Amok and Other Stories (4 page)

She looked at me, turning a little pale. She probably sensed already that my refusal was not a matter of avarice, but she said, ‘Then what do you want?’

I was not putting up with her cool tone any more. ‘Let’s show our hands, shall we? I am not a tradesman … I’m not the poor apothecary in
Romeo and Juliet
who sells his poison for ‘corrupted gold’. Perhaps I’m the opposite of a
tradesman
… you won’t get what you want by those means.’

‘So you won’t do it?’

‘Not for money.’

All was very still between us for a second. So still that for the first time I heard her breathing.

‘What else can you want, then?’

Now I could control myself no longer. ‘First, I want you to stop … stop speaking to me as if I were a tradesman and address me like a human being. And when you need help, I don’t want you to … to come straight out with your shameful offer of money, but to ask me … ask me to help you as one human being to another. I am not just a
doctor
, I don’t spend all my time in consultations … I spend some of it in other ways too, and perhaps you have come at such a time.’

She says nothing for a moment, and then her lip curls very slightly, trembles, and she says quickly, ‘Then if I were to ask you … would you do it?’

‘You’re trying to drive a bargain again—you won’t ask me unless I promise first. You must ask me first—then I will give you an answer.’

She tosses her head like a defiant horse, and looks angrily at me.

‘No, I will not ask you. I’d rather go to my ruin!’

At that anger seized upon me, red, senseless anger.

‘Then if you won’t ask, I will make my own demand. I don’t think I have to put it crudely—you know what I want from you. And then—then I will help you.’

She stared at me for a moment. Then—oh, I can’t, I can’t tell you how terrible it was—then her features froze and she … she suddenly
laughed
, she laughed at me with unspeakable contempt in her face, contempt that was scattered all over me … and at the same time intoxicated me. That derisive laughter was like a sudden explosion, breaking out so abruptly and with such monstrous force behind it that I … yes, I could have sunk to the ground and kissed her feet. It lasted only a second … it was like lightning, and it had set my whole body on fire. Then she turned and went quickly to the door. I instinctively moved to follow her … to apologise, to beg her … well, my strength was entirely broken. She turned once more and said … no,
ordered
, ‘Don’t dare to follow me or try to track me down. You would regret it.’

And the door slammed shut behind her.”

Another hesitation. Another silence … again, there was only the faint rushing sound, as if of moonlight pouring down. Then, at last, the voice spoke again.

“The door slammed, but I stood there motionless on the spot, as if hypnotized by her order. I heard her go downstairs, open the front door … I heard it all, and my whole will urged me to follow her … to … oh, I don’t know what, to call her back, strike her, strangle her, but 
to follow her … to follow. Yet I couldn’t. My limbs were crippled as if by an electric shock … I had been cut to the quick by the imperious gleam of those eyes. I know there’s no explaining it, it can’t be described … it may sound ridiculous, but I just stood there, and it was several minutes, perhaps five, perhaps ten, before I could raise a foot from the floor …

But no sooner had I moved that foot than I instantly, swiftly, feverishly hurried down the stairs. She could only have gone along the road back to civilisation … I hurry to the shed for my bicycle, I find I have forgotten the door key, I wrench the lock off, splitting and breaking the
bamboo
of the shed door… and next moment I am on my bicycle and hurrying after her … I have to reach her, I must, before she gets back to her car. I must speak to her. The road rushes past me … only now do I realise how long I must have stood there motionless. Then, where the road through the forest bends just before reaching the buildings of the district station, I see her hurrying along, stepping firmly, walking straight ahead accompanied by her boy … but she must have seen me too, for now she speaks to the boy, who stays behind while she goes on alone. What is she doing? Why does she want to be on her own? Does she want to speak to me out of his
hearing
? I pedal fast and furiously … then something
suddenly
springs into my path. It’s the boy … I am only just in time to swerve and fall. I rise, cursing … involuntarily I raise my fist to hit the fool, but he leaps aside. I pick up my bicycle to remount it, but then the scoundrel lunges forward, takes hold of the bicycle, and says in his pitiful English, ‘You not go on.’

You haven’t lived in the tropics … you don’t know how unheard-of it is for a yellow bastard like that to seize the bicycle of a white ‘master’ and tell him, the master, to stay where he is. Instead of answering I strike him in the face with my fist. He staggers, but keeps hold of the bicycle … his eyes, his narrow, frightened eyes are wide open in
slavish
fear, but he holds the handlebars infernally tight. ‘You not go on,’ he stammers again. It’s lucky I don’t have my revolver with me, or I’d shoot him down. ‘Out of the way, scum!’ is all I say. He cringes and stares at me, but he does not let go of the handlebars. At this rage comes over me … I see that she is well away, she may have escaped me entirely … and I hit him under the chin with a boxer’s punch and send him flying. Now I have my bicycle back, but as I jump on it the mechanism jams. A spoke has bent in our tussle. I try to straighten it with trembling hands. I can’t, so I fling the bicycle across the road at the scoundrel, who gets up, bleeding, and flinches aside. And then—no, you won’t understand how ridiculous it looks to everyone there for a European … well, anyway, I didn’t know what I was doing any more. I had only one thought in my mind: to go after her, to reach her. And so I
ran
, ran like a madman along the road and past the huts, where the yellow riff-raff were gathered in amazement to see a white man, the doctor,
running
.

I reach the station, dripping with sweat. My first
question
is: where is the car? Just driven away … People stare at me in surprise. I must look to them like a lunatic,
arriving
wet and muddy, screaming my question ahead of me before coming to a halt … Down in the road, I see the white fumes of the car exhaust. She has succeeded …
succeeded, just as all her harsh, cruelly harsh calculations must succeed.

But flight won’t help her. There are no secrets among Europeans in the tropics. Everyone knows everyone else, everything is a notable event. And not for nothing did her driver spend an hour in the government bungalow … in a few minutes, I know all about it. I know who she is, I know that she lives in …. well, in the capital of the colony, eight hours from here by rail. I know that she is … let’s say the wife of a big businessman, enormously rich, distinguished, an Englishwoman. I know that her husband has been in America for five months, and is to arrive here next day to take her back to Europe with him …

And meanwhile—the thought burns in my veins like poison—meanwhile she can’t be more than two or three months pregnant …

So far I hope I have made it easy for you to understand … but perhaps only because up to that point I still understood myself, and as a doctor I could diagnose my own condition. From now on, however, something began to work in me like a fever … I lost control. That’s to say, I knew exactly how pointless everything I did was, but I had no power over myself any more … I no longer understood myself. I was merely racing forward, obsessed by my purpose …. No, wait. Perhaps I can make you understand it after all. Do you know what the expression ‘running amok’ means?”

“‘Running amok?’ Yes, I think I do … a kind of
intoxication
affecting the Malays …”

“It’s more than intoxication … it’s madness, a sort of human rabies, an attack of murderous, pointless
monomania
that bears no comparison with ordinary alcohol poisoning. I’ve studied several cases myself during my time in the East—it’s easy to be very wise and objective about other people—but I was never able to uncover the terrible secret of its origin. It may have something to do with the climate, the sultry, oppressive atmosphere that weighs on the nervous system like a storm until it
suddenly
breaks … well then, this is how it goes: a Malay, an ordinary, good-natured man, sits drinking his brew, impassive, indifferent, apathetic … just as I was sitting in my room … when suddenly he leaps to his feet, snatches his dagger and runs out into the street, going straight ahead of him, always straight ahead, with no idea of any destination. With his
kris
he strikes down anything that crosses his path, man or beast, and this murderous frenzy makes him even more deranged. He froths at the mouth as he runs, he howls like a lunatic … but he still runs and runs and runs, he doesn’t look right, he doesn’t look left, he just runs on screaming shrilly, brandishing his
bloodstained
kris
as he forges straight ahead in that dreadful way. The people of the villages know that no power can halt a man running amok, so they shout warnings ahead when they see him coming—‘Amok! Amok!’—and
everyone
flees … but he runs on without hearing, without
seeing,
striking down anything he meets … until he is either shot dead like a mad dog or collapses of his own accord, still frothing at the mouth …

I once saw a case from the window of my bungalow. It was a terrible sight, but it’s only because I saw it that
I can understand myself in those days … because I stormed off like that, just like that, obsessed in the same way, going straight ahead with that dreadful expression, seeing nothing to right or to left, following the woman. I don’t remember exactly what I did, it all went at such breakneck speed, with such mindless haste … Ten
minutes,
no, five—no, two—after I had found out all about the woman, her name, where she lived and her story, I was racing back to my house on a borrowed bicycle, I threw a suit into my case, took some money and drove to the railway station in my carriage. I went without informing the district officer, without finding a locum for myself, I left the house just as it was, unlocked. The servants were standing around, the astonished women were asking questions. I didn’t answer, didn’t turn, drove to the station and took the next train to the city … only an hour after that woman had entered my room, I had thrown my life away and was running amok, careering into empty space.

I ran straight on, headlong … I arrived in the city at six in the evening, and at ten past six I was at her house asking to see her. It was … well, as you will understand, it was the most pointless, stupid thing I could have done, but a man runs amok with empty eyes, he doesn’t see where he is going. The servant came back after a few minutes, cool and polite: his mistress was not well and couldn’t see anyone.

I staggered away. I prowled around the house for an hour, possessed by the insane hope that she might
perhaps
come looking for me. Only then did I book into the hotel on the beach and went to my room with two
bottles of whisky which, with a double dose of veronal, helped to calm me. At last I fell asleep … and that dull, troubled sleep was the only momentary respite in my race between life and death.”

The ship’s bell sounded. Two hard, full strokes that
vibrated
on, trembling, in the soft pool of near-motionless air and then ebbed away in the quiet, endless rushing of the water washing around the keel, its sound mingling with his
passionate
tale. The man opposite me in the dark must have started in alarm, for his voice hesitated. Once again I heard his hand move down to find a bottle, and the soft gurgling. Then, as if reassured, he began again in a firmer voice.

“I can scarcely tell you about the hours I passed from that moment on. I think, today, that I was in a fever at the time; at the least I was in a state of over-stimulation
bordering
on madness—as I told you, I was running amok. But don’t forget, it was Tuesday night when I arrived, and on Saturday—as I had now discovered—her
husband
was to arrive on the P&O steamer from Yokohama. So there were just three days left, three brief days for the decision to be made and for me to help her. You’ll understand that I knew I must help her at once, yet I couldn’t speak a word to her. And my need to apologise for my ridiculous, deranged behaviour drove me on. I knew how valuable every moment was, I knew it was a matter of life and death to her, yet I had no opportunity of approaching her with so much as a whisper or a sign, because my tempestuous foolishness in chasing after her
had frightened her off. It was … wait, yes … it was like running after someone warning that a murderer is on the way, and that person thinks you are the murderer yourself and so runs on to ruin … She saw me only as a man
running
amok, pursuing her in order to humiliate her, but I … and this was the terrible absurdity of it … I wasn’t thinking of that any more at all. I was destroyed already, I just wanted to help her, do her a service. I would have committed murder, any crime, to help her … but she didn’t understand that. When I woke in the morning and went straight back to her house, the boy was standing in the doorway, the servant whose face I had punched, and when he saw me coming—he must have been looking out for me—he hurried in through the door. Perhaps he went in only to announce my arrival discreetly … perhaps … oh, that uncertainty, how it torments me now … perhaps everything was ready to receive me, but then, when I saw him, I remembered my disgrace, and this time I didn’t even dare to try calling on her again. I was weak at the knees. Just before reaching the doorway I turned and went away again … went away, while she, perhaps, was waiting for me in a similar state of torment.

I didn’t know what to do in this strange city that seemed to burn like fire beneath my feet. Suddenly I thought of something, called for a carriage, went to see the vice-resident on whose leg I had operated back at my own district station, and had myself announced. Something in my appearance must have seemed strange, for he looked at me with slight alarm, and there was an uneasiness about his civility … perhaps he recognised me as a man running amok. I told him, briefly, that I wanted
a transfer to the city, I couldn’t exist in my present post any longer, I said, I had to move at once. He looked at me … I can’t tell you how he looked at me … perhaps as a doctor looks at a sick man. ‘A nervous breakdown, my dear doctor?’ he said. ‘I understand that only too well. I’m sure it can be arranged, but wait … let’s say for four weeks, while I find a replacement.’