CHAPTER SEVEN
There are in our lives short periods which hold no place in
memory but only as the recollection of a feeling. There is no
remembrance of gesture, of action, of any outward manifestation
of life; those are lost in the unearthly brilliance or in the
unearthly gloom of such moments. We are absorbed in the
contemplation of that something, within our bodies, which
rejoices or suffers while the body goes on breathing,
instinctively runs away or, not less instinctively,
fights--perhaps dies. But death in such a moment is the
privilege of the fortunate, it is a high and rare favour, a
supreme grace.
Willems never remembered how and when he parted from Aissa. He
caught himself drinking the muddy water out of the hollow of his
hand, while his canoe was drifting in mid-stream past the last
houses of Sambir. With his returning wits came the fear of
something unknown that had taken possession of his heart, of
something inarticulate and masterful which could not speak and
would be obeyed. His first impulse was that of revolt. He would
never go back there. Never! He looked round slowly at the
brilliance of things in the deadly sunshine and took up his
paddle! How changed everything seemed! The river was broader,
the sky was higher. How fast the canoe flew under the strokes of
his paddle! Since when had he acquired the strength of two men
or more? He looked up and down the reach at the forests of the
bank with a confused notion that with one sweep of his hand he
could tumble all these trees into the stream. His face felt
burning. He drank again, and shuddered with a depraved sense of
pleasure at the after-taste of slime in the water.
It was late when he reached Almayer's house, but he crossed the
dark and uneven courtyard, walking lightly in the radiance of
some light of his own, invisible to other eyes. His host's sulky
greeting jarred him like a sudden fall down a great height. He
took his place at the table opposite Almayer and tried to speak
cheerfully to his gloomy companion, but when the meal was ended
and they sat smoking in silence he felt an abrupt discouragement,
a lassitude in all his limbs, a sense of immense sadness as after
some great and irreparable loss. The darkness of the night
entered his heart, bringing with it doubt and hesitation and dull
anger with himself and all the world. He had an impulse to shout
horrible curses, to quarrel with Almayer, to do something
violent. Quite without any immediate provocation he thought he
would like to assault the wretched, sulky beast. He glanced at
him ferociously from under his eyebrows. The unconscious Almayer
smoked thoughtfully, planning to-morrow's work probably. The
man's composure seemed to Willems an unpardonable insult. Why
didn't that idiot talk to-night when he wanted him to? . . . on
other nights he was ready enough to chatter. And such dull
nonsense too! And Willems, trying hard to repress his own
senseless rage, looked fixedly through the thick tobacco-smoke at
the stained tablecloth.
They retired early, as usual, but in the middle of the night
Willems leaped out of his hammock with a stifled execration and
ran down the steps into the courtyard. The two night watchmen,
who sat by a little fire talking together in a monotonous
undertone, lifted their heads to look wonderingly at the
discomposed features of the white man as he crossed the circle of
light thrown out by their fire. He disappeared in the darkness
and then came back again, passing them close, but with no sign of
consciousness of their presence on his face. Backwards and
forwards he paced, muttering to himself, and the two Malays,
after a short consultation in whispers left the fire quietly, not
thinking it safe to remain in the vicinity of a white man who
behaved in such a strange manner. They retired round the corner
of the godown and watched Willems curiously through the night,
till the short daybreak was followed by the sudden blaze of the
rising sun, and Almayer's establishment woke up to life and work.
As soon as he could get away unnoticed in the bustle of the busy
riverside, Willems crossed the river on his way to the place
where he had met Aissa. He threw himself down in the grass by
the side of the brook and listened for the sound of her
footsteps. The brilliant light of day fell through the irregular
opening in the high branches of the trees and streamed down,
softened, amongst the shadows of big trunks. Here and there a
narrow sunbeam touched the rugged bark of a tree with a golden
splash, sparkled on the leaping water of the brook, or rested on
a leaf that stood out, shimmering and distinct, on the monotonous
background of sombre green tints. The clear gap of blue above
his head was crossed by the quick flight of white rice-birds
whose wings flashed in the sunlight, while through it the heat
poured down from the sky, clung about the steaming earth, rolled
among the trees, and wrapped up Willems in the soft and odorous
folds of air heavy with the faint scent of blossoms and with the
acrid smell of decaying life. And in that atmosphere of Nature's
workshop Willems felt soothed and lulled into forgetfulness of
his past, into indifference as to his future. The recollections
of his triumphs, of his wrongs and of his ambition vanished in
that warmth, which seemed to melt all regrets, all hope, all
anger, all strength out of his heart. And he lay there, dreamily
contented, in the tepid and perfumed shelter, thinking of Aissa's
eyes; recalling the sound of her voice, the quiver of her
lips--her frowns and her smile.
