Karain

Just finished an oddly disturbing early short story by Conrad called 'Karain: a memory'. A tale set somewhere in the islands of what are now Indonesia and the Phillipines, at a time when the Dutch were still in the former and the Spanish in the latter. A time also when it was OK to write about racial traits, like a tendency to run amok, this being a Malay word, appropriate to the race of the hero (Karain). When it was OK for white owned & officered ships to run guns to warring natives, in defiance of prohibition by the colonial powers. At least for English ships to run guns to lands colonised by the Dutch or the Spanish rather than ourselves.

The natives in question were sufficiently warlike for the men to carry swords almost all the time and for there to be rules about exactly how the sword was to be carried, with there being pacific carrying and aggressive carrying, the difference seeming to involve where exactly the hilt was and how much of the rest was visible. I suppose there would have been a similar etiquette about carrying guns in the Wild West. The whites might have claimed that they were bringing peace and justice to a turbulent world, most of the inhabitants of which were fed up with the violence & insecurity.

Perhaps disturbing because of a connection to my comment about Antony & Cleopatra grandstanding (see 1st August), with Karain being the king of a very small country, carved out between land and sea, a king with very kingly bearing amongst his people, but a kingly bearing that was a performance, a studied & self-conscious performance. A performance which was hiding something further inside the performer. Or was it that there nothing inside; the king was little more than his performance?

In this case part of what was inside was a ghost, in the first instance of a girl who abandoned caste & country for a fat Dutchman and in the second of the girl's brother, whom he had shot, at the end of a long quest of vengeance, to stop him honour-killing the sister. A ghost finally subdued by means of a cheap amulet, manufactured under Karain's eyes, by a young sailor. A tale of the unconscious at a time (1898) when that concept was still young & fresh.

Like many of Conrad's yarns, a story in a frame, or to be more precise in this case, a story within a frame within a frame. Or in the words of the title, a memory rather than a story.

PS: I learn in passing that the Phillipines were named for a King Philip of Spain. Obvious enough, but not obvious enough for me to make the connection by myself.