Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (24 page)

After some time he got up and went to the door of a room on the right of the verandah.  That was the office.  The office of Lingard and Co.  He very seldom went in there.  There was no business now, and he did not want an office.  The door was locked, and he stood biting his lower lip, trying to think of the place where the key could be.  Suddenly he remembered: in the women’s room hung upon a nail.  He went over to the doorway where the red curtain hung down in motionless folds, and hesitated for a moment before pushing it aside with his shoulder as if breaking down some solid obstacle.  A great square of sunshine entering through the window lay on the floor.  On the left he saw Mrs. Almayer’s big wooden chest, the lid thrown back, empty; near it the brass nails of Nina’s European trunk shone in the large initials N. A. on the cover.  A few of Nina’s dresses hung on wooden pegs, stiffened in a look of offended dignity at their abandonment.  He remembered making the pegs himself and noticed that they were very good pegs.  Where was the key?  He looked round and saw it near the door where he stood.  It was red with rust.  He felt very much annoyed at that, and directly afterwards wondered at his own feeling.  What did it matter?  There soon would be no key — no door — nothing!  He paused, key in hand, and asked himself whether he knew well what he was about.  He went out again on the verandah and stood by the table thinking.  The monkey jumped down, and, snatching a banana skin, absorbed itself in picking it to shreds industriously.

“Forget!” muttered Almayer, and that word started before him a sequence of events, a detailed programme of things to do.  He knew perfectly well what was to be done now.  First this, then that, and then forgetfulness would come easy.  Very easy.  He had a fixed idea that if he should not forget before he died he would have to remember to all eternity.  Certain things had to be taken out of his life, stamped out of sight, destroyed, forgotten.  For a long time he stood in deep thought, lost in the alarming possibilities of unconquerable memory, with the fear of death and eternity before him.  “Eternity!” he said aloud, and the sound of that word recalled him out of his reverie.  The monkey started, dropped the skin, and grinned up at him amicably.

He went towards the office door and with some difficulty managed to open it.  He entered in a cloud of dust that rose under his feet.

Books open with torn pages bestrewed the floor; other books lay about grimy and black, looking as if they had never been opened.  Account books.  In those books he had intended to keep day by day a record of his rising fortunes.  Long time ago.  A very long time.  For many years there has been no record to keep on the blue and red ruled pages!  In the middle of the room the big office desk, with one of its legs broken, careened over like the hull of a stranded ship; most of the drawers had fallen out, disclosing heaps of paper yellow with age and dirt.  The revolving office chair stood in its place, but he found the pivot set fast when he tried to turn it.  No matter.  He desisted, and his eyes wandered slowly from object to object.  All those things had cost a lot of money at the time.  The desk, the paper, the torn books, and the broken shelves, all under a thick coat of dust.  The very dust and bones of a dead and gone business.  He looked at all these things, all that was left after so many years of work, of strife, of weariness, of discouragement, conquered so many times.  And all for what?  He stood thinking mournfully of his past life till he heard distinctly the clear voice of a child speaking amongst all this wreck, ruin, and waste.  He started with a great fear in his heart, and feverishly began to rake in the papers scattered on the floor, broke the chair into bits, splintered the drawers by banging them against the desk, and made a big heap of all that rubbish in one corner of the room.

He came out quickly, slammed the door after him, turned the key, and, taking it out, ran to the front rail of the verandah, and, with a great swing of his arm, sent the key whizzing into the river.  This done he went back slowly to the table, called the monkey down, unhooked its chain, and induced it to remain quiet in the breast of his jacket.  Then he sat again on the table and looked fixedly at the door of the room he had just left.  He listened also intently.  He heard a dry sound of rustling; sharp cracks as of dry wood snapping; a whirr like of a bird’s wings when it rises suddenly, and then he saw a thin stream of smoke come through the keyhole.  The monkey struggled under his coat.  Ali appeared with his eyes starting out of his head.

“Master!  House burn!” he shouted.

Almayer stood up holding by the table.  He could hear the yells of alarm and surprise in the settlement.  Ali wrung his hands, lamenting aloud.

“Stop this noise, fool!” said Almayer, quietly.  “Pick up my hammock and blankets and take them to the other house.  Quick, now!”

