Sailors on the Inward Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

began to tell, I think I should go on. It will make more sense that way.
    In the past, when our conversation had taken such a depressingly familiar turn, he had invariably drifted into one of those black moods that left him inaccessible, but while all the signs were there that day, he was not giving in to them. To the contrary, I had the impression of a man in repose whose confidence had weathered an unpleasant admission, and was struck again by the serenity I had noticed as he came up the gangway.
    He withdrew a pipe and a leather tobacco pouch from his pocket and carefully filled the bowl. Once it was going, he took several deep puffs and watched the smoke drift leeward. By then the fog had dissipated and we could see the smokestacks of large ships, along with the odd mast and sail. Conrad pointed skyward with the stem of his pipe.
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.’ Wonderful image. I’ve always been shamelessly jealous of Stephen Crane.”
    From far down the estuary came the sound of a foghorn quickly answered by another. Those invisible vessels calling out their warnings reminded me of times when I stood blind on a bridge, attentive to the trumpeting of another ship while staring into the impenetrable fog, on the lookout for the vaguest shape, the slightest hint of darkness that would be the bow of a vessel making toward mine, a perfectly natural memory that I thought no more of until it came back several hours later tinged with the color of Stephen’s sun.
    Conrad tamped the bowl of his pipe with a silver tool and regarded me soberly over the match flame.
    â€œIt’s unique, Jack, the red of soldier’s blood and the blood of Christ and sacrifice and rage, all that and more. The color stays in your mind like the sun does after you’ve looked at it, glowing after you’ve closed your eyes. What’s more, he doesn’t force it on you, doesn’t have to. The red is perfectly natural, the result of smoke in the air, the color of battle.”
    I said, “I’ve always wondered if the book would have been better if he had actually been in the war.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” he responded. “His imagination gave him a color that was more true than what he would have seen. This story of mine has color too, a soft yellow that surrounds everything. You know how it is sometimes when you try to remember the beginning of a story. It’s hazy like the fog out there. You think it could have been this or that. The roots of this one are very clear, mon vieux, a beautiful view in the Carpathian Mountains.” He made a sweeping gesture with his pipe as if he were sketching a mountain valley. “A place of small farms and pastures, absolutely bucolic. I have never seen a place so at one with that word.”

U NDER THE DIM glow of that red sun Conrad began talking about visiting Poland in 1914, looking so intently over the half-obscured waters of the great river that I thought he might be trying to see the spires and steeples of his homeland. I was immediately caught up and quite forgot about the color of the sun, which, in retrospect I now realize, he had intentionally called to my attention. Not until an hour later did I understand that it was implicated in his story, something I am sure you will pick up on and hold in your mind as you read. Your way with signs has always seemed to set you and Conrad apart from your contemporaries.
    But to get on with the story. Conrad said that he had decided on the visit after Pinker, his agent, sold the serial rights of Victory for the hefty sum of a thousand pounds, far more than he had expected. Twenty-one years had gone by since he had seen Poland and he was yearning to make a pilgrimage to the haunts of his early life for himself and also for his son, Borys. It seemed to be a propitious time. Conrad was a successful writer going home to render his account to whoever was still alive and