Chapter Chapter 3 · 第1章（3）

"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a half-pint champagne

bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he

said Mr. Kurtz had painted this--in this very station more than a year

ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. 'Tell me, pray,'

said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'

"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking

away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of

the Central Station. Everyone knows that.' He was silent for a while.

'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and

science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began

to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by

Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness

of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some

even write that; and so _he_ comes here, a special being, as you ought

to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He

paid no attention. 'Yes. 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. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light

dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing

an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh.

'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He

hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued

severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'

"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had

risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on

the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the

moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. 'What a row the brute

makes!' said the indefatigable man with the mustaches, appearing

near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression--punishment--bang! Pitiless,

pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations

for the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed my

companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,'

he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha!

Danger--agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the 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 knots gesticulating,

discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily

believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the

forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir,

through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of

the land went home to one's very heart,--its mystery, its greatness,

the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly

somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my

pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm.

'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and

especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that

pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my

disposition. . . .'

"I let him run on, this _papier-mache_ Mephistopheles, and it seemed to

me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find

nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had

been planning to be assistant-manager by-and-by under the present man,

and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a

little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my

shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a

carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud,

by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was

before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon

had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass,

over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than

the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber

gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur.

All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about

himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity

looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we

who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it

handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that

couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could

see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was

in there. I had heard enough about it too--God knows! Yet somehow it

didn't bring any image with it--no more than if I had been told an angel

or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might

believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch

sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you

asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy

and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as

smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--offer to fight you. I would not

have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough

to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because

I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.

There is a taint of death, a 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 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 somehow

would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see--you

understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name

any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see

anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain

attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation,

that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of

struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which

is of the very essence of dreams. . . ."

He was silent for a while.

". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the

life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which

makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is

impossible. We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."

He paused again as if reflecting, then added--"Of course in this you

fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know. . . ."

It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one

another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more

to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might

have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch

for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the

faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself

without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.

". . . Yes--I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what

he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was

nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled

steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the

necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you

conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal

genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate

tools--intelligent men.' He did not make bricks--why, there was a

physical impossibility in the way--as I was well aware; and if he

did secretarial work for the manager, it was because 'no sensible man

rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I saw

it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven!

Rivets. To get on with the work--to stop the hole. Rivets I

wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast--cases--piled

up--burst--split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that

station yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death.

You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping

down--and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had

plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week

the messenger, a lone negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand,

left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan

came in with trade goods,--ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder

only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded

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, 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 Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only

known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . 'My dear

sir,' he cried, 'I write from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was

a way--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 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 even had sat up o' nights for him. All this

energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said;

'but you can say this only of 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, he strode off. 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 an empty Huntley & 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 I could do. No, I don't

like work. I had 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--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--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 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 he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a 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 in a kind

of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over

his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing

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, 'You . . . eh?' I don't know why

we behaved 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 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.

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, 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 ichthyosaurus had

been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the

boiler-maker 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 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 trod on

the heels of the donkeys; a lot of tents, camp-stools, 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 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 itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and

I believe they were sworn to 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, 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 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.

"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 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 thought to Kurtz. 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."