September 12, 2025 • 48 mins
02 - Chapter 1 - Part 2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
In this powerful novella based on Joseph Conrad's own experiences in the Belgian Congo, Charles Marlow, an experienced seaman, tells a small group of friends about a profoundly disturbing episode in his life where he was employed by a large colonising enterprise to sail a tinpot steamer up a river into the heart of Africa with a view to bringing out an ivory trader who had gone rogue. Conrad biographer Maya Janasoff has argued that while Marlow's descriptions of Africans are crudely racist, the author binds this racist language with "a potentially radical suggestion. What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that 'savages' were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage."
In this powerful novella based on Joseph Conrad's own experiences in the Belgian Congo, Charles Marlow, an experienced seaman, tells a small group of friends about a profoundly disturbing episode in his life where he was employed by a large colonising enterprise to sail a tinpot steamer up a river into the heart of Africa with a view to bringing out an ivory trader who had gone rogue. Conrad biographer Maya Janasoff has argued that while Marlow's descriptions of Africans are crudely racist, the author binds this racist language with "a potentially radical suggestion. What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that 'savages' were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part two of chapter one of Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Bob Neufeld. I didn't want any more loitering
in the shade, and I made haste towards the station.
When near the buildings, I met a white man in
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such an unexpected elegance of get up that in the
first moment I took him for a sort of vision.
I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light
outpack of jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots,
no hat, hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green lined parasol.
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Held in a big white hand. He was amazing and
had a penholder behind his ear. I shook hands with
this miracle, and I learned he was the company's chief accountants,
and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station.
He had come out for a moment, he said, to
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get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd,
with its suggestion of sedentary desk life. I wouldn't have
mentioned the fellow to you at all. Only it was
from his lips that I first heard the name of
the man who was so indissolubly connected with the memories
of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow, Yes, I
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respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His
appearance was certainly that of a head dresser's dummy. But
in the great demoralization of the land, he kept up
his appearance. That's backbone, his starched collars and got up
shirt fronts were achievements of character. He had been out
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nearly three years, and later I could not help asking
him how he managed to sport shut linen. He had
just the faintest blush and said modestly, I've been teaching
one of the native women about the station. It was difficult.
She had a distaste for the work. Thus, this man
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had verily accomplished something, and he was devoted to his books,
which were in apple pie order. Everything else in the
station was in a muddle. Heads, things, buildings, strings of
dusty niggers with splay feets arrived and departed a stream
of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads and brass wire set
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into the depths of darkness, and in return came a
precious trickle of ivory. I had to wait in the
station for ten days an eternity. I lived in a
hut in the yard, but to the out of the chaos,
I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was
built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that
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as he bent over his high desk, he was barred
from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There
was no need to open the big shutter to see
it was hot. There, too, big flies buzzed fiendishly and
did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor,
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while of faultless appearance, and even slightly scented, perching on
a high stool, he wrote. He wrote, Sometimes he stood
up for exercise when a truckled bed with a sick man,
some invalid agent from up country was put in there.
He exhibited a gentle annoyance. The groans of this sick person,
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he said, distract my attention, and without that it is
extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.
One day, he remarked, without lifting his head in the interior,
you will note out meet mister Kurtz. On my asking
who mister Kurtz was, he said he was a first
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class Agent's, and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added, slowly,
laying down his pen, he is a very remarkable person.
Further questions elicited from him that mister Kurtz was at
present in charge of a trading post, a very important
one in the true ivory country at the very bottom
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of there sends in as much ivory as all the
others put together. He began to write again. The sick
man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in
a great piece. Suddenly there was a growing murmur of
voices and a great trampling of feet. A caravan had
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come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out
on the other side of the planks. All the carriers
were speaking together, and in the mids of the uproar,
the mementable voice of the chief Agent was heard giving
it up tearfully for the twentieth time that day. He
rose slowly. What a frightful row, he said. He crossed
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the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning,
said to me, he does not hear what dead? I asked, startled, No,
not yet, he answered, with great composure, then alluding with
the toss of the head to the tumult in the
station yard. When one has got to make correct entries,
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one comes to hate those savages, hate them to the death.
He remained thoughtful for a moment. When you see, mister Kurtz,
he went on, tell him from me that everything here,
he glanced at the desk, is very satisfactory. They don't
like to write to him with those messengers of ours.
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You never know whom get hold of your letter. At
that central station. He stared at me for a moment
with his mild bulging eyes. Oh he will go far,
very far, he began again. He will be a somebody
in the administration before long they above the council in Europe,
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you know mean him to be. He turned to his work.
The noise outside had ceased, and presently, in going out,
I stopped at the door, in the steady buzz of flies.
The homeward bound agent was lying, finished and insensible. The other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly
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correct transactions, and fifty feet below the doorstep I could
see the still treetops of the grove of death. Next
day I left that station at last with a caravan
of sixty men for a two hundred mile tramp, no
use telling you much about that. Paths, paths everywhere, a
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stamped in network of paths, spreading over the empty land,
through the long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down
and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills, ablaze
with heat and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut.
