 | CHAPTER EIGHT Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad |  |
8. CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled
up, all dripping, into the main quadrangle of the
old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits of walls and
rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept
the day through. He had slept in the shadow of the
mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness
and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between
the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle
of the gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing
like a tiny black speck in the blue, stooped, circling
prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling in a bird
of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white
body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no
more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of
rubbish within three yards of that man, lying as still
as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck, craned
his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied
colouring, with an air of voracious anxiety towards the
promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then,
sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled
himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's
eyes fell on waking was this patient watcher for
the signs of death and corruption. When the man got
up the vulture hopped away in great, side-long, fluttering
jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and reluctant,
before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister
droop of beak and claws.
Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his
eyes up to the sky, muttered, "I am not dead yet."
The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in
splendour and publicity up to the very moment, as it
were, when he took charge of the lighter containing the
treasure of silver ingots.
The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete
harmony with his vanity, and as such perfectly
genuine. He had given his last dollar to an old woman
moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search
under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in
obscurity and without witnesses, it had still the characteristics
of splendour and publicity, and was in strict
keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in
solitude, except for the watchful vulture, amongst
the ruins of the fort, had no such characteristics. His
first confused feeling was exactly this — that it was not
in keeping. It was more like the end of things. The
necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows
how long, which assailed him on his return to consciousness,
made everything that had gone before for years
appear vain and foolish, like a flattering dream come
suddenly to an end.
He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and,
putting aside the bushes, looked upon the harbour. He
saw a couple of ships at anchor upon the sheet of water
reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo's steamer
moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of
the Custom House, there appeared the extent of the
town like a grove of thick timber on the plain with a
gateway in front, and the cupolas, towers, and miradors
rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered already
to the night. The thought that it was no longer open
to him to ride through the streets, recognized by everyone,
great and little, as he used to do every evening
on his way to play monte in the posada of the Mexican
Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to
a town that had no existence.
For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted
bushes spring back, and, crossing over to the other side
of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness of the great
gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing
long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between
their black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud
alone there with the treasure. That man was the only
one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the
Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And
that merely would be an anxiety for his own sake. As
to the rest, they neither knew nor cared. What he
had heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true.
Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept
the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them
as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service.
The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of
the horizon, enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and
the lover of Antonia alone with the treasure on the
Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on these
things invisible and existing, sat down and took his
face between his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty
for the first time in his life. To find himself without
money after a run of bad luck at monte in the low,
smoky room of Domingo's posada, where the fraternity
of Cargadores gambled, sang, and danced of an evening;
to remain with empty pockets after a burst of public
generosity to some peyne d'oro girl or other (for whom
he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution.
He remained rich in glory and reputation. But
since it was no longer possible for him to parade the
streets of the town, and be hailed with respect in the
usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself destitute
indeed.
His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and
extremely anxious thinking, as it had never been dry
before. It may be said that Nostromo tasted the dust
and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten
deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing
his head from between his fists, he tried to spit before
him — "Tfui" — and muttered a curse upon the selfishness
of all the rich people.
Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was
the feeling of his waking), the idea of leaving the country
altogether had presented itself to Nostromo. At
that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another
dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark
pines on the heights and white houses low down near
a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port,
where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails
outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently
between the end of long moles of squared blocks that
project angularly towards each other, hugging a cluster
of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill covered with
palaces. He remembered these sights not without
some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and
severely beaten as a boy on one of these feluccas by a
short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and
distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated
him out of his orphan's inheritance. But it is mercifully
decreed that the evils of the past should appear
but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of loneliness,
abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these
things appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With
bare feet and head, with one check shirt and a pair of
cotton calzoneros for all worldly possessions?
The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a
fist dug into each cheek, laughed with self-derision, as
he had spat with disgust, straight out before him into
universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at
any strong check to its ruling passion had a bitterness
approaching that of death itself. He was simple. He
was as ready to become the prey of any belief, superstition,
or desire as a child.
