"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after something altogether without a substance. I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr Kurtz. Talking with. . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to--a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake him by the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together. That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words--the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
"那时，我心里就只想着这个极度失望的感觉，仿佛是发现冉己一直在力争的东西根本不存在了，哪怕我大老远地来只是为了能与克尔兹先生谈谈，心情也不会比现在更糟......谈谈。我把一只鞋抛出船外，也意识到，我所一直盼望的正是这个--和克尔兹先生谈谈，我不无奇怪地发现自己从未想过他在干什么，而只想象他在说什么，我不曾想过，'现在我再也见不到他了'，或者，'现在我再也不能跟他握手了，我只想过'现在我冉也听不到他说话了。'这个人是以一种声音的形态出现的。当然，我不是没有把他与某种行动联系在一起。不是有很多人以各种各样的嫉妒和钦佩的语气告诉我，他通过搜集、物物交换、诈骗或者偷窃得到的象牙比其他代理人的总和还多吗?这不重要，重要的是在于他是个有天赋的人，他所有的天赋中最突出的一点，也是有真实存在感的一点，那就是他说话的本事．他的占辞--他的表达才能，那能让人时而困惑，时而醒悟的能力，那最高尚也最卑鄙的才能，那规则律动的光明之河或是从无法穿透的黑暗之心培育出的欺诈之流。
"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, By Jove! it's all over. We are too late; he has vanished--the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all,--and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn't a man ever----Here, give me some tobacco." . . .
"我的另一只鞋也朝这河的鬼或是神头上飞去了，我想：'天啊!一切都完了，我们来得太迟'；他已经消失了--他的天赋也消失了，消失在某一支长矛，某一支箭或某一根大棒之下，我终究还是再也听不到那家伙说话了一我的悲哀之中有一种强烈得令人惊诧的感情，甚至与我所注意到的那些丛林野人的哀号中的感情小相上下，即使我被剥夺了信念或者失去了生活的目标，我也不会感到比这更强烈的孤寂的忧伤，不知为什么...体为什么这样讨厌地叹气?是谁?荒唐吗?唉，是荒唐，上帝啊!难道一个人就不能--嗨，给我一点烟叶......"
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.
他停了下来，一片深长的寂静。然后一根火柴亮了起来，照出了马洛瘦削的脸庞，满脸倦意，抻情呆滞，皱纹一条条向下延展，眼皮低垂，一副注意力集中的神态；而当他用力抽着他的烟斗时，在那小小火苗有规律地明灭中，他的面容似乎在黑夜里时隐时现，火柴灭了。
"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal--you hear--normal from year's end to year's end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be--exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut up to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice. And I heard--him--it-- this voice--other voices--all of them were so little more than voices--and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices--even the girl herself--now----" He was silent for a long time.
'荒唐!'他叫道，'当体想说什么的时候，这足最糟糕不过的了，你们都呆在这里，每个人都有两个固定地址，就像一艘笨重的大船有两个锚一样，一边街角有个杀猪的，另一边有个警察，全都胃口不错，体温正常--你们听到了--一年到头都很正常。然后你们说，荒唐!让荒唐见鬼去吧!荒唐!我亲爱的伙计们，对一个纯粹出于紧张而刚把一双新鞋扔到河里去的男人，你们又能指望什么呢?'现在想起来，我当时没有落泪。这真是让人吃惊。总的来说，我对自己的坚毅感到自豪。那时，我一想到自己失去了倾听天才克尔兹淡天说地的价值连城的机会，就觉得非常难过。当然，我错了，当时机会还在等着我，噢，是的，我听到的可多了。还有，我的感觉是正确的。一个声音，除了是一个声音，他几乎什么也不是，而且我听到了--他--它--这个声音--还有其他一些声音--他们全都是除开声音之外所剩无几--关于那时候的回忆一直在我脑海里盘旋不去，我无法感触它，它就像一句漫无边际、毫无意义的话的余音，渐渐消逝，它愚蠢、残忍、肮脏，野蛮或者可以说根本就是卑鄙下流，没自任何意义，声音--甚至那个女孩本身--现在--"很长一阵子，他都没说话。
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it--completely. They--the women I mean--are out of it--should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr Kurtz saying, 'My Intended.' You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this--ah--specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes--but evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my----' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible--it was not good for one either--to try and imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land--I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude-- utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence--utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion. These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong--too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil--I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place--and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!--breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see? your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in--your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr Kurtz--for the shade of Mr Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and--as he was good enough to say himself--his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by-and-by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his--let us say--nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which--as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times--were offered up to him--do you understand?--to Mr Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings--we approach them with the might as of deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' &c. &c. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence--of words--of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet' (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilisation. But then, you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter rnisgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully--I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back--a help--an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me--I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
"最后，我是用一句谎言才驱散了他那些才能的阴魂，"他突然又开始说了起来，"女孩，什么?我有没有提到过一个女孩?噢，她可是局外人--完全是局外人。她们--我是指女人们--都是局外人--也应该这样--。我们必须帮助她们留在她们自己那个美丽的世界中，不然我们的世界就更糟糕了，噢，她可不能被牵涉进来，你们真该听那位像是从坟里走出来的克尔兹先生说'我的未婚妻'，那你们就会马上明白她与这件事的确毫无关系。还有克尔兹先生那高高的前额骨!据说有时候头发会继续生长，但这个--啊--例子却秃得让人难以忘怀。这片荒原曾轻轻地拍打过他的头，看吧，他的头就像一个球--一个象牙球，这处荒原曾爱抚过他，于是--噜!--他枯萎了；荒原俘虏了他，爱上他，拥抱了他，进入了他的血脉，耗尽了他的肉体，还以某种不可思议的魔鬼人盟仪式，使他的灵魂与荒原融为一体，荒原宠着他，纵着他。象牙?我想是的。成堆成堆的象牙，那问破旧的泥巴小屋都快被象牙撑破了。你可能会以为整个国家天上地下都再找不到一根象牙了。'绝大多数是化石，'经理曾不以为然地说过，它们与我一样，根本小是化石；然而他们把挖出米的东西都叫做化石，似乎这些黑人有时候的确会把象牙埋起来--但显然他们不能把这包象牙埋得深到能拯救这位天才的克尔兹先生的命运。我们的汽船上装满了象牙，还不得不在甲板上堆了许多。这样他就能看见并欣赏象牙，直到他看不见为止。因为这种对个人偏爱的欣赏一直持续到他生命的最后，你们真该听听他说，'我的象牙'这句话，噢，是的，我听他说过，'我的未婚妻，我的象牙，我的贸易站，我的河流．我的--'一切都是属于他的，这让我屏住呼吸，期待着听荒原爆发出一阵惊天动地、能使恒星震动的大笑。一切都属于他--这倒是小事，重要的是要知道，他属于什么，有多少黑暗势力宣称拥有他。这才是真正让人毛骨悚然的念头。这简直无法想象--想象这个对人也没有什么好处，在这块土地的魔鬼中，他坐了一把很高的交椅--的确这样，你们不会明白，你们怎么会明白呢?--你们脚下踩着坚固的人行道，周嗣是和和气气、随时准备鼓励你或攻击你的邻居，你们诚惶诚恐地来往于屠夫与警察之间，心中充满一种丑闻，绞架和疯人院的可怕的恐惧--你们怎能想象得出，通过孤寂的道路--绝对孤寂，连个警察也没有，通过寂静的道路--绝对寂静，听不到你和气的邻居低声警告你要注意舆论，一个人自由的双脚能把他带到创世之初的哪一个特定领域呢?这些小起眼的小事有着重要的影响，当它不存在的时候，你必须得依靠自己固有的力量，依靠自己诚实守信的能力。当然，你可能会大愚若智，反而不会出岔子--你可能会蠢到都不知道种种黑暗势力在攻击你，依我看，没有一个笨蛋能与魔鬼做交易换回自己的灵魂，要么是笨蛋太笨，要么是魔鬼太鬼--我不知道到底是哪个原因，或者，你也许是一个异常高贵的人，除了奇景、天籁，你对一切都视而不见．充耳不闻。于是对你来说，大地只是一个立足之地--这样是你的损失，还是你的收获呢?我不敢妄言，但我们中的绝大多数都不属于这两类人。对我们来说，大地是一个居住之所，我们必须忍受各种景象、声音和气味，老天啊!--比如说，得呼吸死河马的气味，还不能因此得病，你们难道不明白吗?于是你的力量开始起作用了，这是对你自己能力的信心，相信自己能挖几个不显眼的洞，把这玩艺儿埋进去--这是你的奉献精神的威力，不是为你自己奉献，而是为一个含糊而不清的辛苦的事业奉献，这的确够准的。注意了，我并不是设法找借口，也不足解释--我足在设法向自己说明--说明--克尔兹先生--说明克尔兹先生的幽魂。这个不知从哪儿钻出来的鬼魂，在完全消失之前，对我有种令人惊奇的信心，让我十分荣幸。这是因为它能跟我讲英语。最初克尔兹先生曾在英国受过一部分教育．而且--正如他好心好意地告诉我那样--他的同情心总是用在适当的地方，他的母亲是半个英国人，父亲是半个法国人。整个欧洲都对克尔兹先生的发展做出过贡献；而且我以适当的方式渐渐了解到，国际禁止野蛮习俗狲会曾委托他写过一份报告，用以指导将来的工作。他写了，我看到过，也读过这份报告，这是一份很有辩才的报告，振振有词．佴我觉得有点神经过敏，他居然能抽出时间写这样一份密密麻麻、长达17页的报告!但这一定是在他--就这么说吧--发疯之前写的。他还为这个去主持了某些子夜舞会，舞会都以一些无法形容出来的仪式作为结束，这些仪式--根据我在不同时候所听到的我大概猜出来--都是献给他的--你们明白吗?--献给克尔兹先生自己的，然而那仍是一份写得很漂亮的报告．可是，开头的一段从我后来得知的情况来看，让我觉得不吉利。他一开始提m这样的观点，认为从所达到的发展水平看，我们白人'在他们(野蛮人)眼中必然带有超自然生物的特点--我们是带着神一般的威力去撵近他们的。'等等，等等。'简单地用用我们的意志力，我们就能永远对他们行使一种几乎设有限制的权力，'等等，等等从这里他就开始天花乱坠。把我都给说服了。通篇的慷慨陈词不太好记，却可谓堂而皇之，你们知道的，它让我感受到一种出自庄严仁心的、奇特而动人的浩然正气。它让我由于热切而兴奋不已，这就是雄辩的--言辞的--燃烧着的高贵文字的无限威力。词句神奇地流泄，没有任何实际的暗示来打断它，只是在最后一页的下边有一个像是注解的东西．显然是很久以后才匆匆涂上去的，写得很潦草，可以看成是对一种方法的说明。很简单，在这篇动人的、能激发起这种利他主义思想的文章最后，如同晴空中的一道闪电，他发出一个清楚而可怕的呼吁，'消灭所有的畜牲!'奇怪的是，他显然把那段极有价值的附记给忘了个一千二净，因为后来，当他的神志有点恢复正常时，他再三恳求我仔细保管'我的小册子'(他这么叫的)，因为将来它一定会对他的事业有好处，我对一切都十分了解，而且，结果我还得照顾他死后的名声，在这方面我做得够多了，所以有着不容置辩的权利。如果我愿意的话，就可以把它和人类文明的一切垃圾。打个比方吧，一切死猫都扔进人类发展的垃圾桶，让它永远安息，可当时，你们看，我没有选择的余地，人们不能忘记他，不管他是好是坏，他不是一般人，他有着能迷惑或恐吓未开化的人的力量，他能让那些蒙昧的人大跳魔舞向他致敬：他还能让那些朝圣者渺小的灵魂中充满疑惧：他至少有一个忠实的朋友．这世界上，他还征服了一个既不蒙昧也未被自私自利荇染的灵魂。不，我不能忘记他，尽管我并不想断言这个家伙就值得我们牺牲生命去寻找。我十分怀念那个死去的舵手--甚至在他的尸体还躺在驾驶室里的时候，我就已经开始想他，追悼个不比黑撒哈拉里的一粒小沙了更有价值的野蛮人，你们也许会觉得这非常奇怪，嗯，你们难道不明白吗，他曾经做过一些事情，他曾经在掌舵；几个月来他一直在幕后支持我--他是个帮手--一件工具。这是一种合作关系。他为我掌舵--我就得照顾他，我为他的不足之处担心，于是我们之间产生了一种微妙的联系，而且直到这种联系忽然中断，我才意识到它的存在，他受伤时看我的眼光中，包含着一种深不可测的亲密感，我至今仍记得--仿佛在要求临终时确定一种远亲关系。
To be continued... |
