Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (novels in english txt) đ
- Author: Joseph Conrad
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âââI had immense plans,â he muttered irresolutely. âYes,â said I; âbut if you try to shout Iâll smash your head withâ ââ There was not a stick or a stone near. âI will throttle you for good,â I corrected myself. âI was on the threshold of great things,â he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. âAnd now for this stupid scoundrelâ ââ âYour success in Europe is assured in any case,â I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you understandâ âand indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spellâ âthe heavy, mute spell of the wildernessâ âthat seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, donât you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the headâ âthough I had a very lively sense of that danger, tooâ âbut in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke himâ âhimselfâ âhis own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. Iâve been telling you what we saidâ ârepeating the phrases we pronouncedâ âbut whatâs the good? They were common everyday wordsâ âthe familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasnât arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clearâ âconcentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chanceâ âbarring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasnât so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I hadâ âfor my sins, I supposeâ âto go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to oneâs belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw itâ âI heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neckâ âand he was not much heavier than a child.
âWhen next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung down stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tailâ âsomething that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.
âWe had carried Kurtz into the pilothouse: there was more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.
âââDo you understand this?â I asked.
âHe kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his colourless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. âDo I not?â he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.
âI pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror through that wedged
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