Tales of Unrest

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Tales of Unrest

TALES OF UNREST

By Joseph Conrad



"Be it thy course to being giddy minds With foreign quarrels."
--SHAKESPEARE



TO ADOLF P. KRIEGER FOR THE SAKE OF OLD DAYS



CONTENTS

KARAIN: A MEMORY

THE IDIOTS

AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS

THE RETURN

THE LAGOON




AUTHOR'S NOTE

Of the five stories in this volume, "The Lagoon," the last in order,
is the earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and
marks, in a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan
phase with its special subject and its verbal suggestions. Conceived in
the same mood which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the
Islands," it is told in the same breath (with what was left of it, that
is, after the end of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision, rendered
in the same method--if such a thing as method did exist then in my
conscious relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I
doubt it very much. One does one's work first and theorises about it
afterwards. It is a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no
use whatever to any one and just as likely as not to lead to false
conclusions.

Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and
the first of "The Lagoon" there has been no change of pen, figuratively
speaking. It happened also to be literally true. It was the same pen: a
common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain lack of emotional
faculty I am glad to be able to say that on one occasion at least I did
give way to a sentimental impulse. I thought the pen had been a good pen
and that it had done enough for me, and so, with the idea of keeping it
for a sort of memento on which I could look later with tender eyes, I
put it into my waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all
sorts of places--at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in
cardboard boxes--till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden
bowl containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string,
small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage that
washes out of a man's life into such receptacles. I would catch sight of
it from time to time with a distinct feeling of satisfaction till, one
day, I perceived with horror that there were two old pens in there. How
the other pen found its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or
wastepaper basket I can't imagine, but there the two were, lying side by
side, both encrusted with ink and completely undistinguishable from each
other. It was very distressing, but being determined not to share my
sentiment between two pens or run the risk of sentimentalising over
a mere stranger, I threw them both out of the window into a flower
bed--which strikes me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's
past.

But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the "Cornhill
Magazine", being my first appearance in a serial of any kind; and I have
lived long enough to see it guyed most agreeably by Mr. Max Beerbohm
in a volume of parodies entitled "A Christmas Garland," where I found
myself in very good company. I was immensely gratified. I began to
believe in my public existence. I have much to thank "The Lagoon" for.

My next effort in short-story writing was a departure--I mean a
departure from the Malay Archipelago. Without premeditation, without
sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it, I stepped
into the very different atmosphere of "An Outpost of Progress." I
found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new
reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs. For
a moment I fancied myself a new man--a most exciting illusion. It clung
to me for some time, monstrous, half conviction and half hope as to its
body, with an iridescent tail of dreams and with a changeable head like
a plastic mask. It was only later that I perceived that in common with
the rest of men nothing could deliver me from my fatal consistency. We
cannot escape from ourselves.

"An Outpost of Progress" is the lightest part of the loot I carried
off from Central Africa, the main portion being of course "The Heart of
Darkness." Other men have found a lot of quite different things there
and I have the comfortable conviction that what I took would not have
been of much use to anybody else. And it must be said that it was but
a very small amount of plunder. All of it could go into one's breast
pocket when folded neatly. As for the story itself it is true enough in
its essentials. The sustained invention of a really telling lie demands
a talent which I do not possess.

"The Idiots" is such an obviously derivative piece of work that it is
impossible for me to say anything about it here. The suggestion of it
was not mental but visual: the actual idiots. It was after an interval
of long groping amongst vague impulses and hesitations which ended in
the production of "The Nigger" that I turned to my third short story in
the order of time, the first in this volume: "Karain: A Memory."

Reading it after many years "Karain" produced on me the effect of
something seen through a pair of glasses from a rather advantageous
position. In that story I had not gone back to the Archipelago, I had
only turned for another look at it. I admit that I was absorbed by the
distant view, so absorbed that I didn't notice then that the motif of
the story is almost identical with the motif of "The Lagoon." However,
the idea at the back is very different; but the story is mainly made
memorable to me by the fact that it was my first contribution to
"Blackwood's Magazine" and that it led to my personal acquaintance with
Mr. William Blackwood whose guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless
to be genuine, and prized accordingly. "Karain" was begun on a sudden
impulse only three days after I wrote the last line of "The Nigger," and
the recollection of its difficulties is mixed up with the worries of
the unfinished "Return," the last pages of which I took up again at the
time; the only instance in my life when I made an attempt to write with
both hands at once as it were.

Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a left-handed
production. Looking through that story lately I had the material
impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud
drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the general
uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout and
distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder
of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal
wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any pages of mine.
Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my attempt; and it
was worth while, if only to see of what excesses I was capable in that
sort of virtuosity. In this connection I should like to confess my
surprise on finding that notwithstanding all its apparatus of
analysis the story consists for the most part of physical impressions;
impressions of sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting
horse, reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their
own sake and combined with a sublimated description of a desirable
middle-class town-residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister
effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and there have
been such words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest
gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me
in sheer toil, in temper, and in disillusion.

J. C.





TALES OF UNREST




KARAIN, A MEMORY


I

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in
our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any
property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives;
but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to
miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence
of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams
between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine and the glitter of
the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the
smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating
perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone
nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre
cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand
watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of
white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the
reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon
the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of
steel.

There are faces too--faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the frank
audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They
thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their ornamented
and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs,
red turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with the gleam of scabbards,
gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and jewelled handles of their
weapons. They had an independent bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained
manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft voices speaking of battles,
travels, and escapes; boasting with composure, joking quietly; sometimes
in well-bred murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity;
or celebrating with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We
remember the faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk
and metal; the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and
martial; and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands that,
after one short grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They were
Karain's people--a devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips;
they read their thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them nonchalantly
of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly, like gifts of
fate. They were all free men, and when speaking to him said, "Your
slave." On his passage voices died out as though he had walked guarded
by silence; awed whispers followed him. They called him their war-chief.
He was the ruler of three villages on a narrow plain; the master of
an insignificant foothold on the earth--of a conquered foothold that,
shaped like a young moon, lay ignored between the hills and the sea.

From the deck of our schooner, anchored in the middle of the bay, he
indicated by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged outline
of the hills the whole of his domain; and the ample movement seemed to
drive back its limits, augmenting it suddenly into something so immense
and vague that for a moment it appeared to be bounded only by the sky.
And really, looking at that place, landlocked from the sea and shut off
from the land by the precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult
to believe in the existence of any neighbourhood. It was still,
complete, unknown, and full of a life that went on stealthily with a
troubling effect of solitude; of a life that seemed unaccountably empty
of anything that would stir the thought, touch the heart, give a hint of
the ominous sequence of days. It appeared to us a land without memories,
regrets, and hopes; a land where nothing could survive the coming of the
night, and where each sunrise, like a dazzling act of special creation,
was disconnected from the eve and the morrow.

Karain swept his hand over it. "All mine!" He struck the deck with his
long staff; the gold head flashed like a falling star; very close behind
him a silent old fellow in a richly embroidered black jacket alone of
all the Malays around did not follow the masterful gesture with a look.
He did not even lift his eyelids. He bowed his head behind his master,
and without stirring held hilt up over his right shoulder a long blade
in a silver scabbard. He was there on duty, but without curiosity, and
seemed weary, not with age, but with the possession of a burdensome
secret of existence. Karain, heavy and proud, had a lofty pose and
breathed calmly. It was our first visit, and we looked about curiously.

The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet
of water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores enclosing it made an
opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The
hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits
seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their
steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their
foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound
about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the villages;
slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low houses;
dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind the dark
colonnades of tree-trunks; figures passed vivid and vanishing; the smoke
of fires stood upright above the masses of flowering bushes; bamboo
fences glittered, running away in broken lines between the fields. A
sudden cry on the shore sounded plaintive in the distance, and ceased
abruptly, as if stifled in the downpour of sunshine. A puff of breeze
made a flash of darkness on the smooth water, touched our faces, and
became forgotten. Nothing moved. The sun blazed down into a shadowless
hollow of colours and stillness.

It was the stage where, dressed splendidly for his part, he strutted,
incomparably dignified, made important by the power he had to awaken an
absurd expectation of something heroic going to take place--a burst of
action or song--upon the vibrating tone of a wonderful sunshine. He was
ornate and disturbing, for one could not imagine what depth of horrible
void such an elaborate front could be worthy to hide. He was not
masked--there was too much life in him, and a mask is only a lifeless
thing; but he presented himself essentially as an actor, as a human
being aggressively disguised. His smallest acts were prepared and
unexpected, his speeches grave, his sentences ominous like hints and
complicated like arabesques. He was treated with a solemn respect
accorded in the irreverent West only to the monarchs of the stage, and
he accepted the profound homage with a sustained dignity seen nowhere
else but behind the footlights and in the condensed falseness of some
grossly tragic situation. It was almost impossible to remember who he
was--only a petty chief of a conveniently isolated corner of Mindanao,
where we could in comparative safety break the law against the traffic
in firearms and ammunition with the natives. What would happen should
one of the moribund Spanish gun-boats be suddenly galvanized into a
flicker of active life did not trouble us, once we were inside the
bay--so completely did it appear out of the reach of a meddling world;
and besides, in those days we were imaginative enough to look with
a kind of joyous equanimity on any chance there was of being quietly
hanged somewhere out of the way of diplomatic remonstrance. As to
Karain, nothing could happen to him unless what happens to all--failure
and death; but his quality was to appear clothed in the illusion of
unavoidable success. He seemed too effective, too necessary there, too
much of an essential condition for the existence of his land and his
people, to be destroyed by anything short of an earthquake. He summed up
his race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life, of tropical
nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination; and, like it, he
carried the seed of peril within.

