Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (14 page)

The girl’s lips quivered and she remained silent for a while, breathing quickly.

“I have seen him, not a long time ago,” she said at last.  “The talk is true; he is dead.  What do you want from me, Tuan?  I must go.”

Just then the report of the gun fired on board the steam launch was heard, interrupting Reshid’s reply.  Leaving the girl he ran to the house, and met in the courtyard Abdulla coming towards the gate.

“The Orang Blanda are come,” said Reshid, “and now we shall have our reward.”

Abdulla shook his head doubtfully.  “The white men’s rewards are long in coming,” he said.  “White men are quick in anger and slow in gratitude.  We shall see.”

He stood at the gate stroking his grey beard and listening to the distant cries of greeting at the other end of the settlement.  As Taminah was turning to go he called her back.

“Listen, girl,” he said: “there will be many white men in Almayer’s house.  You shall be there selling your cakes to the men of the sea.  What you see and what you hear you may tell me.  Come here before the sun sets and I will give you a blue handkerchief with red spots.  Now go, and forget not to return.”

He gave her a push with the end of his long staff as she was going away and made her stumble.

“This slave is very slow,” he remarked to his nephew, looking after the girl with great disfavour.

Taminah walked on, her tray on the head, her eyes fixed on the ground.  From the open doors of the houses were heard, as she passed, friendly calls inviting her within for business purposes, but she never heeded them, neglecting her sales in the preoccupation of intense thinking.  Since the very early morning she had heard much, she had also seen much that filled her heart with a joy mingled with great suffering and fear.  Before the dawn, before she left Bulangi’s house to paddle up to Sambir she had heard voices outside the house when all in it but herself were asleep.  And now, with her knowledge of the words spoken in the darkness, she held in her hand a life and carried in her breast a great sorrow.  Yet from her springy step, erect figure, and face veiled over by the everyday look of apathetic indifference, nobody could have guessed of the double load she carried under the visible burden of the tray piled up high with cakes manufactured by the thrifty hands of Bulangi’s wives.  In that supple figure straight as an arrow, so graceful and free in its walk, behind those soft eyes that spoke of nothing but of unconscious resignation, there slept all feelings and all passions, all hopes and all fears, the curse of life and the consolation of death.  And she knew nothing of it all.  She lived like the tall palms amongst whom she was passing now, seeking the light, desiring the sunshine, fearing the storm, unconscious of either.  The slave had no hope, and knew of no change.  She knew of no other sky, no other water, no other forest, no other world, no other life.  She had no wish, no hope, no love, no fear except of a blow, and no vivid feeling but that of occasional hunger, which was seldom, for Bulangi was rich and rice was plentiful in the solitary house in his clearing.  The absence of pain and hunger was her happiness, and when she felt unhappy she was simply tired, more than usual, after the day’s labour.  Then in the hot nights of the south-west monsoon she slept dreamlessly under the bright stars on the platform built outside the house and over the river.  Inside they slept too: Bulangi by the door; his wives further in; the children with their mothers.  She could hear their breathing; Bulangi’s sleepy voice; the sharp cry of a child soon hushed with tender words.  And she closed her eyes to the murmur of the water below her, to the whisper of the warm wind above, ignorant of the never-ceasing life of that tropical nature that spoke to her in vain with the thousand faint voices of the near forest, with the breath of tepid wind; in the heavy scents that lingered around her head; in the white wraiths of morning mist that hung over her in the solemn hush of all creation before the dawn.

