Сердце тьмы / Heart of darkness (адаптированный английский B1)

Behind them walked a guard, carrying a rifle. He wore a uniform jacket with a missing button. Seeing a white man, he quickly raised his rifle. It was a security measure; white people look similar from a distance. He quickly relaxed, smiled, and seemed to include me in his responsibility. After all, I was also part of this.

Instead of going up the hill, I went down. I wanted the prisoners to be out of sight before I continued. I'm not especially kind; I've had to fight and defend myself many times. I've had to fight back – that's just part of life. I've seen abuse, and greed; powerful, angry things that control people. But here, I sensed a different kind of evil: a mean, weak kind of violence. How bad it was, I only realized much later. For a moment, I felt a warning. Then I went down the hill towards the trees.

I avoided a large hole someone had dug. I couldn't understand why. It wasn't a mine, just a hole. Maybe it was to give the prisoners work. I don't know. Then I almost fell into a small pit where broken pipes were thrown. It looked like someone had broken them on purpose. Finally, I reached the trees. I wanted some shade, but it felt like I'd entered a dark place. The river was nearby, and the sound of rushing water filled the quiet forest. It sounded like the earth itself was moving.

Dark figures lay, and sat among the trees, leaning against the trunks, close to the ground, partly hidden in the faint light. They looked as if they were in pain, abandoned, and desperate. Another explosion at the mine on the cliff shook the ground slightly. The work continued. This was where some of the workers had come to die.

They were dying slowly – it was obvious. They weren't enemies or criminals; they were just shadows of illness and hunger, lying in the low light. Brought from all over the coast under work contracts, they were lost and unhappy in this strange place, eating strange food. They got sick, couldn’t work, and were left to die. These dying figures were free, but very weak. I noticed their eyes shining under the trees. Then, I saw a face near my hand. A man lay with his shoulder against a tree. His eyes slowly opened, and looked up at me – large and empty, a brief flash of white in the darkness. He seemed young, almost a boy, but it's hard to tell with them. I gave him a bread I had. He slowly took it and held it; he didn't move or look at me again. He had a piece of white wool around his neck. Why? Where did he get it? Was it a decoration, a good luck charm, or something else? It looked strange against his dark skin.

Near the same tree, two more thin figures sat with their legs pulled up. One stared ahead, and the other rested his forehead as if tired. Others lay around them in various painful positions, like a scene from a terrible accident or an epidemic. While I watched, scared, one of them crawled to the river to drink. He drank from his hand, then sat in the sun, and finally rested his head on his chest.

I didn't want to stay any longer, so I hurried towards the station. Near the buildings, I met a white man, dressed so nicely that at first I thought he was a ghost. He wore a high collar, a light jacket, white pants, a tie, and clean shoes. He had no hat, but his hair was neat, and he held a umbrella. He was amazing; he even had a pen behind his ear.

I shook hands with this man, and learned he was the company's chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He'd come outside for a few minutes, he said, "to get some fresh air." This sounded strange, as it suggested he had a desk job. I wouldn't have mentioned him, except he was the first person I heard mention the name of the man who is so important to my memories of that time. I respected him. I respected his clean clothes and neat hair. He looked like a model, but in this mess, he maintained his appearance. That shows strength. His high collars and clean shirts showed character. He'd been there almost three years; later, I asked him how he kept his clothes so clean. He flushed slightly and said modestly, "I've been teaching a local woman at the station. It was hard. She didn't like the work." He had really achieved something. And he was dedicated to his work, which was perfectly organized.

Everything else at the station was messy – people, things, buildings. Groups of local people came and went; a stream of goods – cheap cotton, beads, and wire – went into the jungle, and a small amount of ivory came back.

I had to wait at the station for ten days – it felt like forever. I lived in a cabin in the yard, but to escape the mess, I sometimes went to the accountant's office. It was made of wood, and poorly built, so sunlight streamed in between the gaps as he sat at his desk. It was hot, and big flies made noise around, bothering him. I usually sat on the floor while he, perfectly clean and even slightly smelling of perfume, sat on a high chair and wrote. Sometimes he stood up to stretch. When a bed with a sick man (an employee from distant area) was brought in, he showed mild anger. "This sick man's sounds," he said, "distract me. And it's hard enough to avoid mistakes in this climate."

One day he said, without looking up, "You'll probably meet Mr. Kurtz in the interior." When I asked who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a top employee; seeing my frustration, he added slowly, putting down his pen, "He's a very remarkable person." I asked more questions, and learned that Mr. Kurtz was in charge of a very important trading post in the main ivory area, "deep in the interior." He sends back more ivory than everyone else combined… He started writing again. The sick man was too weak to make sounds.

