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NOSTROMO
replaced by a more solid title. «Eh, D on Carlos? No! What do
you say? Conde de Sulaco – Eh? – or marquis …»
He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of
cavalry rode round and round without penetrating into
the streets, which resounded with shouts and the strumming of
guitars issuing from the open doors of pulperias. The orders
were not to interfere with the enjoyments of the people. And
above the roofs, next to the perpendicular lines of the cathedral towers the snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large
space of darkening blue sky before the windows of the Intendencia. After a time Pedrito Montero, thrusting his hand
in the bosom of his coat, bowed his head with slow dignity.
The audience was over.
Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as if to disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose
grotesque extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily
danger and intellectual decay. In the passages and on the staircases of the old palace Montero’s troopers lounged about insolently, smoking and making way for no one; the clanking of
sabres and spurs resounded all over the building. Three silent
groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main gallery, formal and helpless, a little huddled up, each keeping
apart from the others, as if in the exercise of a public duty
they had been overcome by a desire to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more restless
and uneasy in its corporate expression, was overtopped by
the big face of D on Juste Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in
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JOSEPH CONRAD
a dense cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary institutions
( on the English model), averted his eyes from the Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignifi ed rebuke of his little
faith in that only saving principle.
The mournful severity of that repro of did not affect
Charles Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the others
directed up on him without reproach, as if only to read their
own fate up on his face. All of them had talked, shouted, and
declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould. The feeling of
compassi on for those men, struck with a strange impotence
in the toils of moral degradation, did not induce him to make
a sign. He suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too
much. He crossed the Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club
was full of festive ragamuffi ns. Their frowsy heads protruded
from every window, and from within came drunken shouts,
the thumping of feet, and the twanging of harps. Broken bottles
strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould found the doctor
still in his house.
Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter
through which he had been watching the street.
«Ah! You are backat last!» he said in a tone of relief.
«I have been telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe,
but I was not by any means certain that the fellow would
have let you go».
«Neither was I», confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on
the table.
«You will have to take action».
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NOSTROMO
The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was
the only course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to go towards expressing his intentions.
«I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do»,
the doctor said, anxiously.
«I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was
bound up with my personal safety», continued Charles Gould,
looking away from the doctor, and fi xing his eyes up on the water-colour sketch up on the wall.
«He believed you?» the doctor asked, eagerly.
«God knows!» said Charles Gould. «I owed it to my wife to say
that much. He is well enough informed. He knows that I have
D on Pepe there. Fuentes must have told him. They know that
the old major is perfectly capable of blowing up the San Tome
mine without hesitati on or compunction. Had it not been
for that I don’t think I’d have left the Intendencia a free man.
He would blow everything up from loyalty and from hate –
from hate of these Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals!
The words one knows so well have a nightmarish meaning in
this country. Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government –
all of them have a fl avour of folly and murder. Haven’t they,
doctor? … I alone can restrain D on Pepe. If they were to – to
do away with me, nothing could prevent him».
«They will try to tamper with him», the doctor suggested,
thoughtfully.
«It is very possible», Charles Gould said very low, as if speaking to himself, and still gazingat the sketch of the San Tome
gorge up on the wall. «Yes, I expect they will try that». Charles
453
JOSEPH CONRAD
Gould looked for the fi rst timeat the doctor. «It would give me
time», he added.
«Exactly», said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement.
«Especially if D on Pepe behaves diplomatically. Why shouldn’t
he give them some hope of success? Eh? Otherwise you wouldn’t
gain so much time. Couldn’t he be instructed to –»
Charles Gould, lookingat the doctor steadily, shook his
head, but the doctor continued with a certain amount of fi re –
«Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of
the mine. It is a good notion. You would mature your plan. Of
course, I don’t ask what it is. I don’t want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you tried to tell me. I am not fi t for confi dences».
«What nonsense!» muttered Charles Gould, with
displeasure.
He disapproved of the doctor’s sensitiveness about that faroff episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould.
It was like morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with the open rectitude of D on Pepe’s conduct,
both from taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be
either verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the risk of
being intercepted. It was by no means certain that a messenger
could reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one to send.