The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well,
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if a lot of mysterious niggers, armed with all kinds
of fearful weapons, suddenly took to traveling on the road
between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left
to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm
and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here
the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several
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abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of
great walls, day after day, with the stamp and shuffle
of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair
under a sixty pound load. Camp, Cook, Sleep, strike, camp,
march now, and then a carrier dead in harness, at
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rest in the long grass near the path, with an
empty water good and his long staff lying by a
side a great silence around and above, perhaps on some
quiet night, the tremor of far off drums sinking swelling,
a tremor vast, faint, a sound, weird, appealing, suggestive and wild,
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and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound
of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man
in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an
armed escort of lush zanzabaries, very hospitable and festive to
say drunk, was looking after the upkeep of the road,
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he declared, can't say I saw any road or any upkeep,
unless the body of a middle aged Negro with a
bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled
three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement.
I had a white companion too, not a bad chap,
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but rather too fleshy, and with the exasperating habit of
fainting on the hot hillsides miles away from the least
bit of shade and water. Annoying. You know, to hold
your own coat like a parasol over a man's head
while he's coming too. I couldn't help asking him once
what he meant by coming there? At all to make money?
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Of course, what do you think, he said scornfully. Then
he got fever and had to be carried in a
hammock slung under a pole as he weighed sixteen. So
I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed,
ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night.
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Quite a mutiny. So one evening I made a speech
in English with gestures, not one of which was lost
to the sixty pair of eyes before me, And the
next morning I started the hammock off in front all right.
An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked
in a bush man hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy
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pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious
for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow
of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor. It
would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes
of individuals. On the spot, I felt I was becoming
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scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On
the fifteenth day I came inside of the Big River
again and hobbled into the central station. It was on
a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a
pretty border of smelly mud on one side and on
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the three others, enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes.
A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and
the first glance at the place was enough to let
you see the flabby devil was running that show. White
men with long staves in their hands, appeared languidly from
amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me,
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and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them,
a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with
great volubility and many digressions. As soon as I told
him who I was, that my steamer was at the
bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. But how why,
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Oh it was all right. The manager himself was there,
all quite correct. Everybody had behaved splendidly. Splendidly, you must,
he said, in agitation, Go and see the general manager
at once. He is waiting. I did not see the
real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I
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see it now, but I am not sure, not at all.
Certainly the affair was too stupid when I think of it,
to be altogether natural. Still, but at the moment it
presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk.
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They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge
of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out
three hours, they tore the bottom out of her on stones,
and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there now my boat was lost.
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As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do
in fishing my command out of the river. I had
to set about it the very next day. That and
the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station
took some months. My first interview with the manager was curious.
He did not ask me to sit down after my
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twenty mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion,
in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of
middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes of the
usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could
make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy
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as an axe. But even at these times, the rest
of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there
was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy,
a smile, not a smile. I remember it, but I
can't explain it was unconscious. This smile was though just
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after he had said something, it got intensified for an instant.
It came at the end of his speeches, like a
seal applied on the words to make the meaning of
the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common
trader from his youth up, employed in these parts. Nothing more.
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He was obeyed. Yet he inspired neither love, nor fear,
nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was its uneasiness,
not a definite mistrust, just uneasiness. Nothing more. You have
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no idea how effective such a faculty can be. He
had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order,
even that was evident in such things as the deplorable
state of the station. He had no learning and no intelligence.
His position had come to him. Why, perhaps because he
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was never ill. He had served three terms of three
years out there, because triumphant health in the general route
of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When
he went home on leave, he rioted on a large
scale pompously jack Ashore with a difference in externals. Only
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this one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing.
He can keep the routine going, that's all. But he
was great. He was great by this little thing that
it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.
He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing
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within him. Such a suspicion made one pause, for out
there there were no external checks. Once, when various tropical
diseases had laid low almost every agent in the station,
he was heard to say, men who come out here
should have no entrails. He sealed the utterance with that
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smile of his, as though it had been a door
opening into a darkness. He had in his keeping. You
fancied you had seen things. But the seal was on.
When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of
the white men about precedents, he ordered an immense round
table to be made, for which a special house had
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to be built. This was the station's mess room, where
he sat, was the first place the rest were nowhere.
One felt this to be his un alterable conviction. He
was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed
his boy, an overfed young Negro from the coast to
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treat the white men under his very eyes with provoking insolence.
He began to speak as soon as he saw me.
I had been very long on the road. He could
not wait, had to start without me. The up river
stations had to be relieved. There had been so many
delays already that he did not know who was dead
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and who was alive, and how they got on, and
so on and so on. He paid no attention to
my explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealing wax,
repeated several times that the situation was very grave, fairy grave.
There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy,
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and its chief, mister Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was
not true. Mister Kurtz was. I felt weary and irritable.
Hang kerts, I thought. I interrupted him by saying, I
had heard of mister Kurtz on the coast. Ah, so
they talk of him down there, he murmured to himself.
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Then he began again, assuring me mister Kurtz was the
best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest
importance to the company. Therefore, I could understand his anxiety.
He was, he said, very very uneasy. Certainly he fidgeted
on his chair. A good deal, exclaimed, Ah, mister Kurtz
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broke the stick of sealing wax and seemed dumbfounded by
the accident. Next thing, he wanted to know how long
it would take to I interrupted him again, being hungry,
you know, and kept on my feet too. I was
getting savage. How can I tell? I said, I haven't
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even seen the wreck yet. Some months, no doubt. All
this talk seemed to me so futile. Some months he said, well,
let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes,
that ought to do the affair. I flung out of
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his hut. He lived all alone in a clay hut
with a sort of verandah, muttering to myself my opinion
of him, he was a chattering idiot. Afterwards, I took
it back when it was borne in upon me, startlingly
with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite
for the affair. I went to work the next day, turning,
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so to speak, my back on that station. In that way,
only it seemed to me I could keep my hold
on the redeeming facts of life. Still one must look
about sometimes and then I saw this station, these men
strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I
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asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here
and there with their absurd long staves in their hands,
like a lot of faithless pilgrims, bewitched inside a rotten fence.
