"Conrad, Joseph - Some Reminiscences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

deference than, in our relative positions, I was strictly
entitled to.

He lowered a tender gaze on his banjo and I went on looking
through the port-hole. The round opening framed in its brass rim
a fragment of the quays, with a row of casks ranged on the frozen
ground and the tail-end of a great cart. A red-nosed carter in a
blouse and a woollen nightcap leaned against the wheel. An idle,
strolling custom-house guard, belted over his blue capote, had
the air of being depressed by exposure to the weather and the
monotony of official existence. The background of grimy houses
found a place in the picture framed by my port-hole, across a
wide stretch of paved quay brown with frozen mud. The colouring
was sombre, and the most conspicuous feature was a little cafe
with curtained windows and a shabby front of white woodwork,
corresponding with the squalor of these poorer quarters bordering
the river. We had been shifted down there from another berth in
the neighbourhood of the Opera House, where that same port-hole
gave me a view of quite another sort of cafe--the best in the
town, I believe, and the very one where the worthy Bovary and his
wife, the romantic daughter of old Pere Renault, had some
refreshment after the memorable performance of an opera which was
the tragic story of Lucia di Lammermoor in a setting of light
music.

I could recall no more the hallucination of the Eastern
Archipelago which I certainly hoped to see again. The story of
"Almayer's Folly" got put away under the pillow for that day. I
do not know that I had any occupation to keep me away from it;
the truth of the matter is that on board that ship we were
leading just then a contemplative life. I will not say anything
of my privileged position. I was there "just to oblige," as an
actor of standing may take a small part in the benefit
performance of a friend.

As far as my feelings were concerned I did not wish to be in that
steamer at that time and in those circumstances. And perhaps I
was not even wanted there in the usual sense in which a ship
"wants" an officer. It was the first and last instance in my sea
life when I served ship-owners who have remained completely
shadowy to my apprehension. I do not mean this for the well-
known firm of London ship-brokers which had chartered the ship to
the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeral Franco-Canadian
Transport Company. A death leaves something behind, but there
was never anything tangible left from the F.C.T.C. It flourished
no longer than roses live, and unlike the roses it blossomed in
the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure
and died before spring set in. But indubitably it was a company,
it had even a house-flag, all white with the letters F.C.T.C.
artfully tangled up in a complicated monogram. We flew it at our