The smoke burst through the crevices of the door, and Ali, with the hammock in his arms, cleared in one bound the steps of the verandah.

“It has caught well,” muttered Almayer to himself.  “Be quiet, Jack,” he added, as the monkey made a frantic effort to escape from its confinement.

The door split from top to bottom, and a rush of flame and smoke drove Almayer away from the table to the front rail of the verandah.  He held on there till a great roar overhead assured him that the roof was ablaze.  Then he ran down the steps of the verandah, coughing, half choked with the smoke that pursued him in bluish wreaths curling about his head.

On the other side of the ditch, separating Almayer’s courtyard from the settlement, a crowd of the inhabitants of Sambir looked at the burning house of the white man.  In the calm air the flames rushed up on high, coloured pale brick-red, with violet gleams in the strong sunshine.  The thin column of smoke ascended straight and unwavering till it lost itself in the clear blue of the sky, and, in the great empty space between the two houses the interested spectators could see the tall figure of the Tuan Putih, with bowed head and dragging feet, walking slowly away from the fire towards the shelter of “Almayer’s Folly.”

In that manner did Almayer move into his new house.  He took possession of the new ruin, and in the undying folly of his heart set himself to wait in anxiety and pain for that forgetfulness which was so slow to come.  He had done all he could.  Every vestige of Nina’s existence had been destroyed; and now with every sunrise he asked himself whether the longed-for oblivion would come before sunset, whether it would come before he died?  He wanted to live only long enough to be able to forget, and the tenacity of his memory filled him with dread and horror of death; for should it come before he could accomplish the purpose of his life he would have to remember for ever!  He also longed for loneliness.  He wanted to be alone.  But he was not.  In the dim light of the rooms with their closed shutters, in the bright sunshine of the verandah, wherever he went, whichever way he turned, he saw the small figure of a little maiden with pretty olive face, with long black hair, her little pink robe slipping off her shoulders, her big eyes looking up at him in the tender trustfulness of a petted child.  Ali did not see anything, but he also was aware of the presence of a child in the house.  In his long talks by the evening fires of the settlement he used to tell his intimate friends of Almayer’s strange doings.  His master had turned sorcerer in his old age.  Ali said that often when Tuan Putih had retired for the night he could hear him talking to something in his room.  Ali thought that it was a spirit in the shape of a child.  He knew his master spoke to a child from certain expressions and words his master used.  His master spoke in Malay a little, but mostly in English, which he, Ali, could understand.  Master spoke to the child at times tenderly, then he would weep over it, laugh at it, scold it, beg of it to go away; curse it.  It was a bad and stubborn spirit.  Ali thought his master had imprudently called it up, and now could not get rid of it.  His master was very brave; he was not afraid to curse this spirit in the very Presence; and once he fought with it.  Ali had heard a great noise as of running about inside the room and groans.  His master groaned.  Spirits do not groan.  His master was brave, but foolish.  You cannot hurt a spirit.  Ali expected to find his master dead next morning, but he came out very early, looking much older than the day before, and had no food all day.

So far Ali to the settlement.  To Captain Ford he was much more communicative, for the good reason that Captain Ford had the purse and gave orders.  On each of Ford’s monthly visits to Sambir Ali had to go on board with a report about the inhabitant of “Almayer’s Folly.”  On his first visit to Sambir, after Nina’s departure, Ford had taken charge of Almayer’s affairs.  They were not cumbersome.  The shed for the storage of goods was empty, the boats had disappeared, appropriated — generally in night-time — by various citizens of Sambir in need of means of transport.  During a great flood the jetty of Lingard and Co. left the bank and floated down the river, probably in search of more cheerful surroundings; even the flock of geese — ”the only geese on the east coast” — departed somewhere, preferring the unknown dangers of the bush to the desolation of their old home.  As time went on the grass grew over the black patch of ground where the old house used to stand, and nothing remained to mark the place of the dwelling that had sheltered Almayer’s young hopes, his foolish dream of splendid future, his awakening, and his despair.

