Nostromo - Joseph Conrad (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

Battista⁠—he of whom, and of Linda, his wife had spoken to him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he on whom she had called aloud to save the children, just before she died⁠—even he was dead!

And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells in town. When it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the great porous jar below.

Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall. While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then, with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the chairs and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of the fireplace⁠—but made no attempt to reach the tobacco⁠—thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito’s entry into Sulaco, the last sun of señor Hirsch’s life, the first of Decoud’s solitude on the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d’Italia Una on its way to the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the capataz de cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with the splutter and flare of a match.

“Si, viejo. It is me. Wait.”

Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the shutters carefully, groped upon a shelf for a candle, and lit it.

Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the dark the sounds made by Nostromo. The light disclosed him standing without support, as if the mere presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible, who was all his son would have been, were enough for the support of his decaying strength.

He extended his hand grasping the briarwood pipe, whose bowl was charred on the edge, and knitted his bushy eyebrows heavily at the light.

“You have returned,” he said, with shaky dignity. “Ah! Very well! I⁠—”

He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the table, his arms folded on his breast, nodded at him slightly.

“You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich, of the aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and betray the people, is not dead yet.”

The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the sound of the well-known voice. His head moved slightly once as if in sign of approval; but Nostromo saw clearly that the old man understood nothing of the words. There was no one to understand; no one he could take into the confidence of Decoud’s fate, of his own, into the secret of the silver. That doctor was an enemy of the people⁠—a tempter⁠ ⁠…

Old Giorgio’s heavy frame shook from head to foot with the effort to overcome his emotion at the sight of that man, who had shared the intimacies of his domestic life as though he had been a grownup son.

“She believed you would return,” he said, solemnly.

Nostromo raised his head.

“She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back⁠—?”

He finished the thought mentally: “Since she has prophesied for me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation.” These words of Teresa’s anger, from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of a soul prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst men of adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo’s mind with the force of a potent malediction. And what a curse it was that which her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so young that he could remember no other woman whom he called mother. Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not fail. The spell was working already. Death itself would elude him now⁠ ⁠… He said violently⁠—

“Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de Dios! The emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded.”

With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded arms, barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen under a curse⁠—a ruined and sinister capataz.

Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word, emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts of bread and half a raw onion.

While the capataz began to devour this beggar’s fare, taking up with stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino went off, and squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in the café, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to have his hands free.

The capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and massive head towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and pronounced slowly⁠—

“After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon you to save the children. Upon you, Gian’ Battista.”

The capataz looked up.

“Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children! They are with the English señora, their rich benefactress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy benefactress⁠ ⁠…”

“I am old,” muttered Giorgio Viola. “An Englishwoman was allowed to give a bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The