In many successive visits we came to know his stage well--the purple
semicircle of hills, the slim trees leaning over houses, the yellow
sands, the streaming green of ravines. All that had the crude and
blended colouring, the appropriateness almost excessive, the suspicious
immobility of a painted scene; and it enclosed so perfectly the
accomplished acting of his amazing pretences that the rest of the world
seemed shut out forever from the gorgeous spectacle. There could be
nothing outside. It was as if the earth had gone on spinning, and had
left that crumb of its surface alone in space. He appeared utterly cut
off from everything but the sunshine, and that even seemed to be made
for him alone. Once when asked what was on the other side of the hills,
he said, with a meaning smile, "Friends and enemies--many enemies;
else why should I buy your rifles and powder?" He was always like
this--word-perfect in his part, playing up faithfully to the mysteries
and certitudes of his surroundings. "Friends and enemies"--nothing else.
It was impalpable and vast. The earth had indeed rolled away from under
his land, and he, with his handful of people, stood surrounded by a
silent tumult as of contending shades. Certainly no sound came from
outside. "Friends and enemies!" He might have added, "and memories," at
least as far as he himself was concerned; but he neglected to make that
point then. It made itself later on, though; but it was after the
daily performance--in the wings, so to speak, and with the lights out.
Meantime he filled the stage with barbarous dignity. Some ten years ago
he had led his people--a scratch lot of wandering Bugis--to the conquest
of the bay, and now in his august care they had forgotten all the past,
and had lost all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice,
reward, punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude
and voice. He understood irrigation and the art of war--the qualities of
weapons and the craft of boat-building. He could conceal his heart; had
more endurance; he could swim longer, and steer a canoe better than any
of his people; he could shoot straighter, and negotiate more tortuously
than any man of his race I knew. He was an adventurer of the sea, an
outcast, a ruler--and my very good friend. I wish him a quick death in a
stand-up fight, a death in sunshine; for he had known remorse and power,
and no man can demand more from life. Day after day he appeared before
us, incomparably faithful to the illusions of the stage, and at sunset
the night descended upon him quickly, like a falling curtain. The seamed
hills became black shadows towering high upon a clear sky; above them
the glittering confusion of stars resembled a mad turmoil stilled by a
gesture; sounds ceased, men slept, forms vanished--and the reality
of the universe alone remained--a marvellous thing of darkness and
glimmers.


II

But it was at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions of
his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in state.
There were at first between him and me his own splendour, my shabby
suspicions, and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of
our lives by its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers
thronged round him; above his head the broad blades of their spears made
a spiked halo of iron points, and they hedged him from humanity by the
shimmer of silks, the gleam of weapons, the excited and respectful hum
of eager voices. Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go
off sitting under a red umbrella, and escorted by a score of boats.
All the paddles flashed and struck together with a mighty splash that
reverberated loudly in the monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad
stream of dazzling foam trailed behind the flotilla. The canoes appeared
very black on the white hiss of water; turbaned heads swayed back and
forth; a multitude of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with
one movement; the spearmen upright in the bows of canoes had variegated
sarongs and gleaming shoulders like bronze statues; the muttered
strophes of the paddlers' song ended periodically in a plaintive shout.
They diminished in the distance; the song ceased; they swarmed on the
beach in the long shadows of the western hills. The sunlight lingered on
the purple crests, and we could see him leading the way to his stockade,
a burly bareheaded figure walking far in advance of a straggling
cortege, and swinging regularly an ebony staff taller than himself. The
darkness deepened fast; torches gleamed fitfully, passing behind bushes;
a long hail or two trailed in the silence of the evening; and at last
the night stretched its smooth veil over the shore, the lights, and the
voices.

Then, just as we were thinking of repose, the watchmen of the schooner
would hail a splash of paddles away in the starlit gloom of the bay; a
voice would respond in cautious tones, and our serang, putting his head
down the open skylight, would inform us without surprise, "That Rajah,
he coming. He here now." Karain appeared noiselessly in the doorway of
the little cabin. He was simplicity itself then; all in white; muffled
about his head; for arms only a kriss with a plain buffalo-horn handle,
which he would politely conceal within a fold of his sarong before
stepping over the threshold. The old sword-bearer's face, the worn-out
and mournful face so covered with wrinkles that it seemed to look out
through the meshes of a fine dark net, could be seen close above his
shoulders. Karain never moved without that attendant, who stood or
squatted close at his back. He had a dislike of an open space
behind him. It was more than a dislike--it resembled fear, a nervous
preoccupation of what went on where he could not see. This, in view of
the evident and fierce loyalty that surrounded him, was inexplicable.
He was there alone in the midst of devoted men; he was safe from
neighbourly ambushes, from fraternal ambitions; and yet more than one of
our visitors had assured us that their ruler could not bear to be alone.
They said, "Even when he eats and sleeps there is always one on the
watch near him who has strength and weapons." There was indeed always
one near him, though our informants had no conception of that watcher's
strength and weapons, which were both shadowy and terrible. We knew, but
only later on, when we had heard the story. Meantime we noticed that,
even during the most important interviews, Karain would often give a
start, and interrupting his discourse, would sweep his arm back with
a sudden movement, to feel whether the old fellow was there. The old
fellow, impenetrable and weary, was always there. He shared his food,
his repose, and his thoughts; he knew his plans, guarded his secrets;
and, impassive behind his master's agitation, without stirring the least
bit, murmured above his head in a soothing tone some words difficult to
catch.

It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white faces, by
unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Karain seemed to forget the strange
obsession that wound like a black thread through the gorgeous pomp of
his public life. At night we treated him in a free and easy manner,
which just stopped short of slapping him on the back, for there are
liberties one must not take with a Malay. He said himself that on such
occasions he was only a private gentleman coming to see other gentlemen
whom he supposed as well born as himself. I fancy that to the last he
believed us to be emissaries of Government, darkly official persons
furthering by our illegal traffic some dark scheme of high statecraft.
Our denials and protestations were unavailing. He only smiled with
discreet politeness and inquired about the Queen. Every visit began with
that inquiry; he was insatiable of details; he was fascinated by the
holder of a sceptre the shadow of which, stretching from the
westward over the earth and over the seas, passed far beyond his own
hand's-breadth of conquered land. He multiplied questions; he could
never know enough of the Monarch of whom he spoke with wonder and
chivalrous respect--with a kind of affectionate awe! Afterwards, when we
had learned that he was the son of a woman who had many years ago ruled
a small Bugis state, we came to suspect that the memory of his mother
(of whom he spoke with enthusiasm) mingled somehow in his mind with the
image he tried to form for himself of the far-off Queen whom he called
Great, Invincible, Pious, and Fortunate. We had to invent details at
last to satisfy his craving curiosity; and our loyalty must be pardoned,
for we tried to make them fit for his august and resplendent ideal. We
talked. The night slipped over us, over the still schooner, over the
sleeping land, and over the sleepless sea that thundered amongst the
reefs outside the bay. His paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the
canoe at the foot of our side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from
duty, dozed on his heels, with his back against the companion-doorway;
and Karain sat squarely in the ship's wooden armchair, under the slight
sway of the cabin lamp, a cheroot between his dark fingers, and a glass
of lemonade before him. He was amused by the fizz of the thing, but
after a sip or two would let it get flat, and with a courteous wave of
his hand ask for a fresh bottle. He decimated our slender stock; but we
did not begrudge it to him, for, when he began, he talked well. He must
have been a great Bugis dandy in his time, for even then (and when we
knew him he was no longer young) his splendour was spotlessly neat,
and he dyed his hair a light shade of brown. The quiet dignity of
his bearing transformed the dim-lit cuddy of the schooner into an
audience-hall. He talked of inter-island politics with an ironic and
melancholy shrewdness. He had travelled much, suffered not a little,
intrigued, fought. He knew native Courts, European Settlements, the
forests, the sea, and, as he said himself, had spoken in his time to
many great men. He liked to talk with me because I had known some of
these men: he seemed to think that I could understand him, and, with
a fine confidence, assumed that I, at least, could appreciate how
much greater he was himself. But he preferred to talk of his native
country--a small Bugis state on the island of Celebes. I had visited it
some time before, and he asked eagerly for news. As men's names came up
in conversation he would say, "We swam against one another when we were
boys"; or, "We hunted the deer together--he could use the noose and
the spear as well as I." Now and then his big dreamy eyes would roll
restlessly; he frowned or smiled, or he would become pensive, and,
staring in silence, would nod slightly for a time at some regretted
vision of the past.