Authors: Joseph Conrad
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude
must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform
me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I
could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of
rivets—and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only
known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . 'My dear
sir,' he cried, 'I write from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was
a way—for an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very
cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether
sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day)
I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of
getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds.
The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could
lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this
energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said;
'but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man—you
apprehend me?—no man here bears a charmed life.' He stood there for
a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little
askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt
Good-night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably
puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It
was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the
battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She
rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked
along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty
in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love
her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given
me a chance to come out a bit—to find out what I could do. No, I don't
like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that
can be done. I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the
work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not
for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere
show, and never can tell what it really means.
"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with
his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few
mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally
despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the
foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony,
yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his
head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed
to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality,
for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young
children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out
there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an
enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work
hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his
children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under
the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind
of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over
his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing
that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on
a bush to dry.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted, 'We shall have rivets!' He
scrambled to his feet exclaiming, 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't
believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You . . . eh?' I don't know why
we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and
nodded mysteriously. 'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above
his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck.
A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on
the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the
sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their
hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut,
vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too.
We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet
flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of
vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves,
boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting
invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested,
ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out
of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty
splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an icthyosaurus had
been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the
boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?'
Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll
come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an
infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three
weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new
clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the
impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on
the heels of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white
cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of
mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such
instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the
loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one
would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for
equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in
themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and
I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk
of sordid buccaneers: it ywas reckless without hardihood, greedy without
audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight
or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not
seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear
treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more
moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into
a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but
the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his
eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with
ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the
station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming
about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting
confab.
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for
that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said
Hang!—and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation,
and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very
interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who
had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the
top after all and how he would set about his work when there."
"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard
voices approaching—and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling
along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost
myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the
manager—or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's incredible.'
. . . I became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside
the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it
did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. 'It
is
unpleasant,' grunted
the uncle. 'He has asked the Administration to be sent there,' said the
other, 'with the idea of showing what he could do; and I was instructed
accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it not
frightful?' They both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre
remarks: 'Make rain and fine weather—one man—the Council—by the
nose'—bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness,
so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle
said, 'The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone
there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant down the
river with a note to me in these terms: "Clear this poor devil out of
the country, and don't bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be
alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me." It was more
than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!' 'Anything since then?'
asked the other hoarsely. 'Ivory,' jerked the nephew; 'lots of it—prime
sort—lots—most annoying, from him.' 'And with that?' questioned the
heavy rumble. 'Invoice,' was the reply fired out, so to speak. Then
silence. They had been talking about Kurtz.
"I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained
still, having no inducement to change my position. 'How did that ivory
come all this way?' growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The
other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an
English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently
intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods
and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided
to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with four
paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the
ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such
a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed
to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout,
four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly
on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home—perhaps; setting
his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and
desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was just simply
a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name, you
understand, had not been pronounced once. He was 'that man.' The
half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult
trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as 'that
scoundrel.' The 'scoundrel' had reported that the 'man' had been very
ill—had recovered imperfectly. . . . The two below me moved away then a
few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I heard:
'Military post—doctor—two hundred miles—quite alone now—unavoidable
delays—nine months—no news—strange rumours.' They approached again,
just as the manager was saying, 'No one, as far as I know, unless a
species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory
from the natives.' Who was it they were talking about now? I gathered in
snatches that this was some man supposed to be in Kurtz's district, and
of whom the manager did not approve. 'We will not be free from unfair
competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example,'
he said. 'Certainly,' grunted the other; 'get him hanged! Why not?
Anything—anything can be done in this country. That's what I say;
nobody here, you understand,
here
, can endanger your position. And why?
You stand the climate—you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe;
but there before I left I took care to—' They moved off and whispered,
then their voices rose again. 'The extraordinary series of delays is
not my fault. I did my best.' The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the
pestiferous absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered
me enough when he was here. "Each station should be like a beacon on the
road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for
humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive you—that ass! And
he wants to be manager! No, it's—' Here he got choked by excessive
indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see
how near they were—right under me. I could have spat upon their hats.
They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was
switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his
head. 'You have been well since you came out this time?' he asked. The
other gave a start. 'Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—like a charm. But the
rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't
the time to send them out of the country—it's incredible!' 'Hm'm.
Just so,' grunted the uncle. 'Ah! my boy, trust to this—I say, trust to
this.' I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that
took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river—seemed to beckon
with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a
treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the
profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my
feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as though I had expected
an answer of some sort to that black display of confidence. You know
the foolish notions that come to one sometimes. The high stillness
confronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the
passing away of a fantastic invasion.
"They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then
pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the
station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed
to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal
length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without
bending a single blade.