CHAPTER SIX
"Lend me your gun, Almayer," said Willems, across the table on
which a smoky lamp shone redly above the disorder of a finished
meal. "I have a mind to go and look for a deer when the moon
rises to-night."
Almayer, sitting sidewise to the table, his elbow pushed amongst
the dirty plates, his chin on his breast and his legs stretched
stiffly out, kept his eyes steadily on the toes of his grass
slippers and laughed abruptly.
"You might say yes or no instead of making that unpleasant
noise," remarked Willems, with calm irritation.
"If I believed one word of what you say, I would," answered
Almayer without changing his attitude and speaking slowly, with
pauses, as if dropping his words on the floor. "As it is--what's
the use? You know where the gun is; you may take it or leave it.
Gun. Deer. Bosh! Hunt deer! Pah! It's a . . . gazelle you
are
after, my honoured guest. You want gold anklets and silk sarongs
for that game--my mighty hunter. And you won't get those for the
asking, I promise you. All day amongst the natives. A fine help
you are to me."
"You shouldn't drink so much, Almayer," said Willems, disguising
his fury under an affected drawl. "You have no head. Never had,
as far as I can remember, in the old days in Macassar. You drink
too much."
"I drink my own," retorted Almayer, lifting his head quickly and
darting an angry glance at Willems.
Those two specimens of the superior race glared at each other
savagely for a minute, then turned away their heads at the same
moment as if by previous arrangement, and both got up. Almayer
kicked off his slippers and scrambled into his hammock, which
hung between two wooden columns of the verandah so as to catch
every rare breeze of the dry season, and Willems, after standing
irresolutely by the table for a short time, walked without a word
down the steps of the house and over the courtyard towards the
little wooden jetty, where several small canoes and a couple of
big white whale-boats were made fast, tugging at their short
painters and bumping together in the swift current of the river.
He jumped into the smallest canoe, balancing himself clumsily,
slipped the rattan painter, and gave an unnecessary and violent
shove, which nearly sent him headlong overboard. By the time he
regained his balance the canoe had drifted some fifty yards down
the river. He knelt in the bottom of his little craft and fought
the current with long sweeps of the paddle. Almayer sat up in
his hammock, grasping his feet and peering over the river with
parted lips till he made out the shadowy form of man and canoe as
they struggled past the jetty again.
"I thought you would go," he shouted. "Won't you take the gun?
Hey?" he yelled, straining his voice. Then he fell back in his
hammock and laughed to himself feebly till he fell asleep. On
the river, Willems, his eyes fixed intently ahead, swept his
paddle right and left, unheeding the words that reached him
faintly.
It was now three months since Lingard had landed Willems in
Sambir and had departed hurriedly, leaving him in Almayer's care.
The two white men did not get on well together. Almayer,
remembering the time when they both served Hudig, and when the
superior Willems treated him with offensive condescension, felt a
great dislike towards his guest. He was also jealous of
Lingard's favour. Almayer had married a Malay girl whom the old
seaman had adopted in one of his accesses of unreasoning
benevolence, and as the marriage was not a happy one from a
domestic point of view, he looked to Lingard's fortune for
compensation in his matrimonial unhappiness. The appearance of
that man, who seemed to have a claim of some sort upon Lingard,
filled him with considerable uneasiness, the more so because the
old seaman did not choose to acquaint the husband of his adopted
daughter with Willems' history, or to confide to him his
intentions as to that individual's future fate. Suspicious from
the first, Almayer discouraged Willems' attempts to help him in
his trading, and then when Willems drew back, he made, with
characteristic perverseness, a grievance of his unconcern. From
cold civility in their relations, the two men drifted into silent
hostility, then into outspoken enmity, and both wished ardently
for Lingard's return and the end of a situation that grew more
intolerable from day to day. The time dragged slowly. Willems
watched the succeeding sunrises wondering dismally whether before
the evening some change would occur in the deadly dullness of his
life. He missed the commercial activity of that existence which
seemed to him far off, irreparably lost, buried out of sight
under the ruins of his past success--now gone from him beyond the
possibility of redemption. He mooned disconsolately about
Almayer's courtyard, watching from afar, with uninterested eyes,
the up-country canoes discharging guttah or rattans, and loading
rice or European goods on the little wharf of Lingard & Co. Big
as was the extent of ground owned by Almayer, Willems yet felt
that there was not enough room for him inside those neat fences.
The man who, during long years, became accustomed to think of
himself as indispensable to others, felt a bitter and savage rage
at the cruel consciousness of his superfluity, of his
uselessness; at the cold hostility visible in every look of the
only white man in this barbarous corner of the world. He gnashed
his teeth when he thought of the wasted days, of the life thrown
away in the unwilling company of that peevish and suspicious
fool. He heard the reproach of his idleness in the murmurs of
the river, in the unceasing whisper of the great forests. Round
him everything stirred, moved, swept by in a rush; the earth
under his feet and the heavens above his head. The very savages
around him strove, struggled, fought, worked--if only to prolong
a miserable existence; but they lived, they lived! And it was
only himself that seemed to be left outside the scheme of
creation in a hopeless immobility filled with tormenting anger
and with ever-stinging regret.
