Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 9. CHAPTER NINE (continued)

He finished the thought mentally: "Since she has prophesied for
me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation." These words of
Teresa's anger, from the circumstances in which they had been
uttered, like the cry of a soul prevented from making its peace
with God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal fortune
from which even the greatest genius amongst men of adventure and
action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo's mind with the
force of a potent malediction. And what a curse it was that which
her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so young that
he could remember no other woman whom he called mother.
Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not
fail. The spell was working already. Death itself would elude him
now. . . . He said violently--

"Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de
Dios! The emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded."

With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded
arms, barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements
of old Viola foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if
indeed fallen under a curse--a ruined and sinister Capataz.

Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word,
emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts
of bread and half a raw onion.

While the Capataz began to devour this beggar's fare, taking up
with stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the
Garibaldino went off, and squatting down in another corner filled
an earthenware mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered
demijohn. With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in
the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to have his
hands free.

The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of
his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and
massive head towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of
his mouth, and pronounced slowly--

"After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely
as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon
you to save the children. Upon you, Gian' Battista."