Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (691 page)

He swayed forward heavily.

The girl, with her hands raised before her pale eyes, was threading her needle. He glanced at her, and his mighty trunk overshadowed the table, bringing nearer to us the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his neck, and that incongruous, anchorite head, burnt in the desert, hollowed and lean as if by excesses of vigils and fasting. His beard flowed imposingly downwards, out of sight, between the two brown hands gripping the edge of the table, and his persistent glance made sombre by the wide dilations of the pupils, fascinated.

“Imagine to yourselves,” he said in his ordinary voice, “that I have eaten man.”

I could only ejaculate a faint “Ah!” of complete enlightenment. But Hermann, dazed by the excessive shock, actually murmured, “Himmel! What for?”

“It was my terrible misfortune to do so,” said Falk in a measured undertone. The girl, unconscious, sewed on. Mrs. Hermann was absent in one of the state-rooms, sitting up with Lena, who was feverish; but Hermann suddenly put both his hands up with a jerk. The embroidered calotte fell, and, in the twinkling of an eye, he had rumpled his hair all ends up in a most extravagant manner. In this state he strove to speak; with every effort his eyes seemed to start further out of their sockets; his head looked like a mop. He choked, gasped, swallowed, and managed to shriek out the one word, “Beast!”

From that moment till Falk went out of the cabin the girl, with her hands folded on the work lying in her lap, never took her eyes off him. His own, in the blindness of his heart, darted all over the cabin, only seeking to avoid the sight of Hermann’s raving. It was ridiculous, and was made almost terrible by the stillness of every other person present. It was contemptible, and was made appalling by the man’s over-mastering horror of this awful sincerity, coming to him suddenly, with the confession of such a fact. He walked with great strides; he gasped. He wanted to know from Falk how dared he to come and tell him this? Did he think himself a proper person to be sitting in this cabin where his wife and children lived? Tell his niece! Expected him to tell his niece! His own brother’s daughter! Shameless! Did I ever hear tell of such impudence? — he appealed to me. “This man here ought to have gone and hidden himself out of sight instead of...”

“But it’s a great misfortune for me. But it’s a great misfortune for me,” Falk would ejaculate from time to time.

However, Hermann kept on running frequently against the corners of the table. At last he lost a slipper, and crossing his arms on his breast, walked up with one stocking foot very close to Falk, in order to ask him whether he did think there was anywhere on earth a woman abandoned enough to mate with such a monster. “Did he? Did he? Did he?” I tried to restrain him. He tore himself out of my hands; he found his slipper, and, endeavouring to put it on, stormed standing on one leg — and Falk, with a face unmoved and averted eyes, grasped all his mighty beard in one vast palm.

“Was it right then for me to die myself?” he asked thoughtfully. I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“Go away,” I whispered imperiously, without any clear reason for this advice, except that I wished to put an end to Hermann’s odious noise. “Go away.”

He looked searchingly for a moment at Hermann before he made a move. I left the cabin too to see him out of the ship. But he hung about the quarter-deck.

“It is my misfortune,” he said in a steady voice.

“You were stupid to blurt it out in such a manner. After all, we don’t hear such confidences every day.”

“What does the man mean?” he mused in deep undertones. “Somebody had to die — but why me?”

He remained still for a time in the dark — silent; almost invisible. All at once he pinned my elbows to my sides. I felt utterly powerless in his grip, and his voice, whispering in my ear, vibrated.

“It’s worse than hunger. Captain, do you know what that means? And I could kill then — or be killed. I wish the crowbar had smashed my skull ten years ago. And I’ve got to live now. Without her. Do you understand? Perhaps many years. But how? What can be done? If I had allowed myself to look at her once I would have carried her off before that man in my hands — like this.”

I felt myself snatched off the deck, then suddenly dropped — and I staggered backwards, feeling bewildered and bruised. What a man! All was still; he was gone. I heard Hermann’s voice declaiming in the cabin, and I went in.

