Nostromo Joseph Conrad (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness, his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began again as if he were talking to her. With almost an illusion of her presence, he wrote the phrase, “I am very hungry.”

“I have the feeling of a great solitude around me,” he continued. “Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me? But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have been for two days, looking after the property of the National Central Railway, of that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into the pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God knows who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above the middle part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for the better defence against the savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native continent did not wear the black coats of politicians, but went about yelling, half-naked, with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman of the house is dying up there, I believe, all alone with her old husband. There is a narrow staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily defend against a mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their kitchen for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse might make behind the plaster of a wall. All the servants they had ran away yesterday and have not returned yet, if ever they do. For the rest, there are only two children here, two girls. The father has sent them downstairs, and they have crept into this café, perhaps because I am here. They huddle together in a corner, in each other’s arms; I just noticed them a few minutes ago, and I feel more lonely than ever.”

Decoud turned half round in his chair, and asked, “Is there any bread here?”

Linda’s dark head was shaken negatively in response, above the fair head of her sister nestling on her breast.

“You couldn’t get me some bread?” insisted Decoud. The child did not move; he saw her large eyes stare at him very dark from the corner. “You’re not afraid of me?” he said.

“No,” said Linda, “we are not afraid of you. You came here with Gian’ Battista.”

“You mean Nostromo?” said Decoud.

“The English call him so, but that is no name either for man or beast,” said the girl, passing her hand gently over her sister’s hair.

“But he lets people call him so,” remarked Decoud.

“Not in this house,” retorted the child.

“Ah! well, I shall call him the capataz then.”

Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily for a while turned round again.

“When do you expect him back?” he asked.

“After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the señor doctor from the town for mother. He will be back soon.”

“He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere on the road,” Decoud murmured to himself audibly; and Linda declared in her high-pitched voice⁠—

“Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian’ Battista.”

“You believe that,” asked Decoud, “do you?”

“I know it,” said the child, with conviction. “There is no one in this place brave enough to attack Gian’ Battista.”

“It doesn’t require much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush,” muttered Decoud to himself. “Fortunately, the night is dark, or there would be but little chance of saving the silver of the mine.”

He turned again to his pocketbook, glanced back through the pages, and again started his pencil.

“That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva with the fugitive president had gone out of harbour, and the rioters had been driven back into the side lanes of the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral with Nostromo, after sending out the cable message for the information of a more or less attentive world. Strangely enough, though the offices of the Cable Company are in the same building as the Porvenir, the mob, which has thrown my presses out of the window and scattered the type all over the plaza, has been kept from interfering with the instruments on the other side of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo, Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the arcades with a piece of paper in his hand. The little man had tied himself up to an enormous sword and was hung all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous, but the bravest German of his size that ever tapped the key of a Morse transmitter. He had received the message from Cayta reporting the transports with Barrios’s army just entering the port, and ending with the words, ‘The greatest enthusiasm prevails.’ I walked off to drink some water at the fountain, and I was shot at from the alameda by somebody hiding behind a tree. But I drank, and didn’t care; with Barrios in Cayta and the great cordillera between us and Montero’s victorious army I seemed, notwithstanding Messrs. Gamacho and Fuentes, to hold my new state in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to sleep, but when I got as far as the Casa Gould I found the patio full of wounded laid out on straw. Lights were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard on that hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung about. At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of the mine, was dressing the wounds; at the other, near the stairs, Father Corbelan, kneeling, listened to the confession of a dying cargador. Mrs. Gould was walking about through these shambles with a large bottle in one hand and a lot of cotton wool in the other. She just looked at me and never