Chapter twenty four:
To the Congo V --- July 1907
When I saw the station ahead, I wanted nothing more than to collapse. Those last few meters were the hardest of the entire run. But the moment my boot struck the raised platform—and I saw the tall space stood empty, I allowed myself to drop upon my knees, just for a breath.
But I knew what was required of me. I followed Nicholas and Conrad, flinging my pack against the closed door. Breathless, I hadn't asked—but Conrad still tossed me spare ammunition. Nicholas took position behind the ticket counter. I crouched by the door, loading the rifle with oddly steady hands, as Conrad laid prone, covering the station's left flank.
After I had my gun loaded, I entered the position as well and simply breathed, trying to catch a normal rhythm. I tried to listen to any sound coming from outside of the building. But there was nothing to hear. My nervousness was only met with the whispers of a soft wind.
At first, I held my post with silent discipline, my cheek to the stock, eyes trained on the sliver of wall where steel met greenery. But as minutes became hours, unease crept in. Neither Conrad nor Nicholas spoke.
The silence fed my growing paranoia. Had we been abandoned? Followed? When would the next train arrive? More and more my thoughts spun.
All my thoughts were met with silence, the only thing I could on occasion make out was the rustle of paper, drifting from behind the ticket counter.
Around the third hour, the silence broke. A fist knocked lightly on the wooden desk. I set my rifle down and turned. Nicholas met my eyes, holding out a book in his uninjured hand. With a nod, he tossed it. I caught it, opened to the marked page inside. In Nicholas's handwriting: "Earliest train: 32 hours. Tear for noise, One page = food. Two = water. Three = coffee. Pass to Conrad." The news hit like a stone. I exhaled quietly and mimed the same motion, tossing the Bible toward Conrad. He caught it without a word. I returned to my post.
By the fifth hour, I had been awake for over twenty. My body screamed to stretch, to move, to speak. The silence was like a cancer, its presence growing as the hours went on. I quelled my impulses by imagining my death, rehearsing it silently, again and again.
Silence was our first defense---to deny the enemy information. A single word could betray our numbers, our state, our exhaustion. Even a cough might unravel everything. In combat, especially in foreign terrain, you must assume the enemy is competent. You must assume they are watching, waiting, and willing.
By the twelfth hour—twenty-seven hours without sleep—I began to slip. The corner I watched blurred, faded, vanished. In its place came visions of the past: silent meals, old conversations, details long buried by time. These memories arrived vivid, surreal. At times I thought I'd fallen asleep, until the steel corner returned, sharp and unyielding.
Around the fifteenth, maybe sixteenth hour, I took a coffee. It tasted nothing like coffee, but it banished the visions. In their place came boredom—crushing, senseless. I felt a compulsion to speak, not from necessity, but from sheer defiance. It had become to me a forbidden act. I nearly whispered—nearly. But I didn't. And so I asked myself: why?
That silence forced reflection—on who I had been, and what I had become.
When I was a boy, all I wanted was to be a famous, well-paid artist. A common dream, perhaps even a childish one. But that was before father died—before Gustav stepped into his role, and I quietly assumed my own. As a child I took the burden of the family upon myself, not out of necessity, but out of desire. I wanted to earn enough for all of us to live freely, without toil.
That self-imposed pressure may have damaged me—but it also shaped me. It warped my sense of time, created a kind of mania, a furnace of urgency. I believed I had perhaps a decade before father would retire. That countdown drove me. What began as passion became purpose. I improved with unnatural speed, not just for pride, but for love—for my mother, for my family.
For those few short years, I had direction. Each morning I awoke with clarity. There was no doubt, no hesitation—only work. My mind and body moved as one. I studied endlessly, comparing my works to the masters, dissecting their forms, imitating their rhythms. My time was not wasted. It was invested. It was the greatest period of growth in my life.
When father died, my sense of Total Commitment vanished. What remained was confusion—uncertainty. I knew, both logically and intuitively, that my work had not been in vain. I had grown into a formidable artist. My progress was undeniable. Yet no matter the truth, I felt like a failure. The burden I carried had no destination now, and I was left walking alone.
I would never see my father retire. He was gone—dissolved into memory, into the wind. Gustav had taken care of our finances, and with that, the urgency vanished. The finality that once drove my every brushstroke was gone. Irretrievable.
I still believed in art as my measure, but to what end? My goals remained, but the destination felt hollow. I moved forward, yes—but toward what? My work continued at the same pace, but with a strange, diminished weight. A silence beneath the rhythm.
The void left by my father's death swallowed the path I had once walked with certainty. And yet, in that emptiness, his memory lingered—not in spoken advice, but in the weight of what he had lost. His regrets echoed in me. Lost time. Lost potential. A life unfinished. That, I came to realize, was his final gift to me. Life is brief—so brief—and one must choose a direction, any direction, and pursue it with full conviction. Even in silence, he taught me: you must always strive.
I thought long and hard—on ambition, wealth, glory, even love. All paths worth walking. But in the end, my answer was disarmingly simple. A choice that would seem laughable to most youths, yet one I saw as wise beyond my years. I believed then—and still do—that most people overlook it. Not from malice, but from distraction, self-absorption, or simple ignorance. A sad truth, but one I had to accept.
I just wanted to make my mother proud.
It was a simple goal—almost embarrassingly so.
It may sound absurd now—that the man who would one day change the world began not with dreams of conquest, glory, or greatness, but with something much smaller. I did not dream of political power or war. I simply wanted to return the love I had been given. To care for my mother, as she had cared for me. That was all.
The logic was undeniable. Had she not devoted her life to Gustav and me? Had she not sacrificed her time, her health, her years—so that we might live well? How could I not do the same in return? To love her back—to make her proud—was not just duty. It was justice.
That finality, that clarity of purpose, took on a tangible form: a single work of true art, promised long ago—if only in spirit—to my mother. That was why I had set my sights on the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. I could have chosen a lesser institution. But this was not just about training—it was about proving that I belonged among the best.
There, I believed, I would refine my craft to its highest form—to cross the threshold between talent and greatness. But even then, I wondered: is there truly any line a man should not cross in pursuit of his purpose? Of that which he desires most?
Looking back, it was clear: my art had been too cold, too sterile—scenes of architecture and landscape, but never of the human form. I had offered technique, not soul. And the judges had seen that. To be admitted, I would have to do more than impress—I would have to shatter their expectations. The work I had created here? Without a doubt it had a soul. For it spoke a truth.
That was why I endured months of preparation for the nightmare of Africa. I needed to create something undeniably human—raw, painful, unforgettable. Not a secondhand image from a newspaper, but a firsthand confrontation with suffering. I had to see it. Feel it. Capture it. What had Leopold done?
Not long after those thoughts faded into silence, my memory vanished with them. Hours passed, but I would never recall them. Later, I asked Nicholas and Conrad what I had done—how I had looked, what I had said. They told me I had done nothing at all. I had simply held my post.
But one moment remains in me with crystal clarity: the whistle of the train. The sound broke me. I cried when it echoed. I cried when the train rolled to a stop. I cried when it took us in. And I cried when I finally slept. For I had won.