No More Learning

If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at
such a thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we talked and was
looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and
at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in
that bush, so silent, so quiet--as silent and quiet as the ruined house
on the hill--made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature
of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in
desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in
hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask--heavy,
like the closed door of a prison--they looked with their air of hidden
knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The
Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had
come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of
that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months--getting himself
adored, I suppose--and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention to
all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down stream.
Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the--what
shall I say? --less material aspirations. However he had got much worse
suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came up--took my
chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad. ' I directed my
glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the
ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three
little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought
within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement,
and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the
field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the
distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the
ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its
first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then
I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake.
These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive
and puzzling, striking and disturbing--food for thought and also for
the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all
events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole.
They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if
their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had
made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The
start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise.
I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned
deliberately to the first I had seen--and there it was, black, dried,
sunken, with closed eyelids,--a head that seemed to sleep at the top of
that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line
of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless and
jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said
afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the district. I have no
opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there
was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only
showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his
various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small
matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under
his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I
can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very
last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a
terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered
to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he
had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the
whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him
because he was hollow at the core. . . . I put down the glass, and the
head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to
have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried,
indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take
these--say, symbols--down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would
not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary.
The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came
every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . 'I don't want to know
anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted.
Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details would be more
intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's
windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at
one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle
horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being
something that had a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine. The
young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him
Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these
splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of
life--or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he
crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the
conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him
excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I
was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers--and these
were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their
sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried
Kurtz's last disciple. 'Well, and you? ' I said. 'I! I! I am a simple
man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can
you compare me to . . . ? ' His feelings were too much for speech, and
suddenly he broke down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've been
doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand in
all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a
mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned.
A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I--I--haven't
slept for the last ten nights. . . . '

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of
the forest had slipped down hill while we talked, had gone far beyond
the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the
gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch
of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling
splendor, with a murky and over-shadowed bend above and below. Not a
living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as
though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the
grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their
midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose
shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to
the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human
beings--of naked human beings--with spears in their hands, with bows,
with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into
the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the
grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive
immobility.

"'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,'
said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had
stopped too, half-way to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on
the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders
of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love
in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I
said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if
to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonoring
necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my glasses I saw the
thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of
that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with
grotesque jerks. Kurtz--Kurtz--that means short in German--don't it?
Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life--and death.
He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his
body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I
could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving.
It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had
been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of
dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide--it gave him
a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the
air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep voice reached
me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The
stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at
the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without
any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected
these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn
in a long aspiration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms--two
shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine--the thunderbolts
of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as
he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little
cabins--just a room for a bed-place and a camp-stool or two, you know.
We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes
and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these
papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of
his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not
seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the
moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said,
'I am glad. ' Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special
recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted
without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed
me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man
did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in
him--factitious no doubt--to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall
hear directly.

"The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once
and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the
pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his
glance.

"Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting
indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river
two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under
fantastic headdresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque
repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and
gorgeous apparition of a woman.

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths,
treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous
ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of
a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to
the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of
glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men,
that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have
had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and
superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and
stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen
suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the
colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her,
pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous
and passionate soul.

"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long
shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce
aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some
struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a
stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an
inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step
forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of
fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The
young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back.
She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving
steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw
them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to
touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the
earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy
embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into
the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the
dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.

"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to
shoot her,' said the man of patches, nervously. 'I had been risking my
life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She
got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked
up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At least
it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour,
pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this
tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or
there would have been mischief. I don't understand. . . . No--it's too
much for me. Ah, well, it's all over now. '

"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save
me! --save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save _me! _ Why, I've had
to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick
as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out
yet--I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little
peddling notions--you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . . '

"The manager came out. He did me the honor to take me under the arm and
lead me aside. 'He is very low, very low,' he said. He considered it
necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We have
done all we could for him--haven't we?
But there is no disguising the
fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did
not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously,
cautiously--that's my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district
is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will
suffer. I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory--mostly
fossil. We must save it, at all events--but look how precarious the
position is--and why? Because the method is unsound. ' 'Do you,' said I,
looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound method"? ' 'Without doubt,' he
exclaimed, hotly. 'Don't you? ' . . . 'No method at all,' I murmured
after a while. 'Exactly,' he exulted. 'I anticipated this. Shows a
complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper
quarter. ' 'Oh,' said I, 'that fellow--what's his name? --the brickmaker,
will make a readable report for you. ' He appeared confounded for a
moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile,
and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief--positively for relief.
'Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with
emphasis. He started, dropped on me a cold heavy glance, said very
quietly, 'He _was_,' and turned his back on me. My hour of favor was
over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods
for which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something
to have at least a choice of nightmares.