The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed.
You would think they were praying to it. A taint
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of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like a whiff
from some corpse. By Jove, I've never seen anything so
unreal in my life, and outside the silent wilderness surrounding,
this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something
great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for
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the passing away of this fantastic invasion. Oh these months, well,
never mind. Various things happened. One evening, a grass shed
full of Calaco cotton prints, bees, and I don't know
what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you
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would have thought the earth had opened to let an
avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my
pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all
cutting capers in the lights with their arms lifted high.
When the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to
the river a tin pail in his hand, assured me
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that everybody was behaving splendidly. Splendidly, dipped about a quart
of water and tore back again. I noticed there was
a hole in the bottom of his pail. I strolled up.
There was no hurry, you see. The thing had gone
off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless
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from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven
everybody back back, lighted up everything, and collapsed. The shed
was already a heap of embers, glowing fiercely. A nigger
was being beaten near by. They said he had caused
the fire in some way, but be that as it may,
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he was screeching most horribly. I saw him later for
several days, sitting in a bit of shade, looking very
sick and trying to recover himself. Afterwards, he arose and
went out, and the wilderness, without a sound, took him
into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from
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the dark, I found myself at the back of two
men talking. I heard the name of kerts pronounced then
the words take advantage of this unfortunate accident. One of
the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening.
Did you ever see anything like it? Say? It was incredible,
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he said, and walked off. The other man remained he
was a first class agent, young gentlemanly a bit reserved,
with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He
was standoffish with the other agents, and they, on their
side said he was the manager's spy upon them. As
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to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before
we got into talk, and by and by we strolled
away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to
his room, which was in the main building of the station.
He struck a match, and I perceived that this young
aristocrat had not only a silver mounted dressing case, but
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also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that
time the manager was the only man supposed to have
any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls.
A collection of spears, assgades, shields, knives was hung up
in trophies. The business entrusted to this fellow was the
making of bricks, so I had been informed, But there
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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
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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.
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As far as I could see. They beguiled the time
by backbiding and in frigging 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
pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government,
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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,
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oh no, by heavens, there was 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
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into a kick. I had no idea why he wanted
to be so pocable, 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.
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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
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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
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he got angry, and to conceal a moment 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 somber, almost black.
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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, mister Kurtz had painted this
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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, mister 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
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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
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entrusted 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 bee, as you
ought to know? Why ought I to know? I interrupted,
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really surprised he paid no attention. Yes, to day, 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.
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Oh don't say no, I've mine own eyes to trust.
Lights 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.
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I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was
great fun. When mister Kurtz, I continued severely, it's general manager,
you won't have the opportunity. He blew the candle out suddenly,
and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures
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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 mustaches appearing near us.
Serve him right. Transgression punishment, bang, pitiless, pitiless, That's the
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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. Ah,
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danger agitation, he vanished. I went on to the river side,
and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur
at my ear. Heap of muffs go to the pilgrims
could be seen in nots gesticulating discussing. Several had stilled
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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,
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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
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want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who we'll see,
mister 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 paper, Machet Mestopheles, and
it seemed to me that if I tried, I could
poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside
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but a little loose dirt. Maybe he don't, you see,
had been planned to be the assistant manager by and
by under the present man. And I could see that
the coming of that Kerts 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
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of my steamer, hauled up on the slope, like a
carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud,
of prime evil, mud, by jove, was in my nostrils.
The high stillness of primeval forests was before my eyes.
There were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon
had spread over everything, a thin layer of silver over
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the rank grass, over the mud open, the wall of
matted vegetation, standing higher than the wall of a temper.
Over the great river, I could see through a somber gap, glittering, glittering,
as it flowed broadly by, without a murmur. All this
was great, expectant mute. While the man jabbered about himself,
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I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the
immensity looking at us too, were meant as an appeal
or as a menace? What were we who had strayed
in there? Could we handle that dumb thing or would
it handle us? I felt, how big, how confoundly big,
was that thing that couldn't talk and perhaps was deaf
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as well. What was in there? I could see a
little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard
mister 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
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believed it in the same way one of you might
believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew
once a Scotch sail maker who was certain, they're 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
(34:22):
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
(34:44):
because it appalls me. There is a taint of death,
a flavor 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
(35:06):
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 pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This
simply because I had a notion it would somehow be
of help to that Kurtz, whom at that time I
(35:26):
did not see. You understand, it 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
(35:48):
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.
Now it is impossible, It is impossible to convey the
(36:11):
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
(36:33):
this you fellas 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
(36:56):
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
(37:18):
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 can see it is
not to gaze at the moon. Mister Kurtz was a
(37:42):
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 mass, it was because no sensible man
(38:03):
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 whole rivets I wanted.
