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CHAPTER IV
It must not be supposed that in setting forth the memories of
this half-hour between the moment my uncle left my room till we
met again at dinner, I am losing sight of "Almayer's Folly."
Having confessed that my first novel was begun in idleness--a
holiday task--I think I have also given the impression that it
was a much-delayed book. It was never dismissed from my mind,
even when the hope of ever finishing it was very faint. Many
things came in its way: daily duties, new impressions, old
memories. It was not the outcome of a need--the famous need of
self-expression which artists find in their search for motives.
The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity,
a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps
some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in
London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I
explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary leisurely
walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that
novel I had written nothing but letters and not very many these.
I never made a note of a fact, of an impression or of an anecdote
in my life. The conception of a planned book was entirely
outside my mental range when I sat down to write; the ambition of
being an author had never turned up amongst these gracious
imaginary existences one creates fondly for oneself at times in
the stillness and immobility of a day-dream: yet it stands clear
as the sun at noonday that from the moment I had done blackening
over the first manuscript page of "Almayer's Folly" (it contained
about two hundred words and this proportion of words to a page
has remained with me through the fifteen years of my writing
life), from the moment I had, in the simplicity of my heart and
the amazing ignorance of my mind, written that page the die was
cast. Never had Rubicon been more blindly forded, without
invocation to the gods, without fear of men.
That morning I got up from my breakfast, pushing the chair back,
and rang the bell violently, or perhaps I should say resolutely,
or perhaps I should say eagerly, I do not know. But manifestly
it must have been a special ring of the bell, a common sound made
impressive, like the ringing of a bell for the raising of the
curtain upon a new scene. It was an unusual thing for me to do.
Generally, I dawdled over my breakfast and I solemn took the
trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away; but on
that morning for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness
of the event I did not dawdle. And yet I was not in a hurry. I
pulled the cord casually and while the faint tinkling somewhere
down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual way
and I looked for the matchbox with glances distraught indeed but
exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. I
was composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the
matchbox lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose. And
all this was beautifully and safely usual. Before I had thrown
down the match my landlady's daughter appeared with her calm,
pale face and an inquisitive look, in the doorway. Of late it
was the landlady's daughter who answered my bell. I mention this
little fact with pride, because it proves that during the thirty
or forty days of my tenancy I had produced a favourable
impression. For a fortnight past I had been spared the
unattractive sight of the domestic slave. The girls in that
Bessborough Gardens house were often changed, but whether short
or long, fair or dark, they were always untidy and particularly
bedraggled as if in a sordid version of the fairy tale the ashbin
cat had been changed into a maid. I was infinitely sensible of
the privilege of being waited on by my landlady's daughter. She
was neat if anaemic.
"Will you please clear away all this at once?" I addressed her in
convulsive accents, being at the same time engaged in getting my
pipe to draw. This, I admit, was an unusual request. Generally
on getting up from breakfast I would sit down in the window with
a book and let them clear the table when they liked; but if you
think that on that morning I was in the least impatient, you are
mistaken. I remember that I was perfectly calm. As a matter of
fact I was not at all certain that I wanted to write, or that I
meant to write, or that I had anything to write about. No, I was
not impatient. I lounged between the mantelpiece and the window,
not even consciously waiting for the table to be cleared. It was
ten to one that before my landlady's daughter was done I would
pick up a book and sit down with it all the morning in a spirit
of enjoyable indolence. I affirm it with assurance, and I don't
even know now what were the books then lying about the room.
Whatever they were they were not the works of great masters,
where the secret of clear thought and exact expression can be
found. Since the age of five I have been a great reader, as is
not perhaps wonderful in a child who was never aware of learning
to read. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and
other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history,
voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged
editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some
French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening before
I began to write myself. I believe it was a novel and it is
quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels. It
is very likely. My acquaintance with him was then very recent.
