黑暗的心 英文版 Heart of Darkness
约瑟夫.康拉德 Joseph Conrad
III Page 4
"`Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness.`How true! how true! But when you think that no one knew him so wellas I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'
"`You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps she did.But with every word spoken the room was growing darker,and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illuminedby the unextinguishable light of belief and love.
"`You were his friend,' she went on. `His friend,' she repeated,a little louder. `You must have been, if he had given you this,and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you--and oh!I must speak. I want you--you who have heard his last words--to know I have been worthy of him. . . . It is not pride.. . . Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better thananyone on earth--he told me so himself. And since his motherdied I have had no one--no one--to--to--'
"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even sure whetherhe had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted meto take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death,I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked,easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirstymen drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had beendisapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough or something.And indeed I don't know whether he had not been a pauper all his life.He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatienceof comparative poverty that drove him out there.
"`. . . Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?'she was saying. `He drew men towards him by what was best in them.'She looked at me with intensity. `It is the gift of the great,'she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have theaccompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation,and sorrow, I had ever heard--the ripple of the river, the soughingof the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of wild crowds,the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisperof a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness.`But you have heard him! You know!' she cried.
"`Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart,but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that greatand saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness,in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her--from which I could not even defend myself.
"`What a loss to me--to us!'--she corrected herself withbeautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, `To the world.'By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes,full of tears--of tears that would not fall.
"`I have been very happy--very fortunate--very proud,'she went on. `Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while.And now I am unhappy for--for life.'
"She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaininglight in a glimmer of gold. I rose too.
"`And of all this,' she went on, mournfully, `of allhis promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind,of his noble heart, nothing remains--nothing but a memory.You and I--'
"`We shall always remember him,' I said, hastily.
"`No!' she cried. `It is impossible that all this should be lost--that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing--but sorrow.You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them too--I could notperhaps understand,--but others knew of them. Something must remain.His words, at least, have not died.'
"`His words will remain,' I said.
"`And his example,' she whispered to herself. `Men looked up to him,--his goodness shone in every act. His example--'
"`True,' I said; `his example too. Yes, his example.I forgot that.'
"`But I do not. I cannot--I cannot believe--not yet.I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobodywill see him again, never, never, never.'
"She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching themblack and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheenof the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then.I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her too,a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one,tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brownarms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness.She said suddenly very low, `He died as he lived.'
"`His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, `was in everyway worthy of his life.'
"`And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feelingof infinite pity.
"`Everything that could be done--' I mumbled.
"`Ah, but I believed in him more than anyone on earth--more thanhis own mother, more than--himself. He needed me! Me! I wouldhave treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'
"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. `Don't,' I said,in a muffled voice.
"`Forgive me. I--I-- have mourned so long in silence--in silence.. . . You were with him--to the last? I think of his loneliness.Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood.Perhaps no one to hear. . . .'
"`To the very end,' I said, shakily. `I heard his very last words.. . .' I stopped in a fright.
"`Repeat them,' she said in a heart-broken tone. `I want--I want--something--something--to--to live with.'
"I was on the point of crying at her, `Don't you hear them?'The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us,in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisperof a rising wind. `The horror! The horror!'
"`His last word--to live with,' she murmured. `Don't you understandI loved him--I loved him--I loved him!'
"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
himself. He needed me! Me! I wouldhave treasured.
"`The last word he pronounced was--your name.'
"I heard a light sigh, and then my heart stood still,stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry,by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain.`I knew it--I was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure.I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands.It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape,that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened.The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen,I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due?Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I couldnot tell her. It would have been too dark--too dark altogether.. . ."
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent,in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time."We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director, suddenly.I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bankof clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermostends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.