The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a
man with a distinct experience of the country. He saw
them clearly. He was as if sobered after a long bout
of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken advantage
of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side
with the Blancos against the rest of the people; he had
had interviews with Don José; he had been made use
of by Father Corbelàn for negotiating with Hernandez;
it was known that Don Martin Decoud had admitted
him to a sort of intimacy, so that he had been
free of the offices of the Porvenir. All these things had
flattered him in the usual way. What did he care about
their politics? Nothing at all. And at the end of it all
— Nostromo here and Nostromo there — where is Nostromo?
Nostromo can do this and that — work all day
and ride all night — behold! he found himself a marked
Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for instance,
would choose to take, now the Montero party,
had, after all, mastered the town. The Europeans
had given up; the Caballeros had given up. Don
Martin had indeed explained it was only temporary —
that he was going to bring Barrios to the rescue. Where
was that now — with Don Martin (whose ironic manner
of talk had always made the Capataz feel vaguely uneasy)
stranded on the Great Isabel? Everybody had
given up. Even Don Carlos had given up. The
hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant nothing
else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a revulsion
of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity,
been betrayed!
With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him,
out of his silence and immobility, facing the lofty shapes
of the lower peaks crowded around the white, misty
sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again,
sprang abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must
go. But where?
"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage
us as if we were dogs born to fight and hunt for them.
The vecchio is right," he said, slowly and scathingly.
He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his
mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the
café, full of engine-drivers and fitters from the railway
workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose.
He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God
knows what might have happened to him! He made
a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head.
To the left and right, in front and behind him, the
scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
"Teresa was right, too," he added in a low tone
touched with awe. He wondered whether she was
dead in her anger with him or still alive. As if in answer
to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with a
soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling
cry: "Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo! — it is finished; it is finished"
— announces calamity and death in the popular
belief, drifted vaguely like a large dark ball across his
path. In the downfall of all the realities that made his
force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered
slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It
could mean nothing else. The cry of the ill-omened
bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a
fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
unseen powers which he had offended by refusing
their voice against him. She was dead. With admirable
and human consistency he referred everything to
himself. She had been a woman of good counsel always.
And the bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned
by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice
of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy
old man quite stupid for a time.
As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner
of trusted subordinates, considered him as a person
fitted by education perhaps to sign papers in an office
and to give orders, but otherwise of no use whatever,
and something of a fool. The necessity of winding
round his little finger, almost daily, the pompous and
testy self-importance of the old seaman had grown
irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given
him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of
overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a
self-confident personality as much by the certitude
of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old
Englishman had no judgment, he said to himself. It
was useless to suppose that, acquainted with the true
state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He
would talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo
feared him as one would fear saddling one's self
with some persistent worry. He had no discretion.
He would betray the treasure. And Nostromo had
made up his mind that the treasure should not be
betrayed.
The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence.
His imagination had seized upon the clear and
simple notion of betrayal to account for the dazed feeling
of enlightenment as to being done for, of having
inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in
A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa
(may God have her soul!) had been right. He had
never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her
white form sitting up bowed in bed, the falling black
hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him, the
anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic
with the awfulness of inspiration and of death.
For it was not for nothing that the evil bird had uttered
its lamentable shriek over his head. She was dead —
may God have her soul!
Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses,
his mind used the pious formula from the superficial
force of habit, but with a deep-seated sincerity. The
popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that incapacity
delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of
swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders
inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead.
But would God consent to receive her soul? She had
died without confession or absolution, because he had
not been willing to spare her another moment of his
time. His scorn of priests as priests remained; but
after all, it was impossible to know whether what they
affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon,
are simple and credible notions. The magnificent
Capataz de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple
realities, such as the admiration of women, the adulation
of men, the admired publicity of his life, was ready
to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his
shoulders.
Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the
lingering warmth of the fine sand under the soles of his
feet. The narrow strand gleamed far ahead in a long
curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the
harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued
of water lying as still as death on his right hand. He
strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude
as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution.