There were cases of them down at the coast, cases
(38:25):
piled up, burst split. You kicked a loose rivet in
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
(38:47):
to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a
long negro let, her bag on shoulder and staff in hand,
left our station for the coast, and several times a
week a coast came teravan came in with trade goods,
ghastly glazed kalico that made you shudder only to look
at it. Glass beads value about penny a quart, confounded
(39:10):
spotted cotton, handkerchiefs, and no rivets. Three carriers could have
brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
He was becoming confidential now, But I fancy my unresponsive
attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged
it necessary to inform me. He feared neither God nor devil,
(39:34):
let alone any mere man. I said, I could see
that very well. But what I wanted was a certain
quantity of rivets. And rivets were what really mister Kurtz wanted,
if he had only known it now. Letters went to
the coast every week. My dear sir, he cried, I
(39:54):
write from dictation. I demanded rivets. There was a for
an intelligent man. He changed his manner, became very cold,
and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus. Wondered whether
sleeping on board the steamer. I stuck to my salvage
night and day. I wasn't disturbed. There was an old
(40:17):
hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on
the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds.
The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and
empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him.
Some had even sat upper night's for him. All this
energy was wasted, though, that animal has a charmed life,
(40:39):
he said. But you can say this's only are brutes
in this country. No man, you apprehend me, No man
here bears a charmed life. He stood there for a
moment in the moonlight, with his delicate hooked nose set
a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink.
Then with a curt good night night, he strode off.
(41:03):
I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which
made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days.
It was a great comfort to turn from that chap
to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined tin pot steamboat.
I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like
(41:23):
an empty huntly and palmer biscuit tin kicked along a gutter.
She was nothing so solid in make, and rather less
pretty in shape. But I had expended enough hard work
on her to make me love her. No influential friend
would have served me better. She had given me a
chance to come out a bit to find out what
(41:44):
I could do. No, I didn't like work. I would
rather laze about and think of all the fine things
that can be done. I don't like work, no man does.
But I like what is in the work, the chance
to find yourself, your own reality, for yourself, not for others.
(42:05):
What no other man can ever know. They can only
see the mere show and never can tell what it
really means. I was not surprised to see somebody sitting
aft on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud.
You see, I rather chummed with the few mechanics there
were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised
(42:28):
on account of their imperfect manners. I suppose this was
the Foreman, a boiler maker by trade, a good worker.
He was a lank, bony, yellow faced man, with big,
intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was
as bald as the palm of my hand. But his hair,
in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and
(42:51):
had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung
down to his waist. He was a widower with six
young children. He had left them in charge of a
sister of his to come out there, and the passion
of his life was pigeon flying. He was an enthusiast
and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons after work hours.
(43:14):
He used sometimes to come over from his hut for
a little talk about his children and his pigeons. At work,
when he had to crawl in the mud under the
bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard
of his and a kind of white serviettes he brought
for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears.
In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank,
(43:36):
rincing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then
spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry. I slapped
him on the back and shouted, we shall have rivets.
He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming no rivets, as though
he couldn't believe his ears. Then, in a low voice,
(43:58):
you way, I don't know why we behave like lunatics.
I put my finger to the side of my nose
and nodded mysteriously good for you, he cried, snapped his
fingers above his head, lifting one foot, I tried a jig.
We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came
(44:20):
out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the
other bank of the creek sent it back in a
thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made
some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A
dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut vanished,
Then a second or so after the doorway itself vanished too.
(44:45):
We stopped, and the silence, driven away by the stamping
of our feet, flowed back again from the recesses of
the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and
entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in
the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life.
(45:07):
A rolling wave of plants piled up, crested, ready to
topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of
us out of his little existence. And it moved not.
A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us
from afar, as though an Ichthiosaurus had been taking a
(45:27):
bath of glitter in the Great River. After all, said
the boilermaker, in a reasonable tone. Why shouldn't we get
the rivets? Why not? Indeed, I did not know of
any reason why we shouldn't. They'll come in three weeks,
I said, confidently. But they didn't. Instead of rivets, there
(45:50):
came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in
sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by
a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and
tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to
the impressed pilgrims a quarrelsome band of footsore, sulky niggers
(46:12):
trode on the heels of the donkey. A lot of tents, campstools,
tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down
in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen
a little over the muddle of the station. Five such
installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight, with
(46:32):
the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores that
one would think they were lugging after a raid into
the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess
of things decent in themselves, but that human folly made
look like the spoils of thieving. This devoted band called
(46:55):
itself the El Dorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they
were sworn into secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk
of sordid buccaneers. It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity,
and cruel without courage. There was not an atom of
foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them,
(47:18):
and they did not seem aware these things are wanted
for the work of the world. To tear treasure out
of the bowels of the land was their desire, with
no more moral purpose at the back of it than
there is in the burglars breaking into a safe. Who
paid the expenses of the noble enterprise? I don't know,
but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
(47:43):
In exterior, he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood,
and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He
carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs,
and during the time his gang infested the station, spoke
to no one but his nephew. You could see these
two roaming about all day long with their heads close
(48:05):
together in an everlasting confab. I had given up worrying
myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of
folly is more limited than you would suppose, I said,
hang and let things slide. I had plenty of time
for meditation, and now and then I would give some
(48:27):
thought to Kerts. I wasn't very interested in him. No, Still,
I was curious to see whether this man, who had
come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would
climb to the top after all, and how he would
set about his work when there end of chapter one
Part two of chapter one of Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Bob Neufeld. I didn't want any more loitering
in the shade, and I made haste towards the station.
