ALMAYER'S FOLLY: A STORY OF AN EASTERN RIVER
by Joseph Conrad
CHAPTER I.
"Kaspar! Makan!"
The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of
splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present
hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years,
and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be
an end to all this soon.
He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call.
Leaning with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah,
he went on looking fixedly at the great river that flowed-indifferent and hurried--before his eyes. He liked to look at it
about the time of sunset; perhaps because at that time the
sinking sun would spread a glowing gold tinge on the waters of
the Pantai, and Almayer's thoughts were often busy with gold;
gold he had failed to secure; gold the others had secured-dishonestly, of course--or gold he meant to secure yet, through
his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina. He absorbed
himself in his dream of wealth and power away from this coast
where he had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness
of toil and strife in the vision of a great and splendid reward.
They would live in Europe, he and his daughter. They would be
rich and respected. Nobody would think of her mixed blood in the
presence of her great beauty and of his immense wealth.
Witnessing her triumphs he would grow young again, he would
forget the twenty-five years of heart-breaking struggle on this
coast where he felt like a prisoner. All this was nearly within
his reach. Let only Dain return! And return soon he must--in
his own interest, for his own share. He was now more than a
week late! Perhaps he would return to-night. Such were Almayer's
thoughts as, standing on the verandah of his new but already
decaying house--that last failure of his life-- he looked on the
broad river. There was no tinge of gold on it this evening, for
it had been swollen by the rains, and rolled an angry and muddy
flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying small drift-wood and
big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees with branches and
foliage, amongst which the water swirled and roared angrily.
One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just
by the house, and Almayer, neglecting his dream, watched it with
languid interest. The tree swung slowly round, amid the hiss and
foam of the water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began
to move down stream again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a
long, denuded branch, like a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven
against the river's brutal and unnecessary violence. Almayer's
interest in the fate of that tree increased rapidly. He leaned
over to see if it would clear the low point below. It did; then
he drew back, thinking that now its course was free down to the
sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now growing
small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight
of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would
drift. Would the current carry it north or south? South,
probably, till it drifted in sight of Celebes, as far as
Macassar, perhaps!
Macassar! Almayer's quickened fancy distanced the tree on its
imaginary voyage, but his memory lagging behind some twenty years
or more in point of time saw a young and slim Almayer, clad all
in white and modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on
the dusty jetty of Macassar, coming to woo fortune in the godowns
of old Hudig. It was an important epoch in his life, the
beginning of a new existence for him. His father, a subordinate
official employed in the Botanical Gardens of Buitenzorg, was no
doubt delighted to place his son in such a firm. The young man
himself too was nothing loth to leave the poisonous shores of
Java, and the meagre comforts of the parental bungalow, where the
father grumbled all day at the stupidity of native gardeners, and
the mother from the depths of her long easy-chair bewailed the
lost glories of Amsterdam, where she had been brought up, and of
her position as the daughter of a cigar dealer there.
Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter
pocket, speaking English well, and strong in arithmetic; ready to
conquer the world, never doubting that he would.
After those twenty years, standing in the close and stifling heat
of a Bornean evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the
image of Hudig's lofty and cool warehouses with their long and
straight avenues of gin cases and bales of Manchester goods; the
big door swinging noiselessly; the dim light of the place, so
delightful after the glare of the streets; the little railed-off
spaces amongst piles of merchandise where the Chinese clerks,
neat, cool, and sad-eyed, wrote rapidly and in silence amidst the
din of the working gangs rolling casks or shifting cases to a
muttered song, ending with a desperate yell. At the upper end,
facing the great door, there was a larger space railed off, well
lighted; there the noise was subdued by distance, and above it
rose the soft and continuous clink of silver guilders which other
discreet Chinamen were counting and piling up under the
supervision of Mr. Vinck, the cashier, the genius presiding in
the place--the right hand of the Master.
In that clear space Almayer worked at his table not far from a
little green painted door, by which always stood a Malay in a red
sash and turban, and whose hand, holding a small string dangling
from above, moved up and down with the regularity of a machine.
The string worked a punkah on the other side of the green door,
where the so-called private office was, and where old Hudig--the
Master--sat enthroned, holding noisy receptions. Sometimes the
little door would fly open disclosing to the outer world, through
the bluish haze of tobacco smoke, a long table loaded with
bottles of various shapes and tall water-pitchers, rattan
easy-chairs occupied by noisy men in sprawling attitudes, while
the Master would put his head through and, holding by the handle,
would grunt confidentially to Vinck; perhaps send an order
thundering down the warehouse, or spy a hesitating stranger and
greet him with a friendly roar, "Welgome, Gapitan! ver' you gome
vrom? Bali, eh? Got bonies? I vant bonies! Vant all you got;
ha! ha! ha! Gome in!" Then the stranger was dragged in, in a
tempest of yells, the door was shut, and the usual noises
refilled the place; the song of the workmen, the rumble of
barrels, the scratch of rapid pens; while above all rose the
musical chink of broad silver pieces streaming ceaselessly
through the yellow fingers of the attentive Chinamen.
At that time Macassar was teeming with life and commerce. It was
the point in the islands where tended all those bold spirits who,
fitting out schooners on the Australian coast, invaded the Malay
Archipelago in search of money and adventure. Bold, reckless,
keen in business, not disinclined for a brush with the pirates
that were to be found on many a coast as yet, making money fast,
they used to have a general "rendezvous" in the bay for purposes
of trade and dissipation. The Dutch merchants called those men
English pedlars; some of them were undoubtedly gentlemen for whom
that kind of life had a charm; most were seamen; the acknowledged
king of them all was Tom Lingard, he whom the Malays, honest or
dishonest, quiet fishermen or desperate cut-throats, recognised
as "the Rajah-Laut"--the King of the Sea.
Almayer had heard of him before he had been three days in
Macassar, had heard the stories of his smart business
transactions, his loves, and also of his desperate fights with
the Sulu pirates, together with the romantic tale of some child-a girl--found in a piratical prau by the victorious Lingard,
when, after a long contest, he boarded the craft, driving the
crew overboard. This girl, it was generally known, Lingard had
adopted, was having her educated in some convent in Java, and
spoke of her as "my daughter." He had sworn a mighty oath to
marry her to a white man before he went home and to leave her all
his money. "And Captain Lingard has lots of money," would say
Mr. Vinck solemnly, with his head on one side, "lots of money;
more than Hudig!" And after a pause--just to let his hearers
recover from their astonishment at such an incredible assertion-he would add in an explanatory whisper, "You know, he has
discovered a river."
That was it! He had discovered a river! That was the ...
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