Joseph Conrad, A Smile of Fortune

Joseph Conrad, A Smile of Fortune, Modern Voices, London, 2007

I was anxious for success and I wished, too, to do justice to the flattering latitude of my owners’ instructions contained in one noble phrase: ‘We leave it to you to do the best you can with the ship.’… All the world being thus given me for a stage, my abilities appeared to me no bigger than a pinhead. 3

On coming in from the sea one has to pick up the conditions of an utterly unrelated existence. Every little event at first has the peculiar emphasis of novelty. 5

A quiet little laugh, with a ‘That’ll be all right, Captain,’ was his answer. All this, words, intonation, the glimpsed attitude of the man in the cuddy, had an unexpected character, a something friendly in it—proprietary. 5

Ah! These commercial interests—spoiling the finest life under the sun. why must the sea be used for trade—and for war as well? Why kill and traffic on it, pursuing selfish aims of no great importance after all? It would have been so much nicer just to sail about with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one’s legs on, but a few books and get a change of cooking for a while. But, living in a world more or less homicidal and desperately mercantile, it was plainly my duty to make the best of its opportunities. 6

With the appetite of a schoolboy, and after two months of sea fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I did not. It smacked of extravagance. 9

We parted on the quay, after he had expressed quietly the hope of seeing me often ‘at the store’. He had a smoking room for captains there, with newspapers and a box of ‘rather decent cigars’. I left him very unceremoniously. 12

…dropping tears. They trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old rugged wall. I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the terror of sailors, a hard man; that he had never had a wife or chick of his own. 14

I listened with horrible critical detachment to that service I had had to read myself, once or twice, over childlike men who had died at sea. The words of hop and defiance, the winged words so inspiring in the free immensity of water and sky, seemed to fall wearily into the little grave. 14

Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge of the quay with comical animosity: ‘I would! If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker. I am an old bird here and don’t you forget it. Come and see me on board some day!’ 18

I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship’s cuddy, and glad enough was I to think that the shore life that strikes one as so pettily complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first coming from sea, could be kept off a few hours longer. 18

I remonstrated with my late patient for his manner of expressing himself. But he only tossed his head disdainfully. 19

I admit it is absurd to be concerned with the morals of one’s ship-chandler, if ever so well connected, but his personality had stamped itself upon my first day in harbour, in the way you know. 20

A lanky, inky, light yellow, mulatto youth, miserably long-necked and generally recalling a sick chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a cheap deal desk and faced me as if gone dumb with fright. I had some difficulty in persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get from him the nature of his objection. He did it at last with an almost agonized reluctance that ceased to be mysterious to me when I heard him being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls, then audibly cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment whatever, because he came back flying head foremost through the door with a stifled shriek. 23

This one was dark instead of being fair like the other, but he was as big. He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been doubtless snoozing in the rocking chair that stood in a corner furthest from the window. Above the great bulk of his crumpled white shirt, buttoned with three diamond studs, his round face looked swarthy. It was moist; his brown moustache hung limp and ragged. He pushed a common, cane-bottomed chair towards me with his foot. / ‘Sit down.’ 24

…and he sat down in the chair vacated by the steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short, jarring laugh. A profound silence reigned. With his drowsy stare Jacobus seemed to be slumbering open-eyed. Yet, somehow, I was aware of being profoundly scrutinized by those heavy eyes. 27

‘I am proposing you a bit of business, Captain. I wouldn’t charge you a great price.’ / I told him that I did not go in for trade. I even added grimly that I knew only too well how that sort of spec generally ended. / He signed and clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary resignation. I admired the placidity of his impudence. 28

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French families, descendants of the old colonists: all noble, all impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay. 31

The first time I called on the couple she spied a little spot of grease on the poor devil’s pantaloons and made him a screaming scene of reproaches so full of sincere passion that I sat terrified as at a tragedy of Racine. 31

I remarked that this surely was an old story by now. / My friend assented. But it was Jacobus’ own fault that it was neither forgiven nor forgotten. He came back ultimately. But how? Not in a spirit of contrition, in a way to propitiate his scandalized fellow citizens. He must needs drag along with his a child—a girl…[My friend] did not see why she should have been brought into a respectable community to perpetuate the memory of the scandal. 33

As to Jacobus’ business (which certainly annoyed his brother) it was a wise choice on his part. It brought him in contact only with strangers of passage, whereas any other would have given rise to all sorts of awkwardness with his social equals. The man was not wanting in a certain tact—only he was naturally shameless. 34

‘You don’t understand. To begin with, she’s not a mulatto. And a scandal is a scandal. People should be given a chance to forget. I dare say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a scullion or something of that kind. 34

With no more than a nod to the men I found assembled there, I poured down a deep, cool draught on my indignation, then another, and then, becoming dejected, I sat plunged in cheerless reflections. The others read, talked, smoked, bandied over my head some unsubtle chaff. But my abstraction was respected. 36

