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The Floating Press - Joseph Conrad

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82 pages

English

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The Shadow Line is a novella by Joseph Conrad. A young man becomes captain of a ship in the Orient, and his experiences bring him to the threshold of his development into maturity: the shadow line. The story contrasts the young man and his expectations with the wiser experience of his elders. The novella has been read as a comment on the first world war, because of its preoccupation with camaraderie in the face of prolonged hardship.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775415749
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE SHADOW LINE
A CONFESSION
* * *
JOSEPH CONRAD

*

The Shadow Line A Confession First published in 1917.
ISBN 978-1-775415-74-9
© 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Part One I II III Part Two IV V VI

*
"Worthy of my undying regard"
To Borys And All Others Who, Like Himself, Have Crossed In Early Youth The Shadow Line Of Their Generation With Love
Part One
*
— D'autre fois, calme plat, grand miroir De mon desespoir .—BAUDELAIRE
I
*
Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. Thevery young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilegeof early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautifulcontinuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.
One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters anenchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn ofthe path has its seduction. And it isn't because it is an undiscoveredcountry. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed thatway. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects anuncommon or personal sensation—a bit of one's own.
One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessors, excited,amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together—the kicks andthe half-pence, as the saying is—the picturesque common lot that holdsso many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes.One goes on. And the time, too, goes on—till one perceives ahead ashadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must beleft behind.
This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have spokenare likely to come. What moments? Why, the moments of boredom, ofweariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean moments when thestill young are inclined to commit rash actions, such as getting marriedsuddenly or else throwing up a job for no reason.
This is not a marriage story. It wasn't so bad as that with me. Myaction, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce—almost ofdesertion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger Ithrew up my job—chucked my berth—left the ship of which the worst thatcould be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, notentitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use tryingto put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be acaprice.
It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as thenshe belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a bluereef-scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at hermasthead a house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with awhite crescent in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hencethe green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House ofStraits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire asyou could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not troublehim at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his own people.
It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men inthe shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed hadnever set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw himbut once, quite accidentally on a wharf—an old, dark little man blindin one eye, in a snowy robe and yellow slippers. He was having his handseverely kissed by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had done somefavour, in the way of food and money. His alms-giving, I have heard, wasmost extensive, covering almost the whole Archipelago. For isn't it saidthat "The charitable man is the friend of Allah"?
Excellent (and picturesque) Arab owner, about whom one needed not totrouble one's head, a most excellent Scottish ship—for she was thatfrom the keep up—excellent sea-boat, easy to keep clean, most handy inevery way, and if it had not been for her internal propulsion, worthy ofany man's love, I cherish to this day a profound respect for her memory.As to the kind of trade she was engaged in and the character of myshipmates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and themen made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter.
And suddenly I left all this. I left it in that, to us, inconsequentialmanner in which a bird flies away from a comfortable branch. It wasas though all unknowing I had heard a whisper or seen something.Well—perhaps! One day I was perfectly right and the next everything wasgone—glamour, flavour, interest, contentment—everything. It was oneof these moments, you know. The green sickness of late youth descendedon me and carried me off. Carried me off that ship, I mean.
We were only four white men on board, with a large crew of Kalashes andtwo Malay petty officers. The Captain stared hard as if wondering whatailed me. But he was a sailor, and he, too, had been young at one time.Presently a smile came to lurk under his thick iron-gray moustache, andhe observed that, of course, if I felt I must go he couldn't keep meby main force. And it was arranged that I should be paid off thenext morning. As I was going out of his cabin he added suddenly, in apeculiar wistful tone, that he hoped I would find what I was so anxiousto go and look for. A soft, cryptic utterance which seemed to reachdeeper than any diamond-hard tool could have done. I do believe heunderstood my case.
But the second engineer attacked me differently. He was a sturdy youngScot, with a smooth face and light eyes. His honest red countenanceemerged out of the engine-room companion and then the whole robust man,with shirt sleeves turned up, wiping slowly the massive fore-arms witha lump of cotton-waste. And his light eyes expressed bitter distaste, asthough our friendship had turned to ashes. He said weightily: "Oh! Aye!I've been thinking it was about time for you to run away home and getmarried to some silly girl."
It was tacitly understood in the port that John Nieven was a fiercemisogynist; and the absurd character of the sally convinced me that hemeant to be nasty—very nasty—had meant to say the most crushing thinghe could think of. My laugh sounded deprecatory. Nobody but a friendcould be so angry as that. I became a little crestfallen. Our chiefengineer also took a characteristic view of my action, but in a kindlierspirit.
He was young, too, but very thin, and with a mist of fluffy brown beardall round his haggard face. All day long, at sea or in harbour, he couldbe seen walking hastily up and down the after-deck, wearing anintense, spiritually rapt expression, which was caused by a perpetualconsciousness of unpleasant physical sensations in his internal economy.For he was a confirmed dyspeptic. His view of my case was very simple.He said it was nothing but deranged liver. Of course! He suggested Ishould stay for another trip and meantime dose myself with a certainpatent medicine in which his own belief was absolute. "I'll tell youwhat I'll do. I'll buy you two bottles, out of my own pocket. There. Ican't say fairer than that, can I?"
I believe he would have perpetrated the atrocity (or generosity) at themerest sign of weakening on my part. By that time, however, I was morediscontented, disgusted, and dogged than ever. The past eighteen months,so full of new and varied experience, appeared a dreary, prosaic wasteof days. I felt—how shall I express it?—that there was no truth to begot out of them.
What truth? I should have been hard put to it to explain. Probably, ifpressed, I would have burst into tears simply. I was young enough forthat.
Next day the Captain and I transacted our business in the HarbourOffice. It was a lofty, big, cool, white room, where the screened lightof day glowed serenely. Everybody in it—the officials, the public—werein white. Only the heavy polished desks gleamed darkly in a centralavenue, and some papers lying on them were blue. Enormous punkahs sentfrom on high a gentle draught through that immaculate interior and uponour perspiring heads.
The official behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept itup till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?"my Captain answered, "No! Signing off for good." And then his grinvanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till hehanded me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been mypassports for Hades.
While I was putting them away he murmured some question to the Captain,and I heard the latter answer good-humouredly:
"No. He leaves us to go home."
"Oh!" the other exclaimed, nodding mournfully over my sad condition.
I didn't know him outside the official building, but he leaned forwardthe desk to shake hands with me, compassionately, as one would with somepoor devil going out to be hanged; and I am afraid I performed my partungraciously, in the hardened manner of an impenitent criminal.
No homeward-bound mail-boat was due for three or four days. Being now aman without a ship, and having for a time broken my connection with thesea—become, in fact, a mere potential passenger—it would have beenmore appropriate perhaps if I had gone to stay at an hotel. There itwas, too, within a stone's throw of the Harbour Office, low, but somehowpalatial, displaying its white, pillared pavilions surrounded by trimgrass plots. I would have felt a passenger indeed in there! I gave it ahostile glance and directed my steps toward the Officers' Sailors' Home.
I walked in the sunshine, disregarding it, and in the shade of the bigtrees on the esplanade without enjoyin