Heart of Darkness
hear; “yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I
got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where
I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and
the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a
kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was
sombre enough, too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very
clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of
light.
“I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of
Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas—a regular dose of the East—six years
or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and
invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to
civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get
tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship—I should think the
hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn’t even look at me. And I
got tired of that game, too.
“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look
for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in
all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank
spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly
inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it
and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there.’ The North Pole was one of
these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not
try now. The glamour’s off. Other places were scattered about the
hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and... well, we won’t talk
about that. But there was one yet—the biggest, the most blank, so to
speak—that I had a hankering after.
“True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got
filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased
to be a blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy to
dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was
in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on
the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the
sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail
lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a
shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird—a silly little
bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on
that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can’t trade without
using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water—steamboats! Why
shouldn’t I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but
could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
“You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but
I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it’s cheap
and not so nasty as it looks, they say.
“I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh
departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I
always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I
wouldn’t have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I
must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said ‘My
dear fellow,’ and did nothing. Then—would you believe it?—I tried the
women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work—to get a job. Heavens!
Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic
soul. She wrote: ‘It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything,
anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high
personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots of
influence with,’ etc. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get
me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.
“I got my appointment—of course; and I got it very quick. It appears
the Company had received news that one of their captains had been
killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made
me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards,
when I made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I
heard the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some
hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven—that was the fellow’s name, a
Dane—thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore
and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it
didn’t surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to
be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever
walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years
already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably
felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way.
Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of
his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man—I was told the
chief’s son—in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a
tentative jab with a spear at the white man—and of course it went quite
easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared
into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on
the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad
panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed
to trouble much about Fresleven’s remains, till I got out and stepped
into his shoes. I couldn’t let it rest, though; but when an opportunity
offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his
ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The
supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village
was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the
fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people
had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children,
through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens
I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them,
anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment,
before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
“I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I
was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the
contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me
think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in
finding the Company’s offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,
and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea
empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
“A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable
windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between
the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double
doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks,
went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and
opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim,
sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up
and walked straight at me—still knitting with downcast eyes—and only
just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a
somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an
umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me
into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in
the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large
shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast
amount of red—good to see at any time, because one knows that some real
work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears
of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the
jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I
wasn’t going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in
the centre. And the river was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake.
Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a
compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me
into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk
squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an
impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He
was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end
of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely,
was satisfied with my French. _Bon Voyage_.
“In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room
with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy,
made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things
not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.
“I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such
ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was
just as though I had been let into some conspiracy—I don’t
know—something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer
room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,
and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The
old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a
foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white
affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed
spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the
glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.
Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted
over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned
wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An eerie
feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away
there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting
black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing
continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and
foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. _Ave!_ Old knitter of black
wool. _Morituri te salutant_. Not many of those she looked at ever saw
her again—not half, by a long way.
“There was yet a visit to the doctor. ‘A simple formality,’ assured me
the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.
Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some
clerk I suppose—there must have been clerks in the business, though the
house was as still as a house in a city of the dead—came from somewhere
up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains
on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy,
under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too
early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed
a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the
Company’s business, and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at
him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once.
‘I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,’ he said
sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose.
“The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the
while. ‘Good, good for there,’ he mumbled, and then with a certain
eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather
surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got
the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He
was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with
his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. ‘I always ask
leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those
going out there,’ he said. ‘And when they come back, too?’ I asked.