Awakening to Exploitation

The journey upriver dragged on with grim monotony, each day blending into the next. The oppressive heat pressed down on Charles like a physical weight, while the ever-present hum of insects filled the air with a maddening, unrelenting drone. The Congo River, a sluggish ribbon of muddy water, carried them deeper into a world untouched by time, a world where the rules of civilization began to crumble.

In this desolate environment, Charles’s illusions about his father began to unravel.

The first crack in his admiration came when they arrived at one of Sir Robert’s trading posts. It was a ramshackle collection of buildings, hastily constructed and in various stages of decay. The stench of unwashed bodies and rotting refuse hung heavy in the air. A group of native workers, their emaciated forms marked by scars and fresh welts, toiled under the watchful eyes of armed overseers.

Charles couldn’t tear his gaze away from their faces: hollow, gaunt, and devoid of hope. He had read about the noble savages of Africa, imagining them as proud and free, living in harmony with nature. What he saw now bore no resemblance to those romanticized tales.

“What are they building?” he asked, his voice uncertain.

“Expanding the storage depot,” Sir Robert replied dismissively. “We’ve had a good haul of ivory this season. Need more space to store it all before shipment.”

Charles frowned. “But they look ill. Shouldn’t they rest?”

Sir Robert’s laughter was sharp and cold. “Rest? The savages are lazy by nature, Charles. If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Hard work is good for them, teaches discipline.”

A chill ran down Charles’s spine. He turned to Sparrow, who was leaning casually against a stack of crates, chewing on a piece of tobacco. The American grinned at Charles, his teeth stained yellow.

“You’ll get used to it, boy,” Sparrow said. “They’re closer to beasts than men. Hard work’s the best thing for ’em. Better off working for us than eating each other, don’t you think?”

Charles wanted to retort, but the weight of their gazes held him in check. His protests would be mocked, dismissed as naivety. He had learned quickly that questioning his father or Sparrow only earned him scorn. To his father’s hired men, he was still the soft-hearted London boy, unworthy of their respect.

Over the following days, the extent of the exploitation became impossible to ignore. The workers were little more than slaves, driven to exhaustion under the constant threat of ****. Charles witnessed one man collapse under the weight of an ivory tusk. Without hesitation, an overseer lashed the man’s back with a whip, the crack of leather cutting through the air.

Charles moved to intervene, but Sir Robert stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “Don’t. He’ll learn to carry his load or be replaced.”

“But, Father, this is inhumane!” Charles protested, his voice trembling with anger.

“Inhumane?” Sir Robert’s green eyes flashed with irritation. “This is the cost of progress, Charles. Without men like us, these savages would still be feasting on each other and dancing naked around fires. We’re bringing them order, purpose. We’re bringing them civilization.”

Charles stared at his father in disbelief. He had always admired Sir Robert’s charisma, his confidence, his ability to command respect. Now, he saw only arrogance and cruelty.

The final blow to Charles’s idealism came when they visited a rubber plantation deep in the jungle. The plantation was a sprawling, nightmarish operation. Dark-skinned workers tapped the trees for sap, their hands raw and blistered from the caustic latex. Those who didn’t meet their quotas faced brutal punishments: beatings, mutilations, or worse. Charles recoiled at the sight of children with missing limbs, their haunted eyes staring into some unseen abyss.

“Leopold’s men had a simple method,” Sparrow said with a grin, his tone laced with dark amusement. “Cut off a hand if they missed their quota. Trouble is, you cut off a hand, and that’s one less to work with. Now? We take their kids’ arms or their women. Teaches ’em quick.”

Charles’s stomach churned, revulsion boiling in his chest. His gaze caught on a young boy, no older than twelve, who crouched in the dirt. The child’s left hand was missing, and his right scratched furtively at the ground. As Charles approached, the boy quickly erased the marks he had been drawing.

“What’s your name?” Charles asked softly, crouching to meet the boy’s eye level. The boy seemed to have been drawing a man with stretched limbs. It seemed familiar, though Charles couldn't exactly recall where he had seen it.

The boy hesitated, his gaze darting nervously to the overseers. “[Lobi],” he whispered.

“What are you drawing, Lobi?” Charles asked, trying to gain the boy’s trust, to show he wasn’t like the other white men.

