Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  “The object, you mean, of this conversation, which I admit I have forced upon you in a measure.”

  “Forced! Object!” he repeated, still keeping half a pace or so behind me. “You wanted to talk about women, apparently. That’s a subject. But I don’t care for it. I have never.... In fact, I have had other subjects to think about.”

  “I am concerned here with one woman only — a young girl — the sister of your dead friend — Miss Haldin. Surely you can think a little of her. What I meant from the first was that there is a situation which you cannot be expected to understand.”

  I listened to his unsteady footfalls by my side for the space of several strides.

  “I think that it may prepare the ground for your next interview with Miss Haldin if I tell you of it. I imagine that she might have had something of the kind in her mind when she left us together. I believe myself authorized to speak. The peculiar situation I have alluded to has arisen in the first grief and distress of Victor Haldin’s execution. There was something peculiar in the circumstances of his arrest. You no doubt know the whole truth....”

  I felt my arm seized above the elbow, and next instant found myself swung so as to face Mr. Razumov.

  “You spring up from the ground before me with this talk. Who the devil are you? This is not to be borne! Why! What for? What do you know what is or is not peculiar? What have you to do with any confounded circumstances, or with anything that happens in Russia, anyway?”

  He leaned on his stick with his other hand, heavily; and when he let go my arm, I was certain in my mind that he was hardly able to keep on his feet.

  “Let us sit down at one of these vacant tables,” I proposed, disregarding this display of unexpectedly profound emotion. It was not without its effect on me, I confess. I was sorry for him.

  “What tables? What are you talking about? Oh — the empty tables? The tables there. Certainly. I will sit at one of the empty tables.”

  I led him away from the path to the very centre of the raft of deals before the chalet. The Swiss couple were gone by that time. We were alone on the raft, so to speak. Mr. Razumov dropped into a chair, let fall his stick, and propped on his elbows, his head between his hands, stared at me persistently, openly, and continuously, while I signalled the waiter and ordered some beer. I could not quarrel with this silent inspection very well, because, truth to tell, I felt somewhat guilty of having been sprung on him with some abruptness — of having “sprung from the ground,” as he expressed it.

  While waiting to be served I mentioned that, born from parents settled in St. Petersburg, I had acquired the language as a child. The town I did not remember, having left it for good as a boy of nine, but in later years I had renewed my acquaintance with the language. He listened, without as much as moving his eyes the least little bit. He had to change his position when the beer came, and the instant draining of his glass revived him. He leaned back in his chair and, folding his arms across his chest, continued to stare at me squarely. It occurred to me that his clean-shaven, almost swarthy face was really of the very mobile sort, and that the absolute stillness of it was the acquired habit of a revolutionist, of a conspirator everlastingly on his guard against self-betrayal in a world of secret spies.

  “But you are an Englishman — a teacher of English literature,” he murmured, in a voice that was no longer issuing from a parched throat. “I have heard of you. People told me you have lived here for years.”

  “Quite true. More than twenty years. And I have been assisting Miss Haldin with her English studies.”

  “You have been reading English poetry with her,” he said, immovable now, like another man altogether, a complete stranger to the man of the heavy and uncertain footfalls a little while ago — at my elbow.

  “Yes, English poetry,” I said. “But the trouble of which I speak was caused by an English newspaper.”

  He continued to stare at me. I don’t think he was aware that the story of the midnight arrest had been ferreted out by an English journalist and given to the world. When I explained this to him he muttered contemptuously, “It may have been altogether a lie.”

  “I should think you are the best judge of that,” I retorted, a little disconcerted. “I must confess that to me it looks to be true in the main.”

  “How can you tell truth from lies?” he queried in his new, immovable manner.

  “I don’t know how you do it in Russia,” I began, rather nettled by his attitude. He interrupted me.

  “In Russia, and in general everywhere — in a newspaper, for instance. The colour of the ink and the shapes of the letters are the same.”

  “Well, there are other trifles one can go by. The character of the publication, the general verisimilitude of the news, the consideration of the motive, and so on. I don’t trust blindly the accuracy of special correspondents — but why should this one have gone to the trouble of concocting a circumstantial falsehood on a matter of no importance to the world?”

  “That’s what it is,” he grumbled. “What’s going on with us is of no importance — a mere sensational story to amuse the readers of the papers — the superior contemptuous Europe. It is hateful to think of. But let them wait a bit!”

  He broke off on this sort of threat addressed to the western world. Disregarding the anger in his stare, I pointed out that whether the journalist was well- or ill-informed, the concern of the friends of these ladies was with the effect the few lines of print in question had produced — the effect alone. And surely he must be counted as one of the friends — if only for the sake of his late comrade and intimate fellow-revolutionist. At that point I thought he was going to speak vehemently; but he only astounded me by the convulsive start of his whole body. He restrained himself, folded his loosened arms tighter across his chest, and sat back with a smile in which there was a twitch of scorn and malice.

  “Yes, a comrade and an intimate.... Very well,” he said.

