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

flower its perfume in the coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were little, going out with their mother to mass, she remembered that people took no notice of Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she supposed.

He broke out⁠—

“Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white throat.”⁠ ⁠…

Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added, impetuously⁠—

“Your little feet!”

Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes glanced at her little feet.

“And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah! now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She will not be so fierce.”

“Chica!” said Nostromo, “I have not told her anything.”

“Then make haste. Come tomorrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have some peace from her scolding and⁠—perhaps⁠—who knows⁠ ⁠…”

“Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You⁠ ⁠…”

“Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,” she said, unmoved. “Who is Ramirez⁠ ⁠… Ramirez⁠ ⁠… Who is he?” she repeated, dreamily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a cavern, where the magnificent capataz de cargadores had hidden his conquests of love and wealth.

“Listen, Giselle,” he said, in measured tones; “I will tell no word of love to your sister. Do you want to know why?”

“Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the rich will be surprised yet⁠ ⁠… Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary.”

She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face, then let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple and red.

Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed her ambient seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before leaving the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain Fidanza, for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to appear on the Company’s wharf⁠—a Mediterranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in Costaguana. The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too⁠—close, soft, profound, as no more than fifty yards from that spot it had gathered evening after evening about the self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud’s utter scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.

“You have got to hear,” he began at last, with perfect self-control. “I shall say no word of love to your sister, to whom I am betrothed from this evening, because it is you that I love. It is you!”⁠ ⁠…

The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer. While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering slowly upon the fullness of his possession. And he perceived that she was crying. Then the incomparable capataz, the man of careless loves, became gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed her fair head on his breast. He called her his star and his little flower.

It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper’s cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of sizzling and the aroma of an artistic frittura.

In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason survived. He was lost to the world in their embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into his ear⁠—

“God of mercy! What will become of me⁠—here⁠—now⁠—between this sky and this water I hate? Linda, Linda⁠—I see her!”⁠ ⁠… She tried to get out of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But there was no one approaching their black shapes, enlaced and struggling on the white background of the wall. “Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed today to Giovanni⁠—my lover! Giovanni, you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like other men! I will not give you up⁠—never⁠—only to God himself! But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful thing?”

Released, she