Heart of Darkness
trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of
bricks—so I had been informed; but there wasn’t a fragment of a brick
anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a
year—waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something, I
don’t know what—straw maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there and as
it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me
what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However,
they were all waiting—all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them—for
something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation,
from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them
was disease—as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by
back-biting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way.
There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of
it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic
pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as
their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed
to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn
percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on
that account—but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, 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. 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. It was
very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was
full only 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 an empty half-pint
champagne bottle (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 ago—while 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.’ 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 intrusted 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. Today he is chief of the best station, next
year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and... but I dare-say
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. Oh, don’t say no. I’ve my own eyes to trust.’ Light
dawned upon me. My dear aunt’s influential acquaintances 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 moustaches, appearing near
us. ‘Serve him right. Transgression—punishment—bang! Pitiless,
pitiless. That’s the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for
the future. 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 servile 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 verily believe they took these sticks to
bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the
moonlight, and through that 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 mend 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, and especially by you, who will see Mr.
Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn’t like him to get
a false idea of my disposition....’
“I let him run on, this _papier-mache_ Mephistopheles, and it seemed to
me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would
find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don’t you see,
had 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 a 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 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
deaf 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 sixty—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 flavour 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 liked to imagine as to my influence in
Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence 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—making 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....”
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—that which makes
its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is
impossible. We live, as we dream—alone....”
He paused again as if reflecting, then added:
“Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me,
whom you know....”
It had become 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 clue to the
faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself
without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.
“... Yes—I let him run on,” Marlow began again, “and think what he
pleased about the powers that 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 a ‘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 heaven!
Rivets. To get on with the work—to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted.
There were cases of them down at the coast—cases—piled up—burst—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
wasn’t one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that
would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the
messenger, a long negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left
our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan