黑暗的心 英文版 Heart of Darkness
约瑟夫.康拉德 Joseph Conrad
I Page 4
"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in thereit suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something--in fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I wassupposed to know there--putting leading questions as to my acquaintancesin the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs--with curiosity,--though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness.At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curiousto see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imaginewhat I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to seehow he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full of chills,and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business.It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator.At last he got angry, and to conceal a movement of furious annoyance,he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel,representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch.The background was somber--almost black. The movement of the womanwas stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.
"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a half-pint champagne bottle(medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he saidMr. Kurtz had painted this--in this very station more than a year ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. `Tell me, pray,' said I,`who is this Mr. Kurtz?'
"`The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone,looking away. `Much obliged,' I said, laughing. `And you arethe brickmaker of the Central Station. Everyone knows that.'He was silent for a while. `He is a prodigy,' he said at last.`He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devilknows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly,`for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak,higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.'`Who says that?' I asked. `Lots of them,' he replied.`Some even write that; and so HE comes here, a special being,as you ought to know.' `Why ought I to know?' I interrupted,really surprised. He paid no attention. `Yes. To-day he is chiefof the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager,two years more and . . . but I dare say you know what he will bein two years' time. You are of the new gang--the gang of virtue.The same people who sent him specially also recommended you.Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned upon me.My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an unexpectedeffect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh.`Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?'I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun.`When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued severely, `is General Manager,you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside.The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly,pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing;steam ascended in the moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere.`What a row the brute makes!' said the indefatigable manwith the mustaches, appearing near us. `Serve him right.Transgression--punishment--bang! Pitiless, pitiless.That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrationsfor the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' Henoticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once.`Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness;`it's so natural. Ha! Danger--agitation.' He vanished.I went on to the river-side, and the other followed me.I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, `Heap of muffs--go to.'The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing.Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe theytook these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the foreststood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir,through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silenceof the land went home to one's very heart,--its mystery,its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and thenfetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there.I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. `My dear sir,'said the fellow, `I don't want to be misunderstood, and especiallyby you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure.I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my disposition.. . .'
"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemedto me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him,and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.He, don't you see, had been planning to be assistant-managerby-and-by under the present man, and I could see thatthe coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little.He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him.I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled upon the slope like a carcass of some big river animal.The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils,the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes;there were shiny patches on the black creek.The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of mattedvegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple,over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering,glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur.All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabberedabout himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the faceof the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appealor as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here?Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us?I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing thatcouldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I hadheard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it too--God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it--no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there.I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there areinhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmakerwho was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If youasked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he wouldget shy and mutter something about `walking on all-fours.'If you as much as smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as tofight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie.You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I amstraighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick,like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose.Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young foolthere believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influencein Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the restof the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notionit somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the timeI did not see--you understand. He was just a word for me.I did not see the man in the name any more than you do.Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt,because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation,that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewildermentin a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being capturedby the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.. . ."
He was silent for a while.
". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensationof any given epoch of one's existence,--that which makes its truth,its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible.We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."
He paused again as if reflecting, then added--
"Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then.You see me, whom you know. . . ."
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly seeone another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had beenno more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody.The others might have been asleep, but I was awake.I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word,that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness inspiredby this narrative that seemed to shape itself without humanlips in the heavy night-air of the river.
". . . Yes--I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and thinkwhat he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did!And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched,old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while he talkedfluently about `the necessity for every man to get on.' `And whenone comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.'Mr. Kurtz was a `universal genius,' but even a genius wouldfind it easier to work with `adequate tools--intelligent men.'He did not make bricks--why, there was a physical impossibilityin the way--as I was well aware; and if he did secretarialwork for the manager, it was because `no sensible man rejectswantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it?I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets,by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work--to stop the hole.Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast--cases--piled up--burst--split! You kicked a loose rivetat every second step in that station yard on the hillside.Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fillyour pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down--and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted.We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with.And every week the messenger, a lone negro, letter-bag onshoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast.And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods,--ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it,glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spottedcotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers couldhave brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsiveattitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessaryto inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man.I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certainquantity of rivets--and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted,if he had only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week.. . . `My dear sir,' he cried, `I write from dictation.'I demanded rivets. There was a way--for an intelligent man.He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talkabout a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer(I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn't disturbed.There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting outon the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds.The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle theycould lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him.All this energy was wasted, though. `That animal has a charmed life,'he said; `but you can say this only of brutes in this country.No man--you apprehend me?--no man here bears a charmed life.'He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicatehooked nose set a little askew, and his mica eyes glitteringwithout a wink, then, with a curt Good night, he strode off.I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled,which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days.It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influentialfriend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat.I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an emptyHuntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she wasnothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape,but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her.No influential friend would have served me better. She had givenme a chance to come out a bit--to find out what I could do.No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of allthe fine things that can be done. I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work,--the chance to find yourself.Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other mancan ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never cantell what it really means.
attention. `Yes. To-day he is chiefof the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager,two years more and . . . but I dare say you know what he will bein two years' time. You are of the new gang--the gang of virtue.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted, `We shall have rivets!'He scrambled to his feet exclaiming `No! Rivets!' as thoughhe couldn't believe his ears. Then in a low voice, `You . . . eh?'I don't know why we behaved like lunatics. I put my fingerto the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. `Good for you!'he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one foot.I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter cameout of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creeksent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station.It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels.A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut,vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished too.We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stampingof our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land.The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks,branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight,was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling waveof plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek,to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence.And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snortsreached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bathof glitter in the great river. `After all,' said the boiler-makerin a reasonable tone, `why shouldn't we get the rivets?'Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't.`They'll come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
. . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensationof any given epoch of one's existence,--that which makes its truth,its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible.We live.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion,an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections duringthe next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carryinga white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing fromthat elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heelsof the donkeys; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases,brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the airof mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station.Five such installments came, with their absurd air ofdisorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shopsand provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging,after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division.It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselvesbut that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition,and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however,was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood,greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atomof foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and theydid not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world.To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with nomore moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breakinginto a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know;but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood,and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fatpaunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the timehis gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew.You could see these two roaming about all day long with theirheads close together in an everlasting confab.
medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he saidMr. Kurtz had painted this--in this very station more than a year ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading-post. `Tell me, pray,' said I,`who is this Mr. Kurtz?'could?
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets.One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited thanyou would suppose. I said Hang!--and let things slide.I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I wouldgive some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him.No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had comeout equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the topafter all, and how he would set about his work when there."