“[The Watcher],” Lobi whispered, his voice barely audible. “I saw him in a dream. I think he will awake soon.”

Charles decided not to press further, unwilling to scare the boy away.

At the center of the plantation stood a longhouse, larger and sturdier than the other structures. This was Sir Robert’s domain, where he conducted his business and slept. It was there that Charles learned the full extent of his father’s other life.

The trading post housed only male laborers. However, a stroll around the plantation revealed that many native women and an unsettling number of children also lived there. The women were dark-skinned, but many of the children had lighter complexions than their mothers, a detail that gnawed at Charles with a creeping sense of unease.

Charles had grown somewhat desensitized to the sight of native men working naked or nearly so. But seeing the young, healthy native women, scarcely clothed as they moved about the plantation, stirred a different kind of discomfort within him. The women’s lack of clothing was typical in Africa, but it would have been scandalous in England.

Most of the natives lived in makeshift huts, cramped, crumbling shelters barely fit for habitation. Laborers, prisoners, slaves, whatever names Sir Robert used to describe them, the distinctions felt meaningless. What shocked Charles most, however, was discovering that some native women lived in the longhouse itself, among Sir Robert and his men.

Sparrow, ever quick with his vile grin, noticed Charles’s lingering gaze. “Your father’s got a taste for the young ones,” he said, chuckling darkly. “Can’t say I blame him. Some of these girls… well, they clean up nice.”

Charles turned sharply, his stomach churning. “What are you implying, Mr. Sparrow?”

Sparrow spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground, his yellowed teeth glinting in the dim light. “You ain’t blind, are you? All white masters do it. Keep a harem of native concubines to play with when they’re away from their wives. Sir Robert’s no different. Don’t believe me? Look at the mulatto kids running around with red hair. Your father’s made at least twenty of those bastards over the years.”

The words struck Charles like a physical blow. He stumbled away from Sparrow, nausea rising in his throat. That night, as the oppressive jungle and heat pressed in around the longhouse, he confronted his father.

“Is it true?” Charles demanded, standing stiffly in the flickering lantern light. “What Sparrow said about the women?”

Sir Robert looked up from his glass of brandy, his expression unreadable. He set the glass down with deliberate care before answering. “And if it is? What of it?”

Charles’s voice trembled with anger. “What of it? You’re supposed to be a man of honor, not some lecherous tyrant! What would Mother think if she knew about this?”

Sir Robert snorted. “Your mother isn’t a naive boy like you, Charles. Lavinia is a proper Englishwoman: mature, refined. She understands the realities of a man’s life, especially in the colonies. She doesn’t ask questions as long as I don’t embarrass her or stir up scandal in England.”

Charles staggered back, the world around him tilting. The father he had wanted to emulate in England and the man he now saw in Africa felt like two completely different people. Which of them was the real Sir Robert Murray? The proper English gentleman or the callous plantation owner?

And his mother knew. Of course, she knew. She accepted it all because it supported her lifestyle: the proper socialite, the wife of a famous explorer knighted by the queen herself for his services to England.

“She knows?” he whispered. “And she… accepts it?”

Sir Robert leaned back in his chair, his face shadowed in the dim light. “Of course, she does, Charles. A man does what he must to uphold his station and provide for his family. If that means indulging in the occasional… diversion, so be it. The native girls are willing enough, and I don’t hurt them like Sparrow does.”

Charles’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Some of the girls I saw… they’re younger than Mary and Lily!” he muttered, his voice choked with disbelief.

“They’re not like Englishwomen,” Sir Robert replied, his tone matter-of-fact. “They mature earlier, like livestock. Their bodies are made for breeding young. It’s the way of things here. If I didn’t breed them, someone else would.”

Charles’s stomach churned violently, but Sir Robert continued, his voice growing reflective. “When we plant our seed in Africa, we uplift the savages. If those girls were bred by their own kind, cannibalistic brutes, they’d birth more of the same: worthless, dumb, superstitious savages. Instead, they carried the seed of a civilized Englishman. They should feel honored.”

The room felt suffocating. Charles struggled to speak, but no words came. His silence, it seemed, was taken as acquiescence.

“You should take one of my concubines tonight to make you a man,” Sir Robert said, as if giving fatherly advice to his inexperienced son. “Consider it practice for when you return to London and marry a proper white English lady.”