Furthermore, the “great wide spaces” that Robert imagines are guarded by ports packed with bodies, and there is no interior Asia in Conrad to balance the interior Africa of Heart of Darkness, no Kurtz to push past those who guard the border. In The Nigger of the “Narcissus” and “Youth,” a thin coastal strip constitutes a border that is impermeable but richer in theme for being so. Bombay Harbor in The Nigger of the “Narcissus” is cacophonous, actively in dispute with the Western presence. Bangkok Harbor in “Youth” is silent, somberly resistant to it. Both sites are teeming; neither is penetrable. Conrad’s panoramic description of Bangkok Harbor distinguishes between a spacious marine zone and a crowded quay: Marlow sees “the wide sweep of the bay, the glittering sands, the wealth of green infinite and varied, the sea blue like the sea of a dream, the crowd of attentive faces, the blaze of vivid colour . . . .”40 And Conrad’s ports are not observable outside the context of observation; the author assures us as much by his almost Brechtian interest in the spectator’s power to animate spectacle. When the captain of the “Narcissus” negotiates wages with new recruits in Bombay Harbor, “the feverish and shrill babble of Eastern language struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy seamen, who argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts.” Unavoidably, “the resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid tatters” by the din.41 Robert longs for a place whose “spell” would be broken by his presence. He shares interests with Conrad, not ideas or modes of imagination. “A good dose of sea-sickness” would cure Robert of his silliness, Andrew suggests in a deleted passage (14). Reading Conrad carefully would help, too.
Andrew Mayo, not his brother, ships out as Conrad and O’Neill had done, embarking on the voyage to the Asia that Robert relegated to imagination when he married Ruth. Now and then Andrew sends letters home. Singapore, he writes, is “a dirty hole of a place and hotter than hell.” This annoys Robert, who, absorbing the brunt of O’Neill’s irony, complains that his brother’s letters “read like the diary of a—of a farmer!” (88; 615). The irrationality of Robert’s irritation conveys the intensity of his frustration about being unable to experience “the East” in a manner consistent with his imagination, first hand or through the agency of his brother, who remains comically unaware of Robert’s desire to make him the Marlow that Robert himself has failed to become.
Andrew’s return in act two, scene two, allows Robert another opportunity to criticize his brother’s perceived lack of sensitivity to wonders about which he, Robert, has only fantasized. Robert chides Andrew for the inadequacy of his letters. “Oh, I know I’m no author,” replies Andrew, “I’d rather go through a typhoon again than write a letter.” Robert jumps on this: “With eager interest,” he responds, “Then you were through a typhoon?” (98; 619). Indeed, he had been, and in the China Sea at that, where Captain MacWhirr and his crew had survived such an inclemency in Typhoon. Andrew describes the ordeal:
Had to run before it under bare poles for two days. I thought we were bound down for Davy Jones, sure. Never dreamed waves could get so big or the wind blow so hard. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick being such a good skipper we’d have gone to the sharks, all of us. As it was we came out minus a main top-mast and had to beat back to Hong-Kong for repairs (99; 619-20).
In the second edition, that’s it. In the first edition, Andrew presses his point as best he can. He describes the typhoon as “Hell,” echoing his remark on Singapore. “And as for the East you used to rave about,” he adds, “well, you ought to see it, and smell it!” Finally, this land of “Chinks and Japs and Hindus and the rest of them . . . . has the stink market cornered” (100–01). One may detect an echo of the narrator of Typhoon on the “repulsive smell” of the breath of a “Chinaman,” and Andrew’s reliance on racial amalgamation recalls Conrad’s descriptions of Bombay and Bangkok Harbors, although experiences that inspire painterly nuance in Conrad prompt in Andrew mere biliousness.42
