Falk

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FALK

A REMINISCENCE


By Joseph Conrad



Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in
a small river-hostelry not more than thirty miles from London, and less
than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting
men give the grandiose name of "German Ocean." And through the wide
windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower
Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the
eyes.

That flavour of salt-water which for so many of us had been the very
water of life permeated our talk. He who hath known the bitterness of
the Ocean shall have its taste forever in his mouth. But one or two
of us, pampered by the life of the land, complained of hunger. It was
impossible to swallow any of that stuff. And indeed there was a strange
mustiness in everything. The wooden dining-room stuck out over the mud
of the shore like a lacustrine dwelling; the planks of the floor seemed
rotten; a decrepit old waiter tottered pathetically to and fro before
an antediluvian and worm-eaten sideboard; the chipped plates might have
been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and
the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to
one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first
rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh
at a fire of sticks in the company of other good fellows; then, gorged
and happy, sat him back among the gnawed bones to tell his artless tales
of experience--the tales of hunger and hunt--and of women, perhaps!

But luckily the wine happened to be as old as the waiter. So,
comparatively empty, but upon the whole fairly happy, we sat back and
told our artless tales. We talked of the sea and all its works. The
sea never changes, and its works for all the talk of men are wrapped in
mystery. But we agreed that the times were changed. And we talked of old
ships, of sea-accidents, of break-downs, dismastings; and of a man who
brought his ship safe to Liverpool all the way from the River Platte
under a jury rudder. We talked of wrecks, of short rations and of
heroism--or at least of what the newspapers would have called heroism
at sea--a manifestation of virtues quite different from the heroism of
primitive times. And now and then falling silent all together we gazed
at the sights of the river.

A P. & O. boat passed bound down. "One gets jolly good dinners on board
these ships," remarked one of our band. A man with sharp eyes read
out the name on her bows: Arcadia. "What a beautiful model of a ship!"
murmured some of us. She was followed by a small cargo steamer, and the
flag they hauled down aboard while we were looking showed her to be a
Norwegian. She made an awful lot of smoke; and before it had quite blown
away, a high-sided, short, wooden barque, in ballast and towed by a
paddle-tug, appeared in front of the windows. All her hands were forward
busy setting up the headgear; and aft a woman in a red hood, quite alone
with the man at the wheel, paced the length of the poop back and forth,
with the grey wool of some knitting work in her hands.

"German I should think," muttered one. "The skipper has his wife on
board," remarked another; and the light of the crimson sunset all
ablaze behind the London smoke, throwing a glow of Bengal light upon the
barque's spars, faded away from the Hope Reach.

Then one of us, who had not spoken before, a man of over fifty, that had
commanded ships for a quarter of a century, looking after the barque now
gliding far away, all black on the lustre of the river, said:

This reminds me of an absurd episode in my life, now many years ago,
when I got first the command of an iron barque, loading then in a
certain Eastern seaport. It was also the capital of an Eastern kingdom,
lying up a river as might be London lies up this old Thames of ours.
No more need be said of the place; for this sort of thing might have
happened anywhere where there are ships, skippers, tugboats, and orphan
nieces of indescribable splendour. And the absurdity of the episode
concerns only me, my enemy Falk, and my friend Hermann.

There seemed to be something like peculiar emphasis on the words "My
friend Hermann," which caused one of us (for we had just been speaking
of heroism at sea) to say idly and nonchalantly:

"And was this Hermann a hero?"

Not at all, said our grizzled friend. No hero at all. He was a
Schiff-fuhrer: Ship-conductor. That's how they call a Master Mariner
in Germany. I prefer our way. The alliteration is good, and there is
something in the nomenclature that gives to us as a body the sense
of corporate existence: Apprentice, Mate, Master, in the ancient and
honourable craft of the sea. As to my friend Hermann, he might have
been a consummate master of the honourable craft, but he was called
officially Schiff-fuhrer, and had the simple, heavy appearance of a
well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured shrewdness of a small
shopkeeper. With his shaven chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did
not look like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the sea.
Still, he toiled upon the seas, in his own way, much as a shopkeeper
works behind his counter. And his ship was the means by which he
maintained his growing family.

