A boy in a red sarong greeted me at the gate and pressed the palms of his hands together. I did the same and followed him to the steps that led onto the veranda that circled the house. Moveable bamboo screens were mounted on a low railing, an invention of Viereck’s that allowed him to regulate the light and flow of air. The boy continued into the house and a moment later from the gloom at the far end of the veranda came Viereck’s deep voice.
“Jack. I am so glad you have come.”
He moved the screen nearest him and the light fell across his face, glinting on his silver spectacles and the polished wood of his peacock chair, an elaborate thing fashioned out of teak and inlaid with lighter-colored wood worked into intricate designs. He rose and came forward. As usual, he wore a loosely fitted white smock and white trousers rolled up above his ankles. He had aged since I’d last seen him a year after Jim’s death, when we had killed a few bottles of rice wine and he had muttered over and over, “it must be so, it must be so.” Yet with all the years on him he gave the impression of a mountain that could stand up to a deal more erosion. No goatee for Viereck, no neatly trimmed mustache, just a wild tangle of pure patriarchal white beard, luxuriously ragged but aggressive, a fierce assertion of aged masculinity. His long hair, thrown back, uncombed, was rather like a lion’s mane framing the thick spectacles magnifying his pale blue eyes. In the old days they usually had been pushed up on his forehead. Now they remained firmly on his nose. I said I was delighted to see him.
“An old man you see, no? But maybe more in the body than the mind.”
“I shouldn’t think otherwise,” I said as we shook hands.
“Ja? Well, come and sit. I will get us some cool water.”
He called a name and then led me over to some chairs in the far corner. I could see the valley’s rice terraces spread out like a contour map and a man, naked from the waist up, walking beside a buffalo.
“It’s good to sit here so far above everything,” he said. “It is very fine.”
We were interrupted by the boy carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses.
“From the stream,” Viereck said, “what the Americans call branch water. A little whisky might be good with it, don’t you think?”
I said that whisky generally improved everything. He removed a bottle from the sideboard—I had the impression that he was spending most of his time in that corner—and two ornate shot glasses.
“Now,” he said after we’d toasted each other, “tell me about your life. What has happened to Jack Malone? Good things, I hope.”
There were enough to keep me going through a second whisky. When that was gone I turned the tables on him, not quite ready to mention Conrad, though I could think of no way to avoid it.
“And have you stayed put all this time?” I asked.
“Mainly. A few excursions, you understand, to keep the sap flowing, nothing very significant. I still have some interests in Sumatra.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that, nor to learn that he virtually ran a small company from his house, overseeing the distribution of dry goods to settlements up the rivers. He assured me that life in those out-of-the-way places had not changed much in fifty years, except that now everything was complicated by the Dutch. He said this in passing on his way to other things, which included stories about colleagues of ours from the days we’d worked together, all of whom had retired and were getting by, for better or worse. It was enough to tell me that Viereck had his hand in more things than he was willing to discuss. His hatred for the Dutch was balanced by a fierce devotion to his adopted country. If he wasn’t running guns— a specialty of his—then he was helping the people in some other way to undermine their rulers. The unrest that still existed between tribes inevitably led us to Jim. In the novel, Conrad stays very close to what I told him about the friendship that grew up between Viereck and Jim, and I have no doubt he was right in suggesting that Jim represented some younger version of himself to my old friend.
“I still think of him,” he said. “Such a remarkable end.”
“Something like that had to happen.”
“Ach, just so.”
“I mean, he had to make it happen for the story he’d concocted about himself.”
“It is dangerous being romantic.”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” He looked out at the valley and then turned to me. “There is no easy way to say this. Jewel is dead. Not long ago.”
It was a shock. I had been looking forward to seeing her. I had a quick vision of her—the smooth brown skin and liquid eyes. It seemed impossible that she was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yes. It was a blow.”
Jewel had been with him a long time, Ford, and he had developed paternal feelings toward her that were complicated by the fact that he had lost his own family years ago and treasured her as a kind of replacement. I wanted to know what had happened but it was clear that he didn’t feel like talking about her.
