Karain: A Memory
"Karain: A Memory” is a story in six parts told by an unidentified narrator about his very first trip to a small kingdom on the Malay archipelago called Karain, named after its charismatic leader who makes his fortune in the illegal gun trade. Karain makes nightly trips to the narrator’s schooner and over the course of a two years period he is determined to be making plans to launch a war. The narrator attempts, but fails to convince Karain of the futility of this idea by informing him of the overwhelming resistance he will face. The last trip to the fiefdom is occasioned by a huge storm from which Karain escapes to the schooner, half-made with paranoia that he is being tracked by an evil spirt. The last half of the story deals with Karain’s vengeance mission of loyalty to a friend which requires a two year search for a Dutchman who made off with his friend’s sister. Over the course of this adventure, Karain actually winds up killing his friend, is forced into hiding in the jungle and receives visitations from the ghost of the man he killed. The story concludes with Karain reunited with his subjects and, later, the narrator himself reuniting with an old friend in London as they talk about Karain as if he were memory that may or may not be true.
The Idiots
The title here is an archaic one no longer considered properly used to describe those afflicted by mental retardation. The story commences with the image of children so afflicted who turn out to be the children of a local man who has now dead. Jean-Pierre Bacadou took over the rundown family farm following a term in the military and a marriage thereafter subsequently produced twin songs suffering from retardation. And then, later, another son with the same condition. This stimulates Bacadou to become a Catholic, but the birth of a retarded daughter soon instigates regret over this decision. Frustration and anger at the perceived unfairness of life makes him a wife abuser until she turns the table and stabs him to death with scissors. Her mother assumes this action is proof of a curse upon the family and disowns her daughter. Distraught, Mrs. Bacadou takes off running one night, crazed with thoughts that she is being pursued by her dead husband. When a local man tries to stop her, her frenzied mind is convinced it is Jean-Pierre come back to life and she kills herself by flinging her body over a cliff into the waiting waters below.
The Lagoon
Another of Conrad’s white men is sailing into the colonial holdings of Britain when he decides to dock for the night so he can visit an old Malay friend named Arsat. When he arrives at the hut, he discovers Arsat’s wife is near death. As the two men hold vigil together, Arsat tells how Diamelan was a servant girl whom he and his brother had made plans to kidnap. The plot was discovered, but Arsat was still able to escape with the girl at the cost of leaving his brother behind to face the music. This betrayal has convinced Arsat that Diamelan’s death will be retribution.
The Tale
Another story of a sailor that begins in the atmospheric setting of a dark room in which a tale of terror and war is told to a woman. The flashback is also eerily set; a fog too thick too through, but just thick enough to sense danger. A piece of flotsam in the water is the epicenter of these waves of danger and the teller of the tale—a commanding officer aboard ship—sets anchor in shallow water to wait for the weather to improve. When the fog begins to grow thinner, the officer spots a cargo ship and decides to board it where he is met by a friend master who tells his own tale of getting lost in the fog. Something about the other man’s story fails to be fully convincing, however, and the commanding officer suspects he is actually a war profiteer. The master continues to insist his cargo ship is bound for England and he is telling the truth, but the commanding officer is still convinced of his guilt. He finally agrees to allow the other man to steer his ship to safety with directions to head south by southeast. The story ends with the man in the dark room admitting to the woman that the other man had, indeed, merely gotten lost by accident before confessing that the directions he had given him purposely led not to safety, but his ship being destroyed by coming upon rocks in the shallows.
Amy Foster
An unidentified narrator relates a story he heard from a country doctor named Kennedy about a girl named Amy Foster and the consequences of her one day taking pity upon a tramp wandering through town. Only the tramp, it turns out, was actually the survivor of a shipwreck on the way from Austria to America. His name is Yanko and through industriousness and hard work, he wins the love of Amy, learns to speak English and fathers a child with her. The birth of the child changes everything: Amy suddenly sees Yanko as a foreigner to be feared. Eventually, Amy abandons him and Yanko dies as the result of a fever.
Prince Roman
Another unnamed narrator, this one writing of the recollection of himself as a child who met the Prince Roman This recollection serves as an expansion of the narrative to tell the life story of the Prince—who by then was old and deaf. This story involves birth into the Polish aristocracy, a wife who dies while their daughter is still a toddler, an insurrection against the Russian occupying force and Roman’s decision to become join the nationalist rebellion. Using the phony name Sergeant Peter, the Prince exhibits admirable courage under fire before becoming a prisoner of war. His Russian captors recognize who he really is and during the military tribunal he admits to becoming a rebel soldier out of sheer political conviction. While he is sentenced to Siberia, his young daughter inherits his wealthy estate and lives in self-exile in France and Austria. Finally, after twenty-five years, he is released from prison and lives modestly as he works for the benefit of the public.
Falk: A Reminiscence
A young sailor must take over control of a ship following the death of the captain and faces a sick crew and lack of adequate provisions. In addition, the ship is delayed from leaving port along with two other ships captained by Hermann and a man named Falk. Just as they are ready to depart, Falk jumps the gun and in the process causes damage to Hermann’s ship. To make matters worse, Falk has also intervened to keep the new captain from engaging the navigator around. Falk, it turns out, has acted so villainously out of pure lust for Herman’s niece whom he thinks the younger man has designs on as well. When he tries to convince Falk that he is not his rival, Falk engages him to negotiate on his behalf with her uncle. Everything is going better than imagined until Falk explains that there is one thing the girl absolutely must understand before she accepts his proposal: he once consumed human flesh. Falk then relates the details of what led to this act of cannibalism. Five years later the captain returns to the port and discovers that Falk and his young wife no longer reside there.
The Warrior’s Soul
The unidentified narrator of this tale is Russian soldier recalling the Napoleonic Wars. In particularly, he recalls a young soldier named Tomassov who had fallen in love in Paris. One day he arrives as the salon of his beloved to hear her talking intimately with a French officer. As both men are leaving the salon, the French soldier discloses to his Russian counterpart news of the immediate arrest of the Russian envoy and staff. The disclosure affords them enough time to narrowly escape. The narrative switches back to the scene of the Napoleonic Wars where Tomassov is handling a French prisoner who is begging for death as mercy. Tomassov refuses this request. As might be expected, the prisoner is none other than the officer from the French salon. Ultimately, the Russian show the mercy the prisoner continues begging for and shoots him. The story ends with the news that Tomassov eventually went on to resign his commission and live a life provincial life with rumors of a dark deed always hanging over him.