She was a heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of
primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there
were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The
extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel
made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But
the four stern ports of her cabin, glazed with six little greenish panes
each, and framed in wooden sashes painted brown, might have been the
windows of a cottage in the country. The tiny white curtains and the
greenery of flower pots behind the glass completed the resemblance. On
one or two occasions when passing under stern I had detected from my
boat a round arm in the act of tilting a watering pot, and the bowed
sleek head of a maiden whom I shall always call Hermann's niece, because
as a matter of fact I've never heard her name, for all my intimacy with
the family.

This, however, sprang up later on. Meantime in common with the rest
of the shipping in that Eastern port, I was left in no doubt as to
Hermann's notions of hygienic clothing. Evidently he believed in
wearing good stout flannel next his skin. On most days little frocks and
pinafores could be seen drying in the mizzen rigging of his ship, or
a tiny row of socks fluttering on the signal halyards; but once a
fortnight the family washing was exhibited in force. It covered the
poop entirely. The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby
activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions
of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved
at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with
collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments that, taking
the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for
a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible
bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance
by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen mast.

She had her berth just ahead of me, and her name was Diana,--Diana not
of Ephesus but of Bremen. This was proclaimed in white letters a foot
long spaced widely across the stern (somewhat like the lettering of a
shop-sign) under the cottage windows. This ridiculously unsuitable name
struck one as an impertinence towards the memory of the most charming
of goddesses; for, apart from the fact that the old craft was physically
incapable of engaging in any sort of chase, there was a gang of four
children belonging to her. They peeped over the rail at passing boats
and occasionally dropped various objects into them. Thus, sometime
before I knew Hermann to speak to, I received on my hat a horrid
rag-doll belonging to Hermann's eldest daughter. However, these
youngsters were upon the whole well behaved. They had fair heads, round
eyes, round little knobby noses, and they resembled their father a good
deal.

This Diana of Bremen was a most innocent old ship, and seemed to know
nothing of the wicked sea, as there are on shore households that know
nothing of the corrupt world. And the sentiments she suggested were
unexceptionable and mainly of a domestic order. She was a home. All
these dear children had learned to walk on her roomy quarter-deck. In
such thoughts there is something pretty, even touching. Their teeth, I
should judge, they had cut on the ends of her running gear. I have
many times observed the baby Hermann (Nicholas) engaged in gnawing the
whipping of the fore-royal brace. Nicholas' favourite place of residence
was under the main fife-rail. Directly he was let loose he would
crawl off there, and the first seaman who came along would bring him,
carefully held aloft in tarry hands, back to the cabin door. I fancy
there must have been a standing order to that effect. In the course of
these transportations the baby, who was the only peppery person in the
ship, tried to smite these stalwart young German sailors on the face.

Mrs. Hermann, an engaging, stout housewife, wore on board baggy blue
dresses with white dots. When, as happened once or twice I caught her at
an elegant little wash-tub rubbing hard on white collars, baby's socks,
and Hermann's summer neckties, she would blush in girlish confusion, and
raising her wet hands greet me from afar with many friendly nods. Her
sleeves would be rolled up to the elbows, and the gold hoop of her
wedding ring glittered among the soapsuds. Her voice was pleasant, she
had a serene brow, smooth bands of very fair hair, and a good-humoured
expression of the eyes. She was motherly and moderately talkative. When
this simple matron smiled, youthful dimples broke out on her fresh broad
cheeks. Hermann's niece on the other hand, an orphan and very silent, I
never saw attempt a smile. This, however, was not gloom on her part but
the restraint of youthful gravity.

They had carried her about with them for the last three years, to help
with the children and be company for Mrs. Hermann, as Hermann mentioned
once to me. It had been very necessary while they were all little, he
had added in a vexed manner. It was her arm and her sleek head that
I had glimpsed one morning, through the stern-windows of the cabin,
hovering over the pots of fuchsias and mignonette; but the first time I
beheld her full length I surrendered to her proportions. They fix her
in my mind, as great beauty, great intelligence, quickness of wit
or kindness of heart might have made some her other woman equally
memorable.