“So,” he said suddenly, shaking himself as if by pure physical effort he could dislodge the painful memory. “Something is weighing on your mind. I saw the signal flags when you came up the steps.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Little is obvious,” he said. “I don’t like the word. It suggests clarity when there are almost always only shadows.”
“It’s a problem,” I said, “a dilemma. The thing is, I promised not to speak about it.”
“And you want to.”
“I must.”
“So which is more important, the promise or the need?”
“They seem about equal.”
“Well, let me put it another way. Does breaking your word outweigh the need, or is it the other way around?”
“I’m hoping that talking about it will help me see what I can do.”
“What to do. That is always the question.”
“I don’t think discussing it with you makes me a hypocrite. We’re ten thousand miles away and I know you won’t say anything. He’s a friend, a good friend.”
“What I hear is this is best for him, no? As for me,” he gestured toward the valley, “I am not exactly surrounded by the curious.”
I told him, Ford. Under that penetrating gaze—whenever I talked to Viereck I always imagined I was in a tutorial at Oxford, the eminence seated across from me weighing every word—I described meeting Clive Jones and the eerie experience of reading about myself and the others, including Viereck. He smiled when I said that he had been renamed Stein. Other than that, he remained quite still until I came to the visit I had paid to Conrad at the Pent. He leaned forward then, one arm resting on his knee as he stared at a spot on the wooden planks, nodding from time to time, murmuring, “Ach,” or, “I see.”
“Ah.” Viereck sighed, his enormous brows rising up like birds taking flight. “So we are famous.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“And you do not like it.”
“I feel naked. I suppose it could be worse. He could have used my real name.”
“But it is interesting, no? Conrad’s life, yours, Kurtz’s, Jim’s, mine too, all trickling together in a little stream.” Viereck leaned back in his peacock chair and rested his head against the woven lattice. “He told you artists have—what did he call it—certain latitudes. Take him at his word. It is true, yes? I think it must be so. This is not such a big thing.”
“Maybe to you and me. To Conrad, it’s monumental.”
“He will not die of it. Well, now, regard.” He turned so that we faced each other across the table like chess players. “He was very honest with you and maybe you do not listen so carefully. What I hear is that you gave him by accident a way to write. Maybe it is not too much to say you opened his mind. That is a big gift, a big debt, too. I understand. It is not good for a man to feel his freedom so tight.” He made a gesture with both hands. “Not good, but not deadly, either. You said he is writing something else
, without you.”
“I also said he’s afraid I’ll come back.”
“But that is only natural, don’t you see? Personally, I think it is good for him to worry. That way he will listen more carefully to his own voice. But he is only half the problem. I think maybe you are more worried about yourself.” He narrowed his eyes a little and smiled. “You want to know how to be with him.”
As I mentioned that Conrad had invented a phrase about that question and developed an elaborate metaphor for it, I tried to imagine myself afloat in the deep, deep sea of Conrad’s life.
“Are you suggesting I’m like Jim?”
“No, no, no. This is not a demon like poor Jim had to fight, no impossible dreams of glory. Your problem is mundane. You feel responsible.”
“For good reason.”
“Did you force him to write these books?”
“I told him I had read them.”
“But you blame yourself for something that was natural. You see where this is leading?”
“Not at all.”
“You feel you have damaged this friendship and you want to feel good again. You know better, Jack. We never feel good again, not the way we did before. What you want is a way to be with this situation, with Conrad. You can never see him again or you can listen, talk, protect him. But I think this trouble of his is like a ghost, like Jim’s idea of disgrace. It doesn’t end with you. If you are struck dumb or swept overboard or lose your mind, Conrad will still have it. So you cannot change this thing because it is outside of you. It has your name only. You ask my advice, I tell you—be his friend. More than that you cannot do. It is in his blood, like malaria, a part of his life. I say again it is good for him. These books make him so frightened someone will discover he has borrowed, that they will find out. Ja! Just Jim’s case! I think this fear will make him find his own island, his own—what did you say he called it? Patusan.”
