Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his
prudence. He could command himself even when thrown off his balance.
And to become the slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an
occurrence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also in a great part
because of the difficulty of converting it into a form in which it
could become available. The mere act of getting it away from the island
piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the
dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the Great Isabel in
secret, between his voyages along the coast, which were the ostensible
source of his fortune. The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as
if they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He did not dare stay
too long in port. When his coaster was unloaded, he hurried away on
another trip, for he feared arousing suspicion even by a day’s delay.
Sometimes during a week’s stay, or more, he could only manage one visit
to the treasure. And that was all. A couple of ingots. He suffered
through his fears as much as through his prudence. To do things by
stealth humiliated him. And he suffered most from the concentration of
his thought upon the treasure.
A transgression, a crime, entering a man’s existence, eats it up like a
malignant growth, consumes it like a fever. Nostromo had lost his peace;
the genuineness of all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself,
and often cursed the silver of San Tome. His courage, his magnificence,
his leisure, his work, everything was as before, only everything was a
sham. But the treasure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious,
mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots. Sometimes, after
putting away a couple of them in his cabin--the fruit of a secret night
expedition to the Great Isabel--he would look fixedly at his fingers, as
if surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in distant ports. The
necessity to go far afield made his coasting voyages long, and caused
his visits to the Viola household to be rare and far between. He was
fated to have his wife from there. He had said so once to Giorgio
himself. But the Garibaldino had put the subject aside with a majestic
wave of his hand, clutching a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There
was plenty of time; he was not the man to force his girls upon anybody.
As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference for the younger of
the two. They had some profound similarities of nature, which must
exist for complete confidence and understanding, no matter what
outward differences of temperament there may be to exercise their own
fascination of contrast. His wife would have to know his secret or else
life would be impossible. He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid
gaze and white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her
quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, passionately pale
face, energetic, all fire and words, touched with gloom and scorn, a
chip of the old block, true daughter of the austere republican, but with
Teresa’s voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the
poor girl could not conceal her love for Gian’ Battista. He could see it
would be violent, exacting, suspicious, uncompromising--like her soul.
Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her
nature holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish
mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to the
future.
His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest of
them, he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying under
the cliff of the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen’s
figures moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising from its
foundations on the edge of the cliff.
At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought himself
lost irretrievably. What could save him from detection now? Nothing! He
was struck with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would kindle
a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of his life; that life
whose very essence, value, reality, consisted in its reflection from the
admiring eyes of men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears and
gives effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark. Not every man
had such a darkness. And they were going to put a light there. A light!
He saw it shining upon disgrace, poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure
to. . . . Perhaps somebody had already. . . .
The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain
Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like
old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was
on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner.
That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in
the face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought
that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace,
the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine
himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own
existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the
notion of finality. The earth goes on for ever.
And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, but it was as good
for his purposes as the other kind. He sailed close to the cliff of the
Great Isabel, throwing a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth
of the ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. He sailed
close enough to exchange hails with the workmen, shading their eyes on
the edge of the sheer drop of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a
powerful crane. He perceived that none of them had any occasion even to
approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let alone to enter it.
In the harbour he learned that no one slept on the island. The labouring
gangs returned to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the empty
lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the moment he had nothing to fear.
But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a keeper came to live in
the cottage that was being built some hundred and fifty yards back from
the low lighttower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, jungly
ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his influence, of his
magnificence, of his power over the future, of his defiance of ill-luck,
of every possible betrayal from rich and poor alike--what then? He could
never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater than that of other
men, had welded that vein of silver into his life. And the feeling
of fearful and ardent subjection, the feeling of his slavery--so
irremediable and profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared
himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor alive, bound down
to their conquest of unlawful wealth on Azuera--weighed heavily on the
independent Captain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner,
whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in trading) were so well
known along the western seaboard of a vast continent.
Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in his walk, the
vigour and symmetry of his powerful limbs lost in the vulgarity of a
brown tweed suit, made by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the
clothing department of the Compania Anzani, Captain Fidanza was seen in
the streets of Sulaco attending to his business, as usual, that trip.
And, as usual, he allowed it to get about that he had made a great
profit on his cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was
approaching. He was seen in tramcars going to and fro between the town
and the harbour; he talked with people in a cafe or two in his measured,
steady voice. Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that would know
nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born yet.
Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had made for himself,
under his rightful name, another public existence, but modified by
the new conditions, less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the
increased size and varied population of Sulaco, the progressive capital
of the Occidental Republic.
Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little mysterious, was
recognized quite sufficiently under the lofty glass and iron roof of the
Sulaco railway station. He took a local train, and got out in Rincon,
where he visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his wounds
(at the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose Avellanos) in the patio
of the Casa Gould. He consented to sit down and drink a glass of cool
lemonade in the hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a perfect
torrent of words to which he did not listen. He left some money with
her, as usual. The orphaned children, growing up and well schooled,
calling him uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; and in
the doorway paused for a moment to look at the flat face of the San Tome
mountain with a faint frown. This slight contraction of his bronzed brow
casting a marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression,
was observed at the Lodge which he attended--but went away before the
banquet. He wore it at the meeting of some good comrades, Italians
and Occidentals, assembled in his honour under the presidency of an
indigent, sickly, somewhat hunchbacked little photographer, with a white
face and a magnanimous soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of
all capitalists, oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic Giorgio
Viola, old revolutionist, would have understood nothing of his opening
speech; and Captain Fidanza, lavishly generous as usual to some poor
comrades, made no speech at all. He had listened, frowning, with his
mind far away, and walked off unapproachable, silent, like a man full of
cares.
His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he watched the stone-masons
go off to the Great Isabel, in lighters loaded with squared blocks of
stone, enough to add another course to the squat light-tower. That was
the rate of the work. One course per day.
And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of strangers on the island
would cut him completely off the treasure. It had been difficult and
dangerous enough before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought
with the resolution of a master and the cunning of a cowed slave. Then
he went ashore.
He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as usual, the expedient he
found at a critical moment was effective enough to alter the situation
radically. He had the gift of evolving safety out of the very danger,
this incomparable Nostromo, this “fellow in a thousand.” With Giorgio
established on the Great Isabel, there would be no need for concealment.
He would be able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters--one of
his daughters--and stay late talking to the old Garibaldino. Then in the
dark . . . Night after night . . . He would dare to grow rich quicker
now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate in unquestioned
possession this treasure, whose tyranny had weighed upon his mind, his
actions, his very sleep.
He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell--and the thing was done as
Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs. Gould. When the project was mooted to
the Garibaldino, something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost of a
very ancient smile, stole under the white and enormous moustaches of the
old hater of kings and ministers. His daughters were the object of his
anxious care. The younger, especially. Linda, with her mother’s voice,
had taken more her mother’s place. Her deep, vibrating “Eh, Padre?”
seemed, but for the change of the word, the very echo of the
impassioned, remonstrating “Eh, Giorgio?” of poor Signora Teresa. It was
his fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for his girls.
The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was the object of his profound
aversion, as resuming the sins of the country whose people were blind,
vile esclavos.
On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza found the Violas
settled in the light-keeper’s cottage. His knowledge of Giorgio’s
idiosyncrasies had not played him false. The Garibaldino had refused
to entertain the idea of any companion whatever, except his girls.
And Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his poor Nostromo, with that
felicity of inspiration which only true affection can give, had formally
appointed Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel’s Light.
“The light is private property,” he used to explain. “It belongs to my
Company. I’ve the power to nominate whom I like, and Viola it shall be.
It’s about the only thing Nostromo--a man worth his weight in gold, mind
you--has ever asked me to do for him.”
Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New Custom House, with
its sham air of a Greek temple, flatroofed, with a colonnade, Captain
Fidanza went pulling his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the
Great Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before all men’s
eyes, with a sense of having mastered the fates. He must establish a
regular position. He would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of
Giselle as he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but the old man would be
glad to keep the elder, who had his wife’s voice.
He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud,
and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the
beach at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of
the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting
on a bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly
to his loud hail. He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared.
“It is good here,” said the old man, in his austere, far-away manner.