When near the buildings, I met a white man in
(00:22):
such an unexpected elegance of get up that in the
first moment I took him for a sort of vision.
I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light
outpack of jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots,
no hat, hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green lined parasol.
(00:46):
Held in a big white hand. He was amazing and
had a penholder behind his ear. I shook hands with
this miracle, and I learned he was the company's chief accountants,
and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station.
He had come out for a moment, he said, to
(01:06):
get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd,
with its suggestion of sedentary desk life. I wouldn't have
mentioned the fellow to you at all. Only it was
from his lips that I first heard the name of
the man who was so indissolubly connected with the memories
of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow, Yes, I
(01:29):
respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His
appearance was certainly that of a head dresser's dummy. But
in the great demoralization of the land, he kept up
his appearance. That's backbone, his starched collars and got up
shirt fronts were achievements of character. He had been out
(01:51):
nearly three years, and later I could not help asking
him how he managed to sport shut linen. He had
just the faintest blush and said modestly, I've been teaching
one of the native women about the station. It was difficult.
She had a distaste for the work. Thus, this man
(02:13):
had verily accomplished something, and he was devoted to his books,
which were in apple pie order. Everything else in the
station was in a muddle. Heads, things, buildings, strings of
dusty niggers with splay feets arrived and departed a stream
of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads and brass wire set
(02:36):
into the depths of darkness, and in return came a
precious trickle of ivory. I had to wait in the
station for ten days an eternity. I lived in a
hut in the yard, but to the out of the chaos,
I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was
built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that
(02:59):
as he bent over his high desk, he was barred
from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There
was no need to open the big shutter to see
it was hot. There, too, big flies buzzed fiendishly and
did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor,
(03:19):
while of faultless appearance, and even slightly scented, perching on
a high stool, he wrote. He wrote, Sometimes he stood
up for exercise when a truckled bed with a sick man,
some invalid agent from up country was put in there.
He exhibited a gentle annoyance. The groans of this sick person,
(03:44):
he said, distract my attention, and without that it is
extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.
One day, he remarked, without lifting his head in the interior,
you will note out meet mister Kurtz. On my asking
who mister Kurtz was, he said he was a first
(04:06):
class Agent's, and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added, slowly,
laying down his pen, he is a very remarkable person.
Further questions elicited from him that mister Kurtz was at
present in charge of a trading post, a very important
one in the true ivory country at the very bottom
(04:30):
of there sends in as much ivory as all the
others put together. He began to write again. The sick
man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in
a great piece. Suddenly there was a growing murmur of
voices and a great trampling of feet. A caravan had
(04:50):
come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out
on the other side of the planks. All the carriers
were speaking together, and in the mids of the uproar,
the mementable voice of the chief Agent was heard giving
it up tearfully for the twentieth time that day. He
rose slowly. What a frightful row, he said. He crossed
(05:14):
the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning,
said to me, he does not hear what dead? I asked, startled, No,
not yet, he answered, with great composure, then alluding with
the toss of the head to the tumult in the
station yard. When one has got to make correct entries,
(05:37):
one comes to hate those savages, hate them to the death.
He remained thoughtful for a moment. When you see, mister Kurtz,
he went on, tell him from me that everything here,
he glanced at the desk, is very satisfactory. They don't
like to write to him with those messengers of ours.
(05:59):
You never know whom get hold of your letter. At
that central station. He stared at me for a moment
with his mild bulging eyes. Oh he will go far,
very far, he began again. He will be a somebody
in the administration before long they above the council in Europe,
(06:21):
you know mean him to be. He turned to his work.
The noise outside had ceased, and presently, in going out,
I stopped at the door, in the steady buzz of flies.
The homeward bound agent was lying, finished and insensible. The other,
bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly
(06:44):
correct transactions, and fifty feet below the doorstep I could
see the still treetops of the grove of death. Next
day I left that station at last with a caravan
of sixty men for a two hundred mile tramp, no
use telling you much about that. Paths, paths everywhere, a
(07:07):
stamped in network of paths, spreading over the empty land,
through the long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down
and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills, ablaze
with heat and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut.
The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well,
(07:31):
if a lot of mysterious niggers, armed with all kinds
of fearful weapons, suddenly took to traveling on the road
between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left
to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm
and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here
the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several
(07:54):
abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of
great walls, day after day, with the stamp and shuffle
of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair
under a sixty pound load. Camp, Cook, Sleep, strike, camp,
march now, and then a carrier dead in harness, at
(08:18):
rest in the long grass near the path, with an
empty water good and his long staff lying by a
side a great silence around and above, perhaps on some
quiet night, the tremor of far off drums sinking swelling,
a tremor vast, faint, a sound, weird, appealing, suggestive and wild,
(08:42):
and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound
of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man
in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an
armed escort of lush zanzabaries, very hospitable and festive to
say drunk, was looking after the upkeep of the road,
(09:04):
he declared, can't say I saw any road or any upkeep,
unless the body of a middle aged Negro with a
bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled
three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement.
I had a white companion too, not a bad chap,
(09:25):
but rather too fleshy, and with the exasperating habit of
fainting on the hot hillsides miles away from the least
bit of shade and water. Annoying. You know, to hold
your own coat like a parasol over a man's head
while he's coming too. I couldn't help asking him once
what he meant by coming there? At all to make money?