He took off his spectacles and pinched the red places on his nose where they’d bitten into the pale skin. Then he put them on slowly, carefully adjusting the wires behind his ears.
“Look.” He held up his watch, an old, much-banged-up silver thing. Engraved on the back were two serpents, each swallowing the other’s tail. “You are so close as this. So we take care of friends. He feels like his world is a little hole in the ground that somebody may look into and see him for what he thinks he is. You can do nothing about that except understand. In time something may change. If it doesn’t. . . well, at least you are not him.”
Viereck had confirmed some of my own feelings—how we dote on those who agree with us! As we sipped our drinks, I said I was not so sure that I was lucky not to be Conrad. It seemed to me that to be able to write as he did might be worth the anguish.
“You feel that is so,” he said, “or are you musing?”
“A little of both.”
“You are right. It would be fine to see something that has not existed come to life at the tips of your fingers. But the cost. These are lonely people. I know writers, painters, musicians, here and back in Europe, lonely men and women shut up in their rooms, coming out from time to time for a breath of air. They do what they do because they must. They have no choice. For them, life is a dream, the best of life. They only feel alive when they are dreaming.”
“We’re back to your impression of Jim,” I said. “Conrad’s not like him in that regard. He’s always had his feet on the ground.”
“I have not been talking about his feet.”
“Well, it’s complicated.”
“Everything is complicated. Listen, what I heard is this. You do not hear him, not clearly. You talk of his fear of others discovering that he borrowed your life, your voice. That of course worries him. I understand how he would be humiliated. But you do not hear what is under the words, maybe the most important thing, his concern about you, Jack, how terrible it was for him to learn that you knew about the books. Think. A man sleeping wakens at a sound and discovers a thief. He felt just like the thief, caught, naked, his friend’s possessions in his hands, stuffed in his pockets, someone he admires who is important to him. But you are more than that to him, more than a friend. By accident or luck in those years he wrote of Marlow you were both the source and medium of his imagination. You were the puppets whose shadows his fire cast upon the screen, giving shape to what was in his soul. The humiliation he feels for offending you is boundless.”
“I said I forgave him.”
“That word means nothing until one can accept it. Now it is like salt in a wound. Almost better to rant, accuse. Think. He is beholden to you through an act of betrayal.”
“It wasn’t betrayal,” I said. “He borrowed something of mine.”
“Of course. I am speaking of how he sees it. To him he has betrayed more than a friend. He has also betrayed his imagination, the source of his work. It is a terrible paradox. There is only one thing that will help. Silence, your silence. Every time you see him, in every letter you write, I think you must reassure him of your silence.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“Because you have to.”
“Breaking my word.”
He gestured impatiently and looked at me as if I were hopeless.
“Only a fool lets his life be governed by absolutes, thou shalts, thou shalt nots. To keep your word you had to break it this one time. I see how it will go with him. Whenever you meet he will ask if you have spoken. He will have to. And when you say you have not, he can be himself again for a while. And I say this will be good for him. Every time you leave he will sit down at his table and hear this Marlow’s voice in his head, like the Sirens’ song, yes, just so. And he will resist. He will tie himself to the mast like Odysseus, speak in the voice of someone else. He will be hard on himself for fear of backsliding, harder than he would ever have been otherwise. It will make him a better writer.”
He then asked if I could stay the night and I told him it was impossible.
“Well, then, a little dinner before you go.”
Viereck rang the little silver bell on the table and a young woman appeared in a moment who bore such a stunning resemblance to Ayu that my heart leapt in my chest. He spoke to her in the local dialect and she went back inside and returned with the boy, who helped her set the table at the far end of the veranda. From the way Viereck looked at her it was clear that my old friend had found love in the twilight of his life. Throughout dinner I waited for him to say something about her. I wasn’t surprised that he chose not to. Viereck was always a contradiction, startlingly candid and mysteriously aloof, holding back when it came to his own life while he gave himself over completely to yours. I reckoned he was entitled to his mysteries and I didn’t mind being kept in the dark. With nothing left to do, most old men I knew would serve up their lives on a platter to anyone who’d listen. Viereck’s was a more vigorous old age, an example of what could be and one that I have tried to emulate.
