黑暗的心 英文版 Heart of Darkness
约瑟夫.康拉德 Joseph Conrad
III Page 3
"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last.It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquencethe barren darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled!The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now--images ofwealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable giftof noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas--these were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments.The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham,whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mold of primeval earth.But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteriesit had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiatedwith primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction,of all the appearances of success and power.
"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to havekings meet him at railway-stations on his return from someghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things.`You show them you have in you something that is really profitable,and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,'he would say. `Of course you must take care of the motives--right motives--always.' The long reaches that were like oneand the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike,slipped past the steamer with their multitude of secular treeslooking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world,the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres,of blessings. I looked ahead--piloting. `Close the shutter,'said Kurtz suddenly one day; `I can't bear to look at this.'I did so. There was a silence. `Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!'he cried at the invisible wilderness.
"We broke down--as I had expected--and had to lie up for repairs at the headof an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence.One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph,--the lot tied together with a shoe-string. `Keep this for me,' he said.`This noxious fool' (meaning the manager) `is capable of pryinginto my boxes when I am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him.He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly,but I heard him mutter, `Live rightly, die, die . . .' I listened.There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep,or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article?He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again,`for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'
"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peerdown at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sunnever shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I washelping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders,to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters.I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners,hammers, ratchet-drills--things I abominate, because I don't geton with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard;I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap--unless I had the shakestoo bad to stand.
"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him saya little tremulously, `I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.'The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur,`Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.
"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I havenever seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched.I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent.I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride,of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair.Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation,and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he criedout twice, a cry that was no more than a breath--
"`The horror! The horror!'
"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were diningin the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who liftedhis eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored.He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealingthe unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of smallflies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces.Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway,and said in a tone of scathing contempt--
"`Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'
"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner.I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.There was a lamp in there--light, don't you know--and outside it wasso beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who hadpronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth.The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course awarethat next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.
"And then they very nearly buried me.
"However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then.I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to showmy loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is--that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comestoo late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death.It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes placein an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around,without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desireof victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphereof tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and stillless in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom,then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement,and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man.He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edgemyself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not seethe flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe,piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness.He had summed up--he had judged. `The horror!' He was a remarkable man.After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor,it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper,it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth--the strange comminglingof desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best--a vision of grayness without form filled with physical pain,and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things--even of thispain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through.True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge,while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot.And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom,and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into thatinappreciable moment of time in which we step over the thresholdof the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would nothave been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry--much better.It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats,by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond,when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echoof his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucentlypure as a cliff of crystal.
"No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which Iremember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage throughsome inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire.I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sightof people hurrying through the streets to filch a little moneyfrom each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp theirunwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams.They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whoseknowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because Ifelt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplaceindividuals going about their business in the assurance ofperfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntingsof folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend.I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had somedifficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so fullof stupid importance. I dare say I was not very well at that time.I tottered about the streets--there were various affairsto settle--grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons.I admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my temperaturewas seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt's endeavorsto `nurse up my strength' seemed altogether beside the mark.It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was myimagination that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papersgiven me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it.His mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told,by his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an official mannerand wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on me one day andmade inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing,about what he was pleased to denominate certain `documents.'I was not surprised, because I had had two rows with the manageron the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallestscrap out of that package, and I took the same attitudewith the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last,and with much heat argued that the Company had the right to everybit of information about its `territories.' And, said he,`Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of unexplored regions must have beennecessarily extensive and peculiar--owing to his great abilitiesand to the deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed:therefore'--I assured him Mr. Kurtz's knowledge, however extensive,did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration.He invoked then the name of science. `It would be an incalculableloss if,' &c., &c. I offered him the report on the `Suppressionof Savage Customs,' with the postscriptum torn off. He took itup eagerly, but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt.`This is not what we had a right to expect,' he remarked.`Expect nothing else,' I said. `There are only private letters.'He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw himno more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin,appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear all the detailsabout his dear relative's last moments. Incidentally he gave meto understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician.`There was the making of an immense success,' said the man,who was an organist, I believe, with lank gray hair flowing overa greasy coat-collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement;and to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz's profession,whether he ever had any--which was the greatest of his talents.I had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers,or else for a journalist who could paint--but even the cousin(who took snuff during the interview) could not tell me whathe had been--exactly. He was a universal genius--on that pointI agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisilyinto a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation,bearing off some family letters and memoranda without importance.Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fateof his `dear colleague' turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz'sproper sphere ought to have been politics `on the popular side.'He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped short,an eye-glass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive,confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn't writea bit--'but heavens! how that man could talk! He electrifiedlarge meetings. He had faith--don't you see?--he had the faith.He could get himself to believe anything--anything.He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.'`What party?' I asked. `Any party,' answered the other.`He was an--an--extremist.' Did I not think so? I assented.Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity,`what it was that had induced him to go out there?'`Yes,' said I, and forthwith handed him the famous Reportfor publication, if he thought fit. He glanced throughit hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged `it would do,'and took himself off with this plunder.
