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may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from
the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush; the
shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out
sharply then silence, in which the languid beat of the
stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard
a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink
pyjamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway.
The manager sends me he began in an official tone,
and stopped short. Good God! he said, glaring at the
wounded man.
We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and
inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as
though he would presently put to us some questions in an
understandable language; but he died without uttering a
sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a
muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though in
response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper
we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown
gave to his black death-mask an inconeivably sombre,
brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of
inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. Can
you steer? I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very
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dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood
at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you
the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and
socks. He is dead, murmured the fellow, immensely
impressed. No doubt about it, said I, tugging like mad at
the shoe-laces. And by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is
dead as well by this time.
For the moment that was the dominant thought.
There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as though I
had found out I had been striving after something
altogether without a substance. I couldn t have been more
disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose
of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with & I flung one
shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly
what I had been looking forward to a talk with Kurtz. I
made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him
as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn t say to
myself, Now I will never see him, or Now I will never
shake him by the hand, but, Now I will never hear him.
The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I
did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn t I
been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that
he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory
than all the other agents together? That was not the point.
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The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all
his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried
with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his
words the gift of expression, the bewildering, the
illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible,
the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the
heart of an impenetrable darkness.
The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that
river. I thought, By Jove! it s all over. We are too late; he
has vanished the gift has vanished, by means of some
spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak
after all and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of
emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling
sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn t have felt
more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of
a belief or had missed my destiny in life. & Why do you
sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd.
Good Lord! mustn t a man ever Here, give me some
tobacco. &
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match
flared, and Marlow s lean face appeared, worn, hollow,
with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect
of concentrated attention; and as he took vigorous draws
at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the
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night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went
out.
Absurd! he cried. This is the worst of trying to tell.
& Here you all are, each moored with two good
addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round
one corner, a policeman round another, excellent
appetites, and temperature normal you hear normal
from year s end to year s end. And you say, Absurd!
Absurd be exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can
you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had
just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of
it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole,
proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of
having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the
gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was
waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough. And I
was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a
voice. And I heard him it this voice other voices
all of them were so little more than voices and the
memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable,
like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly,
atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any
kind of sense. Voices, voices even the girl herself
now
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He was silent for a long time.
I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie, he began,
suddenly. Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is
out of it completely. They the women, I mean are
out of it should be out of it. We must help them to stay
in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.
Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the
disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, My Intended. You
would have perceived directly then how completely she
was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz!
They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this
ah specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had
patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball
an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and lo! he had
withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got
into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its
own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish
initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite.
Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old
mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there
was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground
in the whole country. Mostly fossil, the manager had
remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am;
but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these
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niggers do bury the tusks sometimes but evidently they
couldn t bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted
Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it,
and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and
enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of
this favour had remained with him to the last. You should
have heard him say, My ivory. Oh, yes, I heard him. My
Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my
everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath
in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a
prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars
in their places. Everything belonged to him but that was
a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how
many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That
was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was
impossible it was not good for one either trying to
imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of
the land I mean literally. You can t understand. How
could you? with solid pavement under your feet,
surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to
fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and
the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows
and lunatic asylums how can you imagine what
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