I had coffee afterward to clear my head for the walk back. He offered to send the boy with me but I said I knew the way well enough. I did not want to go. He did not want me to go. When I stood up he said, “Wait a minute,” and went over to the corner of the veranda for a lantern, which he lit and held out to me.
“So you don’t wander off the path,” he said.
I thanked him.
“You seem happy,” I said.
“Yes, I am. Quite happy.”
We walked down to the gate, where he patted my shoulder.
“I will send to an associate in London for the books,” he said. “These fellows Stein and Marlow, I want to make their acquaintance firsthand.”
Behind him I could see the woman on the veranda outlined by the faint glow of the house lights, watching over him. It made me feel good.
SOON AFTER DAWN I was standing in the company’s sweltering, low-ceilinged warehouse, encouraging half-naked men glistening with sweat to haul heavy bags out into the sun and deposit them on a pallet that was lifted periodically by an ancient cra
ne to the Korimatsu. Toward noon the loading was completed and I escaped to the ship’s deck. The unremitting heat was taking its toll on everyone and the work proceeded in slow motion, men and objects distorted by the shimmering, waving air that engulfed us. But a freak of nature made it tolerable: Once the temperature rises something happens to the island’s vegetation and the most amazing scent is released from the plants and flowers into the air. Moving like smoke on the slight breeze, the voluptuous, calming, narcotic perfume made it possible for us all to continue working.
Midway through the afternoon, I had a vision of Viereck’s shady veranda. The scent would be concentrated by the low ceiling and overhanging roof. I wished that we had been able to spend more time together—not talking about Conrad, whose situation had at least been put to rest to my satisfaction—but about Viereck’s companion. I wanted to know something about her the better to appreciate Viereck’s happiness but more importantly because she put me in mind of Ayu. I was feeling melancholy, wondering for the thousandth time why we had been allowed to become so close only for her to be taken away. I thought of this woman without a name as I sweated through the day, endowed her with Ayu’s spirit.
Later I lay in a cool bath in my room, exhausted enough to go to bed right after dinner. I might have done so if I’d had a few more days to spend in Denpasar, but since I wanted to see a performance of the shadow theater, I got myself together, went downstairs, and had a fine curry. As it was still too early to head down to the square, I went into the bar for a drink and found the place deserted except for the bartender. Over the next few hours it would fill up with guests staying at the hotel, then locals and later the bar girls would start trickling in. The cliché of Eastern eroticism misses its naturalness, Ford. I don’t know how else to put it. I suppose it’s rather like comparing Soho to a white sand beach.
Once it was dark I drifted along the streets, passing by dimly lit food stalls and shops crammed with goods from floor to ceiling. Music came from every direction but somehow never got mixed up, one melody giving way to another in neat succession. It was a fine way to get in the mood for the shadow theater, which probably strikes you as an Asian version of Punch and Judy. In truth, there’s no comparison. The Wayang has its lighter moments, comic relief supplied by a variety of characters, often the dwarf Semar and his clowns, but its spirit is closer to the mystery plays. Of course the stories are vastly different, taken from the great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. There is no cathedral for the Wayang but the vault of the sky, no pews but the earth. It is the simplest kind of theater, which requires only a gathering of people in an open plot, a square cloth lighted from behind by a lantern, a willing imagination—and presto! the ancient world comes to life in shadows that speak and sing and dance, shadows that fight and kill and make love to the pervasive liquid sound of the gamelan. And there is another difference worth mentioning: Your Punch and Judy puppeteer only comes before the crowd at the end of the play for his round of applause, and sometimes not even then. In the Wayang you can see the dalang throughout the performance if you sit behind the screen, which is what I did that night.
Sailors on the Inward Sea Page 17