  “I ventured to speak to you on that assumption. And I cannot be mistaken. I was present when Peter Ivanovitch announced your arrival here to Miss Haldin, and I saw her relief and thankfulness when your name was mentioned. Afterwards she showed me her brother’s letter, and read out the few words in which he alludes to you. What else but a friend could you have been?”

  “Obviously. That’s perfectly well known. A friend. Quite correct.... Go on. You were talking of some effect.”

  I said to myself: “He puts on the callousness of a stern revolutionist, the insensibility to common emotions of a man devoted to a destructive idea. He is young, and his sincerity assumes a pose before a stranger, a foreigner, an old man. Youth must assert itself....” As concisely as possible I exposed to him the state of mind poor Mrs. Haldin had been thrown into by the news of her son’s untimely end.

  He listened — I felt it — with profound attention. His level stare deflected gradually downwards, left my face, and rested at last on the ground at his feet.

  “You can enter into the sister’s feelings. As you said, I have only read a little English poetry with her, and I won’t make myself ridiculous in your eyes by trying to speak of her. But you have seen her. She is one of these rare human beings that do not want explaining. At least I think so. They had only that son, that brother, for a link with the wider world, with the future. The very groundwork of active existence for Nathalie Haldin is gone with him. Can you wonder then that she turns with eagerness to the only man her brother mentions in his letters. Your name is a sort of legacy.”

  “What could he have written of me?” he cried, in a low, exasperated tone.

  “Only a few words. It is not for me to repeat them to you, Mr. Razumov; but you may believe my assertion that these words are forcible enough to make both his mother and his sister believe implicitly in the worth of your judgment and in the truth of anything you may have to say to them. It’s impossible for you now to pass them by like strangers.”

  I paused, and for a moment sat listening to the footsteps of the few people
passing up and down the broad central walk. While I was speaking his head had sunk upon his breast above his folded arms. He raised it sharply.

  “Must I go then and lie to that old woman!”

  It was not anger; it was something else, something more poignant, and not so simple. I was aware of it sympathetically, while I was profoundly concerned at the nature of that exclamation.

  “Dear me! Won’t the truth do, then? I hoped you could have told them something consoling. I am thinking of the poor mother now. Your Russia is a cruel country.”

  He moved a little in his chair.

  “Yes,” I repeated. “I thought you would have had something authentic to tell.”

  The twitching of his lips before he spoke was curious.

  “What if it is not worth telling?”

  “Not worth — from what point of view? I don’t understand.”

  “From every point of view.”

  I spoke with some asperity.

  “I should think that anything which could explain the circumstances of that midnight arrest....”

  “Reported by a journalist for the amusement of the civilized Europe,” he broke in scornfully.

  “Yes, reported.... But aren’t they true? I can’t make out your attitude in this? Either the man is a hero to you, or...”

  He approached his face with fiercely distended nostrils close to mine so suddenly that I had the greatest difficulty in not starting back.

  “You ask me! I suppose it amuses you, all this. Look here! I am a worker. I studied. Yes, I studied very hard. There is intelligence here.” (He tapped his forehead with his finger-tips.) “Don’t you think a Russian may have sane ambitions? Yes — I had even prospects. Certainly! I had. And now you see me here, abroad, everything gone, lost, sacrificed. You see me here — and you ask! You see me, don’t you? — sitting before you.”

  He threw himself back violently. I kept outwardly calm.

  “Yes, I see you here; and I assume you are here on account of the Haldin affair?”

  His manner changed.

  “You call it the Haldin affair — do you?” he observed indifferently.

  “I have no right to ask you anything,” I said. “I wouldn’t presume. But in that case the mother and the sister of him who must be a hero in your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The girl is a frank and generous creature, having the noblest — well — illusions. You will tell her nothing — or you will tell her everything. But speaking now of the object with which I’ve approached you first, we have to deal with the morbid state of the mother. Perhaps something could be invented under your authority as a cure for a distracted and suffering soul filled with maternal affection.”

  His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I could not help thinking, wilfully.

  “Oh yes. Something might,” he mumbled carelessly.

  He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a yawn. When he uncovered his lips they were smiling faintly.

  “Pardon me. This has been a long conversation, and I have not had much sleep the last two nights.”

  This unexpected, somewhat insolent sort of apology had the merit of being perfectly true. He had had no nightly rest to speak of since that day when, in the grounds of the Chateau Borel, the sister of Victor Haldin had appeared before him. The perplexities and the complex terrors — I may say — of this sleeplessness are recorded in the document I was to see later — the document which is the main source of this narrative. At the moment he looked to me convincingly tired, gone slack all over, like a man who has passed through some sort of crisis.

  “I have had a lot of urgent writing to do,” he added.

  I rose from my chair at once, and he followed my example, without haste, a little heavily.

  “I must apologize for detaining you so long,” I said.

  “Why apologize? One can’t very well go to bed before night. And you did not detain me. I could have left you at any time.”

  I had not stayed with him to be offended.

  “I am glad you have been sufficiently interested,” I said calmly. “No merit of mine, though — the commonest sort of regard for the mother of your friend was enough.... As to Miss Haldin herself, she at one time was disposed to think that her brother had been betrayed to the police in some way.”

