This diminishing of my intent began after a chance remark from the woman who happened to live in the next apartment to mine. Her name was Luce. Like most Prachoits, Luce was superficially friendly if we happened to run into each other, but she never made any attempt to make herself known to me. I did not even learn her name until later. If we passed in the hall we always smiled briefly to each other, but nothing more.
One evening, though, I was walking into the building after a long day of driving. I had been enquiring about Tomak at a hospital far away along the southern coast, with the same lack of success as before. I was exhausted after a long day behind the wheel of the car, driving most of the way beneath an unrelenting sun. Luce happened to be entering the building at the same time as me.
My obviously weary state gained a sympathetic comment from her. I told her how I had been driving all day, mentioned the hospital and my hope of finding a friend there. I told her about previous attempts. She seemed interested, concerned. She told me her name, and I told her mine. Once I started talking to her about Tomak I could not stop. I was so alone on this island, with so few people to talk to.
She said, suddenly, ‘Have you been to Adjacent? Your friend might be there.’
It meant nothing to me, so she explained. She spoke quickly, softly, with many a glance around, as if to be sure no one could overhear what she was saying. She said, ‘People are always trying to enter Prachous illegally, so the authorities have built a large camp where the incomers are sent. It’s possible your friend might be there.’
‘How would I find it?’
‘It’s somewhere on the coast, to the north of Beathurn. It’s a long way. There’s an estuary with what was once a huge area of marsh. It used to be called the reedland, but that’s all gone now. They drained it, put up temporary buildings. I’ve never been there myself, because it’s a closed area. Members of the public aren’t allowed to enter it, and anyway it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘So how would I discover if he was there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You say the place is called Adjacent?’
‘I’m not sure why.’ A door on the floor above opened, and footsteps crossed the landing. A moment later a man came quickly down the stairs, passed without acknowledging us, and went out of the main door. ‘I’ve probably said too much,’ Luce said, once he was gone. She was speaking more quietly now. ‘We’re not supposed to know about Adjacent.’
‘But they couldn’t keep something like that secret.’
‘I think they try. I shouldn’t even have told you that name. It’s officially called something else, but that’s a seigniory secret too. Please forget I said anything.’
‘Tomak isn’t an illegal immigrant,’ I said. ‘He was involved in the war, he was injured. He was brought here because of the hospitals.’
‘Then he won’t be there – where I said.’
‘In Adjacent?’
‘I’m sorry – I’m in a hurry.’
She moved away from me, clearly regretting having said what she had. I rarely saw her again after that, and I began to understand that she was probably avoiding me.
That was in fact the only direct mention I ever heard made of the camp. Because of the possibility that Tomak had been sent there, I naturally tried to investigate, but in a way that I was quickly learning to identify as habitually Prachoit my enquiries were met with vagueness, denials, evasions.
I once even tried to locate the place myself, driving north from Beathurn along the coast. Nowhere called Adjacent, or anything like it, showed on any maps. All I had to go on was Luce’s vague description. There was indeed a large area of swampland by a river estuary, roughly where she had described it, but it was either left unmarked on maps or described as undeveloped land. It was impossible to get to it by road, as I discovered when I tried. Barricaded warnings about floods, subsidence, fallen bridges, and so on, blocked the way, and after trying one or two of the roads that looked as if they might lead there. I soon gave up.
For all the time I remained on Prachous, the place called Adjacent was a kind of vacancy on the island – there but not there, a non-place that everyone knew about but that no one had ever been to, and certainly would not discuss with me.
It was an early step on my way to becoming more able to fit in with life on Prachous, although there was a part of my outlook which would never let me surrender entirely to it. My parents were peasants – we lived on a humble farm deep in poor and unyielding countryside, but my father and mother were strict and idealistic, disdaining bourgeois values. Some of that rubbed off on me, but even so I admit the generous life in Beathurn came easily to me. After several months I knew that my search for Tomak was becoming an excuse, a way for me to justify remaining on Prachous long after it was necessary.
One day, walking along the high reinforced harbour wall in Beathurn, enjoying the dazzling sunshine and the cooling sea breeze, relishing the bright colours of the yachts and motor boats, the glistening sea and the endless distant roar of breaking waves, I had one of those moments of self-reappraisal that, in their suddenness, can transform your outlook.
So much time had elapsed since I had last seen Tomak, even longer since we had been able to speak intimately, and even beyond that much longer since we had spent any time alone together. We had been close since we were in our early teens, and were still young when the war tore us apart. I had spoken to him only briefly as the invasion was erupting around us, in a chaos of fire and explosions and collapsing buildings. Tomak had gone to face that war – I had escaped it.
Many months had passed since I landed my aircraft on that grassy Prachoit airstrip, the engine coughing and misfiring as the last drops of fuel were pumped into the carburettor. I had grown, matured, changed, experienced much. It was not that my love for Tomak was immature, but the person I had been then felt distant, remote even from me. The world I knew and had lived in with him no longer existed. Maybe Tomak too would never again exist for me.