With her it was form and size. It was her physical personality that had
this imposing charm. She might have been witty, intelligent, and kind to
an exceptional degree. I don't know, and this is not to the point. All
I know is that she was built on a magnificent scale. Built is the only
word. She was constructed, she was erected, as it were, with a regal
lavishness. It staggered you to see this reckless expenditure of
material upon a chit of a girl. She was youthful and also perfectly
mature, as though she had been some fortunate immortal. She was heavy
too, perhaps, but that's nothing. It only added to that notion of
permanence. She was barely nineteen. But such shoulders! Such round
arms! Such a shadowing forth of mighty limbs when with three long
strides she pounced across the deck upon the overturned Nicholas--it's
perfectly indescribable! She seemed a good, quiet girl, vigilant as
to Lena's needs, Gustav's tumbles, the state of Carl's dear little
nose--conscientious, hardworking, and all that. But what magnificent
hair she had! Abundant, long, thick, of a tawny colour. It had the sheen
of precious metals. She wore it plaited tightly into one single tress
hanging girlishly down her back and its end reached down to her waist.
The massiveness of it surprised you. On my word it reminded one of a
club. Her face was big, comely, of an unruffled expression. She had a
good complexion, and her blue eyes were so pale that she appeared to
look at the world with the empty white candour of a statue. You could
not call her good-looking. It was something much more impressive.
The simplicity of her apparel, the opulence of her form, her imposing
stature, and the extraordinary sense of vigorous life that seemed to
emanate from her like a perfume exhaled by a flower, made her beautiful
with a beauty of a rustic and olympian order. To watch her reaching up
to the clothes-line with both arms raised high above her head, caused
you to fall a musing in a strain of pagan piety. Excellent Mrs.
Hermann's baggy cotton gowns had some sort of rudimentary frills at neck
and bottom, but this girl's print frocks hadn't even a wrinkle; nothing
but a few straight folds in the skirt falling to her feet, and these,
when she stood still, had a severe and statuesque quality. She was
inclined naturally to be still whether sitting or standing. However, I
don't mean to say she was statuesque. She was too generously alive; but
she could have stood for an allegoric statue of the Earth. I don't mean
the worn-out earth of our possession, but a young Earth, a virginal
planet undisturbed by the vision of a future teeming with the monstrous
forms of life and death, clamorous with the cruel battles of hunger and
thought.

The worthy Hermann himself was not very entertaining, though his English
was fairly comprehensible. Mrs. Hermann, who always let off one speech
at least at me in an hospitable, cordial tone (and in Platt-Deutsch I
suppose) I could not understand. As to their niece, however satisfactory
to look upon (and she inspired you somehow with a hopeful view as to
the prospects of mankind) she was a modest and silent presence, mostly
engaged in sewing, only now and then, as I observed, falling over that
work into a state of maidenly meditation. Her aunt sat opposite her,
sewing also, with her feet propped on a wooden footstool. On the other
side of the deck Hermann and I would get a couple of chairs out of the
cabin and settle down to a smoking match, accompanied at long intervals
by the pacific exchange of a few words. I came nearly every evening.
Hermann I would find in his shirt sleeves. As soon as he returned from
the shore on board his ship he commenced operations by taking off his
coat; then he put on his head an embroidered round cap with a tassel,
and changed his boots for a pair of cloth slippers. Afterwards he smoked
at the cabin-door, looking at his children with an air of civic virtue,
till they got caught one after another and put to bed in various
staterooms. Lastly, we would drink some beer in the cabin, which
was furnished with a wooden table on cross legs, and with black
straight-backed chairs--more like a farm kitchen than a ship's cuddy.
The sea and all nautical affairs seemed very far removed from the
hospitality of this exemplary family.