(09:47):
Of course, what do you think, he said scornfully. Then
he got fever and had to be carried in a
hammock slung under a pole as he weighed sixteen. So
I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed,
ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night.
(10:09):
Quite a mutiny. So one evening I made a speech
in English with gestures, not one of which was lost
to the sixty pair of eyes before me, And the
next morning I started the hammock off in front all right.
An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked
in a bush man hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy
(10:34):
pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious
for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow
of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor. It
would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes
of individuals. On the spot, I felt I was becoming
(10:55):
scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On
the fifteenth day I came inside of the Big River
again and hobbled into the central station. It was on
a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a
pretty border of smelly mud on one side and on
(11:15):
the three others, enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes.
A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and
the first glance at the place was enough to let
you see the flabby devil was running that show. White
men with long staves in their hands, appeared languidly from
amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me,
(11:38):
and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them,
a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with
great volubility and many digressions. As soon as I told
him who I was, that my steamer was at the
bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. But how why,
(12:03):
Oh it was all right. The manager himself was there,
all quite correct. Everybody had behaved splendidly. Splendidly, you must,
he said, in agitation, Go and see the general manager
at once. He is waiting. I did not see the
real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I
(12:23):
see it now, but I am not sure, not at all.
Certainly the affair was too stupid when I think of it,
to be altogether natural. Still, but at the moment it
presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk.
(12:43):
They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge
of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out
three hours, they tore the bottom out of her on stones,
and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there now my boat was lost.
(13:05):
As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do
in fishing my command out of the river. I had
to set about it the very next day. That and
the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station
took some months. My first interview with the manager was curious.
He did not ask me to sit down after my
(13:27):
twenty mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion,
in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of
middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes of the
usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could
make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy
(13:48):
as an axe. But even at these times, the rest
of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there
was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy,
a smile, not a smile. I remember it, but I
can't explain it was unconscious. This smile was though just
(14:14):
after he had said something, it got intensified for an instant.
It came at the end of his speeches, like a
seal applied on the words to make the meaning of
the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common
trader from his youth up, employed in these parts. Nothing more.
(14:34):
He was obeyed. Yet he inspired neither love, nor fear,
nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was its uneasiness,
not a definite mistrust, just uneasiness. Nothing more. You have
(14:55):
no idea how effective such a faculty can be. He
had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order,
even that was evident in such things as the deplorable
state of the station. He had no learning and no intelligence.
His position had come to him. Why, perhaps because he
(15:20):
was never ill. He had served three terms of three
years out there, because triumphant health in the general route
of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When
he went home on leave, he rioted on a large
scale pompously jack Ashore with a difference in externals. Only
(15:42):
this one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing.
He can keep the routine going, that's all. But he
was great. He was great by this little thing that
it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.
He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing
(16:04):
within him. Such a suspicion made one pause, for out
there there were no external checks. Once, when various tropical
diseases had laid low almost every agent in the station,
he was heard to say, men who come out here
should have no entrails. He sealed the utterance with that
(16:26):
smile of his, as though it had been a door
opening into a darkness. He had in his keeping. You
fancied you had seen things. But the seal was on.
When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of
the white men about precedents, he ordered an immense round
table to be made, for which a special house had
(16:48):
to be built. This was the station's mess room, where
he sat, was the first place the rest were nowhere.
One felt this to be his un alterable conviction. He
was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed
his boy, an overfed young Negro from the coast to
(17:11):
treat the white men under his very eyes with provoking insolence.
He began to speak as soon as he saw me.
I had been very long on the road. He could
not wait, had to start without me. The up river
stations had to be relieved. There had been so many
delays already that he did not know who was dead
(17:32):
and who was alive, and how they got on, and
so on and so on. He paid no attention to
my explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealing wax,
repeated several times that the situation was very grave, fairy grave.
There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy,
(17:53):
and its chief, mister Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was
not true. Mister Kurtz was. I felt weary and irritable.
Hang kerts, I thought. I interrupted him by saying, I
had heard of mister Kurtz on the coast. Ah, so
they talk of him down there, he murmured to himself.
(18:15):
Then he began again, assuring me mister Kurtz was the
best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest
importance to the company. Therefore, I could understand his anxiety.
He was, he said, very very uneasy. Certainly he fidgeted
on his chair. A good deal, exclaimed, Ah, mister Kurtz
(18:40):
broke the stick of sealing wax and seemed dumbfounded by
the accident. Next thing, he wanted to know how long
it would take to I interrupted him again, being hungry,
you know, and kept on my feet too. I was
getting savage. How can I tell? I said, I haven't
(19:01):
even seen the wreck yet. Some months, no doubt. All
this talk seemed to me so futile. Some months he said, well,
let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes,
that ought to do the affair. I flung out of
(19:21):
his hut. He lived all alone in a clay hut
with a sort of verandah, muttering to myself my opinion
of him, he was a chattering idiot. Afterwards, I took
it back when it was borne in upon me, startlingly
with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite
for the affair. I went to work the next day, turning,
(19:46):
so to speak, my back on that station. In that way,
only it seemed to me I could keep my hold
on the redeeming facts of life. Still one must look
about sometimes and then I saw this station, these men
strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I
(20:06):
asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here
and there with their absurd long staves in their hands,
like a lot of faithless pilgrims, bewitched inside a rotten fence.
