I never made a note of a fact,of an impression or of an anecdote in my life.The conception of a planned book was entirely outside my mental range when I sat down to write;the ambition of being an author had never turned up amongst these gracious imaginary existences one creates fondly for oneself at times in the stillness and immobility of a day-dream:yet it stands clear as the sun at noonday that from the moment I had done blackening over the first manu page of "Almayer's Folly"(it contained about two hundred words and this proportion of words to a page has remained with me through the fifteen years of my writing life),from the moment I had,in the simplicity of my heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind,written that page the die was cast.Never had Rubicon been more blindly forded,without invocation to the gods,without fear of men.
That morning I got up from my breakfast,pushing the chair back,and rang the bell violently,or perhaps I should say resolutely,or perhaps I should say eagerly,I do not know.But manifestly it must have been a special ring of the bell,a common sound made impressive,like the ringing of a bell for the raising of the curtain upon a new scene.It was an unusual thing for me to do.
Generally,I dawdled over my breakfast and I solemn took the trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away;but on that morning for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness of the event I did not dawdle.And yet I was not in a hurry.I pulled the cord casually and while the faint tinkling somewhere down in the basement went on,I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the matchbox with glances distraught indeed but exhibiting,I am ready to swear,no signs of a fine frenzy.I was composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the matchbox lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose.And all this was beautifully and safely usual.Before I had thrown down the match my landlady's daughter appeared with her calm,pale face and an inquisitive look,in the doorway.Of late it was the landlady's daughter who answered my bell.I mention this little fact with pride,because it proves that during the thirty or forty days of my tenancy I had produced a favourable impression.For a fortnight past I had been spared the unattractive sight of the domestic slave.The girls in that Bessborough Gardens house were often changed,but whether short or long,fair or dark,they were always untidy and particularly bedraggled as if in a sordid version of the fairy tale the ashbin cat had been changed into a maid.I was infinitely sensible of the privilege of being waited on by my landlady's daughter.She was neat if anaemic.
"Will you please clear away all this at once?"I addressed her in convulsive accents,being at the same time engaged in getting my pipe to draw.This,I admit,was an unusual request.Generally on getting up from breakfast I would sit down in the window with a book and let them clear the table when they liked;but if you think that on that morning I was in the least impatient,you are mistaken.I remember that I was perfectly calm.As a matter of fact I was not at all certain that I wanted to write,or that I meant to write,or that I had anything to write about.No,I was not impatient.I lounged between the mantelpiece and the window,not even consciously waiting for the table to be cleared.It was ten to one that before my landlady's daughter was done I would pick up a book and sit down with it all the morning in a spirit of enjoyable indolence.I affirm it with assurance,and I don't even know now what were the books then lying about the room.
Whatever they were they were not the works of great masters,where the secret of clear thought and exact expression can be found.Since the age of five I have been a great reader,as is not perhaps wonderful in a child who was never aware of learning to read.At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics.I had read in Polish and in French,history,voyages,novels;I knew "Gil Blas"and "Don Quixote"in abridged editions;I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets,but I cannot say what I read on the evening before I began to write myself.I believe it was a novel and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquaintance with him was then very recent.
He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English.With men of European reputation,with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray,it was otherwise.My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby."It is extraordinary how well Mrs.Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish and the sinister Ralph rage in that language.As to the Crummles family and the family of the learned Squeers it seemed as natural to them as their native speech.It was,I have no doubt,an excellent translation.This must have been in the year '70.But I really believe that I am wrong.That book was not my first introduction to English literature.My first acquaintance was (or were)the "Two Gentlemen of Verona,"and that in the very MS.of my father's translation.It was during our exile in Russia,and it must have been less than a year after my mother's death,because I remember myself in the black blouse with a white border of my heavy mourning.We were living together,quite alone,in a small house on the outskirts of the town of T--.That afternoon,instead of going out to play in the large yard which we shared with our landlord,I had lingered in the room in which my father generally wrote.What emboldened me to clamber into his chair I am sure I don't know,but a couple of hours afterwards he discovered me kneeling in it with my elbows on the table and my head held in both hands over the MS.of loose pages.I was greatly confused,expecting to get into trouble.He stood in the doorway looking at me with some surprise,but the only thing he said after a moment of silence was:
"Read the page aloud."
