Notes on My Books | Page 3

before. But how did he bring them into the river? He could hardly
have done it in his arms like a lot of kittens. I knew that Almayer
founded the chronology of all his misfortunes on the date of that fateful
advent; and yet the very first time we dined with Almayer there was
Willems sitting at table with us in the manner of the skeleton at the
feast, obviously shunned by everybody, never addressed by any one,
and for all recognition of his existence getting now and then from
Almayer a venomous glance which I observed with great surprise. In
the course of the whole evening he ventured one single remark which I
didn't catch because his articulation was imperfect, as of a man who
had forgotten how to speak. I was the only person who seemed aware
of the sound. Willems subsided. Presently he retired, pointedly
unnoticed--into the forest maybe? Its immensity was there, within three
hundred yards of the verandah, ready to swallow up anything. Almayer
conversing with my captain did not stop talking while he glared angrily
at the retreating back. Didn't that fellow bring the Arabs into the river!
Nevertheless Willems turned up next morning on Almayer's verandah.
From the bridge of the steamer I could see plainly these two,
breakfasting together, tête à tête and, I suppose, in dead silence, one
with his air of being no longer interested in this world and the other
raising his eyes now and then with intense dislike.
It was clear that in those days Willems lived on Almayer's charity. Yet
on returning two months later to Sambir I heard that he had gone on an
expedition up the river in charge of a steam-launch belonging to the
Arabs, to make some discovery or other. On account of the strange
reluctance that everyone manifested to talk about Willems it was
impossible for me to get at the rights of that transaction. Moreover, I
was a newcomer, the youngest of the company, and, I suspect, not
judged quite fit as yet for a full confidence. I was not much concerned
about that exclusion. The faint suggestion of plots and mysteries
pertaining to all matters touching Almayer's affairs amused me vastly.
Almayer was obviously very much affected. I believe he missed

Willems immensely. He wore an air of sinister preoccupation and
talked confidentially with my captain. I could catch only snatches of
mumbled sentences. Then one morning as I came along the deck to take
my place at the breakfast table Almayer checked himself in his
low-toned discourse. My captain's face was perfectly impenetrable.
There was a moment of profound silence and then as if unable to
contain himself Almayer burst out in a loud vicious tone:
"One thing's certain; if he finds anything worth having up there they
will poison him like a dog."
Disconnected though it was, that phrase, as food for thought, was
distinctly worth hearing. We left the river three days afterwards and I
never returned to Sambir; but whatever happened to the protagonist of
my Willems nobody can deny that I have recorded for him a less
squalid fate.
J. C.
1919.

NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS'
TO MY READERS IN AMERICA
From that evening when James Wait joined the ship--late for the muster
of the crew--to the moment when he left us in the open sea, shrouded in
sailcloth, through the open port, I had much to do with him. He was in
my watch. A negro in a British forecastle is a lonely being. He has no
chums. Yet James Wait, afraid of death and making her his accomplice,
was an impostor of some character--mastering our compassion,
scornful of our sentimentalism, triumphing over our suspicions.
But in the book he is nothing; he is merely the centre of the ship's
collective psychology and the pivot of the action. Yet he, who in the
family circle and amongst my friends is familiarly referred to as the
Nigger, remains very precious to me. For the book written round him is

not the sort of thing that can be attempted more than once in a life-time.
It is the book by which, not as a novelist perhaps, but as an artist
striving for the utmost sincerity of expression, I am willing to stand or
fall. Its pages are the tribute of my unalterable and profound affection
for the ships, the seamen, the winds and the great sea--the moulders of
my youth, the companions of the best years of my life.
After writing the last words of that book, in the revulsion of feeling
before the accomplished task, I understood that I had done with the sea,
and that henceforth I had to be a writer. And almost without laying
down the pen I wrote a preface, trying to