The hostages and the heart of darkness

Those of us who believe Hamas must be destroyed at all costs are obligated to admit that we are accepting a devil’s bargain.

"heart of darkness" by cdrummbks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Joseph Conrad’s great and chilling novella Heart of Darkness ends with an appropriately chilling coda. Having witnessed the death of the mad Kurtz in darkest Africa, the protagonist Marlow meets with Kurtz’s grief-stricken fiancé. Marlow carries a terrible secret: Kurtz’s last words. In his death throes, the genocidal colonialist who had written “exterminate all the brutes” had uttered the words “the horror, the horror.”

Marlow tells the fiancé that he was with Kurtz, “To the very end. … I heard his very last words.” Then, he stops in fear:

“‘Repeat them,’ she murmured in a heart-broken tone. ‘I want—I want—something—something—to—to live with.’

“I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The horror!’

“‘His last word—to live with,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’

“I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

“‘The last word he pronounced was—your name.’

“I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. ‘I knew it—I was sure!’... She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether....”

I was reminded of this passage as news emerged that Hamas had agreed to a partial hostage deal, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis were taking to the streets demanding such a deal, even if it means the end of the war and, presumably, Hamas still in power in some form.