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.