I felt as if I were alone in the city, with the vacant illuminated shop windows, the darkened homes, the deserted pavements, the glowing advertisements. I felt a ripple of my awareness spreading outwards, encompassing the whole of London, centred on myself. I strode past the rows of parked cars, the uncollected refuse bags, the discarded plastic cartons and drink cans. I hurried through intersections where traffic lights changed for absent cars, past walls defaced with spray-can graffiti, past shuttered offices and gated Underground stations. The buildings stood high and dim around me.
Ahead was the prospect of islands.
23
I was imagining Seri was on the ship with me. After leaving Hetta, my temporary refuge from the clinic, we had called first at Collago, and I knew it was possible she had boarded there. I stood amidships while we were in the harbour, covertly watching the passengers embark, and I had not seen her among them; even so, I could have missed seeing her.
For the whole of the voyage, from Hetta to Jethra, via Muriseay, I was glimpsing her. Sometimes it was a sight of her at the other end of the ship: a blonde head held in a certain way, a combination of clothes’ colours, a distinctive walk. Once it was a particular scent I associated with her, detected almost subliminally in the crowded saloon. A name kept coming distractingly to mind; Mathilde, whom once I had mistaken for Seri. I searched my manuscript for some reference to her.
I prowled the ship obsessively at such times, looking for Seri, although not necessarily wanting to find her. I needed to resolve the uncertainty, because in a contradictory way I both willed her to be on board the ship with me, and not. I was lonely and confused, and she had created me after the treatment; at the same time, I had to reject her worldview to be able to find myself.
This delusion of Seri was part of a larger duality.
I was perceiving with two minds. I was what Seri and Lareen had made me, and I was what I had discovered of myself in the unaltered manuscript.
I accepted the uncomfortable reality of the overcrowded ship, the circuitous passage across the Midway Sea, the islands we called at, the confusion of cultures and dialects, the strange food, the heat and the stunning scenery. All this was solid and tangible around me, yet internally I knew none of it could be real.
It scared me to know there was this dichotomy in the perceived world, as if to stop believing it could cause the ship to vanish from beneath me.
I felt prominent on the ship because I was central to its continued existence. This was my dilemma. I knew I did not belong in the islands. Inside me I recognized a deep and consistent truth about my identity: I had discovered myself through the metaphors of my manuscript. But the outer world, perceived anecdotally, had a plausible solidity and confusion. It was random, it was out of control, it lacked story.
I best understood this when I considered the islands.
It had seemed to me, as I recovered from the operation, that as I learned about the Dream Archipelago I was actually creating it in my mind. I had felt my awareness of it spreading outwards.
At different times I had imagined it differently, as comprehension changed. Because I was limited in my imaginative vocabulary, I had built up my creation slowly. At first the islands were mere shapes. Then colour was added—bold, clashing primaries—then they were bedecked with flowers and swarmed by birds and insects, and encrusted with buildings, impoverished by deserts, crowded with people, choked with jungle, lashed by tropical storms and swept by surging tides. These imagined islands at first bore no relation to Collago, the place of my spiritual birth, then one day Seri had passed the apparently innocuous information that Collago itself was a part of the Archipelago. Instantly, my mental construct of the islands changed: the sea was filled with Collagos. Later, still learning, I continued to modify. As I developed what I called taste, I imagined the islands from aesthetic or moral principles, endowing them with romantic, cultural and historical qualities.
Even so, endlessly modified, there had been a neatness to my concept of the islands.
Their reality, as seen from the ship, was therefore charged with surprise, the true relish of travel.
I was entranced by the ever-changing scenery. The islands changed, one from another, with latitude, with subsea geology, with vegetation, with commercial or industrial or agricultural exploitation. One group of islands, marked on my charts as the Olldus Group, was disfigured by centuries of vulcanism: here the beaches were black, the rising cliffs loose with old basalt and lava, and the mountain peaks jagged and barren. Within the same day we were sailing through a cluster of unnamed islands, low and tangled with mangrove swamps. Here the ship was visited by innumerable flying insects that stayed, biting and stinging, until nightfall. Tamer islands greeted us with harbours, a sight of towns and farmland, and food that could be bought to vary the ship’s limited menu.
I spent most of the daylight hours at the rail of the ship, watching this endless passing show, gorging my senses on the gourmanderie of the view. Nor was I alone; many of the other passengers, whom I presumed were native islanders, showed the same fascination. The islands defied interpretation; they could only be experienced.
I knew that I could never have created these islands as a part of my mental imaginings. The very diversity of the visual richness was beyond the making of anything except nature. I discovered the islands and absorbed them, they came to me from outside, they confirmed their real existence to me.
Even so, the duality remained. I knew that the typewritten definition of myself was real, that my life was lived elsewhere. The more I appreciated the scale, variety and sheer beauty of the Dream Archipelago, the less I was able to believe in it.
If Seri was a part of this perception, she too could not exist.
To affirm my knowledge of my inner reality, I read through my manuscript every day. Every time it made more sense, enabling me to see beyond the words, to learn and remember things that were not written.
This ship was a means to an end, taking me on an inner voyage. Once I left it and stepped ashore, and walked in the city I knew as “Jethra”, I would be home.
My grasp on metaphoric reality increased, and my inner confidence grew. For example, I solved the problem of language.
After the treatment I had been brought to awareness through language. I now spoke the same language as Seri and Lareen. I had never given it a thought. Because I had come to it as to a mother tongue I used it instinctively. That I had also written my manuscript in it was something I took for granted. I knew that it was spoken, as first language, by people like Seri and Lareen, and by the doctors and staff at the clinic, and that one could make oneself understood with it throughout the Archipelago. On the ship, announcements were made in it, and newspapers and signs were printed in it.
(It was not, however, the only language in the islands. There was a confusing number of dialects, and different groups of is lands had their own languages. In addition, there was a sort of island patois, spoken throughout the Archipelago, but which had no written form.)
The day after the ship left Muriseay I suddenly realized that my language was called English. That same day, while I was sheltering from the sun on the boat deck, I noticed an ancient sign riveted to the metal wall behind me. It had been painted over a dozen times, but it was still possible to make out the slightly raised lettering. It said: Défense de cracher. Not for a moment did I mistake this for an island language; I knew immediately that the ship was, or at some time had been, French.
Yet where were France and England? I searched my charts of the Archipelago, looking for the coastlines, but in vain. Even so, I knew I was English, that somewhere in my perplexing mind I had a few words of French, sufficient to order drinks, ask the way, or refrain from spitting.
How could English spread through the Archipelago as the language of authority, of the professions, of newspapers, of shopkeepers?
Like everything now, it heightened my trust of the inner life, deepened my distrust of external reality.
; The further north we sailed, the fewer were the passengers on board. The nights were cool, and I spent more time inside my cabin. On the last day I woke with a feeling that I was now ready to land. I spent the morning in reading through my manuscript for the last time, feeling that at last I could read it with total understanding.
It seemed to me that it could be read on three levels.
The first was contained in the words I had actually written, the typewritten text, describing those anecdotes and experiences which had so confused Seri.
Then there were the pencilled substitutions and deletions made by Seri and Lareen.
Finally there was what I had not written: the spaces between the lines, the allusions, the deliberate omissions and the confident assumptions.
I who had been written about. I who had been assumed to have written. I of whom I remembered, for whom I could anticipate.
In my words was the life I had lived before the treatment on Collago. In Seri’s amendments was the life I had assumed, existing in quotes and faint pencil markings. In my omissions was the life I would return to.
Where the manuscript was blank, I had defined my future.
24
There was one last island before Jethra: a high, grim place called Seevl, approached at evening. All I knew of Seevl was that Seri told me she had been born there, that it was the closest island to Jethra. Our call in Seevl seemed unusually long: a lot of people disembarked and a considerable quantity of cargo was loaded. I paced the deck impatiently, wanting to finish my long journey.
Night fell while we were in Seevl Town, but once we had left the confined harbour and rounded a dark, humping headland, I could see the lights of an immense city on the low coastline ahead. The wind was cold and there was a considerable ground swell.
The ship was quiet; I was one of the few passengers aboard.
Then someone came and stood behind me, and without turning I knew who it was.
Seri said: “Why did you run away from me?”
“I wanted to go home.”
She slipped her hand around my arm and pressed herself against me. She was shivering.
“Are you angry with me for following you?”
“No, of course not.” I put my arm around her, kissed her on the side of her cold face. She was wearing a thin blouson over her shirt. “How did you find me?”
“I got to Seevl. All the ships for Jethra stop there. It was just a question of waiting for the right one to come.”
“But why did you follow?”
“I want to be with you. I don’t want you to be in Jethra.”
“It’s not Jethra I’m going to.”
“Yes it is. Don’t delude yourself.”
The city lights were nearer now, sharply visible over the blackly heaving swell. The clouds above were a dark and smudgy orange, reflecting the glow. Behind us, the few islands still in sight were indistinct, neutral shapes. I felt them slipping away from me, a release from the psyche.
“This is where I live,” I said. “I don’t belong in the islands.”
“But you’ve become a part of them. You can’t just put them behind you.”
“That’s all I can do.”
“Then you’ll leave me too.”
“I had already made that decision. I didn’t want you to follow.”
She released my arm and moved away. I went after her and held her again. I tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away. “Seri, don’t make it more difficult. I’ve got to go back to where I came from.”
“It won’t be what you expect. You’ll find yourself in Jethra, and that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“I know what I’m doing.” I thought of the emphatic nature of the manuscript: the inarguable blankness of what was to come.
The ship had hove to a long way from the entrance to the harbour. A pilot cutter was coming out, black against the city bright sea.
“Peter, please don’t go on with this.”
“There’s someone I’m trying to find.”
“Who is it?”
“You’ve read the manuscript,” I said. “Her name is Gracia.”
“Please stop. You’re going to hurt yourself. You mustn’t believe anything written in that manuscript. You said at the clinic that you understood, that everything it said was a kind of fiction. Gracia doesn’t exist, London doesn’t exist. You imagined it all.”
“You were with me in London once,” I said. “You were jealous of Gracia then, you said she upset you.”
“I’ve never been out of the islands!” She glanced at the glowing city, and the hair flattened across her eyes. “I’ve never even been there, to Jethra.”
“I was living with Gracia, and you were there too.”
“Peter, we met in Muriseay, when I was working for the Lotterie.”
“No…I can remember everything now,” I said.
She faced me, and I sensed something new. “If that was so, you wouldn’t be looking for Gracia. You know the truth is that Gracia’s dead! She killed herself two years ago, when you had a row, before you went away to write your manuscript. When she died you couldn’t admit it was your fault. You felt guilty, you were unhappy…all right. But you mustn’t believe that she’s still alive, just because your manuscript says so.”
Her words shocked me; I could feel the earnestness in her.
“How do you know this?” I said.
“Because you told me in Muriseay. Before we left for Collago.”
“But that’s the period I can’t remember. It’s not in the manuscript.”
“Then you can’t remember everything!” Seri said. “We had to wait a few days for the next ship to Collago. We were staying in Muriseay Town. I had a flat there, and you moved in with me. Because I knew what would happen when you took the treatment, I was getting you to tell me everything about your past. You told me then…about Gracia. She committed suicide, and you borrowed a house from a friend and you went there to write everything out of your system.”
“I don’t remember,” I said. Behind us the pilot cutter had come alongside, and two men in uniform were boarding the ship. “Is Gracia her real name?”
“It’s the only name you told me…the same as in the manuscript.”
“Did I tell you where I went to write the manuscript?”
“In the Murinan Hills. Outside Jethra.”
“The friend who lent me the house…was his name Colan?”
“That’s right.”
One of Seri’s insertions: pencil above typewritten line. Underneath Colan’s name, scored through lightly, Edwin Miller, friend of the family. Between the two names a space, a blankness, a room painted white, a sense of landscape spreading out through the white walls, a sea filled with islands.
“I know Gracia’s alive,” I said. “I know because every page of my story is imbued with her. I wrote it for her, because I wanted to find her again.”
“You wrote it because you blamed yourself for her death.”
“You took me to the islands, Seri, but they were wrong and I had to reject you. You said I had to surrender to the islands to find myself. I did that, and I’m free of them. I’ve done what you wanted.” Seri seemed not to be listening. She was staring away from me, across the heaving water to the headlands and moors black behind the city. “Gracia’s alive now because you’re alive. As long as I can feel you and see you, Gracia’s alive.”
“Peter, you’re lying to yourself. You know it isn’t true.”
“I understand the truth, because I found it once.”
“There’s no such thing as truth. You are living by your manuscript, and everything in it is false.”
We stared together towards Jethra, divided by a definition.
There was a delay on the ship, a hoisting of a new flag, then at last we moved forward at half speed, steering a course, avoiding hidden underwater obstacles. I was impatient to land, to discover the city.
Seri went to sit away from me, on one of the slatted deck benches faci
ng to the side. I stayed in the prow of the ship, watching our approach.
We passed a long concrete wall near the mouth of the river and came to smooth water. I heard the ringing of bells and the engines cut back even further. We glided in near silence between the distant banks. I was looking eagerly at the wharves and buildings on either side, seeking familiarity. Cities look different from water.
I heard Seri say: “It will always be Jethra.”
We were passing through a huge area of dockland, a major port, quite unlike the simple harbours of the island towns. Cranes and warehouses loomed dark on the bank, and large ships were tied up and deserted. Once, through a gap, I saw traffic on a road, moving silently and quickly; lights and speed and unexplained purpose, glimpsed through buildings. Further along we passed a wildly floodlit complex of hotels and apartment buildings standing about a huge marina, where hundreds of small yachts and cruisers were moored, and dazzling lights of all colours seemed directed straight at us. People stood on concrete quays, watching our ship as we slid by with muted engines.
We came to a broader stretch of river, where on one bank was parkland. Coloured lights and festoons hung in the trees, smoke rose multicoloured through the branches, people clustered around open fires. There was a raised platform made of scaffolding, surrounded by lights, and here people danced. All was silent, eerily hushed against the rhythm of the river.
The ship turned and we moved towards the bank. Ahead of us now was an illuminated sign belonging to the steamship company, and floodlights spread white radiance across a wide, deserted apron. There were a few cars parked on the far side, but they showed no lights and there was no one there to greet us.
I heard the telegraphy bell ringing on the bridge, and a moment later the remaining vibrations of the engines died away. The pilot’s judgement was uncanny: now without power or steerage, the ship glided slowly towards the berth. By the time the great steel side pressed against the old tyres and rope buffers it was virtually impossible to detect movement.