He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the
first time in English. With men of European reputation, with
Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My
first introduction to English imaginative literature was
"Nicholas Nickleby." It is extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby
could chatter disconnectedly in Polish and the sinister Ralph
rage in that language. As to the Crummles family and the family
of the learned Squeers it seemed as natural to them as their
native speech. It was, I have no doubt, an excellent
translation. This must have been in the year '70. But I really
believe that I am wrong. That book was not my first introduction
to English literature. My first acquaintance was (or were) the
"Two Gentlemen of Verona," and that in the very MS. of my
father's translation. It was during our exile in Russia, and it
must have been less than a year after my mother's death, because
I remember myself in the black blouse with a white border of my
heavy mourning. We were living together, quite alone, in a small
house on the outskirts of the town of T--. That afternoon,
instead of going out to play in the large yard which we shared
with our landlord, I had lingered in the room in which my father
generally wrote. What emboldened me to clamber into his chair I
am sure I don't know, but a couple of hours afterwards he
discovered me kneeling in it with my elbows on the table and my
head held in both hands over the MS. of loose pages. I was
greatly confused, expecting to get into trouble. He stood in the
doorway looking at me with some surprise, but the only thing he
said after a moment of silence was:
"Read the page aloud."
Luckily the page lying before me was not overblotted with
erasures and corrections, and my father's handwriting was
otherwise extremely legible. When I got to the end he nodded and
I flew out of doors thinking myself lucky to have escaped reproof
for that piece of impulsive audacity. I have tried to discover
since the reason of this mildness, and I imagine that all unknown
to myself I had earned, in my father's mind, the right to some
latitude in my relations with his writing-table. It was only a
month before, or perhaps it was only a week before, that I had
read to him aloud from beginning to end, and to his perfect
satisfaction, as he lay on his bed, not being very well at the
time, the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of
the Sea." Such was my title to consideration, I believe, and
also my first introduction to the sea in literature. If I do not
remember where, how and when I learned to read, I am not likely
to forget the process of being trained in the art of reading
aloud. My poor father, an admirable reader himself, was the most
exacting of masters. I reflect proudly that I must have read
that page of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" tolerably well at the age
of eight. The next time I met them was in a 5s. one-volume
edition of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare, read in
Falmouth, at odd moments of the day, to the noisy accompaniment
of caulkers' mallets driving oakum into the deck-seams of a ship
in dry dock. We had run in, in a sinking condition and with the
crew refusing duty after a month of weary battling with the gales
of the North Atlantic. Books are an integral part of one's life
and my Shakespearean associations are with that first year of our
bereavement, the last I spent with my father in exile (he sent me
away to Poland to my mother's brother directly he could brace
himself up for the separation), and with the year of hard gales,
the year in which I came nearest to death at sea, first by water
and then by fire.
Those things I remember, but what I was reading the day before my
writing life began I have forgotten. I have only a vague notion
that it might have been one of Trollope's political novels. And
I remember, too, the character of the day. It was an autumn day
with an opaline atmosphere, a veiled, semi-opaque, lustrous day,
with fiery points and flashes of red sunlight on the roofs and
windows opposite, while the trees of the square with all their
leaves gone were like tracings of indian ink on a sheet of tissue
paper. It was one of those London days that have the charm of
mysterious amenity, of fascinating softness. The effect of
opaline mist was often repeated at Bessborough Gardens on account
of the nearness to the river.
There is no reason why I should remember that effect more on that
day than on any other day, except that I stood for a long time
looking out of the window after the landlady's daughter was gone
with her spoil of cups and saucers. I heard her put the tray
down in the passage and finally shut the door; and still I
remained smoking with my back to the room. It is very clear that
I was in no haste to take the plunge into my writing life, if as
plunge this first attempt may be described. My whole being was
steeped deep in the indolence of a sailor away from the sea, the
scene of never-ending labour and of unceasing duty. For utter
surrender to indolence you cannot beat a sailor ashore when that
mood is on him, the mood of absolute irresponsibility tasted to
the full. It seems to me that I thought of nothing whatever, but
this is an impression which is hardly to be believed at this
distance of years. What I am certain of is, that I was very far
from thinking of writing a story, though it is possible and even
likely that I was thinking of the man Almayer.
I had seen him for the first time some four years before from the
bridge of a steamer moored to a rickety little wharf forty miles
up, more or less, a Bornean river. It was very early morning and
a slight mist, an opaline mist as in Bessborough Gardens only
without the fiery flicks on roof and chimney-pot from the rays of
the red London sun, promised to turn presently into a woolly fog.
Barring a small dug-out canoe on the river there was nothing
moving within sight. I had just come up yawning from my cabin.