She came, of course. To her he was something new, unknown and
strange. He was bigger, stronger than any man she had seen
before, and altogether different from all those she knew. He was
of the victorious race. With a vivid remembrance of the great
catastrophe of her life he appeared to her with all the
fascination of a great and dangerous thing; of a terror
vanquished, surmounted, made a plaything of. They spoke with
just such a deep voice--those victorious men; they looked with
just such hard blue eyes at their enemies. And she made that
voice speak softly to her, those eyes look tenderly at her face!
He was indeed a man. She could not understand all he told her of
his life, but the fragments she understood she made up for
herself into a story of a man great amongst his own people,
valorous and unfortunate; an undaunted fugitive dreaming of
vengeance against his enemies. He had all the attractiveness of
the vague and the unknown--of the unforeseen and of the sudden;
of a being strong, dangerous, alive, and human, ready to be
enslaved.
She felt that he was ready. She felt it with the unerring
intuition of a primitive woman confronted by a simple impulse.
Day after day, when they met and she stood a little way off,
listening to his words, holding him with her look, the undefined
terror of the new conquest became faint and blurred like the
memory of a dream, and the certitude grew distinct, and
convincing, and visible to the eyes like some material thing in
full sunlight. It was a deep joy, a great pride, a tangible
sweetness that seemed to leave the taste of honey on her lips.
He lay stretched at her feet without moving, for he knew from
experience how a slight movement of his could frighten her away
in those first days of their intercourse. He lay very quiet,
with all the ardour of his desire ringing in his voice and
shining in his eyes, whilst his body was still, like death
itself. And he looked at her, standing above him, her head lost
in the shadow of broad and graceful leaves that touched her
cheek; while the slender spikes of pale green orchids streamed
down from amongst the boughs and mingled with the black hair that
framed her face, as if all those plants claimed her for their
own--the animated and brilliant flower of all that exuberant life
which, born in gloom, struggles for ever towards the sunshine.
Every day she came a little nearer. He watched her slow
progress--the gradual taming of that woman by the words of his
love. It was the monotonous song of praise and desire that,
commencing at creation, wraps up the world like an atmosphere and
shall end only in the end of all things--when there are no lips
to sing and no ears to hear. He told her that she was beautiful
and desirable, and he repeated it again and again; for when he
told her that, he had said all there was within him--he had
expressed his only thought, his only feeling. And he watched the
startled look of wonder and mistrust vanish from her face with
the passing days, her eyes soften, the smile dwell longer and
longer on her lips; a smile as of one charmed by a delightful
dream; with the slight exaltation of intoxicating triumph lurking
in its dawning tenderness.
And while she was near there was nothing in the whole world--for
that idle man--but her look and her smile. Nothing in the past,
nothing in the future; and in the present only the luminous fact
of her existence. But in the sudden darkness of her going he
would be left weak and helpless, as though despoiled violently of
all that was himself. He who had lived all his life with no
preoccupation but that of his own career, contemptuously
indifferent to all feminine influence, full of scorn for men that
would submit to it, if ever so little; he, so strong, so superior
even in his errors, realized at last that his very individuality
was snatched from within himself by the hand of a woman. Where
was the assurance and pride of his cleverness; the belief in
success, the anger of failure, the wish to retrieve his fortune,
the certitude of his ability to accomplish it yet? Gone. All
gone. All that had been a man within him was gone, and there
remained only the trouble of his heart--that heart which had
become a contemptible thing; which could be fluttered by a look
or a smile, tormented by a word, soothed by a promise.
When the longed-for day came at last, when she sank on the grass
by his side and with a quick gesture took his hand in hers, he
sat up suddenly with the movement and look of a man awakened by
the crash of his own falling house. All his blood, all his
sensation, all his life seemed to rush into that hand leaving him
without strength, in a cold shiver, in the sudden clamminess and
collapse as of a deadly gun-shot wound. He flung her hand away
brutally, like something burning, and sat motionless, his head
fallen forward, staring on the ground and catching his breath in
painful gasps. His impulse of fear and apparent horror did not
dismay her in the least. Her face was grave and her eyes looked
seriously at him. Her fingers touched the hair of his temple,
ran in a light caress down his cheek, twisted gently the end of
his long moustache: and while he sat in the tremor of that
contact she ran off with startling fleetness and disappeared in a
peal of clear laughter, in the stir of grass, in the nod of young
twigs growing over the path; leaving behind only a vanishing
trail of motion and sound.
