An Outcast of the Islands | Page 4

writer" I don't think the charge was
at all justified. For the life of me I don't see that there is the slightest exotic spirit in the
conception or style of that novel. It is certainly the most TROPICAL of my eastern tales.
The mere scenery got a great hold on me as I went on, perhaps because (I may just as
well confess that) the story itself was never very near my heart. It engaged my
imagination much more than my affection. As to my feeling for Willems it was but the
regard one cannot help having for one's own creation. Obviously I could not be
indifferent to a man on whose head I had brought so much evil simply by imagining him
such as he appears in the novel--and that, too, on a very slight foundation. The man who
suggested Willems to me was not particularly interesting in himself. My interest was
aroused by his dependent position, his strange, dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked,
worn-out European living on the reluctant toleration of that Settlement hidden in the heart
of the forest-land, up that sombre stream which our ship was the only white men's ship to
visit. With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey moustache and eyes without
any expression whatever, clad always in a spotless sleeping suit much be-frogged in front,
which left his lean neck wholly uncovered, and with his bare feet in a pair of straw
slippers, he wandered silently amongst the houses in daylight, almost as dumb as an
animal and apparently much more homeless. I don't know what he did with himself at
night. He must have had a place, a hut, a palm-leaf shed, some sort of hovel where he
kept his razor and his change of sleeping suits. An air of futile mystery hung over him,
something not exactly dark but obviously ugly. The only definite statement I could
extract from anybody was that it was he who had "brought the Arabs into the river." That
must have happened many years 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, tete a tete 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;