黑暗的心 英文版 Heart of Darkness
约瑟夫.康拉德 Joseph Conrad
II Page 3
"We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of brokentwigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short,as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty.I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversedthe pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at the other.Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty rifleand yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men runningbent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent.Something big appeared in the air before the shutter, the riflewent overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at meover his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner,and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice,and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knockedover a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching thatthing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort.The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag,and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yardsor so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank;but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down.The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me;both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that,either thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught himin the side just below the ribs; the blade had gone in outof sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full;a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel;his eyes shone with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out again.He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious,with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him.I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attendto the steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the lineof the steam-whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly.The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly,and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulousand prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may beimagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth.There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped,a few dropping shots rang out sharply--then silence, in whichthe languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears.I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrimin pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway.`The manager sends me--' he began in an official tone,and stopped short. `Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded man.
"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiringglance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he wouldpresently put to us some question in an understandable language;but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb,without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment, as thoughin response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we couldnot hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his blackdeath-mask an inconceivably somber, brooding, and menacing expression.The luster of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness.`Can you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious;but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once Imeant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth,I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. `He is dead,'murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. `No doubt about it,'said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. `And, by the way,I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.'
"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a senseof extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had beenstriving after something altogether without a substance.I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this wayfor the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with.. . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became awarethat that was exactly what I had been looking forward to--a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I hadnever imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing.I didn't say to myself, `Now I will never see him,'or `Now I will never shake him by the hand,' but, `Now Iwill never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice.Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action.Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admirationthat he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivorythan all the other agents together? That was not the point.The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all hisgifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with ita sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words--the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating,the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsatingstream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart ofan impenetrable darkness.
"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river.I thought, `By Jove! it's all over. We are too late; he has vanished--the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club.I will never hear that chap speak after all,'--and my sorrowhad a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I hadnoticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush.I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I beenrobbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. . . . Whydo you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd.Good Lord! mustn't a man ever--Here, give me some tobacco.". . .
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared,and Marlow's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward foldsand dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention;and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat andadvance out of the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame.The match went out.
"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here youall are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors,a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites,and temperature normal--you hear--normal from year's end to year's end.And you say, Absurd! Absurd be--exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what canyou expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboarda pair of new shoes. Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears.I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quickat the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to thegifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me.Oh yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice.He was very little more than a voice. And I heard--him--it--this voice--other voices--all of them were so little more than voices--and the memoryof that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibrationof one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean,without any kind of sense. Voices, voices--even the girl herself--now--"
He was silent for a long time.
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,"he began suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl?Oh, she is out of it--completely. They--the women, I mean--are out of it--should be out of it. We must help them to stayin that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterredbody of Mr. Kurtz saying, `My Intended.' You would haveperceived directly then how completely she was out of it.And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goeson growing sometimes, but this--ah specimen, was impressively bald.The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it waslike a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him,got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to itsown by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation.He was its spoiled and pampered favorite. Ivory? I should think so.Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it.You would think there was not a single tusk left either aboveor below the ground in the whole country. `Mostly fossil,'the manager had remarked disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am;but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggersdo bury the tusks sometimes--but evidently they couldn't bury thisparcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate.We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck.Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because theappreciation of this favor had remained with him to the last.You should have heard him say, `My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him.`My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my--' everything belongedto him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearingthe wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that wouldshake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to,how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.That was the reflection that made you creepy all over.It was impossible--it was not good for one either--trying to imagine.He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land--I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighborsready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately betweenthe butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal andgallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particularregion of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take himinto by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voiceof a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion?These little things make all the great difference.When they are gone you must fall back upon your owninnate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness.Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong--too dulleven to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness.I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil:the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil--I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exaltedcreature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenlysights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place--and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won'tpretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights,with sounds, with smells too, by Jove!--breathe dead hippo,so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see?Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the diggingof unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in--your power of devotion,not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business.And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse oreven explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr. Kurtz--for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the backof Nowhere honored me with its amazing confidence before itvanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me.The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and--as he wasgood enough to say himself--his sympathies were in the right place.His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europecontributed to the making of Kurtz; and by-and-by I learned that,most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppressionof Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report,for its future guidance. And he had written it too. I've seen it.I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence,but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writinghe had found time for! But this must have been before his--let us say--nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certainmidnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which--as faras I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times--were offered up to him--do you understand?--to Mr. Kurtz himself.But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph,however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous.He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of developmentwe had arrived at, `must necessarily appear to them (savages) inthe nature of supernatural beings--we approach them with the mightas of a deity,' and so on, and so on. `By the simple exerciseof our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,'&c., &c. From that point he soared and took me with him.The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember,you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruledby an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm.This was the unbounded power of eloquence--of words--of burning noble words. There were no practical hints tointerrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of noteat the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later,in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method.It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to everyaltruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying,like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: `Exterminate allthe brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparentlyforgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on,when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated meto take good care of `my pamphlet' (he called it), as it wassure to have in the future a good influence upon his career.I had full information about all these things, and, besides,as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory.I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it,if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress,amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the deadcats of civilization. But then, you see, I can't choose.He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common.He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls intoan aggravated witch-dance in his honor; he could also fillthe small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings:he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered onesoul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted withself-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirmthe fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him.I missed my late helmsman awfully,--I missed him even while hisbody was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think itpassing strange this regret for a savage who was no more accountthan a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see,he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him atmy back--a help--an instrument. It was a kind of partnership.He steered for me--I had to look after him, I worried abouthis deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created,of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken.And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he receivedhis hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distantkinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone.He had no restraint, no restraint--just like Kurtz--a tree swayedby the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers,I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side,which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight.His heels leaped together over the little door-step; his shoulderswere pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately.Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth,I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard.The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass,and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sightof it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were thencongregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house,chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies,and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude.What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I can't guess.Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous,murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutterswere likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason--though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible.Oh, quite! I had made up my mind that if my late helmsmanwas to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him.He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but nowhe was dead he might have become a first-class temptation,and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I wasanxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showinghimself a hopeless duffer at the business.
"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially aboutthe necessity of getting well away down the river before dark atall events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the river-sideand the outlines of some sort of building. `What's this?'I asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. `The station!' he cried.I edged in at once, still going half-speed.
"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersedwith rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A longdecaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass;the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar;the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no inclosureor fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently, for nearthe house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed,and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls.The rails, or whatever there had been between, had disappeared.Of course the forest surrounded all that. The river-bankwas clear, and on the water-side I saw a white man under a hatlike a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole arm.Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almostcertain I could see movements--human forms gliding here and there.I steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let herdrift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land.`We have been attacked,' screamed the manager. `I know--I know.It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please.`Come along. It's all right. I am glad.'
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen--something funnyI had seen somewhere. As I maneuvered to get alongside, I wasasking myself, `What does this fellow look like?' Suddenly I got it.He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuffthat was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over,with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow,--patches on the back,patches on front, patches on elbows, on knees; colored bindinground his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers;and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal,because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done.A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of,nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other overthat open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain.`Look out, captain!' he cried; `there's a snag lodged in herelast night.' What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully.I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charming trip.The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug nose up to me.`You English?' he asked, all smiles. `Are you?' I shouted from the wheel.The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment.Then he brightened up. `Never mind!' he cried encouragingly.`Are we in time?' I asked. `He is up there,' he replied, with a tossof the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden.His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armedto the teeth, had gone to the house, this chap came on board.`I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the bush,'I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right.`They are simple people,' he added; `well, I am glad you came.It took me all my time to keep them off.' `But you said itwas all right,' I cried. `Oh, they meant no harm,' he said;and as I stared he corrected himself, `Not exactly.'Then vivaciously, `My faith, your pilot-house wants a clean up!'In the next breath he advised me to keep enough steamon the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble.`One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles.They are simple people,' he repeated. He rattled away at sucha rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to makeup for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that suchwas the case. `Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said.`You don't talk with that man--you listen to him,' he exclaimedwith severe exaltation. `But now--' He waved his arm, and inthe twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency.In a moment he came up again with a jump, possessed himselfof both my hands, shook them continuously, while he gabbled:`Brother sailor . . . honor . . . pleasure . . . delight . . .introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an arch-priest . .. Government of Tambov . . . What? Tobacco! English tobacco;the excellent English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly.Smoke? Where's a sailor that does not smoke?'
"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he hadrun away from school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship;ran away again; served some time in English ships; was nowreconciled with the arch-priest. He made a point of that.`But when one is young one must see things, gather experience,ideas; enlarge the mind.' `Here!' I interrupted.`You can never tell! Here I have met Mr. Kurtz,' he said,youthfully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that.It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-house on the coast to fithim out with stores and goods, and had started for the interiorwith a light heart, and no more idea of what would happen to himthan a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearlytwo years alone, cut off from everybody and everything.`I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-five,' he said.`At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil,'he narrated with keen enjoyment; `but I stuck to him, and talkedand talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg offhis favorite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns,and told me he hoped he would never see my face again.Good old Dutchman, Van Shuyten. I've sent him one small lotof ivory a year ago, so that he can't call me a little thief when Iget back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I don't care.I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old house.Did you see?'
"I gave him Towson's book. He made as though he would kiss me,but restrained himself. `The only book I had left, and Ithought I had lost it,' he said, looking at it ecstatically.`So many accidents happen to a man going about alone, you know.Canoes get upset sometimes--and sometimes you've got to clearout so quick when the people get angry.' He thumbed the pages.`You made notes in Russian?' I asked. He nodded. `I thought theywere written in cipher,' I said. He laughed, then became serious.`I had lots of trouble to keep these people off,' he said.`Did they want to kill you?' I asked. `Oh no!' he cried,and checked himself. `Why did they attack us?' I pursued.He hesitated, then said shamefacedly, `They don't want him to go.'`Don't they?' I said, curiously. He nodded a nod full of mysteryand wisdom. `I tell you,' he cried, `this man has enlarged my mind.'He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyesthat were perfectly round."