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Some Reminiscences-Part14_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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common civility, the talk and the smiles of the previous twenty

days, every condition of my existence at that moment and place



made irresistibly for acceptance; and, crowning all that, there

was the ignorance, the ignorance, I say, the fatal want of



foreknowledge to counter-balance these imperative conditions of

the problem. A refusal would have appeared perverse and insane.



Nobody unless a surly lunatic would have refused. But if I had

not got to know Almayer pretty well it is almost certain there



would never have been a line of mine in print.

I accepted then--and I am paying yet the price of my sanity. The



possessor of the only flock of geese on the East Coast is

responsible for the existence of some fourteen volumes, so far.



The number of geese he had called into being under adverse

climatic conditions was considerably more than fourteen. The



tale of volumes will never overtake the counting of heads, I am

safe to say; but my ambitions point not exactly that way, and



whatever the pangs the toil of writing has cost me I have always

thought kindly of Almayer.



I wonder, had he known anything of it, what his attitude would

have been? This is something not to be discovered in this world.



But if we ever meet in the Elysian Fields--where I cannot depict

him to myself otherwise than attended in the distance by his



flock of geese (birds sacred to Jupiter)--and he addresses me in

the stillness of that passionless region, neither light nor



darkness, neither sound nor silence, and heaving endlessly with

billowy mists from the impalpable multitudes of the swarming



dead, I think I know what answer to make.

I would say, after listening courteously to the unvibrating tone



of his measured remonstrances, which should not disturb, of

course, the solemneternity of stillness in the least--I would



say something like this:

"It is true, Almayer, that in the world below I have converted



your name to my own uses. But that is a very small larceny.

What's in a name, O Shade? If so much of your old mortal



weakness clings to you yet as to make you feel aggrieved (it was

the note of your earthly voice, Almayer), then, I entreat you,



seek speech without delay with our sublime fellow-Shade--with him

who, in his transientexistence as a poet, commented upon the



smell of the rose. He will comfort you. You came to me stripped

of all prestige by men's queer smiles and the disrespectful



chatter of every vagranttrader in the Islands. Your name was

the common property of the winds: it, as it were, floated naked



over the waters about the Equator. I wrapped round its

unhonoured form the royal mantle of the tropics and have essayed



to put into the hollow sound the very anguish of paternity--feats

which you did not demand from me--but remember that all the toil



and all the pain were mine. In your earthly life you haunted me,

Almayer. Consider that this was taking a great liberty. Since



you were always complaining of being lost to the world, you

should remember that if I had not believed enough in your



existence to let you haunt my rooms in Bessborough Gardens, you

would have been much more lost. You affirm that had I been



capable of looking at you with a more perfect detachment and a

greater simplicity, I might have perceived better the inward



marvellousness which, you insist, attended your career upon that

tiny pin-point of light, hardly visible far, far below us, where



both our graves lie. No doubt! But reflect, O complaining

Shade! that this was not so much my fault as your crowning



misfortune. I believed in you in the only way it was possible

for me to believe. It was not worthy of your merits? So be it.



But you were always an unlucky man, Almayer. Nothing was ever

quite worthy of you. What made you so real to me was that you



held this lofty theory with some force of conviction and with an

admirable consistency."



It is with some such words translated into the proper shadowy

expressions that I am prepared to placate Almayer in the Elysian



Abode of Shades, since it has come to pass that having parted

many years ago, we are never to meet again in this world.



Chapter V.




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