  To my great surprise Mr. Razumov sat down again suddenly. I stared at him, and I must say that he returned my stare without winking for quite a considerable time.

  “In some way,” he mumbled, as if he had not understood or could not believe his ears.

  “Some unforeseen event, a sheer accident might have done that,” I went on. “Or, as she characteristically put it to me, the folly or weakness of some unhappy fellow-revolutionist.”

  “Folly or weakness,” he repeated bitterly.

  “She is a very generous creature,” I observed after a time. The man admired by Victor Haldin fixed his eyes on the ground. I turned away and moved off, apparently unnoticed by him. I nourished no resentment of the moody brusqueness with which he had treated me. The sentiment I was carrying away from that conversation was that of hopelessness. Before I had got fairly clear of the raft of chairs and tables he had rejoined me.

  “H’m, yes!” I heard him at my elbow again. “But what do you think?”

  I did not look round even.

  “I think that you people are under a curse.”

  He made no sound. It was only on the pavement outside the gate that I heard him again.

  “I should like to walk with you a little.”

  After all, I preferred this enigmatical young man to his celebrated compatriot, the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I saw no reason for being particularly gracious.

  “I am going now to the railway station, by the shortest way from here, to meet a friend from England,” I said, for all answer to his unexpected proposal. I hoped that something informing could come of it. As we stood on the curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pass, he remarked gloomily —

  “I like what you said just now.”

  “Do you?”

  We stepped off the pavement together.

  “The great problem,” he went on, “is to understand thoroughly the nature of the curse.”

  “That’s not very difficult, I think.”

  “I think so too,” he agreed with me, and his readiness, strangely enough, did not make him less enigmatical in the least.

  “A curse is an evil spell,” I tried him again. “And the important, the great problem, is to find the means to break it.”

  “Yes. To find the means.”

  That was also an assent, but he seemed to be thinking of something else. We had crossed diagonally the open space before the theatre, and began to descend a broad, sparely frequented street in the direction of one of the smaller bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking for a long time.

  “You are not thinking of leaving Geneva soon?” I asked.

  He was silent for so long that I began to think I had been indiscreet, and should get no answer at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed that my question had caused him something in the nature of positive anguish. I detected it mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he had overcome that sort of agonizing hesitation sufficiently to tell me that he had no such intention, he became rather communicative — at least relatively to the former off-hand curtness of his speeches. The tone, too, was more amiable. He informed me that he intended to study and also to write. He went even so far as to tell me he had been to Stuttgart. Stuttgart, I was aware, was one of the revolutionary centres. The directing committee of one of the Russian parties (I can’t tell now which) was located in that town. It was there that he got into touch with the active work of the revolutionists outside Russia.

  “I have never been abroad before,” he explained, in a rather inanimate voice now. Then, after a slight hesitation, altogether different from the agonizing irresolution my first simple question “whether he meant to stay in Geneva” had ar
oused, he made me an unexpected confidence —

  “The fact is, I have received a sort of mission from them.”

  “Which will keep you here in Geneva?”

  “Yes. Here. In this odious....”

  I was satisfied with my faculty for putting two and two together when I drew the inference that the mission had something to do with the person of the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I kept that surmise to myself naturally, and Mr. Razumov said nothing more for some considerable time. It was only when we were nearly on the bridge we had been making for that he opened his lips again, abruptly —

  “Could I see that precious article anywhere?”

  I had to think for a moment before I saw what he was referring to.

  “It has been reproduced in parts by the Press here. There are files to be seen in various places. My copy of the English newspaper I have left with Miss Haldin, I remember, on the day after it reached me. I was sufficiently worried by seeing it lying on a table by the side of the poor mother’s chair for weeks. Then it disappeared. It was a relief, I assure you.”

  He had stopped short.

  “I trust,” I continued, “that you will find time to see these ladies fairly often — that you will make time.”

  He stared at me so queerly that I hardly know how to define his aspect. I could not understand it in this connexion at all. What ailed him? I asked myself. What strange thought had come into his head? What vision of all the horrors that can be seen in his hopeless country had come suddenly to haunt his brain? If it were anything connected with the fate of Victor Haldin, then I hoped earnestly he would keep it to himself for ever. I was, to speak plainly, so shocked that I tried to conceal my impression by — Heaven forgive me — a smile and the assumption of a light manner.

  “Surely,” I exclaimed, “that needn’t cost you a great effort.”

  He turned away from me and leaned over the parapet of the bridge. For a moment I waited, looking at his back. And yet, I assure you, I was not anxious just then to look at his face again. He did not move at all. He did not mean to move. I walked on slowly on my way towards the station, and at the end of the bridge I glanced over my shoulder. No, he had not moved. He hung well over the parapet, as if captivated by the smooth rush of the blue water under the arch. The current there is swift, extremely swift; it makes some people dizzy; I myself can never look at it for any length of time without experiencing a dread of being suddenly snatched away by its destructive force. Some brains cannot resist the suggestion of irresistible power and of headlong motion.