黑暗的心 英文版 Heart of Darkness
约瑟夫.康拉德 Joseph Conrad
I Page 1
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor withouta flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made,the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river,the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turnof the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of aninterminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were weldedtogether without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sailsof the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in redclusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemedcondensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We fouraffectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward.On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical.He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified.It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminousestuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bondof the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through longperiods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerantof each other's yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the bestof old fellows--had, because of his many years and many virtues,the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug.The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and wastoying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-leggedright aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks,a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with hisarms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol.The Director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his wayaft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily.Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht.For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes.We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring.The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance.The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was abenign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essexmarshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the woodedrises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches,became more somber every minute, as if angered by the approachof the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low,and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat,as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloombrooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenitybecame less brilliant but more profound. The old riverin its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day,after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks,spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leadingto the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerablestream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes anddeparts for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories.And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than toevoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reachesof the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in itsunceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships ithad borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea.It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud,from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all,titled and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea.It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewelsflashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returningwith her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited bythe Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men.They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the shipsof men on `Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers"of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame,they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword,and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land,bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had notfloated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknownearth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began toappear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-leggedthing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships movedin the fairway--a great stir of lights going up and going down.And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous townwas still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine,a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark placesof the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea."The worst that could be said of him was that he did not representhis class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while mostseamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home isalways with them--the ship; and so is their country--the sea.One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same.In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores,the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it bethe sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and asinscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work,a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for himthe secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secretnot worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity,the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut.But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns beexcepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not insidelike a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought itout only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one ofthese misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectralillumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It wasaccepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presentlyhe said, very slow--
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here,nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. . . . Light cameout of this river since--you say Knights? Yes; but it is like arunning blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds.We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the oldearth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine--what d'ye call`em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north;run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of oneof these craft the legionaries,--a wonderful lot of handy men theymust have been too--used to build, apparently by the hundred,in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here--the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a skythe color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina--and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like.Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages,--precious little to eatfit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink.No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and therea military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundleof hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,--death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush.They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it.Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking muchabout it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gonethrough in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to facethe darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eyeon a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by,if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate.Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much dice,you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect,or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes.Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland postfeel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirsin the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to livein the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him.The fascination of the abomination--you know. Imagine thegrowing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust,the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palmof the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him,he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and withouta lotus-flower--"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this.What saves us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency.But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists;their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect.They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strengthis just an accident arising from the weakness of others.They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got.It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale,and men going at it blind--as is very proper for those who tacklea darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly meansthe taking it away from those who have a different complexionor slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thingwhen you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only.An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea;and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up,and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . ."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames,white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other--then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city wenton in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on,waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood;but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice,"I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailorfor a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run,to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,"he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellersof tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would bestlike to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you oughtto know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that riverto the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthestpoint of navigation and the culminating point of my experience.It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me--and into my thoughts. It was somber enough too--and pitiful--not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either. No, not very clear.And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to Londonafter a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regulardose of the East--six years or so, and I was loafing about,hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes,just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you.It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tiredof resting. Then I began to look for a ship--I should thinkthe hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me.And I got tired of that game too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps.I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia,and lose myself in all the glories of exploration.At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth,and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, `When Igrow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places,I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now.The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator,and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres.I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that.But there was one yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to speak--that I had a hankering after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more.It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names.It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery--a white patchfor a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that youcould see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with itshead in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country,and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the mapof it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird--a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern,a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself,they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot offresh water--steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one?I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake off the idea.The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society;but I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it'scheap and not so nasty as it looks, they say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a freshdeparture for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know.I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then--you see--I feltsomehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them.The men said `My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then--would youbelieve it?--I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me.I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: `It will be delightful.I am ready to do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea.I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration,and also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c., &c. She was determinedto make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat,if such was my fancy.
"I got my appointment--of course; and I got it very quick.It appears the Company had received news that one of theircaptains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives.This was my chance, and it made me the more anxious to go.It was only months and months afterwards, when I made the attemptto recover what was left of the body, that I heard the originalquarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens.Yes, two black hens. Fresleven--that was the fellow's name,a Dane--thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain,so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the villagewith a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise me in the least tohear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven wasthe gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs.No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already outthere engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably feltthe need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way.Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a bigcrowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man,--I was told the chief's son,--in desperation at hearing the oldchap yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man--and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades.Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting allkinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand,the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic,in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemedto trouble much about Fresleven's remains, till I got out andstepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but whenan opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grassgrowing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones.They were all there. The supernatural being had not beentouched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the hutsgaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures.A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished.Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children,through the bush, and they had never returned.What became of the hens I don't know either. I should thinkthe cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through thisglorious affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begunto hope for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eighthours I was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers,and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city thatalways makes me think of a whited sepulcher. Prejudice no doubt.I had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It wasthe biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of it.They were going to run an over-sea empire, and make no endof coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses,innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence,grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archwaysright and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar.I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnishedstaircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to.Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs,knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me--still knitting with downcast eyes--and only just as I began tothink of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist,stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as anumbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and precededme into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about.Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on oneend a large shining map, marked with all the colors of a rainbow.There was a vast amount of red--good to see at any time, because oneknows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lotof blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast,a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drinkthe jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these.I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And the riverwas there--fascinating--deadly--like a snake. Ough! A door opened,a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression,appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary.Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the middle.From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpnessin a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six,I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of everso many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely,was satisfied with my French. Bon voyage.