Of course, they don’t know that I … well, they don’t know that … they don’t know it, and what business is it of theirs, after all, they’re strangers …”

He stopped again, and then very suddenly and hastily said, “But I don’t want to bother you … forgive me for speaking so freely.”

He made a bow, and was about to leave, but I urged him to stay. “You’re not bothering me in the least. I’m glad to have a few quiet words with someone up here myself … may I offer you a cigarette?”

He took one, and I lit it. Once again his face moved away from the ship’s black side, flickering in the light of the match, but now he turned it fully to me: his eyes behind his glasses looking inquiringly into my face, avidly and with demented force. A shudder passed through me. I could feel that this man wanted to speak, had to speak. And I knew that I must help him by saying nothing.

We sat down again. He had a second deckchair there, and offered it to me. Our cigarettes glowed, and from the way that the ring of light traced by his in the darkness shook, I could tell that his hand was trembling. But I kept silent, and so did he. Then, suddenly, he asked in a quiet voice, “Are you very tired?”

“No, not at all.”

The voice in the dark hesitated again. “I would like to ask you something … that’s to say, I’d like to tell you something. Oh, I know, I know very well how absurd it is to turn to the first man I meet, but … I’m … I’m in a terrible mental condition, I have reached a point where I absolutely must talk to someone, or it will be the end of me … You’ll understand that when I … well, if I tell you … I mean, I know you can’t help me, but this silence is almost making me ill, and a sick man always looks ridiculous to others …”

Here I interrupted, begging him not to distress himself. He could tell me anything he liked, I said. Naturally I couldn’t promise him anything, but to show willingness is a human duty. If you see someone in trouble, I added, of course it is your duty to help …

“Duty … to show willing … a duty to try to … so you too think it is a man’s duty … yes, his duty to show himself willing to help.”

He repeated it three times. I shuddered at the blunt, grim tone of his repetition. Was the man mad? Was he drunk?

As if I had uttered my suspicions aloud, he suddenly said in quite a different voice, “You may think me mad or drunk. No, I’m not—not yet. Only what you said moved me so … so strangely, because that’s exactly what torments me now, wondering if it’s a duty … a duty …”

He was beginning to stammer again. He broke off for a moment, pulled himself together, and began again.

“The fact is, I am a doctor of medicine, and in that profession we often come upon such cases, such fateful cases … borderline cases, let’s call them, when we don’t know whether or not it is our duty … or rather, when there’s more than one duty involved, not just to another human being but to ourselves too, to the state, to science … yes, of course, we must help, that’s what we are there for … but such maxims are never more than theory. How far should we go with our help? Here are you, a stranger to me, and I’m a stranger to you, and I ask you not to mention seeing me … well, so you don’t say anything, you do that duty … and now I ask you to talk to me because my own silence is killing me, and you say you are ready to listen. Good, but that’s easy … suppose I were to ask you to take hold of me and throw me overboard, though, your willingness to help would be over. The duty has to end somewhere … it ends where we begin thinking of our own lives, our own responsibilities, it has to end somewhere, it has to end … or perhaps for doctors, of all people, it ought not to end? Must a doctor always come to the rescue, be ready to help one and all, just because he has a diploma full of Latin words, must he really throw away his life and water down his own blood if some woman … if someone comes along wanting him to be noble, helpful, good? Yes, duty ends somewhere … it ends where no more can be done, that’s where it ends …”

He stopped again, and regained control.

“Forgive me, I know I sound agitated … but I’m not drunk, not yet … although I often am, I freely confess it, in this hellish isolation … bear in mind that for seven years I’ve lived almost entirely with the local natives and with animals … you forget how to talk calmly. And then if you do open up, everything comes flooding out … but wait … Yes, I know … I was going to ask you, I wanted to tell you about a certain case, wondering whether you think one has a duty to help … just help, with motives as pure as an angel’s, or whether … Although I fear it will be a long story. Are you sure you’re not tired?”

“No, not in the least.”

“Thank you … thank you. Will you have a drink?”

He had been groping in the dark behind him somewhere. There was a clinking sound: two or three, at any rate several bottles stood ranged there. He offered me a glass of whisky, which I sipped briefly, while he drained his glass in a single draught. For a moment there was silence between us. Then the ship’s bell struck half-past midnight.

 

“Well then … I’d like to tell you about a case.