The serang and the Malay crew were overhauling the cargo chains
and trying the winches; their voices sounded subdued on the deck
below and their movements were languid. That tropical daybreak
was chilly. The Malay quartermaster, coming up to get something
from the lockers on the bridge, shivered visibly. The forests
above and below and on the opposite bank looked black and dank;
wet dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched deck
awnings, and it was in the middle of a shuddering yawn that I
caught sight of Almayer. He was moving across a patch of burnt
grass, a blurred shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house
behind him, a low house of mats, bamboos and palm-leaves with a
high-pitched roof of grass.
He stepped upon the jetty. He was clad simply in flapping
pyjamas of cretonne pattern (enormous flowers with yellow petals
on a disagreeable blue ground) and a thin cotton singlet with
short sleeves. His arms, bare to the elbow, were crossed on his
chest. His black hair looked as if it had not been cut for a
very long time and a curly wisp of it strayed across his
forehead. I had heard of him at Singapore; I had heard of him on
board; I had heard of him early in the morning and late at night;
I had heard of him at tiffin and at dinner; I had heard of him in
a place called Pulo Laut from a half-caste gentleman there, who
described himself as the manager of a coal-mine; which sounded
civilised and progressive till you heard that the mine could not
be worked at present because it was haunted by some particulary
atrocious ghosts. I had heard of him in a place called Dongola,
in the Island of Celebes, when the Rajah of that little-known
seaport (you can get no anchorage there in less than fifteen
fathom, which is extremely inconvenient) came on board in a
friendly way with only two attendants, and drank bottle after
bottle of soda-water on the after-skylight with my good friend
and commander, Captain C--. At least I heard his name distinctly
pronounced several times in a lot of talk in Malay language. Oh
yes, I heard it quite distinctly--Almayer, Almayer--and saw
Captain C-- smile while the fat dingy Rajah laughed audibly. To
hear a Malay Rajah laugh outright is a rare experience I can
assure you. And I overhead more of Almayer's name amongst our
deck passengers (mostly wandering traders of good repute) as they
sat all over the ship--each man fenced round with bundles and
boxes--on mats, on pillows, on quilts, on billets of wood,
conversing of Island affairs. Upon my word, I heard the mutter
of Almayer's name faintly at midnight, while making my way aft
from the bridge to look at the patent taffrail-log tinkling its
quarter-miles in the great silence of the sea. I don't mean to
say that our passengers dreamed aloud of Almayer, but it is
indubitable that two of them at least, who could not sleep
apparently and were trying to charm away the trouble of insomnia
by a little whispered talk at that ghostly hour, were referring
in some way or other to Almayer. It was really impossible on
board that ship to get away definitely from Almayer; and a very
small pony tied up forward and whisking its tail inside the
galley, to the great embarrassment of our Chinaman cook, was
destined for Almayer. What he wanted with a pony goodness only
knows, since I am perfectly certain he could not ride it; but
here you have the man, ambitious, aiming at the grandiose,
importing a pony, whereas in the whole settlement at which he
used to shake daily his impotent fist, there was only one path
that was practicable for a pony: a quarter of a mile at most,
hedged in by hundreds of square leagues of virgin forest. But
who knows? The importation of that Bali Pony might have been
part of some deep scheme, of some diplomatic plan, of some
hopeful intrigue. With Almayer one could never tell. He
governed his conduct by considerations removed from the obvious,
by incredible assumptions, which rendered his logic impenetrable
to any reasonable person. I learned all this later. That
morning seeing the figure in pyjamas moving in the mist I said to
myself: "That's the man."
He came quite close to the ship's side and raised a harassed
countenance, round and flat, with that curl of black hair over
the forehead and a heavy, pained glance.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
He looked hard at me: I was a new face, having just replaced
the chief mate he was accustomed to see; and I think that this
novelty inspired him, as things generally did, with deep-seated
mistrust.
"Didn't expect you in till this evening," he remarked
suspiciously.
I don't know why he should have been aggrieved, but he seemed to
be. I took pains to explain to him that having picked up the
beacon at the mouth of the river just before dark and the tide
serving, Captain C-- was enabled to cross the bar and there was
nothing to prevent him going up river at night.
"Captain C-- knows this river like his own pocket," I concluded
discursively, trying to get on terms.
