Heart of Darkness
‘Oh, I never see them,’ he remarked; ‘and, moreover, the changes take
place inside, you know.’ He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. ‘So you
are going out there. Famous. Interesting, too.’ He gave me a searching
glance, and made another note. ‘Ever any madness in your family?’ he
asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. ‘Is that question
in the interests of science, too?’ ‘It would be,’ he said, without
taking notice of my irritation, ‘interesting for science to watch the
mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but...’ ‘Are you an
alienist?’ I interrupted. ‘Every doctor should be—a little,’ answered
that original, imperturbably. ‘I have a little theory which you
messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in
the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a
magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my
questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my
observation...’ I hastened to assure him I was not in the least
typical. ‘If I were,’ said I, ‘I wouldn’t be talking like this with
you.’ ‘What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,’ he
said, with a laugh. ‘Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.
_Adieu_. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. _Adieu_.
In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.’... He lifted a
warning forefinger.... ‘_Du calme, du calme_.’
“One thing more remained to do—say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I
found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for
many days—and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would
expect a lady’s drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the
fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to
me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and
goodness knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and
gifted creature—a piece of good fortune for the Company—a man you don’t
get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of
a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached!
It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital—you
know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort
of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and
talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the
rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about
‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,’ till, upon my
word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the
Company was run for profit.
“‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,’
she said, brightly. It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are.
They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything
like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they
were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some
confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the
day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
“After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write
often, and so on—and I left. In the street—I don’t know why—a queer
feeling came to me that I was an imposter. Odd thing that I, who used
to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours’ notice,
with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a
moment—I won’t say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this
commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying
that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the
centre of a continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the
earth.
“I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they
have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing
soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a
coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There
it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or
savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’
This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an
aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so
dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran
straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose
glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land
seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish
specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying
above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger
than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded
along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to
levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin
shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers—to take care of
the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the
surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care.
They were just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast
looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various
places—trading places—with names like Gran’ Bassam, Little Popo; names
that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister
back-cloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these
men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the
uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth
of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The
voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the
speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason,
that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a
momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You
could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They
shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces
like grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild
vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true
as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there.
They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I
belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling
would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I
remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There
wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the
French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped
limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all
over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let
her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky,
and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and
vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would
give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There
was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious
drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board
assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them
enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.
“We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were
dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at
some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death
and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated
catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as
if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of
rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud,
whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves,
that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.
Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but
the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was
like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
“It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river.
We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin
till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a
start for a place thirty miles higher up.
“I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a
Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a
young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling
gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head
contemptuously at the shore. ‘Been living there?’ he asked. I said,
‘Yes.’ ‘Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?’ he went on,
speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. ‘It
is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder
what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?’ I said to him I
expected to see that soon. ‘So-o-o!’ he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart,
keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he continued.
‘The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a
Swede, too.’ ‘Hanged himself! Why, in God’s name?’ I cried. He kept on
looking out watchfully. ‘Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the
country perhaps.’
“At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up
earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a
waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise
of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A
lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty
projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times
in a sudden recrudescence of glare. ‘There’s your Company’s station,’
said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the
rocky slope. ‘I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So.
Farewell.’
“I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading
up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an
undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the
air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some
animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty
rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark
things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn
tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull
detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and
that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were
building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this
objectless blasting was all the work going on.
“A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men
advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow,
balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink
kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their
loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could
see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope;
each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together
with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.
Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of
war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous
voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called
enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the