"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was
ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me
as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I
felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp
earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an
impenetrable night. . . . The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard
him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman--couldn't
conceal--knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation. '
I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect
that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. 'Well! ' said I at last,
'speak out. As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz's friend--in a way. '

"He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been 'of the
same profession,' he would have kept the matter to himself without
regard to consequences. 'He suspected there was an active ill-will
towards him on the part of these white men that--' 'You are right,' I
said, remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. 'The manager
thinks you ought to be hanged. ' He showed a concern at this intelligence
which amused me at first. 'I had better get out of the way quietly,' he
said, earnestly. 'I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon
find some excuse. What's to stop them? There's a military post three
hundred miles from here. ' 'Well, upon my word,' said I, 'perhaps you
had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by. '
'Plenty,' he said. 'They are simple people--and I want nothing, you
know. ' He stood biting his lips, then: 'I don't want any harm to happen
to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's
reputation--but you are a brother seaman and--' 'All right,' said I,
after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me. ' I did not know
how truly I spoke.

"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered
the attack to be made on the steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of
being taken away--and then again. . . . But I don't understand these
matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away--that you
would give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an
awful time of it this last month. ' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is all right
now. ' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently. 'Thanks,'
said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open. ' 'But quiet--eh? ' he urged,
anxiously. 'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here--' I
promised a complete discretion with great gravity. 'I have a canoe and
three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a
few Martini-Henry cartridges? ' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He
helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between
sailors--you know--good English tobacco. ' At the door of the pilot-house
he turned round--' I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare? '
He raised one leg. 'Look. ' The soles were tied with knotted strings
sandal-wise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he
looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his
pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark
blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' &c. , &c. He seemed to think himself
excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness.
'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard
him recite poetry--his own too it was, he told me. Poetry! ' He rolled
his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my
mind! ' 'Goodby,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him--whether it
was possible to meet such a phenomenon! . . .

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with
its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to
make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a
big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the
station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks,
armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within
the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from
the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed
the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping
their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air
with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of
many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from
the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of
a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses.
I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of
yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke
me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the
low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I
glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but
Mr. Kurtz was not there.

"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I
didn't believe them at first--the thing seemed so impossible. The fact
is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract
terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What
made this emotion so overpowering was--how shall I define it? --the moral
shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to
thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.
This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the
usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden
onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending,
was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much,
that I did not raise an alarm.

"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair
on deck within three feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he
snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I
did not betray Mr. Kurtz--it was ordered I should never betray him--it
was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was
anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,--and to this day I
don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar
blackness of that experience.

"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail--a broad trail through the
grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, 'He can't
walk--he is crawling on all-fours--I've got him. ' The grass was wet
with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague
notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I don't know. I
had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded
herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the
other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in
the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get
back to the steamer, and imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the
woods to an advanced age. Such silly things--you know. And I remember
I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart, and was
pleased at its calm regularity.

"I kept to the track though--then stopped to listen. The night was very
clear: a dark blue space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in which
black things stood very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion
ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that night. I
actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily believe
chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir, of that motion
I had seen--if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as
though it had been a boyish game.

"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me coming, I would have
fallen over him too, but he got up in time. He rose, unsteady, long,
pale, indistinct, like a vapor exhaled by the earth, and swayed
slightly, misty and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed
between the trees, and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest.
I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed
to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was
by no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though he could hardly
stand, there was still plenty of vigor in his voice. 'Go away--hide
yourself,' he said, in that profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced
back. We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A black figure
stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the
glow. It had horns--antelope horns, I think--on its head. Some sorcerer,
some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiend-like enough. 'Do you know what
you are doing? ' I whispered. 'Perfectly,' he answered, raising his voice
for that single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail
through a speaking-trumpet. 'If he makes a row we are lost,' I thought
to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from
the very natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow--this wandering and
tormented thing. 'You will be lost,' I said--'utterly lost. ' One gets
sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right
thing, though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than
he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were
being laid--to endure--to endure--even to the end--even beyond.

"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely. 'Yes,' said I; 'but if
you try to shout I'll smash your head with--' There was not a stick or
a stone near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was
on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing,
with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. 'And now for
this stupid scoundrel--' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any
case,' I affirmed, steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of
him, you understand--and indeed it would have been very little use for
any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell
of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the
awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified
and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out
to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the
throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled
his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't
you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the
head--though I had a very lively sense of that danger too--but in this,
that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the
name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke
him--himself his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was
nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself
loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to
pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood
on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling you what we
said--repeating the phrases we pronounced,--but what's the good? They
were common everyday words,--the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on
every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my
mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases
spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul,
I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me
or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear--concentrated, it is true,
upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only
chance--barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't
so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being
alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I
tell you, it had gone mad. I had--for my sins, I suppose--to go through
the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so
withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity.
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it,--I heard it.