But he knew that on this side of the water he ran no
risk of discovery. The only inhabitant was a lonely,
silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias,
who brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town
for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed,
with a perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering near
an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could
be easily avoided.
The barking of the dogs about that man's ranche was
the first thing that checked his speed. He had forgotten
the dogs. He swerved sharply, and plunged into the
palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an immense
hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper
and rustle faintly high above his head. He traversed
it, entered a ravine, and climbed to the top of a steep
ridge free of trees and bushes.
From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw
the plain between the town and the harbour. In the
woods above some night-bird made a strange drumming
noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the
Indian's dogs continued to bark uproariously. He
wondered what had upset them so much, and, peering
down from his elevation, was surprised to detect unaccountable
movements of the ground below, as if
several oblong pieces of the plain had been in motion.
Those dark, shifting patches, alternately catching and
eluding the eye, altered their place always away from
the harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order
and purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a
column of infantry on a night march towards the higher
broken country at the foot of the hills. But he was
and speculation.
The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility.
He descended the ridge and found himself in the open
solitude, between the harbour and the town. Its spaciousness,
extended indefinitely by an effect of obscurity,
rendered more sensible his profound isolation.
His pace became slower. No one waited for him; no
one thought of him; no one expected or wished his return.
"Betrayed! Betrayed!" he muttered to himself.
No one cared. He might have been drowned
by this time. No one would have cared — unless, perhaps,
the children, he thought to himself. But they
were with the English signora, and not thinking of him
at all.
He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the
Casa Viola. To what end? What could he expect
there? His life seemed to fail him in all its details, even
to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was aware
painfully of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which
she had prophesied with, what he saw now, was her
last breath?
Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course,
inclining by a sort of instinct to the right, towards the
jetty and the harbour, the scene of his daily labours.
The great length of the Custom House loomed up all at
once like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged
his approach, and his curiosity became excited as he
passed cautiously towards the front by the unexpected
sight of two lighted windows.
They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by
some mysterious watcher up there, those two windows
shining dimly upon the harbour in the whole vast extent
of the abandoned building. The solitude could almost
be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in
eyes against the glitter of the stars. As he advanced
in the profound silence, the shrilling of innumerable
cicalas in the dry grass seemed positively deafening to
his strained ears. Slowly, step by step, he found himself
in the great hall, sombre and full of acrid smoke.
A fire built against the staircase had burnt down
impotently to a low heap of embers. The hard wood
had failed to catch; only a few steps at the bottom
smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining
their charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of
light from an open door. It fell upon the vast landing,
all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That was the
room. He climbed the stairs, then checked himself,
because he had seen within the shadow of a man cast
upon one of the walls. It was a shapeless, high-
shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with
lowered head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering
that he was totally unarmed, stepped aside,
and, effacing himself upright in a dark corner, waited
with his eyes fixed on the door.
The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished,
without ceilings under its lofty roof, was pervaded
by the smoke swaying to and fro in the faint cross
draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty rooms
and barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging
shutters came against the wall with a single sharp crack,
as if pushed by an impatient hand. A piece of paper
scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the landing.
The man, whoever he was, did not darken the
lighted doorway. Twice the Capataz, advancing a
couple of steps out of his corner, craned his neck in
the hope of catching sight of what he could be at, so
quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the distorted
shadow of broad shoulders and bowed head.
from the spot, as though he were meditating — or, perhaps,
reading a paper. And not a sound issued from
the room.
Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered
who it was — some Monterist? But he dreaded to show
himself. To discover his presence on shore, unless
after many days, would, he believed, endanger the
treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his whole
soul, it seemed impossible that anybody in Sulaco
should fail to jump at the right surmise. After a
couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who
could tell he had not returned overland from some
port beyond the limits of the Republic? The existence
of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar
sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound
up with it. It rendered him timorous for a moment
before that enigmatic, lighted door. Devil take the
fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be
nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown.
He was a fool to waste his time there in waiting.