Ford did not often visit Almayer, for visiting Almayer was not a pleasant task.  At first he used to respond listlessly to the old seaman’s boisterous inquiries about his health; he even made efforts to talk, asking for news in a voice that made it perfectly clear that no news from this world had any interest for him.  Then gradually he became more silent — not sulkily — but as if he was forgetting how to speak.  He used also to hide in the darkest rooms of the house, where Ford had to seek him out guided by the patter of the monkey galloping before him.  The monkey was always there to receive and introduce Ford.  The little animal seemed to have taken complete charge of its master, and whenever it wished for his presence on the verandah it would tug perseveringly at his jacket, till Almayer obediently came out into the sunshine, which he seemed to dislike so much.

One morning Ford found him sitting on the floor of the verandah, his back against the wall, his legs stretched stiffly out, his arms hanging by his side.  His expressionless face, his eyes open wide with immobile pupils, and the rigidity of his pose, made him look like an immense man-doll broken and flung there out of the way.  As Ford came up the steps he turned his head slowly.

“Ford,” he murmured from the floor, “I cannot forget.”

“Can’t you?” said Ford, innocently, with an attempt at joviality: “I wish I was like you.  I am losing my memory — age, I suppose; only the other day my mate — ”

He stopped, for Almayer had got up, stumbled, and steadied himself on his friend’s arm.

“Hallo!  You are better to-day.  Soon be all right,” said Ford, cheerfully, but feeling rather scared.

Almayer let go his arm and stood very straight with his head up and shoulders thrown back, looking stonily at the multitude of suns shining in ripples of the river.  His jacket and his loose trousers flapped in the breeze on his thin limbs.

“Let her go!” he whispered in a grating voice.  “Let her go.  To-morrow I shall forget.  I am a firm man, . . . firm as a . . . rock, . . . firm . . .”

Ford looked at his face — and fled.  The skipper was a tolerably firm man himself — as those who had sailed with him could testify — but Almayer’s firmness was altogether too much for his fortitude.

Next time the steamer called in Sambir Ali came on board early with a grievance.  He complained to Ford that Jim-Eng the Chinaman had invaded Almayer’s house, and actually had lived there for the last month.

“And they both smoke,” added Ali.

“Phew!  Opium, you mean?”

Ali nodded, and Ford remained thoughtful; then he muttered to himself, “Poor devil!  The sooner the better now.”  In the afternoon he walked up to the house.

“What are you doing here?” he asked of Jim-Eng, whom he found strolling about on the verandah.

Jim-Eng explained in bad Malay, and speaking in that monotonous, uninterested voice of an opium smoker pretty far gone, that his house was old, the roof leaked, and the floor was rotten.  So, being an old friend for many, many years, he took his money, his opium, and two pipes, and came to live in this big house.

“There is plenty of room.  He smokes, and I live here.  He will not smoke long,” he concluded.

“Where is he now?” asked Ford.

“Inside.  He sleeps,” answered Jim-Eng, wearily.  Ford glanced in through the doorway.  In the dim light of the room he could see Almayer lying on his back on the floor, his head on a wooden pillow, the long white beard scattered over his breast, the yellow skin of the face, the half-closed eyelids showing the whites of the eye only. . . .

He shuddered and turned away.  As he was leaving he noticed a long strip of faded red silk, with some Chinese letters on it, which Jim-Eng had just fastened to one of the pillars.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That,” said Jim-Eng, in his colourless voice, “that is the name of the house.  All the same like my house.  Very good name.”

Ford looked at him for awhile and went away.  He did not know what the crazy-looking maze of the Chinese inscription on the red silk meant.  Had he asked Jim-Eng, that patient Chinaman would have informed him with proper pride that its meaning was: “House of heavenly delight.”

In the evening of the same day Babalatchi called on Captain Ford.  The captain’s cabin opened on deck, and Babalatchi sat astride on the high step, while Ford smoked his pipe on the settee inside.  The steamer was leaving next morning, and the old statesman came as usual for a last chat.

“We had news from Bali last moon,” remarked Babalatchi.  “A grandson is born to the old Rajah, and there is great rejoicing.”

Ford sat up interested.

“Yes,” went on Babalatchi, in answer to Ford’s look.  “I told him.  That was before he began to smoke.”