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.You are like a snared bird, because of your strength.And – remember I am a man that has seen much – submit, Tuan! Submit!.Or else.«He drawled out the last words in a hesitating manner and broke off his sentence.Still stretching his hands in turns towards the blaze and without moving his head, Willems gave a short, lugubrious laugh, and asked –»Or else – what?«»She may go away again.Who knows?« finished Babalatchi, in a gentle and insinuating tone.This time Willems spun round sharply.Babalatchi stepped back.»If she does it will be the worse for you,« said Willems, in a menacing voice.»It will be your doing, and I.«Babalatchi spoke, from beyond the circle of light, with calm disdain.»Haï – ya! I have heard before.If she goes – then I die.Good! Will that bring her back do you think – Tuan? If it is my doing it shall be well done, O white man! and – who knows – you will have to live without her.«Willems gasped and started back like a confident wayfarer who, pursuing a path he thinks safe, should see just in time a bottomless chasm under his feet.Babalatchi came into the light and approached Willems sideways, with his head thrown back and a little on one side so as to bring his only eye to bear full on the countenance of the tall white man.»You threaten me,« said Willems, indistinctly.»I, Tuan!« exclaimed Babalatchi, with a slight suspicion of irony in the affected surprise of his tone.»I, Tuan? Who spoke of death? Was it I? No! I spoke of life only.Only of life.Of a long life for a lonely man!«They stood with the fire between them, both silent, both aware, each in his own way, of the importance of the passing minutes.Babalatchi's fatalism gave him only an insignificant relief in his suspense, because no fatalism can kill the thought of the future, the desire of success, the pain of waiting for the disclosure of the immutable decrees of Heaven.Fatalism is born of the fear of failure, for we all believe that we carry success in our own hands, and we suspect that our hands are weak.Babalatchi looked at Willems and congratulated himself upon his ability to manage that white man.There was a pilot for Abdulla – a victim to appease Lingard's anger in case of any mishap.He would take good care to put him forward in everything.In any case let the white men fight it out amongst themselves.They were fools.He hated them – the strong fools – and knew that for his righteous wisdom was reserved the safe triumph.Willems measured dismally the depth of his degradation.He – a white man, the admired of white men, was held by those miserable savages whose tool he was about to become.He felt for them all the hate of his race, of his morality, of his intelligence.He looked upon himself with dismay and pity.She had him.He had heard of such things.He had heard of women who.He would never believe such stories.Yet they were true.But his own captivity seemed more complete, terrible, and final – without the hope of any redemption.He wondered at the wickedness of Providence that had made him what he was; that, worse still, permitted such a creature as Almayer to live.He had done his duty by going to him.Why did he not understand? All men were fools.He gave him his chance.The fellow did not see it.It was hard, very hard on himself – Willems.He wanted to take her from amongst her own people.That's why he had condescended to go to Almayer.He examined himself.With a sinking heart he thought that really he could not – somehow – live without her.It was terrible and sweet.He remembered the first days.Her appearance, her face, her smile, her eyes, her words.A savage woman! Yet he perceived that he could think of nothing else but of the three days of their separation, of the few hours since their reunion.Very well.If he could not take her away, then he would go to her.He had, for a moment, a wicked pleasure in the thought that what he had done could not be undone.He had given himself up.He felt proud of it.He was ready to face anything, do anything.He cared for nothing, for nobody.He thought himself very fearless, but as a matter of fact he was only drunk; drunk with the poison of passionate memories.He stretched his hands over the fire, looked round, and called out –»Aïssa!«She must have been near, for she appeared at once within the light of the fire.The upper part of her body was wrapped up in the thick folds of a head covering which was pulled down over her brow, and one end of it thrown across from shoulder to shoulder hid the lower part of her face.Only her eyes were visible – sombre and gleaming like a starry night.Willems, looking at this strange, muffled figure, felt exasperated, amazed and helpless.The ex-confidential clerk of the rich Hudig would hug to his breast settled conceptions of respectable conduct.He sought refuge within his ideas of propriety from the dismal mangroves, from the darkness of the forests and of the heathen souls of the savages that were his masters.She looked like an animated package of cheap cotton goods! It made him furious.She had disguised herself so because a man of her race was near! He told her not to do it, and she did not obey.Would his ideas ever change so as to agree with her own notions of what was becoming, proper and respectable? He was really afraid they would, in time.It seemed to him awful.She would never change! This manifestation of her sense of proprieties was another sign of their hopeless diversity; something like another step downwards for him.She was too different from him.He was so civilized! It struck him suddenly that they had nothing in common – not a thought, not a feeling; he could not make clear to her the simplest motive of any act of his.and he could not live without her.The courageous man who stood facing Babalatchi gasped unexpectedly with a gasp that was half a groan.This little matter of her veiling herself against his wish acted upon him like a disclosure of some great disaster.It increased his contempt for himself as the slave of a passion he had always derided, as the man unable to assert his will.This will, all his sensations, his personality – all this seemed to be lost in the abominable desire, in the priceless promise of that woman.He was not, of course, able to discern clearly the causes of his misery; but there are none so ignorant as not to know suffering, none so simple as not to feel and suffer from the shock of warring impulses [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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