I could not at first make out a single word, but Mrs. Hermann, who, attracted by the noise, had come in some time before, with an expression of surprise and mild disapproval, depicted broadly on her face, was giving now all the signs of profound, helpless agitation. Her husband shot a string of guttural words at her, and instantly putting out one hand to the bulkhead as if to save herself from falling, she clutched the loose bosom of her dress with the other. He harangued the two women extraordinarily, with much of his shirt hanging out of his waist-belt, stamping his foot, turning from one to the other, sometimes throwing both his arms together, straight up above his rumpled hair, and keeping them in that position while he uttered a passage of loud denunciation; at others folding them tight across his breast — and then he hissed with indignation, elevating his shoulders and protruding his head. The girl was crying.

She had not changed her attitude. From her steady eyes that, following Falk in his retreat, had remained fixed wistfully on the cabin door, the tears fell rapid, thick, on her hands, on the work in her lap, warm and gentle like a shower in spring. She wept without grimacing, without noise — very touching, very quiet, with something more of pity than of pain in her face, as one weeps in compassion rather than in grief — and Hermann, before her, declaimed. I caught several times the word “Mensch,” man; and also “Fressen,” which last I looked up afterwards in my dictionary. It means “Devour.” Hermann seemed to be requesting an answer of some sort from her; his whole body swayed. She remained mute and perfectly still; at last his agitation gained her; she put the palms of her hands together, her full lips parted, no sound came. His voice scolded shrilly, his arms went like a windmill — suddenly he shook a thick fist at her. She burst out into loud sobs. He seemed stupefied.

Mrs. Hermann rushed forward babbling rapidly. The two women fell on each other’s necks, and, with an arm round her niece’s waist, she led her away. Her own eyes were simply streaming, her face was flooded. She shook her head back at me negatively, I wonder why to this day. The girl’s head dropped heavily on her shoulder. They disappeared.

Then Hermann sat down and stared at the cabin floor.

“We don’t know all the circumstances,” I ventured to break the silence. He retorted tartly that he didn’t want to know of any. According to his ideas no circumstances could excuse a crime — and certainly not such a crime. This was the opinion generally received. The duty of a human being was to starve. Falk therefore was a beast, an animal; base, low, vile, despicable, shameless, and deceitful. He had been deceiving him since last year. He was, however, inclined to think that Falk must have gone mad quite recently; for no sane person, without necessity, uselessly, for no earthly reason, and regardless of another’s self-respect and peace of mind, would own to having devoured human flesh. “Why tell?” he cried. “Who was asking him?” It showed Falk’s brutality because after all he had selfishly caused him (Hermann) much pain. He would have preferred not to know that such an unclean creature had been in the habit of caressing his children. He hoped I would say nothing of all this ashore, though. He wouldn’t like it to get about that he had been intimate with an eater of men — a common cannibal. As to the scene he had made (which I judged quite unnecessary) he was not going to inconvenience and restrain himself for a fellow that went about courting and upsetting girls’ heads, while he knew all the time that no decent housewifely girl could think of marrying him. At least he (Hermann) could not conceive how any girl could. Fancy Lena!... No, it was impossible. The thoughts that would come into their heads every time they sat down to a meal. Horrible! Horrible!

“You are too squeamish, Hermann,” I said.

He seemed to think it was eminently proper to be squeamish if the word meant disgust at Falk’s conduct; and turning up his eyes sentimentally he drew my attention to the horrible fate of the victims — the victims of that Falk. I said that I knew nothing about them. He seemed surprised. Could not anybody imagine without knowing? He — for instance — felt he would like to avenge them. But what if — said I — there had not been any? They might have died as it were, naturally — of starvation. He shuddered. But to be eaten — after death! To be devoured! He gave another deep shudder, and asked suddenly, “Do you think it is true?”

His indignation and his personality together would have been enough to spoil the reality of the most authentic thing. When I looked at him I doubted the story — but the remembrance of Falk’s words, looks, gestures, invested it not only with an air of reality but with the absolute truth of primitive passion.

“It is true just as much as you are able to make it; and exactly in the way you like to make it. For my part, when I hear you clamouring about it, I don’t believe it is true at all.”

And I left him pondering. The men in my boat lying at the foot of Diana’s side ladder told me that the captain of the tug had gone away in his gig some time ago.