It was on the tip of Charles’s tongue to say that only the late
Capataz de Cargadores could have been employed with some
chance of success and the certitude of discretion. But he did
not say that. He pointed out to the doctor that it would have
been bad policy. Directly D on Pepe let it be supposed that he
could be bought over, the Administrador’s personal safety and
454
NOSTROMO
the safety of his friends would become endangered. For there
would be then no reas on for moderation. The incorruptibility of D on Pepe was the essential and restraining fact. The doctor hung his head and admitted that in a way it was so.
He couldn’t deny to himself that the reasoning was sound
enough. D on Pepe’s usefulness consisted in his unstained
character. As to his own usefulness, he refl ected bitterly it was
also his own character. He declared to Charles Gould that he
had the means of keeping Sotillo from joining his forces with
Montero,at least for the present.
«If you had had all this silver here», the doctor said, «or
even if it had been known to beat the mine, you could have
bribed Sotillo to throw off his recent Monterism. You could
have induced him either to go away in his steamer or even to
join you».
«Certainly not that last», Charles Gould declared, fi rmly. «What could one do with a man like that, afterwards –
tell me, doctor? The silver is gone, and I am glad of it. It would
have been an immediate and strong temptation. The scramble
for that visible plunder would have precipitated a disastrous
ending. I would have had to defend it, too. I am glad we’ve removed it – even if it is lost. It would have been a danger and
a curse».
«Perhaps he is right», the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor. «The thing
is done, and the shadow of the treasure may do just as well as
the substance. Let me try to serve you to the whole extent of my
evil reputation. I am off now to play my game of betrayal with
Sotillo, and keep him off the town».
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JOSEPH CONRAD
She put out both her hands impulsively. «Dr. Monygham,
you are running a terrible risk», she whispered, averting from
his face her eyes, full of tears, for a short glanceat the door of
her husband’s room. She pressed both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the spot, looking downat her, and trying to twist his lips into a smile.
«Oh, I know you will defend my memory», he utteredat last,
and ran tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of
the house. In the street he kept up a great pace with his smart
hobbling walk, a case of instruments under his arm. He was
known for being loco. Nobody interfered with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid plain, interspersed
with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enormity of the Custom House, and the two or three other buildings
whichat that time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to
the south groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their
identity of clearcut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of
the eastern sky. The doctor walked briskly. A darkling shadow
seemed to fall up on him from the zenith. The sun had set. For
a time the snows of Higuerota continued to glow with the refl ected glory of the west. The doctor, holding a straight course
for the Custom House, appeared lonely, hopping amongst
the dark bushes like a tall bird with a broken wing.
Tints of purple, gold, and crims on were mirrored in
the clear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight
as a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making
a sort of rounded green mound, plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf re-
456
NOSTROMO
peated those splendours of colouring on a greater scale and
with a more sombre magnifi cence. The great mass of cloud
fi lling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its
convoluted folds of grey and black, as of a fl oating mantle
stained with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear
cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air. The little wavelets
seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks up on the sandy beaches.
The glassy bands of water along the horiz on gave out a fi ery
red glow, as if fi re and water had been mingled together in
the vast bed of the ocean.
At last the confl agrati on of sea and sky, lying embraced
and still in a fl aming contact up on the edge of the world,
went out. The red sparks in the water vanished together with
the stains of blood in the black mantle draping the sombre
head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and died
out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined
earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen
hours’ sleep, and arose full length from his lair in the long
grass. He stood knee deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the lost air of a man just born
into the world. Handsome, robust, and supple, he threw back
his head, fl ung his arms open, and stretched himself with
a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely growling yawn of
white teeth, as natural and free from evil in the moment of
waking as a magnifi cent and unconscious wild beast. Then, in
the suddenly steadied glance fi xed up on nothing from under
a thoughtful frown, appeared the man.
CHAPTER VIII
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 fl ight 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 fi rst thing up on
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, fl uttering jumps.
458
NOSTROMO
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 fi rst 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 fl attering dream come suddenly to an end.
He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and,
putting aside the bushes, looked up on the harbour. He saw
a couple of shipsat anchor up on the sheet of water refl ecting
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
459
JOSEPH CONRAD
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 songs and lookingat dances,
made it appear to him as 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 up on 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 refl ected 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 fi ght 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 fi sts. He felt
the pinch of poverty for the fi rst time in his life. To fi nd himself without money after a run of bad luckat monte in the low,
460
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