Authors: Joseph Conrad
"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint,
no restraint—just like Kurtz—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; 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 for ever. 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.
Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous,
murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters 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 cause
some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the
man in pink pyjamas 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 burnt—and so on—and
so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that
at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. 'Say! We must have
made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? 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 retreat, I maintained—and I was right—was caused by the
screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began
to howl at me with indignant protests.
"The manager 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 riverside 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 and 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
round 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 waterside I saw a white man under a hat like a
cart-wheel 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 manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself,
'What does this fellow look like?' Suddenly I got it. He looked like
a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown
holland 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; coloured 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 plain. 'Look out, captain!' he
cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' What! Another snag? I
confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off
that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank 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, had gone to the house this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't
like this. These 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 any
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. 'Don't
you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said. 'You don't talk with that man—you
listen to him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation. 'But now—' He
waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost
depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a jump,
possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously, while he
gabbled: 'Brother sailor . . . honour . . . pleasure . . . delight . . .
introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an arch-priest . . .
Government of Tambov . . . 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, and gradually I made out he had run away from
school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some
time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made
a point of that. 'But when one is young one must see things, gather
experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.' 'Here!' I interrupted. 'You
can never tell! Here I met Mr. 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 had 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
Van Shuyten 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 favourite 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, Van Shuyten. 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 happen to
a man going 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 shamefacedly, '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."
"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in
motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic,
fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and
altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was
inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so
far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly disappear.
'I went a little farther,' he said, 'then still a little farther—till
I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind.
Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick—quick—I tell
you.' The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his
destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile
wanderings. For months—for years—his life hadn't been worth a day's
purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all
appearances indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and
of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like
admiration—like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him
unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to
breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move
onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation.
If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure
had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth. I almost
envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to
have consumed all thought of self so completely, that even while he
was talking to you, you forgot that it was he—the man before your
eyes—who had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion
to Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him, and
he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it
appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so
far.
"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near
each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an
audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest,
they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. 'We talked
of everything,' he said, quite transported at the recollection. 'I
forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last
an hour. Everything! Everything! . . . Of love, too.' 'Ah, he talked to
you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he cried,
almost passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see things—things.'
"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman
of my wood-cutters, lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and
glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I assure you
that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the
very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so
impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever
since, you have been with him, of course?' I said.
"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken
by various causes. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse
Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky
feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the
forest. 'Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and
days before he would turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth waiting
for!—sometimes.' 'What was he doing? exploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh,
yes, of course'; he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too—he
did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire
too much—but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. 'But he had no
goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. 'There's a good lot of
cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'To speak plainly,
he raided the country,' I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He
muttered something about the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz got the
tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little. 'They
adored him,' he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that
I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness
and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his
thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'he
came to them with thunder and lightning, you know—and they had never
seen anything like it—and very terrible. He could be very terrible.
You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no!
Now—just to give you an idea—I don't mind telling you, he wanted to
shoot me, too, one day—but I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried
'What for?' 'Well, I had a small lot of ivory the chief of that village
near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well,
he wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He declared he would shoot me
unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because
he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth
to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true, too.
I gave him the ivory. What did I care! But I didn't clear out. No, no. I
couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, of course, till we got friendly
again for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to
keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He was living for the most part
in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes
he would take to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be careful.
This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't
get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there
was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then
he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks;
forget himself amongst these people—forget himself—you know.' 'Why!
he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad.
If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such
a thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was
looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and
at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in
that bush, so silent, so quiet—as silent and quiet as the ruined house
on the hill—made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature
of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in
desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in
hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask—heavy,
like the closed door of a prison—they looked with their air of hidden
knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The
Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had
come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of
that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months—getting himself
adored, I suppose—and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention
to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down
stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of
the—what shall I say?—less material aspirations. However he had
got much worse suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came
up—took my chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad.' I
directed my glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there
was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with
three little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this
brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque
movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped
up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck
at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable
in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view,
and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a
blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw
my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they
were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing—food for thought
and also for vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky;
but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend
the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the
stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the
first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may
think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement
of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I
returned deliberately to the first I had seen—and there it was, black,
dried, sunken, with closed eyelids—a head that seemed to sleep at the
top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow
white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some
endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.