The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed.
You would think they were praying to it. A taint
(20:27):
of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like a whiff
from some corpse. By Jove, I've never seen anything so
unreal in my life, and outside the silent wilderness surrounding,
this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something
great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for
(20:50):
the passing away of this fantastic invasion. Oh these months, well,
never mind. Various things happened. One evening, a grass shed
full of Calaco cotton prints, bees, and I don't know
what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you
(21:12):
would have thought the earth had opened to let an
avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my
pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all
cutting capers in the lights with their arms lifted high.
When the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to
the river a tin pail in his hand, assured me
(21:34):
that everybody was behaving splendidly. Splendidly, dipped about a quart
of water and tore back again. I noticed there was
a hole in the bottom of his pail. I strolled up.
There was no hurry, you see. The thing had gone
off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless
(21:55):
from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven
everybody back back, lighted up everything, and collapsed. The shed
was already a heap of embers, glowing fiercely. A nigger
was being beaten near by. They said he had caused
the fire in some way, but be that as it may,
(22:17):
he was screeching most horribly. I saw him later for
several days, sitting in a bit of shade, looking very
sick and trying to recover himself. Afterwards, he arose and
went out, and the wilderness, without a sound, took him
into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from
(22:38):
the dark, I found myself at the back of two
men talking. I heard the name of kerts pronounced then
the words take advantage of this unfortunate accident. One of
the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening.
Did you ever see anything like it? Say? It was incredible,
(23:00):
he said, and walked off. The other man remained he
was a first class agent, young gentlemanly a bit reserved,
with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He
was standoffish with the other agents, and they, on their
side said he was the manager's spy upon them. As
(23:21):
to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before
we got into talk, and by and by we strolled
away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to
his room, which was in the main building of the station.
He struck a match, and I perceived that this young
aristocrat had not only a silver mounted dressing case, but
(23:43):
also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that
time the manager was the only man supposed to have
any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls.
A collection of spears, assgades, shields, knives was hung up
in trophies. The business entrusted to this fellow was the
making of bricks, so I had been informed, But there
(24:06):
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
(24:26):
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.
(24:47):
As far as I could see. They beguiled the time
by backbiding and in frigging 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
pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government,
(25:11):
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,
(25:32):
oh no, by heavens, there was 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
(25:54):
into a kick. I had no idea why he wanted
to be so pocable, 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.
(26:18):
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
(26:38):
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
(26:59):
he got angry, and to conceal a moment 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 somber, almost black.
(27:19):
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, mister Kurtz had painted this
(27:40):
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, mister 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
(28:04):
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
(28:26):
entrusted 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 bee, as you
ought to know? Why ought I to know? I interrupted,
(28:49):
really surprised he paid no attention. Yes, to day, 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.
(29:13):
Oh don't say no, I've mine own eyes to trust.
Lights 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.
(29:35):
I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was
great fun. When mister Kurtz, I continued severely, it's general manager,
you won't have the opportunity. He blew the candle out suddenly,
and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures
(29:56):
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 mustaches appearing near us.
Serve him right. Transgression punishment, bang, pitiless, pitiless, That's the
(30:20):
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. Ah,
(30:41):
danger agitation, he vanished. I went on to the river side,
and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur
at my ear. Heap of muffs go to the pilgrims
could be seen in nots gesticulating discussing. Several had stilled
(31:02):
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,
(31:22):
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
(31:45):
want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who we'll see,
mister 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 paper, Machet Mestopheles, and
it seemed to me that if I tried, I could
poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside
(32:09):
but a little loose dirt. Maybe he don't, you see,
had been planned to be the assistant manager by and
by under the present man. And I could see that
the coming of that Kerts 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
(32:30):
of my steamer, hauled up on the slope, like a
carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud,
of prime evil, mud, by jove, was in my nostrils.
The high stillness of primeval forests was before my eyes.
There were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon
had spread over everything, a thin layer of silver over
(32:53):
the rank grass, over the mud open, the wall of
matted vegetation, standing higher than the wall of a temper.
Over the great river, I could see through a somber gap, glittering, glittering,
as it flowed broadly by, without a murmur. All this
was great, expectant mute. While the man jabbered about himself,
(33:16):
I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the
immensity looking at us too, were meant as an appeal
or as a menace? What were we who had strayed
in there? Could we handle that dumb thing or would
it handle us? I felt, how big, how confoundly big,
was that thing that couldn't talk and perhaps was deaf
(33:39):
as well. What was in there? I could see a
little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard
mister 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
(34:00):
believed it in the same way one of you might
believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew
once a Scotch sail maker who was certain, they're 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
(34:22):
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
(34:44):
because it appalls me. There is a taint of death,
a flavor 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
(35:06):
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 pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This
simply because I had a notion it would somehow be
of help to that Kurtz, whom at that time I
(35:26):
did not see. You understand, it 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
(35:48):
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.
Now it is impossible, It is impossible to convey the
(36:11):
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
(36:33):
this you fellas 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
(36:56):
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
(37:18):
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 can see it is
not to gaze at the moon. Mister Kurtz was a
(37:42):
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 mass, it was because no sensible man
(38:03):
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 whole rivets I wanted.
