Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (802 page)

“We used to admire Mrs. Davidson from a distance.  It was a girlish head out of a keepsake.  From a distance.  We had not many opportunities for a closer view, because she did not care to give them to us.  We would have been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there.  Not that she ever said anything ungracious.  She never had much to say for herself.  I was perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home.  What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth.  But then I am an observer with strong prejudices.  Most of us were fetched by her white, swan-like neck, by that drooping, innocent profile.  There was a lot of latent devotion to Davidson’s wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell you.  But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the sort of men we were; a mistrust which extended — I fancied — to her very husband at times.  And I thought then she was jealous of him in a way; though there were no women that she could be jealous about.  She had no women’s society.  It’s difficult for a shipmaster’s wife unless there are other shipmasters’ wives about, and there were none here then.  I know that the dock manager’s wife called on her; but that was all.  The fellows here formed the opinion that Mrs. Davidson was a meek, shy little thing.  She looked it, I must say.  And this opinion was so universal that the friend I have been telling you of remembered his conversation with Davidson simply because of the statement about Davidson’s wife.  He even wondered to me: ‘Fancy Mrs. Davidson making a fuss to that extent.  She didn’t seem to me the sort of woman that would know how to make a fuss about anything.’

“I wondered, too — but not so much.  That bumpy forehead — eh?  I had always suspected her of being silly.  And I observed that Davidson must have been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety.

“My friend said: ‘No.  He seemed rather touched and distressed.  There really was no one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because he intended to make a call in some God-forsaken creek, to look up a fellow of the name of Bamtz who apparently had settled there.’

“And again my friend wondered.  ‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘what connection can there be between Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz?’

“I don’t remember now what answer I made.  A sufficient one could have been given in two words: ‘Davidson’s goodness.’  That never boggled at unworthiness if there was the slightest reason for compassion.  I don’t want you to think that Davidson had no discrimination at all.  Bamtz could not have imposed on him.  Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was.  He was a loafer with a beard.  When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the corners of two little eyes.  There was no such beard from here to Polynesia, where a beard is a valuable property in itself.  Bamtz’s beard was valuable to him in another way.  You know how impressed Orientals are by a fine beard.  Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah, the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard.  And it’s very well known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years.  It was a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same.  A unique loafer.  He made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery.  One can understand a fellow living by cadging and small swindles in towns, in large communities of people; but Bamtz managed to do that trick in the wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts of the virgin forest.

“He understood how to ingratiate himself with the natives.  He would arrive in some settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap carbine or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or something of that sort, to the Rajah, or the head-man, or the principal trader; and on the strength of that gift, ask for a house, posing mysteriously as a very special trader.  He would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat of the land, for a while, and then do some mean swindle or other — or else they would get tired of him and ask him to quit.  And he would go off meekly with an air of injured innocence.  Funny life.  Yet, he never got hurt somehow.  I’ve heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars’ worth of trade goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him.  Fact.  And observe that nothing prevented the old fellow having Bamtz’s throat cut and the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on earth would have inquired after Bamtz?

“He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north as the Gulf of Tonkin.  Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation from time to time.  And it was while loafing and cadging in Saigon, bearded and dignified (he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper), that he came across Laughing Anne.

“The less said of her early history the better, but something must be said.  We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in her famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low café.  She was stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about a kid she had, a boy of five or six.

“A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her out first into these parts — from Australia, I believe.  He brought her out and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there, known to most of us by sight, at any rate.  Everybody in the Archipelago had heard of Laughing Anne.  She had really a pleasant silvery laugh always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn’t enough apparently to make her fortune.  The poor creature was ready to stick to any half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as it might have been expected.

“She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for near upon two years.  The German said to her: ‘This is all over, mein Taubchen.  I am going home now to get married to the girl I got engaged to before coming out here.’  And Anne said: ‘All right, I’m ready to go.  We part friends, don’t we?’

“She was always anxious to part friends.  The German told her that of course they were parting friends.  He looked rather glum at the moment of parting.  She laughed and went ashore.

“But it was no laughing matter for her.  She had some notion that this would be her last chance.  What frightened her most was the future of her child.  She had left her boy in Saigon before going off with the German, in the care of an elderly French couple.  The husband was a doorkeeper in some Government office, but his time was up, and they were returning to France.  She had to take the boy back from them; and after she had got him back, she did not like to part with him any more.

“That was the situation when she and Bamtz got acquainted casually.  She could not have had any illusions about that fellow.  To pick up with Bamtz was coming down pretty low in the world, even from a material point of view.  She had always been decent, in her way; whereas Bamtz was, not to mince words, an abject sort of creature.  On the other hand, that bearded loafer, who looked much more like a pirate than a bookkeeper, was not a brute.  He was gentle — rather — even in his cups.  And then, despair, like misfortune, makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows.  For she may well have despaired.  She was no longer young — you know.

“On the man’s side this conjunction is more difficult to explain, perhaps.  One thing, however, must be said of Bamtz; he had always kept clear of native women.  As one can’t suspect him of moral delicacy, I surmise that it must have been from prudence.  And he, too, was no longer young.  There were many white hairs in his valuable black beard by then.  He may have simply longed for some kind of companionship in his queer, degraded existence.  Whatever their motives, they vanished from Saigon together.  And of course nobody cared what had become of them.