Less than five minutes after entering the place the
Capataz began his retreat. He got away down the
stairs with perfect success, gave one upward look over
his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran stealthily
across the hall. But at the very moment he was turning
out of the great door, with his mind fixed upon escaping
the notice of the man upstairs, somebody he had
not heard coming briskly along the front ran full into
him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise,
and leaped back and stood still, each indistinct to the
other. Nostromo was silent. The other man spoke
first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
"Who are you?"
Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr.
the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a
word presented itself to his mind. No use! An inexplicable
repugnance to pronounce the name by which
he was known kept him silent a little longer. At last
he said in a low voice —
"A Cargador."
He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had
received a shock. He flung his arms up and cried out
his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before the marvel
of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to moderate
his voice. The Custom House was not so deserted
as it looked. There was somebody in the lighted room
above.
There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished
fact than its wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly
by the considerations affecting its fears and
desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the
marvellous side of events. And it was in the most
natural way possible that the doctor asked this man
whom only two minutes before he believed to have
been drowned in the gulf —
"You have seen somebody up there? Have you?"
"No, I have not seen him."
"Then how do you know?"
"I was running away from his shadow when we
met."
"His shadow?"
"Yes. His shadow in the lighted room," said Nostromo,
in a contemptuous tone. Leaning back with
folded arms at the foot of the immense building, he
dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not looking
at the doctor. "Now," he thought to himself, "he
will begin asking me about the treasure."
But the doctor's thoughts were concerned with an
but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo taken
himself off with his whole command with this suddenness
and secrecy? What did this move portend?
However, it dawned upon the doctor that the man
upstairs was one of the officers left behind by the disappointed
colonel to communicate with him.
"I believe he is waiting for me," he said.
"It is possible."
"I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz."
"Go away where?" muttered Nostromo.
Already the doctor had left him. He remained
leaning against the wall, staring at the dark water of
the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas filled his ears. An
invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took
from them all power to determine his will.
"Capataz! Capataz!" the doctor's voice called
urgently from above.
The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre
indifference as upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he
stepped out from under the wall, and, looking up, saw
Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window.
"Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need
not fear the man up here."
He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man!
The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores fear a man!
It angered him that anybody should suggest such a
thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking
and in danger because of the accursed treasure, which
was of so little account to the people who had tied it
round his neck. He could not shake off the worry of
it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these
people. . . . And he had never even asked after
it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate
undertaking of his life.
Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again
through the cavernous hall, where the smoke was considerably
thinned, and went up the stairs, not so warm
to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top.
The doctor appeared in it for a moment, agitated and
impatient.
"Come up! Come up!"
At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz
experienced a shock of surprise. The man had not
moved. He saw his shadow in the same place. He
started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to
solve a mystery.
It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of
a second, against the light of two flaring and guttering
candles, through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made
his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had
imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an
enormous and distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter
than a flash of lightning followed the impression of his
constrained, toppling attitude — the shoulders projecting
forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then
he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched
so terribly that the two clenched fists, lashed together,
had been forced up higher than the shoulder-blades.
From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous glance
the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over
a heavy beam and down to a staple in the wall. He
did not want to look at the rigid legs, at the feet hanging
down nervelessly, with their bare toes some six inches
above the floor, to know that the man had been given
the estrapade till he had swooned. His first impulse
was to dash forward and sever the rope at one blow.
He felt for his knife. He had no knife — not even a
knife. He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched
on the edge of the table, facing thoughtfully the cruel
without stirring —
"Tortured — and shot dead through the breast —
getting cold."
This information calmed the Capataz. One of the
candles flickering in the socket went out. "Who did
this?" he asked.
"Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured — of course.
But why shot?" The doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo,
who shrugged his shoulders slightly. "And
mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I
wish I had his secret."
Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to
look. "I seem to have seen that face somewhere," he
muttered. "Who is he?"
The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. "I
may yet come to envying his fate. What do you
think of that, Capataz, eh?"
But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing
the remaining light, he thrust it under the drooping
head. The doctor sat oblivious, with a lost gaze.
Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of
Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.