"Better," said Almayer.
Leaning over the rail of the bridge I looked at Almayer, who
looked down at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his
feet a little; he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The
morning fog had thickened considerably. Everything round us
dripped: the derricks, the rails, every single rope in the ship-
-as if a fit of crying had come upon the universe.
Almayer again raised his head and in the accents of a man
accustomed to the buffets of evil fortune asked hardly audibly:
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?"
I told him almost in a whisper, for he attuned my communications
to his minor key, that we had such a thing as a pony, and I
hinted, as gently as I could, that he was confoundedly in the way
too. I was very anxious to have him landed before I began to
handle the cargo. Almayer remained looking up at me for a long
while with incredulous and melancholy eyes as though it were not
a safe thing to believe my statement. This pathetic mistrust in
the favourable issue of any sort of affair touched me deeply, and
I added:
"He doesn't seem a bit the worse for the passage. He's a nice
pony too."
Almayer was not to be cheered up; for all answer he cleared his
throat and looked down again at his feet. I tried to close with
him on another tack.
"By Jove!" I said. "Aren't you afraid of catching pneumonia or
bronchitis or something, walking about in a singlet in such a wet
fog?"
He was not to be propitiated by a show of interest in his health.
His answer was a sinister "No fear," as much as to say that even
that way of escape from inclement fortune was closed to him.
"I just came down. . ." he mumbled after a while.
"Well then, now you're here I will land that pony for you at once
and you can lead him home. I really don't want him on deck.
He's in the way."
Almayer seemed doubtful. I insisted:
"Why, I will just swing him out and land him on the wharf right
in front of you. I'd much rather do it before the hatches are
off. The little devil may jump down the hold or do some other
deadly thing."
"There's a halter?" postulated Almayer.
"Yes, of course there's a halter." And without waiting any more
I leaned over the bridge rail.
"Serang, land Tuan Almayer's pony."
The cook hastened to shut the door of the galley and a moment
later a great scuffle began on deck. The pony kicked with
extreme energy, the kalashes skipped out of the way, the serang
issued many orders in a cracked voice. Suddenly the pony leaped
upon the fore-hatch. His little hoofs thundered tremendously; he
plunged and reared. He had tossed his mane and his forelock into
a state of amazing wildness, he dilated his nostrils, bits of
foam flecked his broad little chest, his eyes blazed. He was
something under eleven hands; he was fierce, terrible, angry,
warlike, he said ha! ha! distinctly, he raged and thumped--and
sixteen able-bodied kalashes stood round him like disconcerted
nurses round a spoilt and passionate child. He whisked his tail
incessantly; he arched his pretty neck; he was perfectly
delightful; he was charmingly naughty. There was not an atom of
vice in that performance; no savage baring of teeth and lying
back of ears. On the contrary, he pricked them forward in a
comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable;
I would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life
is a stern thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I
steeled my heart and from my elevated position on the bridge I
ordered the men to fling themselves upon him in a body.
The elderly serang, emitting a strange inarticulate cry, gave the
example. He was an excellent petty officer--very competent
indeed, and a moderate opium smoker. The rest of them in one
great rush smothered that pony. They hung on to his ears, to his
mane, to his tail; they lay in piles across his back, seventeen
in all. The carpenter, seizing the hook of the cargo-chain,
flung himself on top of them. A very satisfactory petty officer
too, but he stuttered. Have you ever heard a light-yellow, lean,
sad, earnest Chinaman stutter in pidgin-English? It's very weird
indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the pony at all;
but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that
there was something alive inside.
From the wharf Almayer hailed in quavering tones:
"Oh, I say!"
Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck unless
perhaps the tops of the men's heads; he could only hear the
scuffle, the mighty thuds, as if the ship were being knocked to
pieces. I looked over: "What is it?"
"Don't let them break his legs," he entreated me plaintively.
"Oh, nonsense! He's all right now. He can't move."
By that time the cargo-chain had been hooked to the broad canvas
belt round the pony's body, the kalashes sprang off
simultaneously in all directions, rolling over each other, and
the worthy serang, making a dash behind the winch, turned the
steam on.
"Steady!" I yelled, in great apprehension of seeing the animal
snatched up to the very head of the derrick.
