Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 12. CHAPTER TWELVE (continued)

"Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni," she said,
unmoved. "Who is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?"
she repeated, dreamily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded
gulf, with a low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing
iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a cavern,
where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had hidden his
conquests of love and wealth.

"Listen, Giselle," he said, in measured tones; "I will tell no
word of love to your sister. Do you want to know why?"

"Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you
are not like other men; that no one had ever understood you
properly; that the rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints
in heaven! I am weary."

She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face,
then let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land
side, but slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse
they could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out
to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple and red.

Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the
house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white
stockings and black slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to
surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The
charm of her body, the promising mysteriousness of her indolence,
went out into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and
intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows, impregnating
the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed her ambient
seduction in the tumultuous heaving of his breast. Before leaving
the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain
Fidanza, for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He
stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to
appear on the Company's wharf--a Mediterranean sailor come ashore
to try his luck in Costaguana. The dusk of purple and red
enveloped him, too--close, soft, profound, as no more than fifty
yards from that spot it had gathered evening after evening about
the self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud's utter
scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.