And I liked this because I had a rather worrying time on board my own
ship. I had been appointed ex-officio by the British Consul to take
charge of her after a man who had died suddenly, leaving for the
guidance of his successor some suspiciously unreceipted bills, a few
dry-dock estimates hinting at bribery, and a quantity of vouchers for
three years' extravagant expenditure; all these mixed up together in a
dusty old violin-case lined with ruby velvet. I found besides a large
account-book, which, when opened, hopefully turned out to my infinite
consternation to be filled with verses--page after page of rhymed
doggerel of a jovial and improper character, written in the neatest
minute hand I ever did see. In the same fiddle-case a photograph of my
predecessor, taken lately in Saigon, represented in front of a garden
view, and in company of a female in strange draperies, an elderly,
squat, rugged man of stern aspect in a clumsy suit of black broadcloth,
and with the hair brushed forward above the temples in a manner
reminding one of a boar's tusks. Of a fiddle, however, the only trace
on board was the case, its empty husk as it were; but of the two last
freights the ship had indubitably earned of late, there were not even
the husks left. It was impossible to say where all that money had gone
to. It wasn't on board. It had not been remitted home; for a letter
from the owners, preserved in a desk evidently by the merest accident,
complained mildly enough that they had not been favoured by a scratch
of the pen for the last eighteen months. There were next to no stores on
board, not an inch of spare rope or a yard of canvas. The ship had been
run bare, and I foresaw no end of difficulties before I could get her
ready for sea.

As I was young then--not thirty yet--I took myself and my troubles very
seriously. The old mate, who had acted as chief mourner at the captain's
funeral, was not particularly pleased at my coming. But the fact is the
fellow was not legally qualified for command, and the Consul was bound,
if at all possible, to put a properly certificated man on board. As to
the second mate, all I can say his name was Tottersen, or something like
that. His practice was to wear on his head, in that tropical climate, a
mangy fur cap. He was, without exception, the stupidest man I had ever
seen on board ship. And he looked it too. He looked so confoundedly
stupid that it was a matter of surprise for me when he answered to his
name.

I drew no great comfort from their company, to say the least of it;
while the prospect of making a long sea passage with those two fellows
was depressing. And my other thoughts in solitude could not be of a
gay complexion. The crew was sickly, the cargo was coming very slow; I
foresaw I would have lots of trouble with the charterers, and doubted
whether they would advance me enough money for the ship's expenses.
Their attitude towards me was unfriendly. Altogether I was not getting
on. I would discover at odd times (generally about midnight) that I
was totally inexperienced, greatly ignorant of business, and hopelessly
unfit for any sort of command; and when the steward had to be taken to
the hospital ill with choleraic symptoms I felt bereaved of the only
decent person at the after end of the ship. He was fully expected to
recover, but in the meantime had to be replaced by some sort of servant.
And on the recommendation of a certain Schomberg, the proprietor of the
smaller of the two hotels in the place, I engaged a Chinaman. Schomberg,
a brawny, hairy Alsatian, and an awful gossip, assured me that it was
all right. "First-class boy that. Came in the suite of his Excellency
Tseng the Commissioner--you know. His Excellency Tseng lodged with me
here for three weeks."

He mouthed the Chinese Excellency at me with great unction, though
the specimen of the "suite" did not seem very promising. At the time,
however, I did not know what an untrustworthy humbug Schomberg was. The
"boy" might have been forty or a hundred and forty for all you could
tell--one of those Chinamen of the death's-head type of face and
completely inscrutable. Before the end of the third day he had revealed
himself as a confirmed opium-smoker, a gambler, a most audacious thief,
and a first-class sprinter. When he departed at the top of his speed
with thirty-two golden sovereigns of my own hard-earned savings it was
the last straw. I had reserved that money in case my difficulties came
to the worst. Now it was gone I felt as poor and naked as a fakir. I
clung to my ship, for all the bother she caused me, but what I could not
bear were the long lonely evenings in her cuddy, where the atmosphere,
made smelly by a leaky lamp, was agitated by the snoring of the mate.
That fellow shut himself up in his stuffy cabin punctually at eight, and
made gross and revolting noises like a water-logged trump. It was odious
not to be able to worry oneself in comfort on board one's own ship.
Everything in this world, I reflected, even the command of a nice little
barque, may be made a delusion and a snare for the unwary spirit of
pride in man.

