Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  It was only on the stage that the unusual was outwardly acknowledged.

  “I suppose,” thought Razumov, “that if I had made up my mind to blow out my brains on the landing I would be going up these stairs as quietly as I am doing it now. What’s a man to do? What must be must be. Extraordinary things do happen. But when they have happened they are done with. Thus, too, when the mind is made up. That question is done with. And the daily concerns, the familiarities of our thought swallow it up — and the life goes on as before with its mysterious and secret sides quite out of sight, as they should be. Life is a public thing.”

  Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out; entered very quietly and bolted the door behind him carefully.

  He thought, “He hears me,” and after bolting the door he stood still holding his breath. There was not a sound. He crossed the bare outer room, stepping deliberately in the darkness. Entering the other, he felt all over his table for the matchbox. The silence, but for the groping of his hand, was profound. Could the fellow be sleeping so soundly?

  He struck a light and looked at the bed. Haldin was lying on his back as before, only both his hands were under his head. His eyes were open. He stared at the ceiling.

  Razumov held the match up. He saw the clear-cut features, the firm chin, the white forehead and the topknot of fair hair against the white pillow. There he was, lying flat on his back. Razumov thought suddenly, “I have walked over his chest.”

  He continued to stare till the match burnt itself out; then struck another and lit the lamp in silence without looking towards the bed any more. He had turned his back on it and was hanging his coat on a peg when he heard Haldin sigh profoundly, then ask in a tired voice —

  “Well! And what have you arranged?”

  The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad to put his hands against the wall. A diabolical impulse to say, “I have given you up to the police,” frightened him exceedingly. But he did not say that. He said, without turning round, in a muffled voice —

  “It’s done.”

  Again he heard Haldin sigh. He walked to the table, sat down with the lamp before him, and only then looked towards the bed.

  In the distant corner of the large room far away from the lamp, which was small and provided with a very thick china shade, Haldin appeared like a dark and elongated shape — rigid with the immobility of death. This body seemed to have less substance than its own phantom walked over by Razumov in the street white with snow. It was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion.

  Haldin was heard again.

  “You must have had a walk — such a walk,...” he murmured deprecatingly. “This weather....”

  Razumov answered with energy —

  “Horrible walk.... A nightmare of a walk.”

  He shuddered audibly. Haldin sighed once more, then —

  “And so you have seen Ziemianitch — brother?”

  “I’ve seen him.”

  Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with the Prince, thought it prudent to add, “I had to wait some time.”

  “A character — eh? It’s extraordinary what a sense of the necessity of freedom there is in that man. And he has sayings too — simple, to the point, such as only the people can invent in their rough sagacity. A character that....”

  “I, you understand, haven’t had much opportunity....” Razumov muttered through his teeth.

  Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “You see, brother, I have been a good deal in that house of late. I used to take there books — leaflets. Not a few of the poor people who live there can read. And, you see, the guests for the feast of freedom must be sought for in byways and hedges. The truth is, I have almost lived in that house of late. I slept sometimes in the stable. There is a stable....”

  “That’s where I had my interview with Ziemianitch,” interrupted Razumov gently. A mocking spirit entered into him and he added, “It was satisfactory in a sense. I came away from it much relieved.”

  “Ah! he’s a fellow,” went on Haldin, talking slowly at the ceiling. “I came to know him in that way, you see. For some weeks now, ever since I resigned myself to do what had to be done, I tried to isolate myself. I gave up my rooms. What was the good of exposing a decent widow woman to the risk of being worried out of her mind by the police? I gave up seeing any of our comrades....”

  Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper and began to trace lines on it with a pencil.

  “Upon my word,” he thought angrily, “he seems to have thought of everybody’s safety but mine.”

  Haldin was talking on.

  “This morning — ah! this morning — that was different. How can I explain to you? Before the deed was done I wandered at night and lay hid in the day, thinking it out, and I felt restful. Sleepless but restful. What was there for me to torment myself about? But this morning — after! Then it was that I became restless. I could not have stopped in that big house full of misery. The miserable of this world can’t give you peace. Then when that silly caretaker began to shout, I said to myself, ‘There is a young man in this town head and shoulders above common prejudices.’“

  “Is he laughing at me?” Razumov asked himself, going on with his aimless drawing of triangles and squares. And suddenly he thought: “My behaviour must appear to him strange. Should he take fright at my manner and rush off somewhere I shall be undone completely. That infernal General....”

