of a century, completely obliterated like an undesirable historical fact (but this is not the time to speak of that disaster). He doesn’t know that, in a matter of hours, when they sail between St. Thomas and Port-au-Prince, he will meet the violence of the East Wind and the West Wind, and doesn’t know that much later he’ll write about that violence. Between Port-au-Prince and Marseille he will turn nineteen, and won’t know that at home awaits the most difficult chain of events of his youth, events that will culminate, for him, with a gunshot to the heart.
And while that birthday unfolds on board the Saint-Antoine , with songs and embraces from Cervoni, in another vessel somewhere else other things (or shall I say: correspondences) are happening. Allow me to introduce the steamer Lafayette , flagship of the French West Indies line that will play extremely important roles in our small tragedy. Aboard, Lieutenant Lucien Napoléon Bonaparte Wyse, illegitimate son of a famous mother (in the worst sense) and unknown father (in the only sense), this Lieutenant Wyse, dear readers, is preparing to leave on an expedition. His mission is to search through the Colombian Darien Jungle for the best place to open an inter-oceanic canal, which some—in Paris, in New York, in Bogotá itself—have begun to call That Fucking Canal. I’ll say it once and for all: for reasons that will soon become apparent, for reasons impossible to reduce to the golden cage of a single pretty phrase, at that moment it wasn’t just the Canal that began to be fucked up but my entire life.
Chronology is an untamed beast; the reader doesn’t know what inhuman labors I’ve gone through to give my tale a more or less organized appearance (I don’t rule out having failed in the attempt). My problems with the beast can be reduced to one alone. You’ll see, with the passing of the years and the reflection on the subjects of this book, which I’m now writing, I have discovered what undoubtedly comes as no surprise to anyone: that stories in the world, all the stories that are known and told and remembered, all those little stories that for some reason matter to us and which gradually fit together without us noticing to compose the fearful fresco of Great History, they are juxtaposed, touching, intersecting: none of them exists on their own. How to wrest a linear tale from this? Impossible, I fear. Here is a humble revelation, the lesson I’ve learned through brushing up against world events: silence is invention, lies are constructed by what’s not said, and since my intention is to tell faithfully, my cannibalistic tale must include everything, as many stories as can fit in the mouth, big ones and little ones. Well then, in the days before the departure of the Lafayette one of the latter occurred: the encounter between another two travelers. It was a few meters from the port of Colón and, therefore, from Lieutenant Wyse and his men. And in the next chapter, if my life has not ended by then, if there is still enough strength in my hand to hold my pen, I’ll have to concentrate on it. (At my age, which is more or less the age of a dead novelist, Polish by birth and sailor before he became a writer, there’s no point in making plans too far ahead.)
B ut first, responding to the peculiar order events have in my tale, I must concern myself with another matter, or rather with another man. Let’s call him a facilitator; let’s call him an intermediary. It’s obvious, I think: if I’m going to devote so many pages to describing my encounter with Joseph Conrad, it’s at least necessary that I explain a little who the person responsible for our meeting was, the host of my disgrace, the man who fostered the theft . . .
But it’s still too early to speak of the theft.
Let us return, readers, to the year 1903. The location is a dock on the Thames: a passenger steamer has arrived from the Caribbean port of Barranquilla, in the convulsive Republic
And while that birthday unfolds on board the Saint-Antoine , with songs and embraces from Cervoni, in another vessel somewhere else other things (or shall I say: correspondences) are happening. Allow me to introduce the steamer Lafayette , flagship of the French West Indies line that will play extremely important roles in our small tragedy. Aboard, Lieutenant Lucien Napoléon Bonaparte Wyse, illegitimate son of a famous mother (in the worst sense) and unknown father (in the only sense), this Lieutenant Wyse, dear readers, is preparing to leave on an expedition. His mission is to search through the Colombian Darien Jungle for the best place to open an inter-oceanic canal, which some—in Paris, in New York, in Bogotá itself—have begun to call That Fucking Canal. I’ll say it once and for all: for reasons that will soon become apparent, for reasons impossible to reduce to the golden cage of a single pretty phrase, at that moment it wasn’t just the Canal that began to be fucked up but my entire life.
Chronology is an untamed beast; the reader doesn’t know what inhuman labors I’ve gone through to give my tale a more or less organized appearance (I don’t rule out having failed in the attempt). My problems with the beast can be reduced to one alone. You’ll see, with the passing of the years and the reflection on the subjects of this book, which I’m now writing, I have discovered what undoubtedly comes as no surprise to anyone: that stories in the world, all the stories that are known and told and remembered, all those little stories that for some reason matter to us and which gradually fit together without us noticing to compose the fearful fresco of Great History, they are juxtaposed, touching, intersecting: none of them exists on their own. How to wrest a linear tale from this? Impossible, I fear. Here is a humble revelation, the lesson I’ve learned through brushing up against world events: silence is invention, lies are constructed by what’s not said, and since my intention is to tell faithfully, my cannibalistic tale must include everything, as many stories as can fit in the mouth, big ones and little ones. Well then, in the days before the departure of the Lafayette one of the latter occurred: the encounter between another two travelers. It was a few meters from the port of Colón and, therefore, from Lieutenant Wyse and his men. And in the next chapter, if my life has not ended by then, if there is still enough strength in my hand to hold my pen, I’ll have to concentrate on it. (At my age, which is more or less the age of a dead novelist, Polish by birth and sailor before he became a writer, there’s no point in making plans too far ahead.)
B ut first, responding to the peculiar order events have in my tale, I must concern myself with another matter, or rather with another man. Let’s call him a facilitator; let’s call him an intermediary. It’s obvious, I think: if I’m going to devote so many pages to describing my encounter with Joseph Conrad, it’s at least necessary that I explain a little who the person responsible for our meeting was, the host of my disgrace, the man who fostered the theft . . .
But it’s still too early to speak of the theft.
Let us return, readers, to the year 1903. The location is a dock on the Thames: a passenger steamer has arrived from the Caribbean port of Barranquilla, in the convulsive Republic
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