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Heart of Darkness

 Heart of Darkness

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some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted,
uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf
moved, with a mysterious sound—as though the tearing
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.
‘Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees
leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half
coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the
attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine
on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work!
And this was the place where some of the helpers had
withdrawn to die.
‘They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were
not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing
earthly now— nothing but black shadows of disease and
starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.
Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality
of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on
unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and
were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These
moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I
began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees.
Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The

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black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder
against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken
eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of
blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died
out slowly. The man seemed young— almost a boy—but
you know with them it’s hard to tell. I found nothing else
to do but to offer him one of my good Swede’s ship’s
biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on
it and held—there was no other movement and no other
glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his
neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an
ornament—a charm— a propitiatory act? Was there any
idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his
black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
‘Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles
sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped
on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and
appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead,
as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others
were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in
some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood
horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and
knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink.
He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight,

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crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his
woolly head fall on his breastbone.
‘I didn’t want any more loitering in the shade, and I
made haste towards the station. When near the buildings I
met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of getup
that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision.
I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca
jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished
boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a greenlined
parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing,
and had a penholder behind his ear.
‘I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was
the Company’s chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping
was done at this station. He had come out for a
moment, he said, ‘to get a breath of fresh air. The
expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion
of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn’t have mentioned the
fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first
heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly
connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I
respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast
cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of
a hairdresser’s dummy; but in the great demoralization of
the land he kept up his appearance. That’s backbone. His

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starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements
of character. He had been out nearly three years; and,
later, I could not help asking him how he managed to
sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said
modestly, ‘I’ve been teaching one of the native women
about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the
work.’ Thus this man had verily accomplished something.
And he was devoted to his books, which were in applepie
order.
‘Everything else in the station was in a muddle—heads,
things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet
arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods,
rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths
of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.
‘I had to wait in the station for ten days—an eternity. I
lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I
would sometimes get into the accountant’s office. It was
built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that,
as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to
heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to
open the big shutter to see. It was hot there, too; big flies
buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat
generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and
even slightly scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote,

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he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a
truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalid agent from
upcountry) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle
annoyance. ‘The groans of this sick person,’ he said,
‘distract my attention. And without that it is extremely
difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.’
‘One day he remarked, without lifting his head, ‘In the
interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.’ On my asking
who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent; and
seeing my disappointment at this information, he added
slowly, laying down his pen, ‘He is a very remarkable
person.’ Further questions elicited from him that Mr.
Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading-post, a very
important one, in the true ivory-country, at ‘the very
bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others
put together …’ He began to write again. The sick man
was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
‘Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a
great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent
babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of
the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in
the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief
agent was heard ‘giving it up’ tearfully for the twentieth
time that day…. He rose slowly. ‘What a frightful row,’ he

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said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man,
and returning, said to me, ‘He does not hear.’ ‘What!
Dead?’ I asked, startled. ‘No, not yet,’ he answered, with
great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the head to
the tumult in the station-yard, ‘When one has got to make
correct entries, one comes to hate those savages—hate
them to the death.’ He remained thoughtful for a
moment. ‘When you see Mr. Kurtz’ he went on, ‘tell him
from me that everything here’— he glanced at the deck—’
is very satisfactory. I don’t like to write to him—with
those messengers of ours you never know who may get
hold of your letter—at that Central Station.’ He stared at
me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. ‘Oh, he will
go far, very far,’ he began again. ‘He will be a somebody
in the Administration before long. They, above—the
Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.’
‘He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased,
and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the
steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying
finished and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was
making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions;
and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still treetops