He took to wandering about the settlement. The afterwards
flourishing Sambir was born in a swamp and passed its youth in
malodorous mud. The houses crowded the bank, and, as if to get
away from the unhealthy shore, stepped boldly into the river,
shooting over it in a close row of bamboo platforms elevated on
high piles, amongst which the current below spoke in a soft and
unceasing plaint of murmuring eddies. There was only one path in
the whole town and it ran at the back of the houses along the
succession of blackened circular patches that marked the place of
the household fires. On the other side the virgin forest
bordered the path, coming close to it, as if to provoke
impudently any passer-by to the solution of the gloomy problem of
its depths. Nobody would accept the deceptive challenge. There
were only a few feeble attempts at a clearing here and there, but
the ground was low and the river, retiring after its yearly
floods, left on each a gradually diminishing mudhole, where the
imported buffaloes of the Bugis settlers wallowed happily during
the heat of the day. When Willems walked on the path, the
indolent men stretched on the shady side of the houses looked at
him with calm curiosity, the women busy round the cooking fires
would send after him wondering and timid glances, while the
children would only look once, and then run away yelling with
fright at the horrible appearance of the man with a red and white
face. These manifestations of childish disgust and fear stung
Willems with a sense of absurd humiliation; he sought in his
walks the comparative solitude of the rudimentary clearings, but
the very buffaloes snorted with alarm at his sight, scrambled
lumberingly out of the cool mud and stared wildly in a compact
herd at him as he tried to slink unperceived along the edge of
the forest. One day, at some unguarded and sudden movement of
his, the whole herd stampeded down the path, scattered the fires,
sent the women flying with shrill cries, and left behind a track
of smashed pots, trampled rice, overturned children, and a crowd
of angry men brandishing sticks in loud-voiced pursuit. The
innocent cause of that disturbance ran shamefacedly the gauntlet
of black looks and unfriendly remarks, and hastily sought refuge
in Almayer's campong. After that he left the settlement alone.
Later, when the enforced confinement grew irksome, Willems took
one of Almayer's many canoes and crossed the main branch of the
Pantai in search of some solitary spot where he could hide his
discouragement and his weariness. He skirted in his little craft
the wall of tangled verdure, keeping in the dead water close to
the bank where the spreading nipa palms nodded their broad leaves
over his head as if in contemptuous pity of the wandering
outcast. Here and there he could see the beginnings of
chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting out of
sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and
winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly
in the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back
slowly, with a bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and
sadness; oppressed by the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay
in that forest which seemed to push him mercilessly back into the
glittering sunshine of the river. And he would recommence
paddling with tired arms to seek another opening, to find another
deception.
As he paddled up to the point where the Rajah's stockade came
down to the river, the nipas were left behind rattling their
leaves over the brown water, and the big trees would appear on
the bank, tall, strong, indifferent in the immense solidity of
their life, which endures for ages, to that short and fleeting
life in the heart of the man who crept painfully amongst their
shadows in search of a refuge from the unceasing reproach of his
thoughts. Amongst their smooth trunks a clear brook meandered
for a time in twining lacets before it made up its mind to take a
leap into the hurrying river, over the edge of the steep bank.
There was also a pathway there and it seemed frequented. Willems
landed, and following the capricious promise of the track soon
found himself in a comparatively clear space, where the confused
tracery of sunlight fell through the branches and the foliage
overhead, and lay on the stream that shone in an easy curve like
a bright sword-blade dropped amongst the long and feathery grass.
Further on, the path continued, narrowed again in the thick
undergrowth. At the end of the first turning Willems saw a flash
of white and colour, a gleam of gold like a sun-ray lost in
shadow, and a vision of blackness darker than the deepest shade
of the forest. He stopped, surprised, and fancied he had heard
light footsteps--growing lighter--ceasing. He looked around.
The grass on the bank of the stream trembled and a tremulous path
of its shivering, silver-grey tops ran from the water to the
beginning of the thicket. And yet there was not a breath of
wind. Somebody kind passed there. He looked pensive while the
tremor died out in a quick tremble under his eyes; and the grass
stood high, unstirring, with drooping heads in the warm and
motionless air.
He hurried on, driven by a suddenly awakened curiosity, and
entered the narrow way between the bushes. At the next turn of
the path he caught again the glimpse of coloured stuff and of a
woman's black hair before him. He hastened his pace and came in
full view of the object of his pursuit. The woman, who was
carrying two bamboo vessels full of water, heard his footsteps,
stopped, and putting the bamboos down half turned to look back.