  He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with the shadowy figure extended full length on it — so much more indistinct than the one over whose breast he had walked without faltering. Was this, too, a phantom?

  The silence had lasted a long time. “He is no longer here,” was the thought against which Razumov struggled desperately, quite frightened at its absurdity. “He is already gone and this...only...”

  He could resist no longer. He sprang to his feet, saying aloud, “I am intolerably anxious,” and in a few headlong strides stood by the side of the bed. His hand fell lightly on Haldin’s shoulder, and directly he felt its reality he was beset by an insane temptation to grip that exposed throat and squeeze the breath out of that body, lest it should escape his custody, leaving only a phantom behind.

  Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed eyes moving a little gazed upwards at Razumov with wistful gratitude for this manifestation of feeling.

  Razumov turned away and strode up and down the room. “It would have been possibly a kindness,” he muttered to himself, and was appalled by the nature of that apology for a murderous intention his mind had found somewhere within him. And all the same he could not give it up. He became lucid about it. “What can he expect?” he thought. “The halter — in the end. And I....”

  This argument was interrupted by Haldin’s voice.

  “Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body, but they cannot exile my soul from this world. I tell you what — I believe in this world so much that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than as a very long life. That is perhaps the reason I am so ready to die.”

  “H’m,” muttered Razumov, and biting his lower lip he continued to walk up and down and to carry on his strange argument.

  Yes, to a man in such a situation — of course it would be an act of kindness. The question, however, was not how to be kind, but how to be firm. He was a slippery customer.

  “I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this world of ours,” he said with force. “I too, while I live.... But you seem determined to haunt it. You can’t seriously...mean...”

  The voice of the motionless Haldin began —

  “Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought which quickens the world, the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of human dignity, they shall be haunted. As to the destroyers of my mere body, I have forgiven them beforehand.”

  Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at the same time he was observing his own sensations. He was vexed with himself
for attaching so much importance to what Haldin said.

  “The fellow’s mad,” he thought firmly, but this opinion did not mollify him towards Haldin. It was a particularly impudent form of lunacy — and when it got loose in the sphere of public life of a country, it was obviously the duty of every good citizen....

  This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by a paroxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that Razumov hastened to speak at random.

  “Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can’t very well represent it to myself.... I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. There would be nothing unexpected — don’t you see? The element of time would be wanting.”

  He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on his side and looked on intently.

  Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer this fellow with a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He hastened on —

  “And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in Eternity? Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are secrets of birth, for instance. One carries them on to the grave. There is something comical...but never mind. And there are secret motives of conduct. A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. That is interesting and so unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk. Nothing more trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He comes back — he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular notice of the snow on the ground — and behold he is no longer the same man. The most unlikely things have a secret power over one’s thoughts — the grey whiskers of a particular person — the goggle eyes of another.”

  Razumov’s forehead was moist. He took a turn or two in the room, his head low and smiling to himself viciously.

  “Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey whiskers? Excuse me. You seem to think I must be crazy to talk in this vein at such a time. But I am not talking lightly. I have seen instances. It has happened to me once to be talking to a man whose fate was affected by physical facts of that kind. And the man did not know it. Of course, it was a case of conscience, but the material facts such as these brought about the solution.... And you tell me, Victor Victorovitch, not to be anxious! Why! I am responsible for you,” Razumov almost shrieked.

  He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter. Haldin, very pale, raised himself on his elbow.

  “And the surprises of life,” went on Razumov, after glancing at the other uneasily. “Just consider their astonishing nature. A mysterious impulse induces you to come here. I don’t say you have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain point of view you could not have done better. You might have gone to a man with affections and family ties. You have such ties yourself. As to me, you know I have been brought up in an educational institute where they did not give us enough to eat. To talk of affection in such a connexion — you perceive yourself.... As to ties, the only ties I have in the world are social. I must get acknowledged in some way before I can act at all. I sit here working.... And don’t you think I am working for progress too? I’ve got to find my own ideas of the true way.... Pardon me,” continued Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short, throaty laugh, “but I haven’t inherited a revolutionary inspiration together with a resemblance from an uncle.”

  He looked again at his watch and noticed with sickening disgust that there were yet a good many minutes to midnight. He tore watch and chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the table well in the circle of bright lamplight. Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir. Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude. “What move is he meditating over so quietly?” he thought. “He must be prevented. I must keep on talking to him.”

  He raised his voice.

  “You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin — I don’t know what — to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition — your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine — or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day — a sort of hero — a political saint. But I beg to be excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you,” he cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed, “that what it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through — but a man!”

  Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him off in horror.

  “I understand it all now,” he exclaimed, with awestruck dismay. “I understand — at last.”

  Razumov staggered back against the table. His forehead broke out in perspiration while a cold shudder ran down his spine.

  “What have I been saying?” he asked himself. “Have I let him slip through my fingers after all?”

  “He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and instead of a reassuring smile only achieved an uncertain grimace.

  “What will you have?” he began in a conciliating voice which got steady after the first trembling word or two. “What will you have? Consider — a man of studious, retired habits — and suddenly like this.... I am not practised in talking delicately. But...”

  He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him again.

  “What were we to do together till midnight? Sit here opposite each other and think of your — your — shambles?”

  Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude. He bowed his head; his hands hung between his knees. His voice was low and pained but calm.

  “I see now how it is, Razumov — brother. You are a magnanimous soul, but my action is abhorrent to you — alas....”

  Razumov stared. From fright he had set his teeth so hard that his whole face ached. It was impossible for him to make a sound.

  “And even my person, too, is loathsome to you perhaps,” Haldin added mournfully, after a short pause, looking up for a moment, then fixing his gaze on the floor. “For indeed, unless one....”

  He broke off evidently waiting for a word. Razumov remained silent. Haldin nodded his head dejectedly twice.

  “Of course. Of course,” he murmured.... “Ah! weary work!”

  He remained perfectly still for a moment, then made Razumov’s leaden heart strike a ponderous blow by springing up briskly.

  “So be it,” he cried sadly in a low, distinct tone. “Farewell then.”

  Razumov started forward, but the sight of Haldin’s raised hand checked him before he could get away from the table. He leaned on it heavily, listening to the faint sounds of some town clock tolling the hour. Haldin, already at the door, tall and straight as an arrow, with his pale face and a hand raised attentively, might have posed for the statue of a daring youth listening to an inner voice. Razumov mechanically glanced down at his watch. When he looked towards the door again Haldin had vanished. There was a faint rustling in the outer room, the feeble click of a bolt drawn back lightly. He was gone — almost as noiseless as a vision.

  Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted, voiceless lips. The outer door stood open. Staggering out on the landing, he leaned far over the banister. Gazing down into the deep black shaft with a tiny glimmering flame at the bottom, he traced by ear the rapid spiral descent of somebody running down the stairs on tiptoe. It was a light, swift, pattering sound, which sank away from him into the depths: a fleeting shadow passed over the glimmer — a wink of the tiny flame. Then stillness.

  Razumov
hung over, breathing the cold raw air tainted by the evil smells of the unclean staircase. All quiet.

  He went back into his room slowly, shutting the doors after him. The peaceful steady light of his reading-lamp shone on the watch. Razumov stood looking down at the little white dial. It wanted yet three minutes to midnight. He took the watch into his hand fumblingly.

  “Slow,” he muttered, and a strange fit of nervelessness came over him. His knees shook, the watch and chain slipped through his fingers in an instant and fell on the floor. He was so startled that he nearly fell himself. When at last he regained enough confidence in his limbs to stoop for it he held it to his ear at once. After a while he growled —

  “Stopped,” and paused for quite a long time before he muttered sourly —

  “It’s done.... And now to work.”

  He sat down, reached haphazard for a book, opened it in middle and began to read; but after going conscientiously over two lines he lost his hold on the print completely and did not try to regain it. He thought —

  “There was to a certainty a police agent of some sort watching the house across the street.”

  He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway, goggle-eyed, muffled up in a cloak to the nose and with a General’s plumed, cocked hat on his head. This absurdity made him start in the chair convulsively. He literally had to shake his head violently to get rid of it. The man would be disguised perhaps as a peasant... a beggar.... Perhaps he would be just buttoned up in a dark overcoat and carrying a loaded stick — a shifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw onions and spirits.

  This evocation brought on positive nausea. “Why do I want to bother about this?” thought Razumov with disgust. “Am I a gendarme? Moreover, it is done.”