Suddenly, there was a growing noise of voices and many feet. A group of travelers had arrived. A loud, confused shouting was heard on the other side of the boards. All the workers were talking at once, and in the middle of the confusion, the chief agent's sad voice was heard giving up, for the twentieth time that day. He stood up slowly. "What a terrible noise," he said. He quietly walked across the room to check on the sick man, and coming back, said to me, "He can't hear." "What! Is he dead?" I asked, surprised. "No, not yet," he answered calmly. Then, gesturing towards the confusion in the yard, "When you have to make accurate records, you come to hate these people – hate them very much." He thought for a moment. "When you see Mr. Kurtz," he continued, "tell him from me that everything here" – he looked at the deck – "is fine. I don't like to write to him – with our messengers, you never know who might read your letter – at that main office." He looked at me for a moment with his gentle, wide eyes. "Oh, he will go far, very far," he started again. "He will be an important person in the government soon. The people in charge – the Council in Europe – want him to succeed."

He returned to his work. The noise outside had stopped, and as I left, I paused at the door. In the constant noise of flies, the sick agent lay still and unconscious; the other, bent over his books, was carefully recording perfectly normal business; and fifty feet below, I could see the still tops of the trees in the deadly forest.

The next day, I finally left the station with a group of sixty men. We were going on a long, 200-mile walk.

There's not much to tell you about that. Paths, paths everywhere – a network of paths across the empty land. They went through tall grass, burnt grass, bushes, up and down cool valleys, and over hot hills. It was very lonely; no one, not a single house. The people had left a long time ago. If a group of armed people suddenly started traveling between Deal and Gravesend, making local people carry heavy things for them, I imagine everyone would leave quickly. Here, though, the houses were gone too. I passed several abandoned villages. The ruined grass walls looked sadly. Day after day, I walked with sixty people behind me, each carrying a heavy load. We camped, cooked, slept, packed up, and marched. Sometimes, someone died, lying in the grass by the path, with their empty water bottle and walking stick. It was very quiet. Sometimes at night, you could hear distant drums, a faint, strange sound – maybe as meaningful as church bells. Once, I met a white man in a partly-buttoned uniform, camping with armed guards. He said he was looking after the road, but I didn’t see any road or any work being done, except maybe the body of a dead man I found a few miles later.

I had a white friend with me, a nice man, but overweight and he kept fainting in the heat. It was annoying having to hold my coat over him while he recovered. I asked him why he was there. "To make money, of course!" he said angrily. Then he got sick and had to be carried. Because he was very heavy, I had many arguments with the carriers. They refused to work, ran away, or stole things at night. So, I gave them a speech, and the next morning, they carried him. An hour later, I found him beaten. The heavy pole had hurt his nose. He wanted me to punish someone, but the carriers were gone. I remembered an old doctor saying it would be interesting to study how people’s minds change in such situations. I felt like I was becoming a study myself! Anyway, that’s beside the point. On the fifteenth day, I reached the river and arrived at the Central Station. It was surrounded by bushes and forest, with muddy banks and a broken fence. The gate was just a gap in the fence, and it was clear that things were not going well. Some white men with sticks came out to look at me, then went away. One man, a short, excited man, told me my boat was at the bottom of the river. I was shocked. He said it was "all right," the manager was there, and everyone had done a great job. He said I had to see the main manager immediately.

I didn't understand the real importance of the accident right away. I think I understand it now, but I'm not sure at all. It was incredibly silly, when I think about it, almost unbelievable. But at the time, it was just a huge problem. The steamboat sank. They'd left two days earlier in a rush, going up the river. The manager was on board, with a volunteer captain. Less than three hours later, they hit rocks and the boat sank near the south bank. I wondered what I'd do now that my boat was gone. Actually, I had plenty to do – getting my things out of the river. I started the next day. That, and the repairs at the station, took months.

My first meeting with the manager was strange. He didn't ask me to sit down after my long walk that morning. He was a regular: average looking, average height and build, with an average voice and manner. His eyes, a typical blue, were perhaps unusually cold, and his gaze could be intense and heavy. But the rest of him didn't seem to match that intensity. He had a strange, slight expression on his lips – something hidden, a sort of smile, but not quite. I can't describe it. But it became stronger for a moment after he spoke. It came at the end of his sentences, like a stamp on his words, making even simple things seem mysterious.