"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a
start. He could hear the Capataz stagger against
the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction of the
light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-
frames became alive with stars to his sight.
"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself
in English. "Enough to make him jump out of his skin."
Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat.
His head swam. Hirsch! The man was Hirsch!
He held on tight to the edge of the table.
"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted
His voice fell. "In the lighter, and — and —"
"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He
is no more startling to you than you were to me. What
I want to know is how he induced some compassionate
soul to shoot him."
"So Sotillo knows —" began Nostromo, in a more
equable voice.
"Everything!" interrupted the doctor.
The Capataz was heard striking the table with his
fist. "Everything? What are you saying, there?
Everything? Know everything? It is impossible!
Everything?"
"Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I
tell you I have heard this Hirsch questioned last night,
here, in this very room. He knew your name, Decoud's
name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . .
The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject
terror before Sotillo, but he remembered that much.
What do you want more? He knew least about himself.
They found him clinging to their anchor. He
must have caught at it just as the lighter went to the
bottom."
"Went to the bottom?" repeated Nostromo, slowly.
"Sotillo believes that? Bueno!"
The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to
imagine what else could anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo
believed that the lighter was sunk, and the Capataz
de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps
one or two other political fugitives, had been
drowned.
"I told you well, señor doctor," remarked Nostromo
at that point, "that Sotillo did not know everything."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"He did not know I was not dead."
"Neither did we."
"And you did not care — none of you caballeros on
like yourselves on a fool's business that could not end
well."
"You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I
did not think well of the business. So you need not
taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had but little leisure
to think of the dead. Death stands near behind
us all. You were gone."
"I went, indeed!" broke in Nostromo. "And for the
sake of what — tell me?"
"Ah! that is your own affair," the doctor said, roughly.
"Do not ask me."
Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched
on the edge of the table with slightly averted faces,
they felt their shoulders touch, and their eyes remained
directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the
obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with projecting
head and shoulders, in ghastly immobility,
seemed intent on catching every word.
"Muy bien!" Nostromo muttered at last. "So be it.
Teresa was right. It is my own affair."
"Teresa is dead," remarked the doctor, absently,
while his mind followed a new line of thought suggested
by what might have been called Nostromo's return to
life. "She died, the poor woman."
"Without a priest?" the Capataz asked, anxiously.
"What a question! Who could have got a priest for
her last night?"
"May God keep her soul!" ejaculated Nostromo,
with a gloomy and hopeless fervour which had no time
to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to their
previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone,
"Si, señor doctor. As you were saying, it is my own
affair. A very desperate affair."
"There are no two men in this part of the world that
done," the doctor said, admiringly.
And again there was silence between those two men.
They were both reflecting, and the diversity of their
natures made their thoughts born from their meeting
swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to
risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered
with thankfulness at the chain of accident which had
brought that man back where he would be of the greatest
use in the work of saving the San Tomé mine. The
doctor was loyal to the mine. It presented itself to
his fifty-years' old eyes in the shape of a little woman in a
soft dress with a long train, with a head attractively
overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the delicate
preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a
gem and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her
person. As the dangers thickened round the San Tomé
mine this illusion acquired force, permanency, and
authority. It claimed him at last! This claim, exalted
by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions
of hope and reward, made Dr. Monygham's thinking,
acting, individuality extremely dangerous to himself
and to others, all his scruples vanishing in the proud
feeling that his devotion was the only thing that stood
between an admirable woman and a frightful disaster.
It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly
indifferent to Decoud's fate, but left his wits perfectly
clear for the appreciation of Decoud's political idea.
It was a good idea — and Barrios was the only instrument
of its realization. The doctor's soul, withered and
shrunk by the shame of a moral disgrace, became implacable
in the expansion of its tenderness. Nostromo's
return was providential. He did not think of him
humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the
jaws of death. The Capataz for him was the only
doctor's misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer
because based on personal failure) did not lift him
sufficiently above common weaknesses. He was under
the spell of an established reputation. Trumpeted
by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed
in general assent, Nostromo's faithfulness had never
been questioned by Dr. Monygham as a fact. It was
not likely to be questioned now he stood in desperate
need of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he
accepted the popular conception of the Capataz's
incorruptibility simply because no word or fact had
ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be
a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It
was impossible to conceive him otherwise. The question
was whether he would consent to go on such a
dangerous and desperate errand. The doctor was observant
enough to have become aware from the first
of something peculiar in the man's temper. He was
no doubt sore about the loss of the silver.