I let my fellows pull an easy stroke; because of the heavy dew the clear sparkle of the stars seemed to fall on me cold and wetting. There was a sense of lurking gruesome horror somewhere in my mind, and it was mingled with clear and grotesque images. Schomberg’s gastronomic tittle-tattle was responsible for these; and I half hoped I should never see Falk again. But the first thing my anchor-watchman told me was that the captain of the tug was on board. He had sent his boat away and was now waiting for me in the cuddy.

He was lying full length on the stern settee, his face buried in the cushions. I had expected to see it discomposed, contorted, despairing. It was nothing of the kind; it was just as I had seen it twenty times, steady and glaring from the bridge of the tug. It was immovably set and hungry, dominated like the whole man by the singleness of one instinct.

He wanted to live. He had always wanted to live. So we all do — but in us the instinct serves a complex conception, and in him this instinct existed alone. There is in such simple development a gigantic force, and like the pathos of a child’s naive and uncontrolled desire. He wanted that girl, and the utmost that can be said for him was that he wanted that particular girl alone. I think I saw then the obscure beginning, the seed germinating in the soil of an unconscious need, the first shoot of that tree bearing now for a mature mankind the flower and the fruit, the infinite gradation in shades and in flavour of our discriminating love. He was a child. He was as frank as a child too. He was hungry for the girl, terribly hungry, as he had been terribly hungry for food.

Don’t be shocked if I declare that in my belief it was the same need, the same pain, the same torture. We are in his case allowed to contemplate the foundation of all the emotions — that one joy which is to live, and the one sadness at the root of the innumerable torments. It was made plain by the way he talked. He had never suffered so. It was gnawing, it was fire; it was there, like this! And after pointing below his breastbone, he made a hard wringing motion with his hands. And I assure you that, seen as I saw it with my bodily eyes, it was anything but laughable. And again, as he was presently to tell me (alluding to an early incident of the disastrous voyage when some damaged meat had been flung overboard), he said that a time soon came when his heart ached (that was the expression he used), and he was ready to tear his hair out at the thought of all that rotten beef thrown away.

I had heard all this; I witnessed his physical struggles, seeing the working of the rack and hearing the true voice of pain. I witnessed it all patiently, because the moment I came into the cuddy he had called upon me to stand by him — and this, it seems, I had diplomatically promised.

His agitation was impressive and alarming in the little cabin, like the floundering of a great whale driven into a shallow cove in a coast. He stood up; he flung himself down headlong; he tried to tear the cushion with his teeth; and again hugging it fiercely to his face he let himself fall on the couch. The whole ship seemed to feel the shock of his despair; and I contemplated with wonder the lofty forehead, the noble touch of time on the uncovered temples, the unchanged hungry character of the face — so strangely ascetic and so incapable of portraying emotion.

What should he do? He had lived by being near her. He had sat — in the evening — I knew?-all his life! She sewed. Her head was bent — so. Her head — like this — and her arms. Ah! Had I seen? Like this.

He dropped on a stool, bowed his powerful neck whose nape was red, and with his hands stitched the air, ludicrous, sublimely imbecile and comprehensible.

And now he couldn’t have her? No! That was too much. After thinking too that... What had he done? What was my advice? Take her by force? No? Mustn’t he? Who was there then to kill him? For the first time I saw one of his features move; a fighting teeth-baring curl of the lip.... “Not Hermann, perhaps.” He lost himself in thought as though he had fallen out of the world.

I may note that the idea of suicide apparently did not enter his head for a single moment. It occurred to me to ask:

“Where was it that this shipwreck of yours took place?”

“Down south,” he said vaguely with a start.

“You are not down south now,” I said. “Violence won’t do. They would take her away from you in no time. And what was the name of the ship?”

“Borgmester Dahl,” he said. “It was no shipwreck.”

He seemed to be waking up by degrees from that trance, and waking up calmed.

“Not a shipwreck? What was it?”

“Break down,” he answered, looking more like himself every moment. By this only I learned that it was a steamer. I had till then supposed they had been starving in boats or on a raft — or perhaps on a barren rock.