"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of lettersand the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful--I meanshe had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight canbe made to lie too, yet one felt that no manipulation of lightand pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulnessupon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mentalreservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself.I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and thoseletters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps.All that had been Kurtz's had passed out of my hands:his soul, his body, his station, his plans, his ivory,his career. There remained only his memory and his Intended--and I wanted to give that up too to the past, in a way,--to surrender personally all that remained of him with meto that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate.I don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was Ireally wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty,or the fulfillment of one of these ironic necessities that lurkin the facts of human existence. I don't know. I can't tell.But I went.
"I thought his memory was like the other memories of the deadthat accumulate in every man's life,--a vague impress on the brainof shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage;but before the high and ponderous door, between the tallhouses of a street as still and decorous as a well-keptalley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher,opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earthwith all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as muchas he had ever lived--a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances,of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night,and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.The vision seemed to enter the house with me--the stretcher,the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshipers,the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach betweenthe murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffledlike the beating of a heart--the heart of a conquering darkness.It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invadingand vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would haveto keep back alone for the salvation of another soul.And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there,with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires,within the patient woods, those broken phrases came back to me,were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity.I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats,the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment,the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to seehis collected languid manner, when he said one day, `This lotof ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it.I collected it myself at a very great personal risk.I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though.H'm. It is a difficult case. What do you think I oughtto do--resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.'. . . He wanted no more than justice--no more than justice.I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor,and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel--stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning,loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry,`The horror! The horror!'
"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing-roomwith three long windows from floor to ceiling that werelike three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent giltlegs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves.The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness.A grand piano stood massively in a corner, with dark gleamson the flat surfaces like a somber and polished sarcophagus.A high door opened--closed. I rose.
"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towardsme in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a yearsince his death, more than a year since the news came;she seemed as though she would remember and mourn for ever.She took both my hands in hers and murmured, `I had heard youwere coming.' I noticed she was not very young--I mean not girlish.She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad lightof the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead.This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surroundedby an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me.Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful.She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proudof that sorrow, as though she would say, `I--I alone knowhow to mourn for him as he deserves. But while we were stillshaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her facethat I perceived she was one of those creatures that are notthe playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday.And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me toohe seemed to have died only yesterday--nay, this very minute.I saw her and him in the same instant of time--his death andher sorrow--I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death.Do you understand? I saw them together--I heard them together.She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, `I have survived;'while my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled withher tone of despairing regret, the summing-up whisper of hiseternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing there,with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blunderedinto a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a humanbeing to behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down.I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she puther hand over it. . . . `You knew him well,' she murmured,after a moment of mourning silence.
"`Intimacy grows quick out there,' I said. `I knew him as well as itis possible for one man to know another.'
"`And you admired him,' she said. `It was impossible to knowhim and not to admire him. Was it?'
"`He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily. Then before the appealingfixity of her gaze, that seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went on,`It was impossible not to--'