Luckily the page lying before me was not overblotted with erasures and corrections,and my father's handwriting was otherwise extremely legible.When I got to the end he nodded and I flew out of doors thinking myself lucky to have escaped reproof for that piece of impulsive audacity.I have tried to discover since the reason of this mildness,and I imagine that all unknown to myself I had earned,in my father's mind,the right to some latitude in my relations with his writing-table.It was only a month before,or perhaps it was only a week before,that I had read to him aloud from beginning to end,and to his perfect satisfaction,as he lay on his bed,not being very well at the time,the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea."Such was my title to consideration,I believe,and also my first introduction to the sea in literature.If I do not remember where,how and when I learned to read,I am not likely to forget the process of being trained in the art of reading aloud.My poor father,an admirable reader himself,was the most exacting of masters.I reflect proudly that I must have read that page of "Two Gentlemen of Verona"tolerably well at the age of eight.The next time I met them was in a 5s.one-volume edition of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare,read in Falmouth,at odd moments of the day,to the noisy accompaniment of caulkers'mallets driving oakum into the deck-seams of a ship in dry dock.We had run in,in a sinking condition and with the crew refusing duty after a month of weary battling with the gales of the North Atlantic.Books are an integral part of one's life and my Shakespearean associations are with that first year of our bereavement,the last I spent with my father in exile (he sent me away to Poland to my mother's brother directly he could brace himself up for the separation),and with the year of hard gales,the year in which I came nearest to death at sea,first by water and then by fire.
Those things I remember,but what I was reading the day before my writing life began I have forgotten.I have only a vague notion that it might have been one of Trollope's political novels.And I remember,too,the character of the day.It was an autumn day with an opaline atmosphere,a veiled,semi-opaque,lustrous day,with fiery points and flashes of red sunlight on the roofs and windows opposite,while the trees of the square with all their leaves gone were like tracings of indian ink on a sheet of tissue paper.It was one of those London days that have the charm of mysterious amenity,of fascinating softness.The effect of opaline mist was often repeated at Bessborough Gardens on account of the nearness to the river.
There is no reason why I should remember that effect more on that day than on any other day,except that I stood for a long time looking out of the window after the landlady's daughter was gone with her spoil of cups and saucers.I heard her put the tray down in the passage and finally shut the door;and still I remained smoking with my back to the room.It is very clear that I was in no haste to take the plunge into my writing life,if as plunge this first attempt may be described.My whole being was steeped deep in the indolence of a sailor away from the sea,the scene of never-ending labour and of unceasing duty.For utter surrender to indolence you cannot beat a sailor ashore when that mood is on him,the mood of absolute irresponsibility tasted to the full.It seems to me that I thought of nothing whatever,but this is an impression which is hardly to be believed at this distance of years.What I am certain of is,that I was very far from thinking of writing a story,though it is possible and even likely that I was thinking of the man Almayer.
I had seen him for the first time some four years before from the bridge of a steamer moored to a rickety little wharf forty miles up,more or less,a Bornean river.It was very early morning and a slight mist,an opaline mist as in Bessborough Gardens only without the fiery flicks on roof and chimney-pot from the rays of the red London sun,promised to turn presently into a woolly fog.
Barring a small dug-out canoe on the river there was nothing moving within sight.I had just come up yawning from my cabin.
The serang and the Malay crew were overhauling the cargo chains and trying the winches;their voices sounded subdued on the deck below and their movements were languid.That tropical daybreak was chilly.The Malay quartermaster,coming up to get something from the lockers on the bridge,shivered visibly.The forests above and below and on the opposite bank looked black and dank;wet dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched deck awnings,and it was in the middle of a shuddering yawn that I caught sight of Almayer.He was moving across a patch of burnt grass,a blurred shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house behind him,a low house of mats,bamboos and palm-leaves with a high-pitched roof of grass.
He stepped upon the jetty.He was clad simply in flapping pyjamas of cretonne pattern (enormous flowers with yellow petals on a disagreeable blue ground)and a thin cotton singlet with short sleeves.His arms,bare to the elbow,were crossed on his chest.His black hair looked as if it had not been cut for a very long time and a curly wisp of it strayed across his forehead.I had heard of him at Singapore;I had heard of him on board;I had heard of him early in the morning and late at night;I had heard of him at tiffin and at dinner;I had heard of him in a place called Pulo Laut from a half-caste gentleman there,who described himself as the manager of a coal-mine;which sounded civilised and progressive till you heard that the mine could not be worked at present because it was haunted by some particulary atrocious ghosts.I had heard of him in a place called Dongola,in the Island of Celebes,when the Rajah of that little-known seaport (you can get no anchorage there in less than fifteen fathom,which is extremely inconvenient)came on board in a friendly way with only two attendants,and drank bottle after bottle of soda-water on the after-skylight with my good friend and commander,Captain C--.At least I heard his name distinctly pronounced several times in a lot of talk in Malay language.Oh yes,I heard it quite distinctly--Almayer,Almayer--and saw Captain C--smile while the fat dingy Rajah laughed audibly.To hear a Malay Rajah laugh outright is a rare experience I can assure you.And I overhead more of Almayer's name amongst our deck passengers (mostly wandering traders of good repute)as they sat all over the ship--each man fenced round with bundles and boxes--on mats,on pillows,on quilts,on billets of wood,conversing of Island affairs.Upon my word,I heard the mutter of Almayer's name faintly at midnight,while making my way aft from the bridge to look at the patent taffrail-log tinkling its quarter-miles in the great silence of the sea.I don't mean to say that our passengers dreamed aloud of Almayer,but it is indubitable that two of them at least,who could not sleep apparently and were trying to charm away the trouble of insomnia by a little whispered talk at that ghostly hour,were referring in some way or other to Almayer.It was really impossible on board that ship to get away definitely from Almayer;and a very small pony tied up forward and whisking its tail inside the galley,to the great embarrassment of our Chinaman cook,was destined for Almayer.What he wanted with a pony goodness only knows,since I am perfectly certain he could not ride it;but here you have the man,ambitious,aiming at the grandiose,importing a pony,whereas in the whole settlement at which he used to shake daily his impotent fist,there was only one path that was practicable for a pony:a quarter of a mile at most,hedged in by hundreds of square leagues of virgin forest.But who knows?The importation of that Bali Pony might have been part of some deep scheme,of some diplomatic plan,of some hopeful intrigue.With Almayer one could never tell.He governed his conduct by considerations removed from the obvious,by incredible assumptions,which rendered his logic impenetrable to any reasonable person.I learned all this later.That morning seeing the figure in pyjamas moving in the mist I said to myself:"That's the man."He came quite close to the ship's side and raised a harassed countenance,round and flat,with that curl of black hair over the forehead and a heavy,pained glance.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
He looked hard at me:I was a new face,having just replaced the chief mate he was accustomed to see;and I think that this novelty inspired him,as things generally did,with deep-seated mistrust.
"Didn't expect you in till this evening,"he remarked suspiciously.
I don't know why he should have been aggrieved,but he seemed to be.I took pains to explain to him that having picked up the beacon at the mouth of the river just before dark and the tide serving,Captain C--was enabled to cross the bar and there was nothing to prevent him going up river at night.
"Captain C--knows this river like his own pocket,"I concluded discursively,trying to get on terms.
"Better,"said Almayer.
Leaning over the rail of the bridge I looked at Almayer,who looked down at the wharf in aggrieved thought.He shuffled his feet a little;he wore straw slippers with thick soles.The morning fog had thickened considerably.Everything round us dripped:the derricks,the rails,every single rope in the ship--as if a fit of crying had come upon the universe.
Almayer again raised his head and in the accents of a man accustomed to the buffets of evil fortune asked hardly audibly:
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?"I told him almost in a whisper,for he attuned my communications to his minor key,that we had such a thing as a pony,and Ihinted,as gently as I could,that he was confoundedly in the way too.I was very anxious to have him landed before I began to handle the cargo.Almayer remained looking up at me for a long while with incredulous and melancholy eyes as though it were not a safe thing to believe my statement.This pathetic mistrust in the favourable issue of any sort of affair touched me deeply,and I added:
"He doesn't seem a bit the worse for the passage.He's a nice pony too."Almayer was not to be cheered up;for all answer he cleared his throat and looked down again at his feet.I tried to close with him on another tack.
"By Jove!"I said."Aren't you afraid of catching pneumonia or bronchitis or something,walking about in a singlet in such a wet fog?"He was not to be propitiated by a show of interest in his health.
His answer was a sinister "No fear,"as much as to say that even that way of escape from inclement fortune was closed to him.
"I just came down."he mumbled after a while.
"Well then,now you're here I will land that pony for you at once and you can lead him home.I really don't want him on deck.
He's in the way."
Almayer seemed doubtful.I insisted:
"Why,I will just swing him out and land him on the wharf right in front of you.I'd much rather do it before the hatches are off.The little devil may jump down the hold or do some other deadly thing.""There's a halter?"postulated Almayer.
"Yes,of course there's a halter."And without waiting any more I leaned over the bridge rail.
"Serang,land Tuan Almayer's pony."
The cook hastened to shut the door of the galley and a moment later a great scuffle began on deck.The pony kicked with extreme energy,the kalashes skipped out of the way,the serang issued many orders in a cracked voice.Suddenly the pony leaped upon the fore-hatch.His little hoofs thundered tremendously;he plunged and reared.He had tossed his mane and his forelock into a state of amazing wildness,he dilated his nostrils,bits of foam flecked his broad little chest,his eyes blazed.He was something under eleven hands;he was fierce,terrible,angry,warlike,he said ha!ha!distinctly,he raged and thumped--and sixteen able-bodied kalashes stood round him like disconcerted nurses round a spoilt and passionate child.He whisked his tail incessantly;he arched his pretty neck;he was perfectly delightful;he was charmingly naughty.There was not an atom of vice in that performance;no savage baring of teeth and lying back of ears.On the contrary,he pricked them forward in a comically aggressive manner.He was totally unmoral and lovable;I would have liked to give him bread,sugar,carrots.But life is a stern thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide.So I steeled my heart and from my elevated position on the bridge Iordered the men to fling themselves upon him in a body.
The elderly serang,emitting a strange inarticulate cry,gave the example.He was an excellent petty officer--very competent indeed,and a moderate opium smoker.The rest of them in one great rush smothered that pony.They hung on to his ears,to his mane,to his tail;they lay in piles across his back,seventeen in all.The carpenter,seizing the hook of the cargo-chain,flung himself on top of them.A very satisfactory petty officer too,but he stuttered.Have you ever heard a light-yellow,lean,sad,earnest Chinaman stutter in pidgin-English?It's very weird indeed.He made the eighteenth.I could not see the pony at all;but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that there was something alive inside.
From the wharf Almayer hailed in quavering tones:
"Oh,I say!"
Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck unless perhaps the tops of the men's heads;he could only hear the scuffle,the mighty thuds,as if the ship were being knocked to pieces.I looked over:"What is it?""Don't let them break his legs,"he entreated me plaintively.
"Oh,nonsense!He's all right now.He can't move."By that time the cargo-chain had been hooked to the broad canvas belt round the pony's body,the kalashes sprang off simultaneously in all directions,rolling over each other,and the worthy serang,making a dash behind the winch,turned the steam on.
"Steady!"I yelled,in great apprehension of seeing the animal snatched up to the very head of the derrick.
On the wharf Almayer shuffled his straw slippers uneasily.The rattle of the winch stopped,and in a tense,impressive silence that pony began to swing across the deck.
How limp he was!Directly he felt himself in the air he relaxed every muscle in a most wonderful manner.His four hoofs knocked together in a bunch,his head hung down,and his tail remained pendent in a nerveless and absolute immobility.He reminded me vividly of the pathetic little sheep which hangs on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.I had no idea that anything in the shape of a horse could be so limp as that,either living or dead.His wild mane hung down lumpily,a mere mass of inanimate horsehair;his aggressive ears had collapsed,but as he went swaying slowly across the front of the bridge I noticed an astute gleam in his dreamy,half-closed eye.A trustworthy quartermaster,his glance anxious and his mouth on the broad grin,was easing over the derrick watchfully.I superintended,greatly interested.