On the wharf Almayer shuffled his straw slippers uneasily. The
rattle of the winch stopped, and in a tense, impressive silence
that pony began to swing across the deck.
How limp he was! Directly he felt himself in the air he relaxed
every muscle in a most wonderful manner. His four hoofs knocked
together in a bunch, his head hung down, and his tail remained
pendent in a nerveless and absolute immobility. He reminded me
vividly of the pathetic little sheep which hangs on the collar of
the Order of the Golden Fleece. I had no idea that anything in
the shape of a horse could be so limp as that, either living or
dead. His wild mane hung down lumpily, a mere mass of inanimate
horsehair; his aggressive ears had collapsed, but as he went
swaying slowly across the front of the bridge I noticed an astute
gleam in his dreamy, half-closed eye. A trustworthy
quartermaster, his glance anxious and his mouth on the broad
grin, was easing over the derrick watchfully. I superintended,
greatly interested.
"So! That will do."
The derrick-head stopped. The kalashes lined the rail. The rope
of the halter hung perpendicular and motionless like a bell-pull
in front of Almayer. Everything was very still. I suggested
amicably that he should catch hold of the rope and mind what he
was about. He extended a provokingly casual and superior hand.
"Look out then! Lower away!"
Almayer gathered in the rope intelligently enough, but when the
pony's hoofs touched the wharf he gave way all at once to a most
foolish optimism. Without pausing, without thinking, almost
without looking, he disengaged the hook suddenly from the sling,
and the cargo-chain, after hitting the pony's quarters, swung
back against the ship's side with a noisy, rattling slap. I
suppose I must have blinked. I know I missed something, because
the next thing I saw was Almayer lying flat on his back on the
jetty. He was alone.
Astonishment deprived me of speech long enough to give Almayer
time to pick himself up in a leisurely and painful manner. The
kalashes lining the rail had all their mouths open. The mist
flew in the light breeze, and it had come over quite thick enough
to hide the shore completely.
"How on earth did you manage to let him get away?" I asked
scandalised.
Almayer looked into the smarting palm of his right hand, but did
not answer my inquiry.
"Where do you think he will get to?" I cried. "Are there any
fences anywhere in this fog? Can he bolt into the forest?
What's to be done now?"
Almayer shrugged his shoulders.
"Some of my men are sure to be about. They will get hold of him
sooner or later."
"Sooner or later! That's all very fine, but what about my canvas
sling--he's carried it off. I want it now, at once, to land two
Celebes cows."
Since Dongola we had on board a pair of the pretty little island
cattle in addition to the pony. Tied up on the other side of the
fore deck they had been whisking their tails into the other door
of the galley. These cows were not for Almayer, however; they
were invoiced to Abdullah bin Selim, his enemy. Almayer's
disregard of my requisites was complete.
"If I were you I would try to find out where he's gone," I
insisted. "Hadn't you better call your men together or
something? He will throw himself down and cut his knees. He may
even break a leg, you know."
But Almayer, plunged in abstracted thought, did not seem to want
that pony any more. Amazed at this sudden indifference I turned
all hands out on shore to hunt for him on my own account, or, at
any rate, to hunt for the canvas sling which he had round his
body. The whole crew of the steamer, with the exception of
firemen and engineers, rushed up the jetty past the thoughtful
Almayer and vanished from my sight. The white fog swallowed them
up; and again there was a deep silence that seemed to extend for
miles up and down the stream. Still taciturn, Almayer started to
climb on board, and I went down from the bridge to meet him on
the after deck.
"Would you mind telling the captain that I want to see him very
particularly?" he asked me in a low tone, letting his eyes stray
all over the place.
"Very well. I will go and see."
With the door of his cabin wide open Captain C--, just back from
the bathroom, big and broad-chested, was brushing his thick,
damp, iron-grey hair with two large brushes.
"Mr. Almayer told me he wanted to see you very particularly,
sir."
Saying these words I smiled. I don't know why I smiled except
that it seemed absolutely impossible to mention Almayer's name
without a smile of a sort. It had not to be necessarily a
mirthful smile. Turning his head towards me Captain C-- smiled
too, rather joylessly.
"The pony got away from him--eh?"
"Yes sir. He did."
"Where is he?"
"Goodness only knows."
"No. I mean Almayer. Let him come along."
