Heart of Darkness
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.
“I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said
afterwards that Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district. I have no
opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there
was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only
showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his
various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small
matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under
his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I
can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last—only at the very
last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him
a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had
whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of
which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great
solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed
loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.... I put down the
glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to
seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.
“The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried,
indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take
these—say, symbols—down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would
not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was
extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the
chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl.... ‘I don’t want to
know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,’ I
shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details
would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under
Mr. Kurtz’s windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I
seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region
of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive
relief, being something that had a right to exist—obviously—in the
sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did
not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn’t
heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love,
justice, conduct of life—or what not. If it had come to crawling before
Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had
no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of
rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be
the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals,
workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very
subdued to me on their sticks. ‘You don’t know how such a life tries a
man like Kurtz,’ cried Kurtz’s last disciple. ‘Well, and you?’ I said.
‘I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from
anybody. How can you compare me to...?’ His feelings were too much for
speech, and suddenly he broke down. ‘I don’t understand,’ he groaned.
‘I’ve been doing my best to keep him alive, and that’s enough. I had no
hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn’t been a drop of
medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was
shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully!
Shamefully! I—I—haven’t slept for the last ten nights...’
“His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of
the forest had slipped downhill while we talked, had gone far beyond
the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in
the gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the
stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and
dazzling splendour, with a murky and overshadowed bend above and below.
Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.
“Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as
though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the
grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their
midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose
shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to
the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human
beings—of naked human beings—with spears in their hands, with bows,
with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into
the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook,
the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in
attentive immobility.
“‘Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,’
said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had
stopped, too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on
the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the
shoulders of the bearers. ‘Let us hope that the man who can talk so
well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us
this time,’ I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our
situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been
a dishonouring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my
glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving,
the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that
nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz—Kurtz—that means short in
German—don’t it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his
life—and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had
fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from
a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones
of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved
out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless
crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his
mouth wide—it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had
wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. A
deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back
suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again,
and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was
vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest
that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as
the breath is drawn in a long aspiration.
“Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms—two
shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine—the thunderbolts
of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he
walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little
cabins—just a room for a bed place and a camp-stool or two, you know.
We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes
and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these
papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor
of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did
not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for
the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.
“He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said,
‘I am glad.’ Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special
recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted
without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed
me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man
did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in
him—factitious no doubt—to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall
hear directly.
“The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once
and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the
pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his
glance.
“Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting
indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the
river two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight
under fantastic head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in
statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved
a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.
“She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths,
treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous
ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of
a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to
the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of
glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men,
that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must
have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage
and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and
stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen
suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the
colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her,
pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own
tenebrous and passionate soul.
“She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long
shadow fell to the water’s edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce
aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some
struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a
stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an
inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step
forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of
fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The
young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She
looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving
steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw
them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to
touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the
earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy
embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.
“She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into
the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the
dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.
“‘If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried