A fast-paced and moving tale!
There is a white man Tuan and there is one Malay named Arasat. Both had befriended in the time of trouble and danger. The story is from Indonesian rain forests. One day Tuan steers the paddle into the stream to pass the night in the Arasat’s clearing, at a place in the forest, into a wide sweep of a stagnant lagoon. Tuan finds a woman stretched on her back under a broadsheet of red cotton. She lay still as if dead, her big eyes wide open, glittered in the gloom.
“Has she been long ill?” asked the white man.
“I have not slept for 5 nights.” Answered Malay.
They sat in silence before the fire and the Arasat in a mournful composure decides to narrate his story and the story of his dying lover.
“Therefore I shall speak to you of love. Speak in the night. Speak before both night and love are gone- and the eye of the day looks upon my sorrow and my shame; upon my blackened face; upon my burned heart.”
Arasat tells his story of how he kidnapped his lover Diamelen and fled in a boat. Diamelen worked for King’s wife. His brother helped them run away and fought against the king’s men. In this tale, the narrator (Arasat) wanted to be with his lover in a country where,
“Death is forgotten- where death is unknown!”
But inevitable was something else.
This tale leaves behind a pain of atonement and a thought of futility. This is a short story by Conrad, and it was published in 1897. This was my first story of Conrad and I could get easily that it was a symbolic story. It has a moving narration and there is an immediate outgrowth in the pattern of symbolism. What bothered me was that the author constantly kept writing “a white man” for Tuan, though he had introduced his name Tuan in the beginning. What may be the reason??? I need to explore. I am yet to read anything from this author. I am an alien to the themes and contexts of his writing so far. For now, as long as, just this tale is concerned, I can say that I loved and loathed this story simultaneously.
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.”
― Joseph Conrad
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