The captain's stateroom opening straight on deck under the
bridge, I had only to beckon from the doorway to Almayer, who had
remained aft, with downcast eyes, on the very spot where I had
left him. He strolled up moodily, shook hands and at once asked
permission to shut the cabin door.
"I have a pretty story to tell you," were the last words I heard.
The bitterness of tone was remarkable.
I went away from the door, of course. For the moment I had no
crew on board; only the Chinaman carpenter, with a canvas bag
hung round his neck and a hammer in his hand, roamed about the
empty decks knocking out the wedges of the hatches and dropping
them into the bag conscientiously. Having nothing to do I joined
our two engineers at the door of the engine-room. It was near
breakfast time.
"He's turned up early, hasn't he?" commented the second engineer,
and smiled indifferently. He was an abstemious man with a good
digestion and a placid, reasonable view of life even when hungry.
"Yes," I said. "Shut up with the old man. Some very particular
business."
"He will spin him a damned endless yarn," observed the chief
engineer.
He smiled rather sourly. He was dyspeptic and suffered from
gnawing hunger in the morning. The second smiled broadly, a
smile that made two vertical folds on his shaven cheeks. And I
smiled too, but I was not exactly amused. In that man, whose
name apparently could not be uttered anywhere in the Malay
Archipelago without a smile, there was nothing amusing whatever.
That morning he breakfasted with us silently, looking mostly into
his cup. I informed him that my men came upon his pony capering
in the fog on the very brink of the eight-foot-deep well in which
he kept his store of guttah. The cover was off with no one near
by, and the whole of my crew just missed going heels over head
into that beastly hole. Jurumudi Itam, our best quartermaster,
deft at fine needlework, he who mended the ship's flags and sewed
buttons on our coats, was disabled by a kick on the shoulder.
Both remorse and gratitude seemed foreign to Almayer's character.
He mumbled:
"Do you mean that pirate fellow?"
"What pirate fellow? The man has been in the ship eleven years,"
I said indignantly.
"It's his looks," Almayer muttered for all apology.
The sun had eaten up the fog. From where we sat under the after
awning we could see in the distance the pony tied up in front of
Almayer's house, to a post of the verandah. We were silent for a
long time. All at once Almayer, alluding evidently to the
subject of his conversation in the captain's cabin, exclaimed
anxiously across the table:
"I really don't know what I can do now!"
Captain C-- only raised his eyebrows at him, and got up from his
chair. We dispersed to our duties, but Almayer, half dressed as
he was in his cretonne pyjamas and the thin cotton singlet,
remained on board, lingering near the gangway as though he could
not make up his mind whether to go home or stay with us for good.
Our Chinamen boys gave him side glances as they went to and fro;
and Ah Sing, our young chief steward, the handsomest and most
sympathetic of Chinamen, catching my eye, nodded knowingly at his
burly back. In the course of the morning I approached him for a
moment.
"Well, Mr. Almayer," I addressed him easily, "you haven't started
on your letters yet."
We had brought him his mail and he had held the bundle in his
hand ever since we got up from breakfast. He glanced at it when
I spoke and, for a moment, it looked as if he were on the point
of opening his fingers and letting the whole lot fall overboard.
I believe he was tempted to do so. I shall never forget that man
afraid of his letters.
"Have you been long out from Europe?" he asked me.
"Not very. Not quite eight months," I told him. "I left a ship
in Samarang with a hurt back and have been in the hospital in
Singapore some weeks."
He sighed.
"Trade is very bad here."
"Indeed!"
"Hopeless!. . .See these geese?"
With the hand holding the letters he pointed out to me what
resembled a patch of snow creeping and swaying across the distant
part of his compound. It disappeared behind some bushes.
"The only geese on the East Coast," Almayer informed me in a
perfunctory mutter without a spark of faith, hope or pride.
Thereupon, with the same absence of any sort of sustaining spirit
he declared his intention to silence a fat bird and send him on
board for us not later than next day.
I had heard of these largesses before. He conferred a goose as
if it were a sort of Court decoration given only to the tried
friends of the house. I had expected more pomp in the ceremony.
The gift had surely its special quality, multiple and rare. From
the only flock on the East Coast! He did not make half enough of
it. That man did not understand his opportunities. However, I
thanked him at some length.