Such had been her existence before the coming of the brig with the strangers.  She remembered well that time; the uproar in the settlement, the never-ending wonder, the days and nights of talk and excitement.  She remembered her own timidity with the strange men, till the brig moored to the bank became in a manner part of the settlement, and the fear wore off in the familiarity of constant intercourse.  The call on board then became part of her daily round.  She walked hesitatingly up the slanting planks of the gangway amidst the encouraging shouts and more or less decent jokes of the men idling over the bulwarks.  There she sold her wares to those men that spoke so loud and carried themselves so free.  There was a throng, a constant coming and going; calls interchanged, orders given and executed with shouts; the rattle of blocks, the flinging about of coils of rope.  She sat out of the way under the shade of the awning, with her tray before her, the veil drawn well over her face, feeling shy amongst so many men.  She smiled at all buyers, but spoke to none, letting their jests pass with stolid unconcern.  She heard many tales told around her of far-off countries, of strange customs, of events stranger still.  Those men were brave; but the most fearless of them spoke of their chief with fear.  Often the man they called their master passed before her, walking erect and indifferent, in the pride of youth, in the flash of rich dress, with a tinkle of gold ornaments, while everybody stood aside watching anxiously for a movement of his lips, ready to do his bidding.  Then all her life seemed to rush into her eyes, and from under her veil she gazed at him, charmed, yet fearful to attract attention.  One day he noticed her and asked, “Who is that girl?”  “A slave, Tuan!  A girl that sells cakes,” a dozen voices replied together.  She rose in terror to run on shore, when he called her back; and as she stood trembling with head hung down before him, he spoke kind words, lifting her chin with his hand and looking into her eyes with a smile.  “Do not be afraid,” he said.  He never spoke to her any more.  Somebody called out from the river bank; he turned away and forgot her existence.  Taminah saw Almayer standing on the shore with Nina on his arm.  She heard Nina’s voice calling out gaily, and saw Dain’s face brighten with joy as he leaped on shore.  She hated the sound of that voice ever since.

After that day she left off visiting Almayer’s compound, and passed the noon hours under the shade of the brig awning.  She watched for his coming with heart beating quicker and quicker, as he approached, into a wild tumult of newly-aroused feelings of joy and hope and fear that died away with Dain’s retreating figure, leaving her tired out, as if after a struggle, sitting still for a long time in dreamy languor.  Then she paddled home slowly in the afternoon, often letting her canoe float with the lazy stream in the quiet backwater of the river.  The paddle hung idle in the water as she sat in the stern, one hand supporting her chin, her eyes wide open, listening intently to the whispering of her heart that seemed to swell at last into a song of extreme sweetness.  Listening to that song she husked the rice at home; it dulled her ears to the shrill bickerings of Bulangi’s wives, to the sound of angry reproaches addressed to herself.  And when the sun was near its setting she walked to the bathing-place and heard it as she stood on the tender grass of the low bank, her robe at her feet, and looked at the reflection of her figure on the glass-like surface of the creek.  Listening to it she walked slowly back, her wet hair hanging over her shoulders; laying down to rest under the bright stars, she closed her eyes to the murmur of the water below, of the warm wind above; to the voice of nature speaking through the faint noises of the great forest, and to the song of her own heart.

She heard, but did not understand, and drank in the dreamy joy of her new existence without troubling about its meaning or its end, till the full consciousness of life came to her through pain and anger.  And she suffered horribly the first time she saw Nina’s long canoe drift silently past the sleeping house of Bulangi, bearing the two lovers into the white mist of the great river.  Her jealousy and rage culminated into a paroxysm of physical pain that left her lying panting on the river bank, in the dumb agony of a wounded animal.  But she went on moving patiently in the enchanted circle of slavery, going through her task day after day with all the pathos of the grief she could not express, even to herself, locked within her breast.  She shrank from Nina as she would have shrunk from the sharp blade of a knife cutting into her flesh, but she kept on visiting the brig to feed her dumb, ignorant soul on her own despair.  She saw Dain many times.  He never spoke, he never looked.  Could his eyes see only one woman’s image?  Could his ears hear only one woman’s voice?  He never noticed her; not once.

And then he went away.  She saw him and Nina for the last time on that morning when Babalatchi, while visiting his fish baskets, had his suspicions of the white man’s daughter’s love affair with Dain confirmed beyond the shadow of doubt.  Dain disappeared, and Taminah’s heart, where lay useless and barren the seeds of all love and of all hate, the possibilities of all passions and of all sacrifices, forgot its joys and its sufferings when deprived of the help of the senses.  Her half-formed, savage mind, the slave of her body — as her body was the slave of another’s will — forgot the faint and vague image of the ideal that had found its beginning in the physical promptings of her savage nature.  She dropped back into the torpor of her former life and found consolation — even a certain kind of happiness — in the thought that now Nina and Dain were separated, probably for ever.  He would forget.  This thought soothed the last pangs of dying jealousy that had nothing now to feed upon, and Taminah found peace.  It was like the dreary tranquillity of a desert, where there is peace only because there is no life.

And now he had returned.  She had recognised his voice calling aloud in the night for Bulangi.  She had crept out after her master to listen closer to the intoxicating sound.  Dain was there, in a boat, talking to Bulangi.  Taminah, listening with arrested breath, heard another voice.  The maddening joy, that only a second before she thought herself incapable of containing within her fast-beating heart, died out, and left her shivering in the old anguish of physical pain that she had suffered once before at the sight of Dain and Nina.  Nina spoke now, ordering and entreating in turns, and Bulangi was refusing, expostulating, at last consenting.  He went in to take a paddle from the heap lying behind the door.  Outside the murmur of two voices went on, and she caught a word here and there.  She understood that he was fleeing from white men, that he was seeking a hiding-place, that he was in some danger.  But she heard also words which woke the rage of jealousy that had been asleep for so many days in her bosom.  Crouching low on the mud in the black darkness amongst the piles, she heard the whisper in the boat that made light of toil, of privation, of danger, of life itself, if in exchange there could be but a short moment of close embrace, a look from the eyes, the feel of light breath, the touch of soft lips.  So spoke Dain as he sat in the canoe holding Nina’s hands while waiting for Bulangi’s return; and Taminah, supporting herself by the slimy pile, felt as if a heavy weight was crushing her down, down into the black oily water at her feet.  She wanted to cry out; to rush at them and tear their vague shadows apart; to throw Nina into the smooth water, cling to her close, hold her to the bottom where that man could not find her.  She could not cry, she could not move.  Then footsteps were heard on the bamboo platform above her head; she saw Bulangi get into his smallest canoe and take the lead, the other boat following, paddled by Dain and Nina.  With a slight splash of the paddles dipped stealthily into the water, their indistinct forms passed before her aching eyes and vanished in the darkness of the creek.

She remained there in the cold and wet, powerless to move, breathing painfully under the crushing weight that the mysterious hand of Fate had laid so suddenly upon her slender shoulders, and shivering, she felt within a burning fire, that seemed to feed upon her very life.  When the breaking day had spread a pale golden ribbon over the black outline of the forests, she took up her tray and departed towards the settlement, going about her task purely from the force of habit.  As she approached Sambir she could see the excitement and she heard with momentary surprise of the finding of Dain’s body.  It was not true, of course.  She knew it well.  She regretted that he was not dead.  She should have liked Dain to be dead, so as to be parted from that woman — from all women.  She felt a strong desire to see Nina, but without any clear object.  She hated her, and feared her and she felt an irresistible impulse pushing her towards Almayer’s house to see the white woman’s face, to look close at those eyes, to hear again that voice, for the sound of which Dain was ready to risk his liberty, his life even.  She had seen her many times; she had heard her voice daily for many months past.  What was there in her?  What was there in that being to make a man speak as Dain had spoken, to make him blind to all other faces, deaf to all other voices?

She left the crowd by the riverside, and wandered aimlessly among the empty houses, resisting the impulse that pushed her towards Almayer’s campong to seek there in Nina’s eyes the secret of her own misery.  The sun mounting higher, shortened the shadows and poured down upon her a flood of light and of stifling heat as she passed on from shadow to light, from light to shadow, amongst the houses, the bushes, the tall trees, in her unconscious flight from the pain in her own heart.  In the extremity of her distress she could find no words to pray for relief, she knew of no heaven to send her prayer to, and she wandered on with tired feet in the dumb surprise and terror at the injustice of the suffering inflicted upon her without cause and without redress.

The short talk with Reshid, the proposal of Abdulla steadied her a little and turned her thoughts into another channel.  Dain was in some danger.  He was hiding from white men.  So much she had overheard last night.  They all thought him dead.  She knew he was alive, and she knew of his hiding-place.  What did the Arabs want to know about the white men?  The white men want with Dain?  Did they wish to kill him?  She could tell them all — no, she would say nothing, and in the night she would go to him and sell him his life for a word, for a smile, for a gesture even, and be his slave in far-off countries, away from Nina.  But there were dangers.  The one-eyed Babalatchi who knew everything; the white man’s wife — she was a witch.  Perhaps they would tell.  And then there was Nina.  She must hurry on and see.