opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its
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mankind. He lived. Then, before me, he lived as much as
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he had ever lived, a shadow, insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful
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realities, a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped no
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in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house
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with me, the stretcher, the phantom bearers, the wild crowd of obedient
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worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the
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murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled, like the
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beating of a heart, the hearts of a conquering darkness. It was a
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moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush, which it
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seemed to me I would have to keep back alone, for the salvation of
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another soul, and the memory of what I had heard him say Afar there,
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with the horned shapes stirring at my back. In the glow of fires
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within the patient woods, those broken phrases came back to me, were heard
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again, in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading,
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his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness,
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the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed
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to see his collected, languid manner when he said, one day, this
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lot of ivory now is really mine. The company did not pay for it.
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I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid
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they will try to claim it as theirs. Though it's a difficult case.
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What do you think I ought to do? Resist m I want no more
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than justice. He wanted no more than justice, no more than justice.
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I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and while
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I waited, he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel,
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stare with that wide and immense stare, embracing, condemning, loathing all the
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universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, the horror, the horror.
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The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing room
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with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped
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columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves.
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The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano
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stood massively in a corner, with dark gleams on the flat surfaces, like
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a somber and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened closed. I rose.
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She came forward, all in black, with a pale head floating towards me
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in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year
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since his death, more than a year since the news came. She seemed
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as though she would remember and mourn forever. She took both my hands in
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hers and murmured, I had heard you were coming. I noticed she was
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not very young, I mean, not girlish. She had a mature capacity
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for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have grown
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darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge
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on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow,
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seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at
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me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She
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carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though
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she would say, I I alone know how to mourn for him as he
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deserves. But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful
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desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that
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are not the playthings of time. For her, he had died only yesterday,
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And by Jove, the impression was so powerful that for me too,
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he seemed to have died only yesterday. Nay, this very minute, I
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saw her and him in the same instant of time, his death and her
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sorrow. I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do
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you understand I saw them together? There? I heard them together, she
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had said, with a deep catch of the breath, I have survived,
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while my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly mingled with her tone of despairing regret,
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the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I
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was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart, as though
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I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a
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human being to behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down.
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I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she put her
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hand over it. You knew him well, she murmured, after a moment
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of mourning silence. Intimacy grows quickly out there. I said, I knew
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him as well as it is possible for one man to know another. And
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you admired him. He said, it was impossible to know him and not
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admire him. Who was it? He was a remarkable man, I said
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unsteadily. Then, before the appealing fixity of her gaze that seemed to watch
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for more words on my lips, I went on, it was impossible not
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to love him, she finished, eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness.
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How true, How true? But when you think that no one knew
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him so well as I? I had all his noble confidence. I knew
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him best. You knew him best, I repeated, And perhaps she did.
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But with every word spoken, the room was growing darker, and only
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her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief
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and love. You were his friend, she went on, His friend,
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she repeated. A little louder you must have been if he had given you
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this and sent you to me. I fear I can speak to you,
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And oh, I must speak. I want you, you have heard his
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last words, to know I have been worthy of him. It is not
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pride, Yes, I am proud to know I understood him better than any
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one on earth. He told me so himself, and since his mother died,
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I have had no one, no one to to. I listened,
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the darkness deepened. I was not even sure whether he had given me the
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right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch
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of his papers, which after his death. I saw the manager examining under
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the lamp, and the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of
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my sympathy. She talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her
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engagement with Kurts had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough for
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something. And indeed, I don't know whether he had not been a pauper
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all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was
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his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there. Who was not his
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friend, who had heard him speak once? She was saying he drew men
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towards him by what was best in them. She looked at me with intensity
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it is the gift of the great. She went on, and the sound
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of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds,
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full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow. I had ever heard the ripple
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of the river, the sowing of the trees swayed by the wind, the
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murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar,
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the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness.
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But you have heard him, you know, she cried, Yes, I
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know, I said, with something like despair in my heart, but bowing
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my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving
34:45
illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, and the triumphant darkness
34:51
from which I could not have defended her, from which I could not even
34:54
defend myself. What a lost to me, to us, she corrected herself
35:02
with beautiful generosity, then added in a murmur to the world. By the
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last gleams of twilight, I could see the glitter of her eyes full of
35:15
tears, of tears that would not fall. I have been very happy,
35:22
very fortunate, very proud. She went on, too fortunate, too happy
35:29
for a little while, and now I am unhappy for for life. She
35:37
stood up, her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a
35:42
glimmer of gold. I rose too, And all of this she went on,
35:49
mournfully, of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of
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his generous mind, of his noble heart. Nothing remained, nothing but a
36:00
memory. You and I we shall always remember him, I said hastily.
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No, she cried, It is impossible that all this should be lost,
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that such a life should be sacrificed, to leave nothing but sorrow. You
36:22
know what vast plans he had. I knew of them too, I could
36:27
not perhaps understand, but others knew of them. Something must remain. His
36:34
words, at least, have not died. His words will remain, I
36:40
said. And his example, she whispered to herself. Men looked up to
36:47
him, his goodness shown in every act, his example true, I said,
36:55
his example too, Yes, his example. I forgot that. But
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I do not. I cannot. I cannot believe, not yet, I
37:10
cannot believe that I shall never see him again, That nobody will see him
37:16
again, never, never, never, She put out her arms as if
37:27
after a retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the
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fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him. I saw him
37:38
clearly enough. Then I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live,
37:45
And I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar shade, resembling
37:51
in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms,
37:58
stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of
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darkness, she said, suddenly very low. He died as he lived his
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end, said I, with dull anger stirring in me, was in every
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way worthy of his life. And I was not with him, She murmured.
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My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity. Everything that could be
38:31
done, I mumbled, Ah. But I believed in him more than any
38:37
one on earth, more than his own mother, more than himself. He
38:45
needed me me. I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every
38:52
sign, every glance. I felt like a chill grip on my chest,
39:00
don't I said, in a muffled voice. Forgive me, I I have
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mourned so long in silence, in silence, you were with him to the
39:19
last. I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I
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would have understood, perhaps, no one to hear to the very end,
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I said, shakily. I heard his very last words. I stopped in
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affright. Repeat them, she murmured, in a heart broken tone. I
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want I want something, something to to live with. I was on the
39:59
point of crying at her. Don't you hear them? The dusk was repeating
40:05
them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to
40:08
swell menacingly, like the first whisper of a rising wind. Theror, Theror
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his last word to live with? She insisted, Don't you understand I I
40:29
loved him. I loved him. I loved him. I pulled myself together
40:36
and spoke slowly. The last word he pronounced was your name. I heard
40:45
a light sigh, and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by
40:52
an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable
41:00
pain. I knew it. I was sure. She knew she was sure.
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I heard her weeping. She had hidden her face in her hands.
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It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that
41:21
the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do
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not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen? I wonder if
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I had rendered Kerts that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he
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wanted only justice, But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It
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would have been too dark, too dark. Altogether, Marlowe ceased and sat
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apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody
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moved for a time. We have lost the first of the ebb, said
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the director. Suddenly I raised my head. The offing was barred by a
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black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of
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the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky, seemed to lead into the heart
42:21
of an immense darkness. End of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad