Sailors on the Inward Sea (23 page)

Though it was only a little after seven o'clock, heat waves were already shimmering on the path that ran parallel to the canal. The water was glassy and when a punt came along its wake rolled undisturbed to the bank and was lost among the reeds. The shimmering
brought back the image of Ayu and I averted my eyes but it was too late. I saw her again as I watched a bird flying low over the water, a wide vein of scarlet the length of its body. Soon people appeared on the path. There were more punts loaded with fruit and occasionally a caged chicken or a pig, the men in the prows dipping their poles in a steady ancient rhythm. This is very good, I thought, despite the pain of seeing Ayu. I had been in Bali scarcely twelve hours and was alive to its moods. If it were not for Viereck, I would have been happy to stay put in my outpost the rest of the morning.

Dykinck was behind the desk when I reached the lobby, talking to his eldest daughter, who had her mother's almond eyes and his broad forehead. She was in training to be a dancer. I imagined she looked quite beautiful in her elaborate costumes, her neck crooked at an angle, fingers splayed and curved, a two-armed Shiva. I asked him about her progress and learned that she had mastered all but the most difficult movements.

“You must be proud,” I said.

“As a peacock. You're off?”

“To see Hans Viereck.”

“Give him my best,” he said. “The heat's bad today. Already people are complaining.”

“Well, a little sweat never hurt anyone.”

With that, I walked rather quickly outside, grateful that I'd brought along an old conical straw hat, the kind everyone wears in that part of the world.

The road, scarcely more than a dirt track just wide enough for a cart and bullocks, ran between rice fields that rose to terraces conforming to the curve of the hills that stretched far down the valley. At that time of the year the terraces were flooded and shone like silver bands in the morning sun. Along the way bamboo platforms shaped like street lamps held offerings to the rice goddess to ensure
bountiful crops. I passed the visage of the goddess Durga carved in stone, there to protect travelers from Kala, the God of Evil, who takes the midday for his hunting time. I can't say I ever thought those forces would whisk me away, but I liked the idea because it proclaimed a more complex world than ours in the West, a feeling Conrad shared. Think of all his stories set out here that derive their richness from the powers that brood in the jungle shadows. For both of us the East had always suggested new ways of seeing.

At the end of the valley, the fields and terraces gave way to jungle. Before long I came across a large stone statue with terrible eyes but a lovable expression that reminded me of the fat cook on the
Korimatsu.
In a while I was in the hills again and from the top of a rise I could see the valley where Viereck lived, the place as distant from my world as Saturn making his silent rounds out at the edge of the galaxy. When Viereck's house came into view, the peak of his thatched roof rising like a pagoda above the trees, I recalled Conrad's line in
Lord Jim
about Marlow's desire “to confide my difficulty to Stein because he was one of the most trustworthy men I have ever known, an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences about Jim's difficulties as well as my own.”

It was a powerful moment, Ford, past and present joined together in what seemed like another dimension than the ones we know. There I was on the same path I had followed years before when I had hoped that Viereck might be able to enlighten me about what could be done for Jim, help me deal with the confounded sense of obligation his romantic dreams had placed upon me. Our conversation had been one of the most intense of my life and Conrad had made it even more pointed in his novel, bringing out complexities I hadn't seen, adding new elements that were entirely his own invention, most notably Stein's famous advice about how to be: “Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a
dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out in to the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns—
nicht war?
 . . . No! I tell you the way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So you ask me—how to be?” Now I was returning to tell Viereck that I had gotten tangled up again with a man who'd painted himself into a corner. As I went up the path leading to the house I felt a bit like Alice walking through the looking glass.

A boy in a red sarong greeted me at the gate and pressed the palms of his hands together. I did the same and followed him to the steps that led onto the veranda that circled the house. Moveable bamboo screens were mounted on a low railing, an invention of Viereck's that allowed him to regulate the light and flow of air. The boy continued into the house and a moment later from the gloom at the far end of the veranda came Viereck's deep voice.

“Jack. I am so glad you have come.”

He moved the screen nearest him and the light fell across his face, glinting on his silver spectacles and the polished wood of his peacock chair, an elaborate thing fashioned out of teak and inlaid with lighter-colored wood worked into intricate designs. He rose and came forward. As usual, he wore a loosely fitted white smock and white trousers rolled up above his ankles. He had aged since I'd last seen him a year after Jim's death, when we had killed a few bottles of rice wine and he had muttered over and over, “it must be so, it must be so.” Yet with all the years on him he gave the impression of a mountain that could stand up to a deal more erosion. No goatee for Viereck, no neatly trimmed mustache, just a wild tangle of pure patriarchal white beard, luxuriously ragged but aggressive, a fierce assertion of aged masculinity. His long hair, thrown back, uncombed, was rather like a lion's mane framing the thick spectacles magnifying
his pale blue eyes. In the old days they usually had been pushed up on his forehead. Now they remained firmly on his nose. I said I was delighted to see him.

“An old man you see, no? But maybe more in the body than the mind.”

“I shouldn't think otherwise,” I said as we shook hands.

“
Ja?
Well, come and sit. I will get us some cool water.”

He called a name and then led me over to some chairs in the far corner. I could see the valley's rice terraces spread out like a contour map and a man, naked from the waist up, walking beside a buffalo.

“It's good to sit here so far above everything,” he said. “It is very fine.”

We were interrupted by the boy carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses.

“From the stream,” Viereck said, “what the Americans call branch water. A little whisky might be good with it, don't you think?”

I said that whisky generally improved everything. He removed a bottle from the sideboard—I had the impression that he was spending most of his time in that corner—and two ornate shot glasses.

“Now,” he said after we'd toasted each other, “tell me about your life. What has happened to Jack Malone? Good things, I hope.”

There were enough to keep me going through a second whisky. When that was gone I turned the tables on him, not quite ready to mention Conrad, though I could think of no way to avoid it.

“And have you stayed put all this time?” I asked.

“Mainly. A few excursions, you understand, to keep the sap flowing, nothing very significant. I still have some interests in Sumatra.”

I wasn't surprised to hear that, nor to learn that he virtually ran a small company from his house, overseeing the distribution of dry goods to settlements up the rivers. He assured me that life in those
out-of-the-way places had not changed much in fifty years, except that now everything was complicated by the Dutch. He said this in passing on his way to other things, which included stories about colleagues of ours from the days we'd worked together, all of whom had retired and were getting by, for better or worse. It was enough to tell me that Viereck had his hand in more things than he was willing to discuss. His hatred for the Dutch was balanced by a fierce devotion to his adopted country. If he wasn't running guns— a specialty of his—then he was helping the people in some other way to undermine their rulers. The unrest that still existed between tribes inevitably led us to Jim. In the novel, Conrad stays very close to what I told him about the friendship that grew up between Viereck and Jim, and I have no doubt he was right in suggesting that Jim represented some younger version of himself to my old friend.

“I still think of him,” he said. “Such a remarkable end.”

“Something like that had to happen.”

“
Ach,
just so.”

“I mean, he had to make it happen for the story he'd concocted about himself.”

“It is dangerous being romantic.”

“He didn't have a choice.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” He looked out at the valley and then turned to me. “There is no easy way to say this. Jewel is dead. Not long ago.”

It was a shock. I had been looking forward to seeing her. I had a quick vision of her—the smooth brown skin and liquid eyes. It seemed impossible that she was gone.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Yes. It was a blow.”

Jewel had been with him a long time, Ford, and he had developed paternal feelings toward her that were complicated by the fact that
he had lost his own family years ago and treasured her as a kind of replacement. I wanted to know what had happened but it was clear that he didn't feel like talking about her.

“So,” he said suddenly, shaking himself as if by pure physical effort he could dislodge the painful memory. “Something is weighing on your mind. I saw the signal flags when you came up the steps.”

“It's that obvious?”

“Little is obvious,” he said. “I don't like the word. It suggests clarity when there are almost always only shadows.”

“It's a problem,” I said, “a dilemma. The thing is, I promised not to speak about it.”

“And you want to.”

“I must.”

“So which is more important, the promise or the need?”

“They seem about equal.”

“Well, let me put it another way. Does breaking your word outweigh the need, or is it the other way around?”

“I'm hoping that talking about it will help me see what I can do.”

“What to do. That is always the question.”

“I don't think discussing it with you makes me a hypocrite. We're ten thousand miles away and I know you won't say anything. He's a friend, a good friend.”

“What I hear is this is best for him, no? As for me,” he gestured toward the valley, “I am not exactly surrounded by the curious.”

I told him, Ford. Under that penetrating gaze—whenever I talked to Viereck I always imagined I was in a tutorial at Oxford, the eminence seated across from me weighing every word—I described meeting Clive Jones and the eerie experience of reading about myself and the others, including Viereck. He smiled when I said that he had been renamed Stein. Other than that, he remained quite still
until I came to the visit I had paid to Conrad at the Pent. He leaned forward then, one arm resting on his knee as he stared at a spot on the wooden planks, nodding from time to time, murmuring,
“Ach,”
or, “I see.”

“Ah.” Viereck sighed, his enormous brows rising up like birds taking flight. “So we are famous.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And you do not like it.”

“I feel naked. I suppose it could be worse. He could have used my real name.”

“But it is interesting, no? Conrad's life, yours, Kurtz's, Jim's, mine too, all trickling together in a little stream.” Viereck leaned back in his peacock chair and rested his head against the woven lattice. “He told you artists have—what did he call it—certain latitudes. Take him at his word. It is true, yes? I think it must be so. This is not such a big thing.”

“Maybe to you and me. To Conrad, it's monumental.”

“He will not die of it. Well, now, regard.” He turned so that we faced each other across the table like chess players. “He was very honest with you and maybe you do not listen so carefully. What I hear is that you gave him by accident a way to write. Maybe it is not too much to say you opened his mind. That is a big gift, a big debt, too. I understand. It is not good for a man to feel his freedom so tight.” He made a gesture with both hands. “Not good, but not deadly, either. You said he is writing something else, without you.”

“I also said he's afraid I'll come back.”

“But that is only natural, don't you see? Personally, I think it is good for him to worry. That way he will listen more carefully to his own voice. But he is only half the problem. I think maybe you are more worried about yourself.” He narrowed his eyes a little and smiled. “You want to know how to be with him.”

As I mentioned that Conrad had invented a phrase about that question and developed an elaborate metaphor for it, I tried to imagine myself afloat in the deep, deep sea of Conrad's life.

“Are you suggesting I'm like Jim?”

“No, no, no. This is not a demon like poor Jim had to fight, no impossible dreams of glory. Your problem is mundane. You feel responsible.”

“For good reason.”

“Did you force him to write these books?”

“I told him I had read them.”

“But you blame yourself for something that was natural. You see where this is leading?”

“Not at all.”

“You feel you have damaged this friendship and you want to feel good again. You know better, Jack. We never feel good again, not the way we did before. What you want is a way to be with this situation, with Conrad. You can never see him again or you can listen, talk, protect him. But I think this trouble of his is like a ghost, like Jim's idea of disgrace. It doesn't end with you. If you are struck dumb or swept overboard or lose your mind, Conrad will still have it. So you cannot change this thing because it is outside of you. It has your name only. You ask my advice, I tell you—be his friend. More than that you cannot do. It is in his blood, like malaria, a part of his life. I say again it is good for him. These books make him so frightened someone will discover he has borrowed, that they will find out.
Ja!
Just Jim's case! I think this fear will make him find his own island, his own—what did you say he called it? Patusan.”