her place and so can win Conrad's special brand of approval; and second, she fulfils a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined, European woman who will step forth to end the story:
She came forward, all in black with a pale head, floating toward me in the dusk. She was in mourning . . . She took both my hands in hers and murmured, 'I had heard you were coming' . . . She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. (1945)
The difference in the attitude of the novelist to these two women is conveyed in too man y direct and subtle ways to need elaboration. But perhaps the most significant difference is the one implied in the author's bestowal of huma n
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271 2 / CHINUA ACHEBE
expression to the one and the withholding of it from the other. It is clearly not part of Conrad's purpose to confer language on the 'rudimentary souls' of Africa. In place of speech they made 'a violent babble of uncouth sounds'. They 'exchanged short grunting phrases' even among themselves. But most of the time they were too busy with their frenzy. There are two occasions in the book, however, when Conrad departs somewhat from his practice and confers speech, even English speech, on the savages. The first occurs when cannibalism gets the better of them:
'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp white teeth?'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I asked; 'what would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!' he said curtly. (1919)
The other occasion was the famous announcement: 'Mistah Kurtz?he dead'
(1941).
At first sight these instances might be mistaken for unexpected acts of generosity from Conrad. In reality they constitute some of his best assaults. In the case of the cannibals the incomprehensible grunts that had thus far served them for speech suddenly proved inadequate for Conrad's purpose of letting the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts. Weighing the necessity for consistency in the portrayal of the dum b brutes against the sensational advantages of securing their conviction by clear, unambiguous evidence issuing out of their own mouth Conrad chose the latter. As for the announcement of Mr Kurtz's death by the 'insolent black head in the doorway', what better or more appropriate finis could be written to the horror story of that wayward child of civilization who wilfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and 'taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land' than the proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined?
It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism. Certainly Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his story. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. Th e primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person. But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire4 between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint, clearly and adequately, at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Conrad seems to me to approve of Mar- low, with only minor reservations?a fact reinforced by the similarities between their two careers.
Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding
those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition
which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities
in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians5 or wherever.
Thus Marlow is able to toss out such bleeding-heart sentiments as these:
4. A guarded line between infected and uninsonal wealth by the brutal exploitation of the peofected areas. ple of the Belgian Congo. 5. Leopold II (1835-1909) satisfied a lust for per
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AN IMAGE OF AFRICA / 2713
They were all dying slowly?it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now?nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.
(1901)
The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age in England, Europe and America. It took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people. That extraordinary missionary, Albert Schweitzer,6 who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to Africans in muc h the same area as Conrad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence. In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.' An d so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being. Naturally he became a sensation in Europe and America. Pilgrims flocked, and I believe still flock even after he has passed on, to witness the prodigious miracle in Lamberene, on the edge of the primeval forest.
Conrad's liberalism would not take him quite as far as Schweitzer's, though. He would not use the word 'brother' however qualified; the farthest he would go was 'kinship'. Whe n Marlow's African helmsman falls down with a spear in his heart he gives his white master one final disquieting look:
And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory?like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
It is important to note that Conrad, careful as ever with his words, is concerned not so muc h about 'distant kinship' as about someone laying a claim on it. The black man lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates Conrad, 'the thought of their humanity?like yours . . . Ugly.'
Th e point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against