"You see," he interrupted abruptly in a very peculiar tone, "the
worst of this country is that one is not able to realise. . .it's
impossible to realise. . ." His voice sank into a languid
mutter. "And when one has very large interests. . .very
important interests. . ." he finished faintly. . ."up the river."
We looked at each other. He astonished me by giving a start and
making a very queer grimace.
"Well, I must be off," he burst out hurriedly. "So long!"
At the moment of stepping over the gangway he checked himself
though, to give me a mumbled invitation to dine at his house that
evening with my captain, an invitation which I accepted. I don't
think it could have been possible for me to refuse.
I like the worthy folk who will talk to you of the exercise of
free will "at any rate for practical purposes." Free, is it?
For practical purposes! Bosh! How could I have refused to dine
with that man? I did not refuse simply because I could not
refuse. Curiosity, a healthy desire for a change of cooking,
common civility, the talk and the smiles of the previous twenty
days, every condition of my existence at that moment and place
made irresistibly for acceptance; and, crowning all that, there
was the ignorance, the ignorance, I say, the fatal want of
foreknowledge to counter-balance these imperative conditions of
the problem. A refusal would have appeared perverse and insane.
Nobody unless a surly lunatic would have refused. But if I had
not got to know Almayer pretty well it is almost certain there
would never have been a line of mine in print.
I accepted then--and I am paying yet the price of my sanity. The
possessor of the only flock of geese on the East Coast is
responsible for the existence of some fourteen volumes, so far.
The number of geese he had called into being under adverse
climatic conditions was considerably more than fourteen. The
tale of volumes will never overtake the counting of heads, I am
safe to say; but my ambitions point not exactly that way, and
whatever the pangs the toil of writing has cost me I have always
thought kindly of Almayer.
I wonder, had he known anything of it, what his attitude would
have been? This is something not to be discovered in this world.
But if we ever meet in the Elysian Fields--where I cannot depict
him to myself otherwise than attended in the distance by his
flock of geese (birds sacred to Jupiter)--and he addresses me in
the stillness of that passionless region, neither light nor
darkness, neither sound nor silence, and heaving endlessly with
billowy mists from the impalpable multitudes of the swarming
dead, I think I know what answer to make.
I would say, after listening courteously to the unvibrating tone
of his measured remonstrances, which should not disturb, of
course, the solemn eternity of stillness in the least--I would
say something like this:
"It is true, Almayer, that in the world below I have converted
your name to my own uses. But that is a very small larceny.
What's in a name, O Shade? If so much of your old mortal
weakness clings to you yet as to make you feel aggrieved (it was
the note of your earthly voice, Almayer), then, I entreat you,
seek speech without delay with our sublime fellow-Shade--with him
who, in his transient existence as a poet, commented upon the
smell of the rose. He will comfort you. You came to me stripped
of all prestige by men's queer smiles and the disrespectful
chatter of every vagrant trader in the Islands. Your name was
the common property of the winds: it, as it were, floated naked
over the waters about the Equator. I wrapped round its
unhonoured form the royal mantle of the tropics and have essayed
to put into the hollow sound the very anguish of paternity--feats
which you did not demand from me--but remember that all the toil
and all the pain were mine. In your earthly life you haunted me,
Almayer. Consider that this was taking a great liberty. Since
you were always complaining of being lost to the world, you
should remember that if I had not believed enough in your
existence to let you haunt my rooms in Bessborough Gardens, you
would have been much more lost. You affirm that had I been
capable of looking at you with a more perfect detachment and a
greater simplicity, I might have perceived better the inward
marvellousness which, you insist, attended your career upon that
tiny pin-point of light, hardly visible far, far below us, where
both our graves lie. No doubt! But reflect, O complaining
Shade! that this was not so much my fault as your crowning
misfortune. I believed in you in the only way it was possible
for me to believe. It was not worthy of your merits? So be it.
But you were always an unlucky man, Almayer. Nothing was ever
quite worthy of you. What made you so real to me was that you
held this lofty theory with some force of conviction and with an
admirable consistency."
It is with some such words translated into the proper shadowy
expressions that I am prepared to placate Almayer in the Elysian
Abode of Shades, since it has come to pass that having parted
many years ago, we are never to meet again in this world.
Content of CHAPTER IV [Joseph Conrad's book: Some Reminiscences]
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