He scrambled to his feet slowly and painfully, like a man with a
burden on his shoulders, and walked towards the riverside. He
hugged to his breast the recollection of his fear and of his
delight, but told himself seriously over and over again that this
must be the end of that adventure. After shoving off his canoe
into the stream he lifted his eyes to the bank and gazed at it
long and steadily, as if taking his last look at a place of
charming memories. He marched up to Almayer's house with the
concentrated expression and the determined step of a man who had
just taken a momentous resolution. His face was set and rigid,
his gestures and movements were guarded and slow. He was keeping
a tight hand on himself. A very tight hand. He had a vivid
illusion--as vivid as reality almost--of being in charge of a
slippery prisoner. He sat opposite Almayer during that
dinner--which was their last meal together--with a perfectly calm
face and within him a growing terror of escape from his own self.
Now and then he would grasp the edge of the table and set his
teeth hard in a sudden wave of acute despair, like one who,
falling down a smooth and rapid declivity that ends in a
precipice, digs his finger nails into the yielding surface and
feels himself slipping helplessly to inevitable destruction.
Then, abruptly, came a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way
of his will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that
wish, that idea kept back during all those hours, darted into his
brain with the heat and noise of a conflagration. He must see
her! See her at once! Go now! To-night! He had the raging
regret of the lost hour, of every passing moment. There was no
thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive fear of the
irrevocable, with the innate falseness of the human heart, he
wanted to keep open the way of retreat. He had never absented
himself during the night. What did Almayer know? What would
Almayer think? Better ask him for the gun. A moonlight night. .
. . Look for deer. . . . A colourable pretext. He would lie to
Almayer. What did it matter! He lied to himself every minute of
his life. And for what? For a woman. And such. . . .
Almayer's answer showed him that deception was useless.
Everything gets to be known, even in this place. Well, he did
not care. Cared for nothing but for the lost seconds. What if
he should suddenly die. Die before he saw her. Before he could .
. .
As, with the sound of Almayer's laughter in his ears, he urged
his canoe in a slanting course across the rapid current, he tried
to tell himself that he could return at any moment. He would
just go and look at the place where they used to meet, at the
tree under which he lay when she took his hand, at the spot where
she sat by his side. Just go there and then return--nothing
more; but when his little skiff touched the bank he leaped out,
forgetting the painter, and the canoe hung for a moment amongst
the bushes and then swung out of sight before he had time to dash
into the water and secure it. He was thunderstruck at first.
Now
he could not go back unless he called up the Rajah's people to
get a boat and rowers--and the way to Patalolo's campong led past
Aissa's house!
He went up the path with the eager eyes and reluctant steps of a
man pursuing a phantom, and when he found himself at a place
where a narrow track branched off to the left towards Omar's
clearing he stood still, with a look of strained attention on his
face as if listening to a far-off voice--the voice of his fate.
It was a sound inarticulate but full of meaning; and following it
there came a rending and tearing within his breast. He twisted
his fingers together, and the joints of his hands and arms
cracked. On his forehead the perspiration stood out in small
pearly drops. He looked round wildly. Above the shapeless
darkness of the forest undergrowth rose the treetops with their
high boughs and leaves standing out black on the pale sky--like
fragments of night floating on moonbeams. Under his feet warm
steam rose from the heated earth. Round him there was a great
silence.
He was looking round for help. This silence, this immobility of
his surroundings seemed to him a cold rebuke, a stern refusal, a
cruel unconcern. There was no safety outside of himself--and in
himself there was no refuge; there was only the image of that
woman. He had a sudden moment of lucidity--of that cruel lucidity
that comes once in life to the most benighted. He seemed to see
what went on within him, and was horrified at the strange sight.
He, a white man whose worst fault till then had been a little
want of judgment and too much confidence in the rectitude of his
kind! That woman was a complete savage, and . . . He tried to
tell himself that the thing was of no consequence. It was a vain
effort. The novelty of the sensations he had never experienced
before in the slightest degree, yet had despised on hearsay from
his safe position of a civilized man, destroyed his courage. He
was disappointed with himself. He seemed to be surrendering to a
wild creature the unstained purity of his life, of his race, of
his civilization. He had a notion of being lost amongst
shapeless things that were dangerous and ghastly. He struggled
with the sense of certain defeat--lost his footing--fell back
into the darkness. With a faint cry and an upward throw of his
arms he gave up as a tired swimmer gives up: because the swamped
craft is gone from under his feet; because the night is dark and
the shore is far--because death is better than strife.