20
I moved house and found more friends. A house on a hill became available so I negotiated for it and took it over. I began to fill it with the sort of furniture I liked, put paintings on the wall, stacked the shelves with books and records and started the long task of re-landscaping the overgrown garden. The balance on my numbered loan account grew steadily larger.
I looked for and soon found a job. I had never had a proper job in my life, but for most of the wealthier Prachoits finding work was an option, not a necessity. It was one way of bringing down the tithing debt, but otherwise there was no material advantage. I had found out that the type of loan I was using could be extended indefinitely. If I chose never to pay it back then it would only become payable if I wished to leave Prachous, or it would be seized on my death, when the Seigniory would take whatever assets I had in settlement.
It was fairly easy for me to find a job I could do. I worked for a while as a secretarial assistant, light duties, three days a week, not because that interested me but because I thought it would help familiarize me with some of the ordinary commercial life of Beathurn.
The job hardly ate into my free time, and I continued to make my sightseeing expeditions in my car. I discovered the unique network of cable-cars that had been put up on the tall range of mountains that lay to the north of the town. These high and slightly nerve-racking rides were popular with everyone in Beathurn, because of the sensational and breathtaking views they offered of the town, the coastline and some of the surrounding countryside. I rode on the cable cars most weekends, particularly relishing the cool air close to the summits of these mountains. I also enrolled in a local gymnasium and in my spare time worked out three times a week. A colleague gave me a bicycle which would fold down and fit in the back of my car, so that I could drive out to the less accessible areas of the island and ride across the wild terrain. I joined a local book-readers’ group, I took up dancing and I became a patron of our local theatre, Il-Palazz Dukat Aviator, the Grand Aviator
Palace, which I loved because of its logo, a stylized airman in leather cap and goggles, with a racy propeller-driven aircraft in the background.
As a volunteer patron of the theatre I was one of several who took it in turns to carry out routine tasks behind the scenes. My own duty was to work with the wardrobe department, arranging for the costumes to be collected and cleaned after a performance. There was a contract laundry in the town – all I had to do was drive the costumes across to the laundry, then either wait while the cleaning was carried out, or return to pick them up later.
One afternoon in the warmest season I went to Il-Palazz as usual to collect that week’s laundry. After I had parked my car at the back of the theatre and was walking around to the side entrance, a tall young man in dark clothes and with a tangle of unruly hair came out through the door into the narrow alleyway. The theatre is a deep building, reaching back a long way from the road. As I had only just entered the alley from the car park we were a distance apart. He did not look in my direction at all, but everything about his appearance sent a thrill of recognition through me. He turned away and walked quickly towards the front of the building, where the main entrance was.
I stood in shock, staring after him, frozen into immobility by seeing him. It was Tomak!
I called his name at once, then hurried after him. He was too far away to have heard me so I called again, much more loudly. My voice cracked with excitement. He turned the corner, walking down the road away from the theatre. It seemed to me that he had heard me because for a moment his head turned in my direction, but almost at once he passed behind a tall hedge. I had glimpsed him face-on! As I walked quickly down the alley I expected him to pause, or look back at me, but he did not.
I ran the remaining distance but as I turned to follow him along the road I saw him opening the passenger door of a car, preparing to climb in. He was speaking to the driver. I called his name again, this time fearful that he was for some reason deliberately ignoring me. Once again he looked back at me, but then he lowered himself into the car and slammed the door. It drove away at once.
In the confusion, the sudden rising of excitement, I hardly knew what to do. I desperately tried to remember what I could of the car, but it was a neutral grey colour, a popular model – there were thousands like it on the streets of Beathurn. There had been a licence plate of course, but I had not thought to look properly. The grey car was already far away – I could see that it had halted at the junction where the road leads down towards the port, but then it moved on, heading away from the shore. I could no longer see it.
I hurried inside the theatre, hoping someone might know who the man was and how I could contact him. There was no matinee performance that day so much of the building’s interior was darkened. The tech crew were away from the theatre until the evening show. I found the front-of-house manager but he had not noticed anyone going in or out. Backstage I came across two scenery riggers – they were just returning from lunch and had seen no one they did not recognize. The same was true of Ellse, the wardrobe manager, whom I worked with regularly. She said she knew that Madame Wollsten, the community manager, was interviewing someone, but had no more details. I found the manager straight away but all she would tell me was that a magician from the town had called in to try to obtain a booking from her. Would that have been the man I saw leaving the building? She shrugged her shoulders, losing interest.
I completed my errand with the laundry, dropped off the clean costumes at the theatre and then returned home. My thoughts and emotions were still running wild. That young man had been Tomak! But it couldn’t have been Tomak. He looked just like him, but the information I was given before I arrived on this island was that Tomak had suffered burns to his head and shoulders. It was this knowledge that had lent an edge of urgency to my search for him. The man I glimpsed outside the theatre showed no sign of injury.
And if that was the magician Madame Wollsten had told me about, then of course it could not be Tomak. Unless Tomak and he were one, unless Tomak had for some incomprehensible reason become a stage performer, an illusionist – it was too fantastic to consider.
After having been pushed into the background for a long while, Tomak became my obsession again. The thought that he might be living in the same town as me, not only alive but apparently unharmed, was something I could not ignore. That night I lay awake for hours, wondering what I should do, while an entirely separate part of my mind was arguing that it was a coincidence, that he was someone who only resembled Tomak, who was not him, who could not be him.
The next day I walked into the town, wandering through the most populous parts, scanning the face of every man I saw. I walked slowly through the streets for hours, sweltering in the heat, desperate to see him.
The only thing I knew, but then not with total certainty, was that the man I had seen leaving the theatre was almost certainly the magician. He must be living somewhere in the town.
I started to ask around, trying to find out if anyone I was in contact with knew or had ever heard of any magicians in Beathurn. None had. Later I contacted a conjurers’ professional organization in Prachous Town, but the only member they had in Beathurn was now elderly and semi-retired.
I made a habit of walking through the centre of town most days, sometimes even diverting to one of the outer suburbs, always hoping to find him. Several weeks went by with nothing, but then at last I saw him again.
21
Close to the centre of Beathurn there is a pleasant, tree-filled square, set aside for pedestrians and people who want to relax over a quiet meal in the open air: there are several restaurants fronting the pedestrian area, and a couple of café-bars. The square is virtually closed to traffic, which is confined to a narrow road running along one side. This peaceful and attractive place is in front of the main building of the Multitechnic University and is a natural meeting area, not only for the students, who congregate there in their hundreds, but for everyone else too.
While making my regular forays in search of Tomak I almost invariably went through the square, thinking it was one of the more likely places he would be.
And so it turned out. One morning, while walking to work, I passed through the square, not in fact at that moment thinking of Tomak or trying to see him. Then I did: he was sitting alone at a table for two, a newspaper spread out in front of him, a pen in one hand while he solved some kind of puzzle, and a cup of coffee in the other. Next to his hand was a plate with the crumbs left over from something he had eaten.
Of course I came to a halt, staring across at him. He was unaware of me, reaching forward with his pen from time to time to mark a square of letters printed in the newspaper. My first instinct was to approach him, but since I saw him at the theatre a few weeks had passed. I wanted to be careful.
I walked past the café, turned around, walked back. He was ordering something from the waiter, so I stood still until he had finished, thinking he might glance around, notice me. He did not. I waited until the waiter brought him his order, a second cup of coffee, then went to one of the empty tables. When the waiter came across I ordered a coffee for myself.
If the man I thought was Tomak noticed me, he did not act on it. If it was Tomak surely he would recognize me? I sat still at my table, trying not to stare, but being constantly aware of him. Who could he be? If not Tomak he looked identical to the young man I had lost when the war broke out. A magician? It stretched credulity, but all I knew was that this man reminded me in every way of Tomak – apart from the facial resemblance, which was uncannily close, he had the same hair, the same colouring, sat hunched over his newspaper in a way that was completely familiar to me.
He settled his bill, folded his newspaper, which he tossed into a waste receptacle beside the main door of the café, then walked out into the square. He did not pass directly by my table, but he was close, so close.
I was thrown by this encounter to such an extent that as he walked off into the busy square it did not occur to me to follow
him. By the time I thought about it he had disappeared into the crowds.
The next morning I went to the same place at the same time, and to my relief he was there again. I took a table on the far side of the café’s concourse, from where I could look at him without feeling obvious about it. I ordered a croissant and a cup of black coffee, and while I toyed with them I thought again about the dilemma presented to me by this man. I now understood that the conflict was between heart and head.
If it really was Tomak, the man I had known and loved, why did he not recognize me? Why did he show no trace of the injuries about which I had been given such explicit, shocking and authoritative information? Of course, he might be pretending not to know me, but I could not think of a single reason why he should do that. Or another possibility: the injuries he received might have been different from the ones I had heard about: maybe he had suffered traumatic amnesia, so that much of his past life was forgotten?
On the other hand, my calm head told me that it was not Tomak at all, that it could not be him, that it was an amazing coincidence. A coincidence of his dark and often untidy hair, of his wide eyes, his high cheekbones, his broad shoulders, his easy way of sitting. When the man smiled I saw Tomak smile and I went rigid inside, uplifted by remembered happiness, laid low by a sense of abandonment.
I knew there was only one way to find out. I had to resolve it by speaking to him directly. I signed for what I’d eaten, then stood up and started across the café concourse, my heart thumping with sudden nervousness. As I did so a young woman made her way quickly towards him across the square, waving her hand. She wound her way sinuously through the tables, went directly to him and leaned down to kiss him on both cheeks. Laughing, she sat down on the chair opposite his. He squeezed her hand across the table, smiling.