"So!That will do."
The derrick-head stopped.The kalashes lined the rail.The rope of the halter hung perpendicular and motionless like a bell-pull in front of Almayer.Everything was very still.I suggested amicably that he should catch hold of the rope and mind what he was about.He extended a provokingly casual and superior hand.
"Look out then!Lower away!"
Almayer gathered in the rope intelligently enough,but when the pony's hoofs touched the wharf he gave way all at once to a most foolish optimism.Without pausing,without thinking,almost without looking,he disengaged the hook suddenly from the sling,and the cargo-chain,after hitting the pony's quarters,swung back against the ship's side with a noisy,rattling slap.Isuppose I must have blinked.I know I missed something,because the next thing I saw was Almayer lying flat on his back on the jetty.He was alone.
Astonishment deprived me of speech long enough to give Almayer time to pick himself up in a leisurely and painful manner.The kalashes lining the rail had all their mouths open.The mist flew in the light breeze,and it had come over quite thick enough to hide the shore completely.
"How on earth did you manage to let him get away?"I asked scandalised.
Almayer looked into the smarting palm of his right hand,but did not answer my inquiry.
"Where do you think he will get to?"I cried."Are there any fences anywhere in this fog?Can he bolt into the forest?
What's to be done now?"
Almayer shrugged his shoulders.
"Some of my men are sure to be about.They will get hold of him sooner or later.""Sooner or later!That's all very fine,but what about my canvas sling--he's carried it off.I want it now,at once,to land two Celebes cows."Since Dongola we had on board a pair of the pretty little island cattle in addition to the pony.Tied up on the other side of the fore deck they had been whisking their tails into the other door of the galley.These cows were not for Almayer,however;they were invoiced to Abdullah bin Selim,his enemy.Almayer's disregard of my requisites was complete.
"If I were you I would try to find out where he's gone,"I insisted."Hadn't you better call your men together or something?He will throw himself down and cut his knees.He may even break a leg,you know."But Almayer,plunged in abstracted thought,did not seem to want that pony any more.Amazed at this sudden indifference I turned all hands out on shore to hunt for him on my own account,or,at any rate,to hunt for the canvas sling which he had round his body.The whole crew of the steamer,with the exception of firemen and engineers,rushed up the jetty past the thoughtful Almayer and vanished from my sight.The white fog swallowed them up;and again there was a deep silence that seemed to extend for miles up and down the stream.Still taciturn,Almayer started to climb on board,and I went down from the bridge to meet him on the after deck.
"Would you mind telling the captain that I want to see him very particularly?"he asked me in a low tone,letting his eyes stray all over the place.
"Very well.I will go and see."
With the door of his cabin wide open Captain C--,just back from the bathroom,big and broad-chested,was brushing his thick,damp,iron-grey hair with two large brushes.
"Mr.Almayer told me he wanted to see you very particularly,sir."Saying these words I smiled.I don't know why I smiled except that it seemed absolutely impossible to mention Almayer's name without a smile of a sort.It had not to be necessarily a mirthful smile.Turning his head towards me Captain C--smiled too,rather joylessly.
"The pony got away from him--eh?"
"Yes sir.He did."
"Where is he?"
"Goodness only knows."
"No.I mean Almayer.Let him come along."
The captain's stateroom opening straight on deck under the bridge,I had only to beckon from the doorway to Almayer,who had remained aft,with downcast eyes,on the very spot where I had left him.He strolled up moodily,shook hands and at once asked permission to shut the cabin door.
"I have a pretty story to tell you,"were the last words I heard.
The bitterness of tone was remarkable.
I went away from the door,of course.For the moment I had no crew on board;only the Chinaman carpenter,with a canvas bag hung round his neck and a hammer in his hand,roamed about the empty decks knocking out the wedges of the hatches and dropping them into the bag conscientiously.Having nothing to do I joined our two engineers at the door of the engine-room.It was near breakfast time.