"It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence,"
he said to himself, with a certain acuteness of
insight into the nature he had to deal with.
On Nostromo's side the silence had been full of black
irresolution, anger, and mistrust. He was the first to
break it, however.
"The swimming was no great matter," he said. "It
is what went before — and what comes after that —"
He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking
off short, as though his thought had butted against
a solid obstacle. The doctor's mind pursued its own
schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as
sympathetically as he was able —
"It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would
think of blaming you. Very unfortunate. To begin
But it was Decoud who — however, he is dead. There
is no need to talk of him."
"No," assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused,
"there is no need to talk of dead men. But I am not
dead yet."
"You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity
could have saved himself."
In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed
highly the intrepidity of that man, whom he valued
but little, being disillusioned as to mankind in general,
because of the particular instance in which his own manhood
had failed. Having had to encounter single-
handed during his period of eclipse many physical
dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous
element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing
sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats
a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from
the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit to appreciate
the mental image he made for himself of the
Capataz, after hours of tension and anxiety, precipitated
suddenly into an abyss of waters and darkness,
without earth or sky, and confronting it not only with
an undismayed mind, but with sensible success. Of
course, the man was an incomparable swimmer, that
was known, but the doctor judged that this instance
testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was
pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success
of the arduous mission with which he meant to entrust
the Capataz so marvellously restored to usefulness.
And in a tone vaguely gratified, he observed —
"It must have been terribly dark!"
"It was the worst darkness of the Golfo," the Capataz
assented, briefly. He was mollified by what seemed a
sign of some faint interest in such things as had befallen
affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he
felt communicative. He expected the continuance
of that interest which, whether accepted or rejected,
would have restored to him his personality — the only
thing lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor,
engrossed by a desperate adventure of his own, was
terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an exclamation
of regret escape him.
"I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a
light."
This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz
by its character of cold-blooded atrocity. It was as
much as to say, "I wish you had shown yourself a
coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your
pains." Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it
related only to the silver, being uttered simply and with
many mental reservations. Surprise and rage rendered
him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically
unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating
violently in his ears.
"For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the
silver would have turned short round and made for some
small port abroad. Economically it would have been
wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk.
It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some
safe place, and using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But
I doubt whether Don Carlos would have ever made up
his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that
is a fact, Capataz."
The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a
tempest in his ears in time to hear the name of Don
Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a changed
man — a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even
voice.
"And would Don Carlos have been content if I had
surrendered this treasure?"
"I should not wonder if they were all of that way of
thinking now," the doctor said, grimly. "I was never
consulted. Decoud had it his own way. Their eyes
are opened by this time, I should think. I for one
know that if that silver turned up this moment miraculously
ashore I would give it to Sotillo. And, as things
stand, I would be approved."
"Turned up miraculously," repeated the Capataz
very low; then raised his voice. "That, señor, would
be a greater miracle than any saint could perform."
"I believe you, Capataz," said the doctor, drily.
He went on to develop his view of Sotillo's dangerous
influence upon the situation. And the Capataz, listening
as if in a dream, felt himself of as little account as
the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom
he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening
also, disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of
neglect.
"Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that
they came to me, then?" he interrupted suddenly.
"Had I not done enough for them to be of some account,
por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos — the gentlemen
— need not think as long as there is a man of the people
ready to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have
no souls — like dogs?"
"There was Decoud, too, with his plan," the doctor
reminded him again.
"Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had
something to do with that treasure, too — what do I
know? No! I have heard too many things. It seems
to me that everything is permitted to the rich."
"I understand, Capataz," the doctor began.