There were cases of them down at the coast, cases
(38:25):
piled up, burst split. You kicked a loose rivet in
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
(38:47):
to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a
long negro let, her bag on shoulder and staff in hand,
left our station for the coast, and several times a
week a coast came teravan came in with trade goods,
ghastly glazed kalico that made you shudder only to look
at it. Glass beads value about penny a quart, confounded
(39:10):
spotted cotton, handkerchiefs, and no rivets. Three carriers could have
brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
He was becoming confidential now, But I fancy my unresponsive
attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged
it necessary to inform me. He feared neither God nor devil,
(39:34):
let alone any mere man. I said, I could see
that very well. But what I wanted was a certain
quantity of rivets. And rivets were what really mister Kurtz wanted,
if he had only known it now. Letters went to
the coast every week. My dear sir, he cried, I
(39:54):
write from dictation. I demanded rivets. There was a for
an intelligent man. He changed his manner, became very cold,
and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus. Wondered whether
sleeping on board the steamer. I stuck to my salvage
night and day. I wasn't disturbed. There was an old
(40:17):
hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on
the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds.
The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and
empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him.
Some had even sat upper night's for him. All this
energy was wasted, though, that animal has a charmed life,
(40:39):
he said. But you can say this's only are brutes
in this country. No man, you apprehend me, No man
here bears a charmed life. He stood there for a
moment in the moonlight, with his delicate hooked nose set
a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink.
Then with a curt good night night, he strode off.
(41:03):
I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which
made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days.
It was a great comfort to turn from that chap
to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined tin pot steamboat.
I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like
(41:23):
an empty huntly and palmer biscuit tin kicked along a gutter.
She was nothing so solid in make, and rather less
pretty in shape. But I had expended enough hard work
on her to make me love her. No influential friend
would have served me better. She had given me a
chance to come out a bit to find out what
(41:44):
I could do. No, I didn't like work. I would
rather laze about and think of all the fine things
that can be done. I don't like work, no man does.
But I like what is in the work, the chance
to find yourself, your own reality, for yourself, not for others.
(42:05):
What no other man can ever know. They can only
see the mere show and never can tell what it
really means. I was not surprised to see somebody sitting
aft on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud.
You see, I rather chummed with the few mechanics there
were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised
(42:28):
on account of their imperfect manners. I suppose this was
the Foreman, a boiler maker by trade, a good worker.
He was a lank, bony, yellow faced man, with big,
intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was
as bald as the palm of my hand. But his hair,
in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and
(42:51):
had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung
down to his waist. He was a widower with six
young children. He had left them in charge of a
sister of his to come out there, and the passion
of his life was pigeon flying. He was an enthusiast
and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons after work hours.
(43:14):
He used sometimes to come over from his hut for
a little talk about his children and his pigeons. At work,
when he had to crawl in the mud under the
bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard
of his and a kind of white serviettes he brought
for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears.
In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank,
(43:36):
rincing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then
spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry. I slapped
him on the back and shouted, we shall have rivets.
He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming no rivets, as though
he couldn't believe his ears. Then, in a low voice,
(43:58):
you way, I don't know why we behave like lunatics.
I put my finger to the side of my nose
and nodded mysteriously good for you, he cried, snapped his
fingers above his head, lifting one foot, I tried a jig.
We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came
(44:20):
out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the
other bank of the creek sent it back in a
thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made
some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A
dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut vanished,
Then a second or so after the doorway itself vanished too.
(44:45):
We stopped, and the silence, driven away by the stamping
of our feet, flowed back again from the recesses of
the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and
entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in
the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life.
(45:07):
A rolling wave of plants piled up, crested, ready to
topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of
us out of his little existence. And it moved not.
A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us
from afar, as though an Ichthiosaurus had been taking a
(45:27):
bath of glitter in the Great River. After all, said
the boilermaker, in a reasonable tone. Why shouldn't we get
the rivets? Why not? Indeed, I did not know of
any reason why we shouldn't. They'll come in three weeks,
I said, confidently. But they didn't. Instead of rivets, there
(45:50):
came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in
sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by
a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and
tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to
the impressed pilgrims a quarrelsome band of footsore, sulky niggers
(46:12):
trode on the heels of the donkey. A lot of tents, campstools,
tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down
in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen
a little over the muddle of the station. Five such
installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight, with
(46:32):
the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores that
one would think they were lugging after a raid into
the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess
of things decent in themselves, but that human folly made
look like the spoils of thieving. This devoted band called
(46:55):
itself the El Dorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they
were sworn into secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk
of sordid buccaneers. It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity,
and cruel without courage. There was not an atom of
foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them,
(47:18):
and they did not seem aware these things are wanted
for the work of the world. To tear treasure out
of the bowels of the land was their desire, with
no more moral purpose at the back of it than
there is in the burglars breaking into a safe. Who
paid the expenses of the noble enterprise? I don't know,
but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
(47:43):
In exterior, he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood,
and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He
carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs,
and during the time his gang infested the station, spoke
to no one but his nephew. You could see these
two roaming about all day long with their heads close
(48:05):
together in an everlasting confab. I had given up worrying
myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of
folly is more limited than you would suppose, I said,
hang and let things slide. I had plenty of time
for meditation, and now and then I would give some
(48:27):
thought to Kerts. I wasn't very interested in him. No, Still,
I was curious to see whether this man, who had
come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would
climb to the top after all, and how he would
set about his work when there end of chapter one
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