Willems also stood still for a minute, then walked steadily on
with a firm tread, while the woman moved aside to let him pass.
He kept his eyes fixed straight before him, yet almost
unconsciously he took in every detail of the tall and graceful
figure. As he approached her the woman tossed her head slightly
back, and with a free gesture of her strong, round arm, caught up
the mass of loose black hair and brought it over her shoulder and
across the lower part of her face. The next moment he was
passing her close, walking rigidly, like a man in a trance. He
heard her rapid breathing and he felt the touch of a look darted
at him from half-open eyes. It touched his brain and his heart
together. It seemed to him to be something loud and stirring
like a shout, silent and penetrating like an inspiration. The
momentum of his motion carried him past her, but an invisible
force made up of surprise and curiosity and desire spun him round
as soon as he had passed.
She had taken up her burden already, with the intention of
pursuing her path. His sudden movement arrested her at the first
step, and again she stood straight, slim, expectant, with a
readiness to dart away suggested in the light immobility of her
pose. High above, the branches of the trees met in a transparent
shimmer of waving green mist, through which the rain of yellow
rays descended upon her head, streamed in glints down her black
tresses, shone with the changing glow of liquid metal on her
face, and lost itself in vanishing sparks in the sombre depths of
her eyes that, wide open now, with enlarged pupils, looked
steadily at the man in her path. And Willems stared at her,
charmed with a charm that carries with it a sense of irreparable
loss, tingling with that feeling which begins like a caress and
ends in a blow, in that sudden hurt of a new emotion making its
way into a human heart, with the brusque stirring of sleeping
sensations awakening suddenly to the rush of new hopes, new
fears, new desires--and to the flight of one's old self.
She moved a step forward and again halted. A breath of wind that
came through the trees, but in Willems' fancy seemed to be driven
by her moving figure, rippled in a hot wave round his body and
scorched his face in a burning touch. He drew it in with a long
breath, the last long breath of a soldier before the rush of
battle, of a lover before he takes in his arms the adored woman;
the breath that gives courage to confront the menace of death or
the storm of passion.
Who was she? Where did she come from? Wonderingly he took his
eyes off her face to look round at the serried trees of the
forest that stood big and still and straight, as if watching him
and her breathlessly. He had been baffled, repelled, almost
frightened by the intensity of that tropical life which wants the
sunshine but works in gloom; which seems to be all grace of
colour and form, all brilliance, all smiles, but is only the
blossoming of the dead; whose mystery holds the promise of joy
and beauty, yet contains nothing but poison and decay. He had
been frightened by the vague perception of danger before, but
now, as he looked at that life again, his eyes seemed able to
pierce the fantastic veil of creepers and leaves, to look past
the solid trunks, to see through the forbidding gloom--and the
mystery was disclosed--enchanting, subduing, beautiful. He
looked at the woman. Through the checkered light between them
she appeared to him with the impalpable distinctness of a dream.
The very spirit of that land of mysterious forests, standing
before him like an apparition behind a transparent veil--a veil
woven of sunbeams and shadows.
She had approached him still nearer. He felt a strange
impatience within him at her advance. Confused thoughts rushed
through his head, disordered, shapeless, stunning. Then he heard
his own voice asking--
"Who are you?"
"I am the daughter of the blind Omar," she answered, in a low but
steady tone. "And you," she went on, a little louder, "you are
the white trader--the great man of this place."
"Yes," said Willems, holding her eyes with his in a sense of
extreme effort, "Yes, I am white." Then he added, feeling as if
he spoke about some other man, "But I am the outcast of my
people."
She listened to him gravely. Through the mesh of scattered hair
her face looked like the face of a golden statue with living
eyes. The heavy eyelids dropped slightly, and from between the
long eyelashes she sent out a sidelong look: hard, keen, and
narrow, like the gleam of sharp steel. Her lips were firm and
composed in a graceful curve, but the distended nostrils, the
upward poise of the half-averted head, gave to her whole person
the expression of a wild and resentful defiance.
A shadow passed over Willems' face. He put his hand over his
lips as if to keep back the words that wanted to come out in a
surge of impulsive necessity, the outcome of dominant thought
that rushes from the heart to the brain and must be spoken in the
face of doubt, of danger, of fear, of destruction itself.
"You are beautiful," he whispered.
She looked at him again with a glance that running in one quick
flash of her eyes over his sunburnt features, his broad
shoulders, his straight, tall, motionless figure, rested at last
on the ground at his feet. Then she smiled. In the sombre
beauty of her face that smile was like the first ray of light on
a stormy daybreak that darts evanescent and pale through the
gloomy clouds: the forerunner of sunrise and of thunder.