"What Capataz?" broke in Nostromo, in a forcible
There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find the Capataz
no more."
"Come, this is childish!" remonstrated the doctor;
and the other calmed down suddenly.
"I have been indeed like a little child," he muttered.
And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered
man suspended in his awful immobility, which seemed
the uncomplaining immobility of attention, he asked,
wondering gently —
"Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful
wretch? Do you know? No torture could have been
worse than his fear. Killing I can understand. His
anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he
torment him like this? He could tell no more."
"No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man
would have seen that. He had told him everything.
But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo would not
believe what he was told. Not everything."
"What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand."
"I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to
believe that the treasure is lost."
"What?" the Capataz cried out in a discomposed
tone.
"That startles you — eh?"
"Am I to understand, señor," Nostromo went on in a
deliberate and, as it were, watchful tone, "that Sotillo
thinks the treasure has been saved by some means?"
"No! no! That would be impossible," said the
doctor, with conviction; and Nostromo emitted a grunt
in the dark. "That would be impossible. He thinks
that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was
sunk. He has convinced himself that the whole show
of getting it away to sea is a mere sham got up to deceive
Fuentes, our new Géfé Político, and himself, too. Only,
he says, he is no such fool."
"But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile
that ever called himself a colonel in this country
of evil," growled Nostromo.
"He is no more unreasonable than many sensible
men," said the doctor. "He has convinced himself
that the treasure can be found because he desires passionately
to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid
of his officers turning upon him and going over to
Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight
or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need fear no
desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous
plunder turning up. I have made it my business to
keep this very hope up."
"You have?" the Capataz de Cargadores repeated
cautiously. "Well, that is wonderful. And how long
do you think you are going to keep it up?"
"As long as I can."
"What does that mean?"
"I can tell you exactly. As long as I live," the doctor
retorted in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words,
he described the story of his arrest and the circumstances
of his release. "I was going back to that silly scoundrel
when we met," he concluded.
Nostromo had listened with profound attention.
"You have made up your mind, then, to a speedy
death," he muttered through his clenched teeth.
"Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz," the doctor said,
testily. "You are not the only one here who can look an
ugly death in the face."
"No doubt," mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be
overheard. "There may be even more than two fools
in this place. Who knows?"
"And that is my affair," said the doctor, curtly.
"As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my
affair," retorted Nostromo. "I see. Bueno! Each
of us has his reasons. But you were the last man I
conversed with before I started, and you talked to me
as if I were a fool."
Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor's
sardonic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud's
faintly ironic recognition used to make him uneasy;
but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was
flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He
could remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about
the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or acquaintance,
till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service
of the mine.
"You may be very wise," he went on, thoughtfully,
staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the
gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch.
"But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have
learned one thing since, and that is that you are a
dangerous man."
Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than
exclaim —
"What is it you say?"
"If he could speak he would say the same thing,"
pursued Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted
against the starlit window.
"I do not understand you," said Dr. Monygham,
faintly.
"No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in
his madness, he would have been in no haste to give the
estrapade to that miserable Hirsch."
The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion,
absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart
steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete
contemptuously.
"Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like
Sotillo. I confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch.
If I had it would have been useless. Anybody can see
that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment
he caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell
you! Just as I myself am doomed — most probably."
This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo's
remark, which was plausible enough to prick
his conscience. He was not a callous man. But the
necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task
he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane
considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical
spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent
even the basest of mankind was odious to him.
It was odious to him by training, instinct, and tradition.
To do these things in the character of a traitor was abhorrent
to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He
had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He
had said to himself bitterly, "I am the only one fit for
that dirty work." And he believed this. He was not
subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had
no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly
enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining
and comforting effect. To that spiritual state the
fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general
atrocity of things. He considered that episode practically.
What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous
change in Sotillo's delusion? That the man
should have been killed like this was what the doctor
could not understand.
"Yes. But why shot?" he murmured to himself.
Nostromo kept very still.
| CHAPTER EIGHT Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad | |