Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and extremely
anxious thinking, as it had never been dry before. It may be said
that Nostromo tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into
which he had bitten deeply in his hunger for praise. Without
removing his head from between his fists, he tried to spit before
him--"Tfui"--and muttered a curse upon the selfishness of all the
rich people.

Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was the feeling
of his waking), the idea of leaving the country altogether had
presented itself to Nostromo. At that thought he had seen, like
the beginning of another dream, a vision of steep and tideless
shores, with dark pines on the heights and white houses low down
near a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port, where the
coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails outspread like
motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the end of long
moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards each
other, hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a
hill covered with palaces. He remembered these sights not without
some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and severely
beaten as a boy on one of these feluccas by a short-necked,
shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and distrustful manner, who (he
firmly believed) had cheated him out of his orphan's inheritance.
But it is mercifully decreed that the evils of the past should
appear but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of loneliness,
abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these things
appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With bare feet and head,
with one check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all
worldly possessions?

The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a fist dug into
each cheek, laughed with self-derision, as he had spat with
disgust, straight out before him into the night. The confused and
intimate impressions of universal dissolution which beset a
subjective nature at any strong check to its ruling passion had a
bitterness approaching that of death itself. He was simple. He
was as ready to become the prey of any belief, superstition, or
desire as a child.