From such reflections I was glad to make any escape on board that Bremen
Diana. There apparently no whisper of the world's iniquities had ever
penetrated. And yet she lived upon the wide sea: and the sea tragic
and comic, the sea with its horrors and its peculiar scandals, the sea
peopled by men and ruled by iron necessity is indubitably a part of the
world. But that patriarchal old tub, like some saintly retreat, echoed
nothing of it. She was world proof. Her venerable innocence apparently
had put a restraint on the roaring lusts of the sea. And yet I have
known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An
elemental force is ruthlessly frank. It may, of course, have been
Hermann's skilful seamanship, but to me it looked as if the allied
oceans had refrained from smashing these high bulwarks, unshipping
the lumpy rudder, frightening the children, and generally opening this
family's eyes out of sheer reticence. It looked like reticence. The
ruthless disclosure was in the end left for a man to make; a man strong
and elemental enough and driven to unveil some secrets of the sea by the
power of a simple and elemental desire.

This, however, occurred much later, and meantime I took sanctuary in
that serene old ship early every evening. The only person on board that
seemed to be in trouble was little Lena, and in due course I perceived
that the health of the rag-doll was more than delicate. This object led
a sort of "in extremis" existence in a wooden box placed against the
starboard mooring-bitts, tended and nursed with the greatest sympathy
and care by all the children, who greatly enjoyed pulling long faces and
moving with hushed footsteps. Only the baby--Nicholas--looked on with a
cold, ruffianly leer, as if he had belonged to another tribe altogether.
Lena perpetually sorrowed over the box, and all of them were in deadly
earnest. It was wonderful the way these children would work up their
compassion for that bedraggled thing I wouldn't have touched with a pair
of tongs. I suppose they were exercising and developing their racial
sentimentalism by the means of that dummy. I was only surprised that
Mrs. Hermann let Lena cherish and hug that bundle of rags to that
extent, it was so disreputably and completely unclean. But Mrs. Hermann
would raise her fine womanly eyes from her needlework to look on with
amused sympathy, and did not seen to see it, somehow, that this
object of affection was a disgrace to the ship's purity. Purity, not
cleanliness, is the word. It was pushed so far that I seemed to detect
in this too a sentimental excess, as if dirt had been removed in
very love. It is impossible to give you an idea of such a meticulous
neatness. It was as if every morning that ship had been arduously
explored with--with toothbrushes. Her very bowsprit three times a week
had its toilette made with a cake of soap and a piece of soft flannel.
Arrayed--I _must_ say arrayed--arrayed artlessly in dazzling white paint
as to wood and dark green as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution
of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian
felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me
sometimes as an abominably real blot upon that ideal state.

I enjoyed it greatly, and on my part I brought a little mild excitement
into it. Our intimacy arose from the pursuit of that thief. It was in
the evening, and Hermann, who, contrary to his habits, had stayed on
shore late that day, was extricating himself backwards out of a little
gharry on the river bank, opposite his ship, when the hunt passed.
Realising the situation as though he had eyes in his shoulder-blades, he
joined us with a leap and took the lead. The Chinaman fled silent like
a rapid shadow on the dust of an extremely oriental road. I followed. A
long way in the rear my mate whooped like a savage. A young moon threw
a bashful light on a plain like a monstrous waste ground: the
architectural mass of a Buddhist temple far away projected itself
in dead black on the sky. We lost the thief of course; but in my
disappointment I had to admire Hermann's presence of mind. The velocity
that stodgy man developed in the interests of a complete stranger earned
my warm gratitude--there was something truly cordial in his exertions.

He seemed as vexed as myself at our failure, and would hardly listen to
my thanks. He said it was "nothings," and invited me on the spot to
come on board his ship and drink a glass of beer with him. We poked
sceptically for a while amongst the bushes, peered without conviction
into a ditch or two. There was not a sound: patches of slime glimmered
feebly amongst the reeds. Slowly we trudged back, drooping under the
thin sickle of the moon, and I heard him mutter to himself, "Himmel!
Zwei und dreissig Pfund!" He was impressed by the figure of my loss. For
a long time we had ceased to hear the mate's whoops and yells.