…the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine. 38

It was really a magnificent garden: smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The town might have been miles away. 38

The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that her whole body swayed within the loose wrapper, and in that unexpectedly harsh voice that yet had a seductive quality to the senses, like certain kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with pleasure: ‘It’s some captain. Leave me alone—will you!’ 42

I was to hear it more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge of human nature if you thought that this was my last visit to that house…44

…she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark as if feeding her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the admirable garden. 45

I called her often ‘Alice’, right before him; sometimes I would address her as Miss ‘Don’t Care’, and I exhausted myself in nonsensical chatter without succeeding once in taking her out of her peevish and tragic self. There were moments when I felt I must break out and start swearing at her till all was blue. And I fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not have moved a muscle. A sort of shady, intimate understanding seemed to have been established between us. 47

It was on her lips the universal explanation, the universal allusion, the universal taunt. 46

She beheld my scornful surprise. 47

Only whiffs of heavy scent passed like a wandering, fragrant souls of that departed multitude of blossoms. 48

It was like offering food to a seated statue. 48

‘You’re doing yourself no good by your choice of friends, my dear chap,’ he said with infantile gravity. 51

I would have given up the society of the whole town, for the sake of sitting near the girl, snarling and superb and barely clad in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper, open low at the throat. She looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging down her tense face, as though she had just jumped out of bed in the panic of a fire. 52

I loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body, to observe the mysterious narrow stare of her splendid black eyes, somewhat long in shape, half closed, contemplating the void. 52

…a fine display of armed robbery in Australia. 55

I looked her over, from the top of her disheveled head, down the lovely line of the shoulder, following the curve of the hip, the draped form of the long limb, right down to her fine ankle below a torn, soiled flounce, and as far as the point of the shabby, high-heeled, blue slipper, dangling from her well-shaped foot, which she moved slightly, with quick, nervous jerks, as if impatient of my presence. 56

She murmured a distinctly scared ‘So soon’, and getting up quickly, went to the little table and poured herself a glass of water. She walked with rapid steps and with an indolent swaying of her whole young figure above the hips; when she passed near me I felt with tenfold force the charm of the peculiar, promising sensation I had formed the habit to seek near her. 58

‘Never mind! Don’t care!’ Then, after a gasp, she spoke with such frightful rapidity that I could hardly make out the amazing words: ‘For if you were to shut me up in an empty place as smooth all round as the palm of my hand, I could always strangle myself with my hair.’ 59

With an easy, indolent, and in its indolence supple, feline movement, she rose from the chair, so provokingly ignoring my now, that for very rage I held my ground within less than a foot of her. Leisurely and tranquil, behaving right before me with the ease of a person alone in a room, she extended her beautiful arms, with her hands clenched, her body swaying, her head thrown back a little, reveling contemptuously in a sense of relief, easing her limbs in freedom after all these days of crouching, motionless poses when she had been so furious and so afraid. / All this with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive, exasperating, like ingratitude doubled with treachery. / I ought to have been flattered, perhaps, but, on the contrary, my anger grew; her movement to pass by me as if I were a wooden post or a piece of furniture, that unconcerned movement brought it to a head. 62

Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. 63

The motion of some sixth sense—the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense that always acts too late, alas!—warned me to look round, and at once I became aware that the conclusion of this tumultuous episode was likely to be a matter of lively anxiety. 63

‘Sit down, Captain,’ he said at last, in his subdued tone. / As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up suddenly the idea of leaving the house there and then. It had become impossible. I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating object. Jacobus turned his daughter’s shoe over and over in his cushioned paws as if studying the way the thing were made. He contemplated the thin sole for a time; then glancing inside with an absorbed air: ‘I am glad I found you here, Captain.’ 65

I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that the outward decency may be bought too dearly at times. 66

The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened, mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one by one. / The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me very tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating and uneven motion that ended in the sinking of her shadowy form into a deep low chair. And I don’t know why or whence I received the impression that she had come too late. She ought to have appeared at my call. She ought to have… It was as if a supreme opportunity had been missed. / I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her armchair. Her ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously: ‘You are still here.’ 69

‘Quite right. You needn’t be. I shall not see you again before I go to sea.’ I rose and stood near her chair. ‘But I shall often think of you in this old garden, passing under the trees over there, walking between these gorgeous flower-beds. You must love this garden—’ / ‘I love nothing.’ / I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully tragic note that I had found once so provoking. But it left me unmoved except for a sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness of all things under Heaven. 70

I felt in my heart that the further one ventures the better one understands how everything in our life is common, short, and empty; that it is in seeking the unknown in our sensations that we discover how mediocre are our attempts and how soon defeated! 71

This being a harbour story it is not my purpose to speak of our passage. I was glad enough to be at sea, but not with the gladness of old days. 73

And as if by a Satanic refinement of irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell. 74

I dreamt of a pile of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was buried, and woke up callous with greed. 76

That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits and starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways starving on a desert island covered with flowers. It was extremely unpleasant. 77