Authors: Joseph Conrad
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards
the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an
unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for
a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light
alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No
hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a
big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's
chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this
station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of
fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion
of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at
all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the
man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time.
Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his
vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a
hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he
kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up
shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly
three years; and, later, I could not help asking him how he managed to
sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly,
'I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was
difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had verily
accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in
apple-pie order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle—heads, things,
buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and
departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads,
and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a
precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days—an eternity. I lived in a
hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into
the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly
put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from
neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to
open the big shutter to see. It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed
fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the
floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented),
perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for
exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalid agent from
upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The
groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And
without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors
in this climate.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you
will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he
said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at
this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very
remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz
was at present in charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in the
true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory
as all the others put together . . .' He began to write again. The sick
man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of
feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst
out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking
together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the
chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time
that day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He
crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to
me, 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked, startled. 'No, not yet,'
he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the
head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one has got to make
correct entries, one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the
death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz'
he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here'—he glanced at the
deck—' is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him—with those
messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter—at
that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild,
bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He
will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the
Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently
in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the
homeward-bound agent was lying finished and insensible; the other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct
transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still
tree-tops of the grove of death.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for
a two-hundred-mile tramp.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a
stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through the
long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly
ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long
time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of
fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for
them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very
soon. Only here the dwellings were gone, too. Still I passed through
several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in
the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of
sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp,
cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and
his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive,
and wild—and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells
in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform,
camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very
hospitable and festive—not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep
of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless
the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead,
upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too,
not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit
of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade
and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over
a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what
he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you
think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in
a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end
of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their
loads in the night—quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in
English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of
eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front
all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in
a bush—man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had
skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody,
but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old
doctor—'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes
of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically
interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day
I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the Central
Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with
a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others
enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate
it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the
flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their
hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to
take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them,
a stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great
volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that
my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What,
how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All
quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'—'you
must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He
is waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I
see it now, but I am not sure—not at all. Certainly the affair was too
stupid—when I think of it—to be altogether natural. Still . . . But
at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The
steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer
skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom
out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had
plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about
it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to
the station, took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to
sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle
size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as
trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his
person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was
only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something
stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can't explain. It
was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something
it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches
like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest
phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his
youth up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he
inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired
uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just
uneasiness—nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . .
a . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative,
or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable
state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His
position had come to him—why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He
had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant
health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power
in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large
scale—pompously. Jack ashore—with a difference—in externals only.
This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he
could keep the routine going—that's all. But he was great. He was great
by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control
such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing
within him. Such a suspicion made one pause—for out there there were no
external checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost
every 'agent' in the station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out
here should have no entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile
of his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in
his keeping. You fancied you had seen things—but the seal was on. When
annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about
precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a
special house had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where
he sat was the first place—the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be
his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was
quiet. He allowed his 'boy'—an overfed young negro from the coast—to
treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.
"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the
road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations
had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did
not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on—and so on,
and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with
a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was
'very grave, very grave.' There were rumours that a very important
station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was
not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz,
I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the
coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself.
Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an
exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore
I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.'
Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr.
Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the
accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to' . . .
I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet
too. I was getting savage. 'How can I tell?' I said. 'I haven't even
seen the wreck yet—some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me
so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before
we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out
of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah)
muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot.
Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly
with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the
'affair.'