Imatges de pàgina
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percentage. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account-but as to effectually lifting a little finger-0, no. By heavens, there is something, after all, in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. Beastly, perhaps. Yet still effective. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.

"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there, it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something. In fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there-putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs with curiosity, though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. His allusions were Chinese to me. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full of chills and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils on a panel representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre-almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.

"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly holding a half-pint bottle of champagne (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he

said Mr. Kurtz had painted this-in this very station more than a year agowhile waiting for means to go to his trading post. "Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'

""The chief of the Inner station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of the Central station. Every one knows that'-and he was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said, at last. 'He is an emissary of pity and science, and progress and devil knows what else. We want ' he began to declaim suddenly 'for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied; 'some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being as you ought to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. To-day he is chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant manager, two years more, and . . . but I daresay you know what he will be in two years' time you are of the new gang-the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. O, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Sight dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential people were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. 'Do you read the company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued, severely, 'is general manager, you won't have the opportunity.'

"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow whence proceeded a sound of hissing. Steam ascended in the moonlight; the beaten nigger groaned somewhere.

'What a row the brute makes,' said the indefatigable man with the mustaches, appearing suddenly. "Serve him right. Transgression-punishment-bang! Pitiless! pitiless! That's the only way. This will prevent all future conflagrations. I was just telling the manager

'He noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said with a kind of obsequious heartiness; 'It's so natural. Ha! Danger-agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs-go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I ver ily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart-its mystery, its greatness. The amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me wend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. 'My dear sir,' said the fellow, I don't want to be misunderstood by you who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to obtain a false idea of my disposition . .

"I let him run on, this papier maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him and find nothing inside but a little loose dirt maybe. He, don't you see, has been planning to be assistant manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked, precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like

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carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove, was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches of light on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver, over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was dead as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too, God knows!

"Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it, no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about 'walking on all fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would, though a man of 60, offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality, in lies, which is

exactly what I hate and detest in the world, what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he pleased to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz, whom at the time I did not see; you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream-a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise and bewilderment, in a tremor of struggling revolt; that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams . .

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He was silent for a while. “... No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence-but what makes its truth, its meaning-its subtle and penetrating essence? It is impossible. We live, as we dreamalone...."

self without human lips in the heavy night air of the river.

"Yes, I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what he chose about the powers there were behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against while he talked fluently about the necessity for every man to get on. And when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon. Mr. Kurtz was an 'universal genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate 'tools, intelligent men.' He did not make bricks-why, there was a physical impossibility in the way-as I was well aware, and if he did secretarial work for the manager it was because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heavens! Rivets! To get on with the work-to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases full of them down at the coast-cases-piled upburst-split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down, and there

He paused again as if reflecting, then wasn't one rivet to be found where it added:

"Of course, in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know."

It had come so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake, I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape it

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was wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a lone negro, letter bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods, ghastly glazed calico, that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads, value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.

"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 really what Mr. Kurtz wanted-if he had only known it. Now letters

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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 in the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day)-I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that was in the 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 hand 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, and this 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, tinpot 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'd rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like workno 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 can never tell what it really

means.

"I was not surprised to see a man 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 boilermaker by trade-a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellowfaced 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 raved about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and 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 index 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 empty 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 and sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened outburst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the boilermaker, 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 came an in vasion, 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 rowdy band of footsore, sulky negroes 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 expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers. It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage. There was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole lot of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. Their desire was to tear treasure out of the bowels of the land, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid for 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 neighborhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his little short legs, and, all 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

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