“Six months later Davidson came into the Mirrah Settlement.  It was the very first time he had been up that creek, where no European vessel had ever been seen before.  A Javanese passenger he had on board offered him fifty dollars to call in there — it must have been some very particular business — and Davidson consented to try.  Fifty dollars, he told me, were neither here nor there; but he was curious to see the place, and the little Sissie could go anywhere where there was water enough to float a soup-plate.

“Davidson landed his Javanese plutocrat, and, as he had to wait a couple of hours for the tide, he went ashore himself to stretch his legs.

“It was a small settlement.  Some sixty houses, most of them built on piles over the river, the rest scattered in the long grass; the usual pathway at the back; the forest hemming in the clearing and smothering what there might have been of air into a dead, hot stagnation.

“All the population was on the river-bank staring silently, as Malays will do, at the Sissie anchored in the stream.  She was almost as wonderful to them as an angel’s visit.  Many of the old people had only heard vaguely of fire-ships, and not many of the younger generation had seen one.  On the back path Davidson strolled in perfect solitude.  But he became aware of a bad smell and concluded he would go no farther.

“While he stood wiping his forehead, he heard from somewhere the exclamation: ‘My God!  It’s Davy!’

“Davidson’s lower jaw, as he expressed it, came unhooked at the crying of this excited voice.  Davy was the name used by the associates of his young days; he hadn’t heard it for many years.  He stared about with his mouth open and saw a white woman issue from the long grass in which a small hut stood buried nearly up to the roof.

“Try to imagine the shock: in that wild place that you couldn’t find on a map, and more squalid than the most poverty-stricken Malay settlement had a right to be, this European woman coming swishing out of the long grass in a fanciful tea-gown thing, dingy pink satin, with a long train and frayed lace trimmings; her eyes like black coals in a pasty-white face.  Davidson thought that he was asleep, that he was delirious.  From the offensive village mudhole (it was what Davidson had sniffed just before) a couple of filthy buffaloes uprose with loud snorts and lumbered off crashing through the bushes, panic-struck by this apparition.

“The woman came forward, her arms extended, and laid her hands on Davidson’s shoulders, exclaiming: ‘Why!  You have hardly changed at all.  The same good Davy.’  And she laughed a little wildly.

“This sound was to Davidson like a galvanic shock to a corpse.  He started in every muscle.  ‘Laughing Anne,’ he said in an awe-struck voice.

“‘All that’s left of her, Davy.  All that’s left of her.’

“Davidson looked up at the sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from which she could have fallen on that spot.  When he brought his distracted gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the pink satin gown.  He had run out of the grass after her.  Had Davidson seen a real hobgoblin his eyes could not have bulged more than at this small boy in a dirty white blouse and ragged knickers.  He had a round head of tight chestnut curls, very sunburnt legs, a freckled face, and merry eyes.  Admonished by his mother to greet the gentleman, he finished off Davidson by addressing him in French.

“‘Bonjour.’

“Davidson, overcome, looked up at the woman in silence.  She sent the child back to the hut, and when he had disappeared in the grass, she turned to Davidson, tried to speak, but after getting out the words, ‘That’s my Tony,’ burst into a long fit of crying.  She had to lean on Davidson’s shoulder.  He, distressed in the goodness of his heart, stood rooted to the spot where she had come upon him.

“What a meeting — eh?  Bamtz had sent her out to see what white man it was who had landed.  And she had recognised him from that time when Davidson, who had been pearling himself in his youth, had been associating with Harry the Pearler and others, the quietest of a rather rowdy set.

“Before Davidson retraced his steps to go on board the steamer, he had heard much of Laughing Anne’s story, and had even had an interview, on the path, with Bamtz himself.  She ran back to the hut to fetch him, and he came out lounging, with his hands in his pockets, with the detached, casual manner under which he concealed his propensity to cringe.  Ya-a-as-as.  He thought he would settle here permanently — with her.  This with a nod at Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragically anxious figure, her black hair hanging over her shoulders.

“‘No more paint and dyes for me, Davy,’ she struck in, ‘if only you will do what he wants you to do.  You know that I was always ready to stand by my men — if they had only let me.’

“Davidson had no doubt of her earnestness.  It was of Bamtz’s good faith that he was not at all sure.  Bamtz wanted Davidson to promise to call at Mirrah more or less regularly.  He thought he saw an opening to do business with rattans there, if only he could depend on some craft to bring out trading goods and take away his produce.

“‘I have a few dollars to make a start on.  The people are all right.’

“He had come there, where he was not known, in a native prau, and had managed, with his sedate manner and the exactly right kind of yarn he knew how to tell to the natives, to ingratiate himself with the chief man.

“‘The Orang Kaya has given me that empty house there to live in as long as I will stay,’ added Bamtz.

“‘Do it, Davy,’ cried the woman suddenly.  ‘Think of that poor kid.’

“‘Seen him?  ‘Cute little customer,’ said the reformed loafer in such a tone of interest as to surprise Davidson into a kindly glance.

“‘I certainly can do it,’ he declared.  He thought of at first making some stipulation as to Bamtz behaving decently to the woman, but his exaggerated delicacy and also the conviction that such a fellow’s promises were worth nothing restrained him.  Anne went a little distance down the path with him talking anxiously.

“‘It’s for the kid.  How could I have kept him with me if I had to knock about in towns?  Here he will never know that his mother was a painted woman.  And this Bamtz likes him.  He’s real fond of him.  I suppose I ought to thank God for that.’

“Davidson shuddered at any human creature being brought so low as to have to thank God for the favours or affection of a Bamtz.