Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (688 page)

A black mudhole blocked the lane. A mound of garbage crowned with the dead body of a dog arrested us not. An empty Australian beef tin bounded cheerily before the toe of my boot. Suddenly we clambered through a gap in a prickly fence....

It was a very clean native compound: and the big native woman, with bare brown legs as thick as bedposts, pursuing on all fours a silver dollar that came rolling out from somewhere, was Mrs. Johnson herself. “Your man’s at home,” said the ex-sergeant, and stepped aside in complete and marked indifference to anything that might follow. Johnson — at home — stood with his back to a native house built on posts and with its walls made of mats. In his left hand he held a banana. Out of the right he dealt another dollar into space. The woman captured this one on the wing, and there and then plumped down on the ground to look at us with greater comfort.

My man was sallow of face, grizzled, unshaven, muddy on elbows and back; where the seams of his serge coat yawned you could see his white nakedness. The vestiges of a paper collar encircled his neck. He looked at us with a grave, swaying surprise. “Where do you come from?” he asked. My heart sank. How could I have been stupid enough to waste energy and time for this?

But having already gone so far I approached a little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit. He would have to come at once with me, sleep on board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he kept on considering attentively the various aspects of the banana, holding first one side up to his eye, then the other.

“You’ve forgotten to apologise,” he said at last with extreme precision. “Not being a gentleman yourself, you don’t know apparently when you intrude upon a gentleman. I am one. I wish you to understand that when I am in funds I don’t work, and now...”

I would have pronounced him perfectly sober hadn’t he paused in great concern to try and brush a hole off the knee of his trousers.

“I have money — and friends. Every gentleman has. Perhaps you would like to know my friend? His name is Falk. You could borrow some money. Try to remember. F-A-L-K, Falk.” Abruptly his tone changed. “A noble heart,” he said muzzily.

“Has Falk been giving you some money?” I asked, appalled by the detailed finish of the dark plot.

“Lent me, my good man, not given me. Lent,” he corrected suavely. “Met me taking the air last evening, and being as usual anxious to oblige — Hadn’t you better go to the devil out of my compound?”

And upon this, without other warning, he let fly with the banana which missed my head, and took the constable just under the left eye. He rushed at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury. They fell.... But why dwell on the wretchedness, the breathlessness, the degradation, the senselessness, the weariness, the ridicule and humiliation and — and — the perspiration, of these moments? I dragged the ex-hussar off. He was like a wild beast. It seems he had been greatly annoyed at losing his free afternoon on my account. The garden of his bungalow required his personal attention, and at the slight blow of the banana the brute in him had broken loose. We left Johnson on his back, still black in the face, but beginning to kick feebly. Meantime, the big woman had remained sitting on the ground, apparently paralysed with extreme terror.

For half an hour we jolted inside our rolling box, side by side, in profound silence. The ex-sergeant was busy staunching the blood of a long scratch on his cheek. “I hope you’re satisfied,” he said suddenly. “That’s what comes of all that tomfool business. If you hadn’t quarrelled with that tugboat skipper over some girl or other, all this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You heard that story?” I said.

“Of course I heard. And I shouldn’t wonder if the Consul-General himself doesn’t come to hear of it. How am I to go before him to-morrow with that thing on my cheek — I want to know. Its you who ought to have got this!”

After that, till the gharry stopped and he jumped out without leave-taking, he swore to himself steadily, horribly; muttering great, purposeful, trooper oaths, to which the worst a sailor can do is like the prattle of a child. For my part I had just the strength to crawl into Schomberg’s coffee-room, where I wrote at a little table a note to the mate instructing him to get everything ready for dropping down the river next day. I couldn’t face my ship. Well! she had a clever sort of skipper and no mistake — poor thing! What a horrid mess! I took my head between my hands. At times the obviousness of my innocence would reduce me to despair. What had I done? If I had done something to bring about the situation I should at least have learned not to do it again. But I felt guiltless to the point of imbecility. The room was empty yet; only Schomberg prowled round me goggle-eyed and with a sort of awed respectful curiosity. No doubt he had set the story going himself; but he was a good-hearted chap, and I am really persuaded he participated in all my troubles. He did what he could for me. He ranged aside the heavy match-stand, set a chair straight, pushed a spittoon slightly with his foot — as you show small attentions to a friend under a great sorrow — sighed, and at last, unable to hold his tongue:

“Well! I warned you, captain. That’s what comes of running your head against Mr. Falk. Man’ll stick at nothing.”

I sat without stirring, and after surveying me with a sort of commiseration in his eyes he burst out in a hoarse whisper: “But for a fine lump of a girl, she’s a fine lump of a girl.” He made a loud smacking noise with his thick lips. “The finest lump of a girl that I ever...” he was going on with great unction, but for some reason or other broke off. I fancied myself throwing something at his head. “I don’t blame you, captain. Hang me if I do,” he said with a patronising air.

“Thank you,” I said resignedly. It was no use fighting against this false fate. I don’t know even if I was sure myself where the truth of the matter began. The conviction that it would end disastrously had been driven into me by all the successive shocks my sense of security had received. I began to ascribe an extraordinary potency to agents in themselves powerless. It was as if Schomberg’s baseless gossip had the power to bring about the thing itself or the abstract enmity of Falk could put my ship ashore.

I have already explained how fatal this last would have been. For my further action, my youth, my inexperience, my very real concern for the health of my crew must be my excuse. The action itself, when it came, was purely impulsive. It was set in movement quite undiplomatically and simply by Falk’s appearance in the doorway.

The room was full by then and buzzing with voices. I had been looked at with curiosity by every one, but how am I to describe the sensation produced by the appearance of Falk himself blocking the doorway? The tension of expectation could be measured by the profundity of the silence that fell upon the very click of the billiard balls. As to Schomberg, he looked extremely frightened; he hated mortally any sort of row (fracas he called it) in his establishment. Fracas was bad for business, he affirmed; but, in truth, this specimen of portly, middle-aged manhood was of a timid disposition. I don’t know what, considering my presence in the place, they all hoped would come of it. A sort of stag fight, perhaps. Or they may have supposed Falk had come in only to annihilate me completely. As a matter of fact, Falk had come in because Hermann had asked him to inquire after the precious white cotton parasol which, in the worry and excitement of the previous day, he had forgotten at the table where we had held our little discussion.

It was this that gave me my opportunity. I don’t think I would have gone to seek Falk out. No. I don’t think so. There are limits. But there was an opportunity and I seized it — I have already tried to explain why. Now I will merely state that, in my opinion, to get his sickly crew into the sea air and secure a quick despatch for his ship a skipper would be justified in going to any length, short of absolute crime. He should put his pride in his pocket; he may accept confidences; explain his innocence as if it were a sin; he may take advantage of misconceptions, of desires and of weaknesses; he ought to conceal his horror and other emotions, and, if the fate of a human being, and that human being a magnificent young girl, is strangely involved — why, he should contemplate that fate (whatever it might seem to be) without turning a hair. And all these things I have done; the explaining, the listening, the pretending — even to the discretion — and nobody, not even Hermann’s niece, I believe, need throw stones at me now. Schomberg at all events needn’t, since from first to last, I am happy to say, there was not the slightest “fracas.”

Overcoming a nervous contraction of the windpipe, I had managed to exclaim “Captain Falk!” His start of surprise was perfectly genuine, but afterwards he neither smiled nor scowled. He simply waited. Then, when I had said, “I must have a talk with you,” and had pointed to a chair at my table, he moved up to me, though he didn’t sit down. Schomberg, however, with a long tumbler in his hand, was making towards us prudently, and I discovered then the only sign of weakness in Falk. He had for Schomberg a repulsion resembling that sort of physical fear some people experience at the sight of a toad. Perhaps to a man so essentially and silently concentrated upon himself (though he could talk well enough, as I was to find out presently) the other’s irrepressible loquacity, embracing every human being within range of the tongue, might have appeared unnatural, disgusting, and monstrous. He suddenly gave signs of restiveness — positively like a horse about to rear, and, muttering hurriedly as if in great pain, “No. I can’t stand that fellow,” seemed ready to bolt. This weakness of his gave me the advantage at the very start. “Verandah,” I suggested, as if rendering him a service, and walked him out by the arm. We stumbled over a few chairs; we had the feeling of open space before us, and felt the fresh breath of the river — fresh, but tainted. The Chinese theatres across the water made, in the sparsely twinkling masses of gloom an Eastern town presents at night, blazing centres of light, and of a distant and howling uproar. I felt him become suddenly tractable again like an animal, like a good-tempered horse when the object that scares him is removed. Yes. I felt in the darkness there how tractable he was, without my conviction of his inflexibility — tenacity, rather, perhaps — being in the least weakened. His very arm abandoning itself to my grasp was as hard as marble — like a limb of iron. But I heard a tumultuous scuffling of boot-soles within. The unspeakable idiots inside were crowding to the windows, climbing over each other’s backs behind the blinds, billiard cues and all. Somebody broke a window pane, and with the sound of falling glass, so suggestive of riot and devastation, Schomberg reeled out after us in a state of funk which had prevented his parting with his brandy and soda. He must have trembled like an aspen leaf. The piece of ice in the long tumbler he held in his hand tinkled with an effect of chattering teeth. “I beg you, gentlemen,” he expostulated thickly. “Come! Really, now, I must insist...”

How proud I am of my presence of mind! “Hallo,” I said instantly in a loud and naive tone, “somebody’s breaking your windows, Schomberg. Would you please tell one of your boys to bring out here a pack of cards and a couple of lights? And two long drinks. Will you?”

To receive an order soothed him at once. It was business. “Certainly,” he said in an immensely relieved tone. The night was rainy, with wandering gusts of wind, and while we waited for the candles Falk said, as if to justify his panic, “I don’t interfere in anybody’s business. I don’t give any occasion for talk. I am a respectable man. But this fellow is always making out something wrong, and can never rest till he gets somebody to believe him.”

This was the first of my knowledge of Falk. This desire of respectability, of being like everybody else, was the only recognition he vouchsafed to the organisation of mankind. For the rest he might have been the member of a herd, not of a society. Self-preservation was his only concern. Not selfishness, but mere self-preservation. Selfishness presupposes consciousness, choice, the presence of other men; but his instinct acted as though he were the last of mankind nursing that law like the only spark of a sacred fire. I don’t mean to say that living naked in a cavern would have satisfied him. Obviously he was the creature of the conditions to which he was born. No doubt self-preservation meant also the preservation of these conditions. But essentially it meant something much more simple, natural, and powerful. How shall I express it? It meant the preservation of the five senses of his body — let us say — taking it in its narrowest as well as in its widest meaning. I think you will admit before long the justice of this judgment. However, as we stood there together in the dark verandah I had judged nothing as yet — and I had no desire to judge — which is an idle practice anyhow. The light was long in coming.

“Of course,” I said in a tone of mutual understanding, “it isn’t exactly a game of cards I want with you.”

I saw him draw his hands down his face — the vague stir of the passionate and meaningless gesture; but he waited in silent patience. It was only when the lights had been brought out that he opened his lips. I understood his mumble to mean that “he didn’t know any game.”

“Like this Schomberg and all the other fools will have to keep off,” I said tearing open the pack. “Have you heard that we are universally supposed to be quarrelling about a girl? You know who — of course. I am really ashamed to ask, but is it possible that you do me the honour to think me dangerous?”

As I said these words I felt how absurd it was and also I felt flattered — for, really, what else could it be? His answer, spoken in his usual dispassionate undertone, made it clear that it was so, but not precisely as flattering as I supposed. He thought me dangerous with Hermann, more than with the girl herself; but, as to quarrelling, I saw at once how inappropriate the word was. We had no quarrel. Natural forces are not quarrelsome. You can’t quarrel with the wind that inconveniences and humiliates you by blowing off your hat in a street full of people. He had no quarrel with me. Neither would a boulder, falling on my head, have had. He fell upon me in accordance with the law by which he was moved — not of gravitation, like a detached stone, but of self-preservation. Of course this is giving it a rather wide interpretation. Strictly speaking, he had existed and could have existed without being married. Yet he told me that he had found it more and more difficult to live alone. Yes. He told me this in his low, careless voice, to such a pitch of confidence had we arrived at the end of half an hour.