Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

When Clemens finished, he looked around and asked: “Who’s next?” Then to Stanley: “My dear man, please: Why not grace us plebeians with something from your own pen? Otherwise I’ll read more, and who would want that?”

Stanley, deeply touched and perhaps emboldened by the reminder that there was something noble and beautiful and deeply human about literature, then stood up, and, with his eyes most sad, excused himself from the parlor and headed into his library, where he kept some sections of his autobiography in a drawer. Written in longhand and converted into typescript, those pages were much expanded from the days when he had first begun them, in the early 1890s (that version proceeding after his “cabinet” manuscript), and though he had since rarely added anything more than a few sentences a day, despite the hours he had devoted to the book, he chose, in an effort to please Clemens, to plunge forward and read from its beginning. But it was no easy thing. When, after some fifteen minutes, and after gulping down two shots of a fine Napoleon brandy, Stanley returned to the parlor, the discoverer of Livingstone and the conqueror of the Congo—“the new Alexander,” as Léopold had once called him — sat down humbly and, with his hands shaking, began to read a section involving his own youth titled “Through the World.”

Tracing the beginnings of his lowly childhood in north Wales, it was a rather fanciful collage of vaguely remembered people and scenes from his earliest days — the interior of a peasant’s cottage, with its ordinary objects: some Chinese pictures, a window set in lead, a teapot hissing, an old clock with chains and weights beneath it, a fly alighting near his cradle — all such things described with care and read in a halting but clear voice. The progress of those pages was marked with various hesitations, his words hardly audible as he stated that he had no father, the man having died a few weeks after his birth, and, with his gut tightening and breathing laborious, his pace slowing whenever he came to any references to the mother who had abandoned him. His face would redden whenever he mentioned that shadowy presence in his narrative.

Then, with the apparent exhaustion of a man who had marched out of a swamp, he simply stopped. “However well, mechanically speaking, I may write, and however many books I have sold — for I have earned my living mainly from literary output — nothing I ever create will be as heart-wrenching as Mark Twain’s tales.” In a solemn mood, he added, “Still, this is what your humble servant has been doing.”

He may have felt bad about his writing, but there was much excitement among his listeners. Clemens’s daughters, although spoiled by their exposure to famous people, knew that it had been a special moment, and they applauded his efforts: Gertrude had often nodded approvingly, and Dolly, greatly pleased and wanting to see and hear more of his autobiography, hoped the recitation would be the beginning of a new phase, one in which he might feel emboldened to finish the “chimerical story of his life.” And Clemens? Touched by Stanley’s timidity in reading from that work aloud, drew him aside and said: “Look here, Henry, if you should need me in any way to assist you, then I am at your disposal. If you care to, I would be glad to be your editor.”

Stanley, shaking Clemens’s hand, answered, “Thank you, Samuel, but this book feels like it will be my coffin. What I have written of it will remain where I left it. It is just my way.”

With that, he and Stanley went out onto the veranda with some brandies and cigars in hand, and there, while luxuriating in the beauty of the night sky, Stanley bared his soul to Clemens.

PERHAPS HE HAD INTUITED that he might never see Clemens again, but on that Easter Sunday evening, Stanley, not feeling long for the world, said:

“Now, Samuel, may I ask you something?”

“Surely.”

“What do you really make of the doings in the Congo?”

“I’ve heard both good and bad things about it, like most folks.”

“But the bad things — do you believe them?”

He thought for a moment and said: “I do, sometimes.”

“You know it’s the ivory and rubber trade behind it. I’ve been made sick over the whole business. And yet some people are saying I’ve profited greatly from it. But what money I have, Samuel, I’ve earned from my lectures and books, mainly.”

“I believe you.”

“Then why do I think you don’t?”

“Sir Henry, I have my own highly developed peeves. The likes of Léopold, your friendly king; the Russian czar; the missionaries in China. America as well these days. I would sooner drink piss than fall in line with the acquisition-mad parties who have made the world a misery for so many. But even if I distrust the motives behind the Africa game and deplore imperialism — well, I’ve said it: Not once have I ever thought you implicated as the planner of such things.”

“Some have accused me of cruelty.”

“You’ve told me that, but do I believe it? My God, Henry, I would imagine that, in the circumstances you’ve been in, you did what you had to do.”

“I’ve never awakened any one morning and thought I would have to kill someone to survive the day, but I have killed again and again.”

“So your conscience is bothering you?”

“No, my conscience is clear. Yet… in the midst of my days, even when I am taking a stroll with little Denzil, some part of my mind is always racing and taking account of the number of lives I have personally brought to an end. Some days I come up with a modest figure — thirty-seven; then the next day I will remember another incident. The number shoots up to one hundred; then on yet other days, I tally up five hundred and more graves and fall into a vague sense of remorse. That’s not counting the hands I’ve lost to malaria and other diseases and those who have starved to death or been shot with poison darts or rifles or drowned, like my poor Kalulu. Nor does it account for the many animals who’ve died on my expeditions — hounds, donkeys, horses, and birds. I don’t lose sleep over it, mind you, I just have odd dreams, in which I am a harbinger of death. Yes, I know that my efforts have contributed to making central Africa what it is today, but never did I dream possible the sufferings that have been reported. Even if only ten percent of the stories are true, as I know them to be, that is hard for me to live with. And though I do not feel at fault — for I was never given a chance to run things there — I have some moments of misery just the same.”

Then: “And here I will tell you how I get beyond it. The first way is through prayer.”

“You sincerely pray?”

“Yes, but sometimes I feel I pray to nothing. Then I think of my family and how I am blessed, and I ask, if I had brought evil into this world, as some accuse me of doing, then how can it be that I am now more or less a happy man?”

“Are you?”

“For a good portion of my days; but then the other moments creep in, and that’s when, Samuel, I must tell you, I will chew on my dream gum and otherwise prevail upon the resources of my wine and spirits cellar. The fact is that it is the rare day when I am not, let me say, in a more or less salubrious state by supper without such spirits.”

“It is your business.”

“Yes, I know, but then even as I count my blessings, I still feel preyed upon by my worst doubts. Along the way I am reminded that I am no longer much of a writer. Tonight you heard a bit of my so-called autobiography, but as I’ve told you, it is something I never expect to finish. You see, I’ve been unable to progress beyond a certain point; if you must know, I have been barely able to proceed beyond the years when you and I knew each other and journeyed to Cuba.”