Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as
his sister. In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such
moments, when the chances of existence are involved, a desire to
leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which
the action may be seen when personality is gone, gone where no
light of investigation can ever reach the truth which every death
takes out of the world. Therefore, instead of looking for
something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or so of sleep,
Decoud was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a letter
to his sister.

In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his
weariness, his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily
sensations. He began again as if he were talking to her. With
almost an illusion of her presence, he wrote the phrase, "I am
very hungry."

"I have the feeling of a great solitude around me," he continued.
"Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea
in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve,
intention, and hope about me? But the solitude is also very
real. All the engineers are out, and have been for two days,
looking after the property of the National Central Railway, of
that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into the
pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, and God
knows who else. The silence about me is ominous. There is above
the middle part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow
openings like loopholes for windows, probably used in old times
for the better defence against the savages, when the persistent
barbarism of our native continent did not wear the black coats of
politicians, but went about yelling, half-naked, with bows and
arrows in its hands. The woman of the house is dying up there, I
believe, all alone with her old husband. There is a narrow
staircase, the sort of staircase one man could easily defend
against a mob, leading up there, and I have just heard, through
the thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into their
kitchen for something or other. It was a sort of noise a mouse
might make behind the plaster of a wall. All the servants they
had ran away yesterday and have not returned yet, if ever they
do. For the rest, there are only two children here, two girls.
The father has sent them downstairs, and they have crept into
this cafe, perhaps because I am here. They huddle together in a
corner, in each other's arms; I just noticed them a few minutes
ago, and I feel more lonely than ever."