"Conrad, Joseph - An Outcast Of The Islands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

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