No More Learning

They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer
skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom
out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had
plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about
it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to
the station, took some months.

"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to
sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle
size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as
trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his
person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only
an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy--a
smile--not a smile--I remember it, but I can't explain. It was
unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it
got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like
a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase
appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth
up employed in these parts--nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That
was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust--just uneasiness--nothing
more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty can
be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even.
That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station.
He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to
him--why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three
terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the
general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went
home on leave he rioted on a large scale--pompously. Jack ashore--with
a difference--in externals only. This one could gather from his casual
talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going--that's
all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was
impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that
secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion
made one pause--for out there there were no external checks. Once when
various tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the
station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no
entrails. ' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though
it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.
You fancied you had seen things--but the seal was on. When annoyed at
meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence,
he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house
had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where he sat was the
first place--the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable
conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed
his 'boy'--an overfed young negro from the coast--to treat the white
men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.

"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the
road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations
had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did
not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on--and so on,
and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with
a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation
was 'very grave, very grave. ' There were rumors that a very important
station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was
not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz,
I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the
coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself.
Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an
exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore
I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy. '
Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr.
Kurtz! ' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumbfounded by the
accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to' . . .
I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet
too, I was getting savage. 'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even
seen the wreck yet--some months, no doubt. ' All this talk seemed to me
so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before
we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair. ' I flung out
of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda)
muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot.
Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly
with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the
'affair. '

"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that
station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the
redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then
I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine
of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered
here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot
of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory'
rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were
praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a
whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in
my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared
speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like
evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic
invasion.

"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One
evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't
know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have
thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that
trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw
them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when
the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin
pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly,
splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I
noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.

"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like
a box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame
had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything--and
collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A
nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in
some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him,
later on, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick
and trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out--and
the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I
approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men,
talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, 'take
advantage of this unfortunate accident. ' One of the men was the manager.
I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it--eh? it
is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man remained. He was
a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked
little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish with the other
agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy upon them.
As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and
by-and-by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to
his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck
a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a
silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself.
Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any
right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of
spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business
intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks--so I had been
informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the
station, and he had been there more than a year--waiting. It seems he
could not make bricks without something, I don't know what--straw maybe.
Anyways, it could not be found there, and as it was not likely to be
sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for.
An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting--all
the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them--for something; and upon my word
it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it,
though the only thing that ever came to them was disease--as far as I
could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against
each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about
that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as
everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as
their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real
feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory
was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued
and slandered and hated each other only on that account,--but as to
effectually lifting a little finger--oh, no. By heavens! there is
something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while
another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very
well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking
at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a
kick.

"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there
it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something--in
fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was
supposed to know there--putting leading questions as to my acquaintances
in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like
mica discs--with curiosity,--though he tried to keep up a bit of
superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became
awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't
possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was
very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full
of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat
business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless
prevaricator. At last he got angry, and to conceal a movement of furious
annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils,
on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a
lighted torch. The background was somber--almost black. The movement of
the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was
sinister.

"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.