The young Korzeniowski. I can see him now, and I’d like my readers to see him, too. Photos of the time show a baby-faced lad, smooth hair, long, straight brows, almond-colored eyes: a young man who regards his aristocratic origins at once with pride and affected disdain; he was five-foot-eight but at this time appears shorter due simply to timidity. Look at him, readers: Korzeniowski is first and foremost a boy who has lost his bearings. . and that’s not all. He has lost his faith in people; he’s lost all his money, wagering it on the habit-forming horse of contraband. Captain Duteuil had betrayed him: he’d taken his money and fled to Buenos Aires. Do you see him, readers? Korzeniowski, disoriented, wanders round the port of Marseille with an anal abscess and not a single coin in his pockets. . The world, thinks Korzeniowski, has suddenly turned into a difficult place, and all through the fault of money. He had quarreled with Monsieur Déléstang; he would never again step on a ship of his fleet. All paths seem closed to him. Korzeniowski thinks — it is to be thought that he thinks — of his uncle Tadeusz, the man whose money has kept him afloat since he left Poland. Uncle Tadeusz writes regularly; for Korzeniowski his letters should be a source of joy (contact with the homeland and so on), but in truth they torment him. Each letter is a judgment; after each reading, Korzeniowski is found guilty and condemned. “In two years you have by your transgressions used up your maintenance for the whole third year,” his uncle writes. “If the allowance that I have allotted you does not suffice, earn some money — and you will have it. If, however, you cannot earn it, then content yourself with what you get from the labor of others — until you are able to supplant it with your own earnings, and gratify yourself.” Uncle Tadeusz makes him feel useless, childish, irresponsible. Uncle Tadeusz has suddenly come to represent all that is detestable about Poland, every constraint, every restriction that had forced Korzeniowski to escape. “Hoping that it is the first and last time you cause me so much trouble, you have my embrace and my blessing.” First time, thinks Korzeniowski, last time. First. Last.
At the age of twenty, Korzeniowski has learned what it means to get into debt up to his neck. While waiting for the profits from the smuggled guns, he’d lived on the money of others; with other people’s money he’d bought the basic necessities for a trip that never came off. And that’s when he turns, for the last time — first, last — to his friend Richard Fecht. He takes a loan of eight hundred francs and leaves for Villa Franca. His intention: to join up with a North American squadron that was anchored there. What follows happens very quickly, and will continue happening very quickly in Korzeniowski’s mind, and also in Conrad’s, for the rest of his life. On the U.S. ships there are no available places: Korzeniowski, Polish citizen with no military papers, no stable employment, no certificates of good conduct, without a single piece of testimony to his skills on deck, is turned away. The Korzeniowskis are rash, passionate, impulsive: Apollo, his father, had been imprisoned for conspiring against the Russian Empire, for organizing several mutinies, and he had staked his life on a patriotic ideal; but the desperate young sailor does not think of him when he manages to get a lift to Monte Carlo, where he will stake his life for — shall we say? — less altruistic motives. Korzeniowski closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he finds himself standing before a roulette wheel. Welcome to Roulettenbourg, he thinks ironically. He doesn’t know where he’s heard that name before, sardonic code of hardened gamblers. But he doesn’t exert himself in pursuit of the memory. His concentration is elsewhere: the ball has begun to spin.
Korzeniowski takes his money, all his money. Then he pushes the chips across the smooth surface of the table; the chips settle contentedly on a black-colored diamond. “Les jeux sont faits,” shouts a voice. And as the roulette spins and on it the black ball, black like the diamond under the chips, Korzeniowski is surprised to recall words not his own and whose providence is unknown.
No, he does not recall them: the words have invaded him, they have taken him by storm. They are Russian words, the language of the empire that killed his father. Where do they come from? Who is speaking, and to whom? “If one begins cautiously,” says the new and mysterious voice rising in his head, “. . and can I, can I be such a baby! Can I fail to understand that I am a lost man?” The roulette spins, the colors disappear, but in Korzeniowski’s head the voice persists and keeps talking: “But — can I not rise again! Yes! I have only for once to be prudent and patient and — that is all! I have only for once to show willpower and in one hour I can transform my destiny! The great thing is willpower. Only remember what happened to me seven months ago at Roulettenbourg just before my final failure.” There it is, thinks Korzeniowski: that strange word. He doesn’t know what Roulettenbourg is or where it is; he doesn’t know who, from deep in his head, mentions this ignoble place. Is it something I’ve heard, something I’ve read, something I’ve dreamed? Who’s there? wonders Korzeniowski. And the voice: “Oh! it was a remarkable instance of determination; I had lost everything, then, everything. .” Who is it, who’s speaking? asks Korzeniowski. And the voice: “I was going out of the casino, I looked, there was still one gulden in my waistcoat pocket. Then I shall have something for dinner, I thought. But after I had gone a hundred paces I changed my mind and went back.” The roulette is coming to a stop. Who are you? asks Korzeniowski. And the voice: “There really is something peculiar in the feeling when, alone in a strange land, far from your home and from friends, not knowing whether you will have anything to eat that day, you stake your last gulden, your very last! I won, and twenty minutes later I went out of the casino, having a hundred and seventy guldens in my pocket. That’s a fact! That’s what the last gulden can sometimes do! And what if I had lost heart then? What if I had not dared to risk it?” But who are you? asks Korzeniowski. And the voice: “Tomorrow, tomorrow it will all be over!”
The roulette has stopped.
“Rouge!” shouts a man’s bow tie.
“Rouge,” repeats Korzeniowski.
Rouge. Red. Rodz.
He has lost everything.
Back in Marseille, he knows very well what he should do. He invites his friend Fecht to his apartment on rue Sainte for tea. There is no tea in the house, nor money to buy any, but that doesn’t matter. Rouge. Red. Rodz, he thinks. Tomorrow it will all be over. He goes out for a stroll around the port, he approaches an English sailing ship and stretches out his arm, as if to touch it, as if the sailing ship were a newborn donkey. There in front of the sailing ship and the Mediterranean, Korzeniowski suffers a violent attack of sadness. His sadness is that of skepticism, disorientation, the complete loss of a place in the world. He had arrived in Marseille drawn by adventure, and by the desire to break with a life that didn’t include adventure, but now he feels lost. An exhaustion that is not physical undermines him from within. Now he realizes that over the last seven days he has not slept seven whole hours. He raises his head and looks at the cloudy sky extending behind the sailing ship’s three masts; there, in the middle of the subtle racket of the port, the universe presents itself as a series of incomprehensible images. A few minutes after five, Korzeniowski is back in his room. Madame Fagot asks if he might not have the money he owes her. “One more day, please,” Korzeniowski says, “one more day.” And he thinks: Tomorrow it will all be over.