I said: “I’ve got to read the manuscript.”
“Lareen won’t let you. Not yet, anyhow.”
“But if I wrote it, it’s my property.”
“You wrote it before the treatment.” Seri was looking away from me, across the dark grounds and into the warm scents of flowers. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
I said: “If I can’t actually read it, will you tell me what it’s about?”
“It’s a sort of fictionalized autobiography. It’s about you, or someone with your name. It deals with childhood, going to school, growing up, your family.”
“What’s fictional about that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I thought for a moment. “Where does it say I was born? In Jethra?”
“Yes.”
“Is it called Jethra in the manuscript?’”
Seri said nothing.
“Or is it called ‘London’?”
Still she said nothing.
“Seri?”
“The name you give it is ‘London’, but we know this means Jethra. You give it other names, too.”
“What are they?”
“I can’t tell you.” At last she looked at me. “How did you know about London?”
“You let it slip once.” I was going to tell her about the ghost memories of the delirium, but somehow it seemed too difficult, too unreliable, even in my own mind. “Do you know where London is?”
“Of course not! You made the name up!”
“What other names did I make up?”
“I don’t know…I can’t remember. Lareen and I went through the manuscript trying to change everything to places we knew. But it was very difficult.”
“Then how much of what you’ve taught me is true?”
“As much as possible. When you came back from the clinic you were like a vegetable. I wanted you to be who you were before the treatment, but I couldn’t just will it. Everything you are now is the result of Lareen’s training.”
“That’s what scares me,” I said.
I stared up the rising lawn to the other chalets; most were in darkness, but lights showed in a few of them. There were my fellow athanasians, my fellow vegetables. I wondered how many of them were suffering the same doubts. Were they even yet aware that somehow their heads had been emptied of all the dusty possessions of a lifetime, then refurnished with someone else’s idea of a better arrangement? I was frightened of what I had been made to think, because I was the product of my mind and I acted accordingly. What had Lareen told me before I acquired taste? Had she and Seri somehow acted in well-intended concert to instil in me beliefs I had not held before the treatment? How would I ever know?
The only link with my past was that manuscript; I could not ever be complete until I read my own definition of myself.
There was a wan moon, misted by high clouds, and the gardens of the clinic had a still, monochrome quality. Seri and I walked along the familiar paths, postponing the moment when we went inside the chalet, but at last we headed back.
I said: “If I get the manuscript, I want to read it on my own. That’s my right, I think.”
“Don’t mention it again. I’ll do my best to get it. All right?”
“Yes.”
We kissed briefly as we walked, but there was still a remoteness in her.
When we were inside the chalet, she said: “You won’t remember, but before all this we were planning to visit a few islands. Would you still like to?”
“Just you and me?”
“Yes.”
“But what about you? Haven’t you changed your mind about me?”
“I don’t like your hair as short as that,” she said, and ruffled her fingers through my new stubble.
That night, when Seri was asleep beside me, I was wakeful. There was a quietness and solitude on the island that in a sense I had grown up with. The picture drawn by Seri and Lareen of the world outside was one of noise and activity, ships and traffic and crowded towns. I was curious to experience this, to see the stately boulevards of Jethra and the clustered old buildings of Muriseay. As I lay there I could imagine the world disposed around Collago, the endless Midway Sea and the innumerable islands. Imagining them I created them, a mental landscape that I could take on trust. I could go out from Collago, island-hop with Seri, invent the scenery and customs and peoples of each island as we came to it. An imaginative challenge lay before me.
What I knew of the world outside was similar to what I knew of myself. From the verandah of the chalet Seri could point out the neighbouring islands, and name them, and show them to me on a map, and describe their agriculture, industries and customs, but until I actually went to them they could only ever be distant objects drawn to my attention.
Thus was I to myself: a distant object, charted and described and thoroughly identified, but one which so far I had been unable to visit.
Before I went out to the islands I had some exploring of my own to do.
20
Lareen returned in the morning, and brought the welcome news that I was to be discharged from the clinic in five days’ time. I thanked her, but I was watching to see if she produced the typewritten manuscript. If she had it with her, it remained in her bag.
Although I was restless, I settled down to a morning’s work with her and Seri. Now I knew that fallibility was a virtue, I used it to strategic effect. During lunch the two women spoke quietly together, and it seemed for a moment that Seri had put my request to her. Later, though, Lareen announced that she had work to do in the main building, and left us in the refectory.
“Why don’t you go for a swim this afternoon?” Seri said. “Take your mind off all this.”
“Are you going to ask her?”
“I told you—leave it to me.”
So I left her alone and went to the swimming pool. Afterwards, I returned to the chalet but there was no sign of either of them. I felt useless and wasted, so I signed for a pass from one of the security guards and walked down to Collago Town. It was a warm afternoon, and the streets were crowded with people and traffic. I relished the noise and confusion, a bustling, discordant contrast with the solipsism and seclusion of my memories. Seri had told me that Collago was a small island, not densely populated and well off the main shipping routes, yet it seemed in my unpractised life to be the very hub of the world. If this was a sample of modern life, I could not wait to join the rest!
I wandered through the streets for a while, then walked down to the harbour. Here I noticed a number of temporary stalls and shops, erected in a position overlooking the water, where patent elixirs could be purchased. I walked slowly along the row, admiring the photographically enlarged letters of testimonial, the exciting claims, the pictures of successful purchasers. The profusion of bottles, pills and other preparations—herbal remedies, powders, salts for drinking water, isometric exercises, thermal garments, royal jelly, meditational tracts, and every other conceivable kind of patent remedy—was such as to make me think, for a moment or two at least, that I had undergone my ordeal unnecessarily. Business along the row was not brisk, yet curiously none of the vendors solicited my business.
On the far side of the harbour a large steamer was docking, and I assumed that it was this arrival that had caused the congestion in town. Passengers were disembarking and cargo was being unloaded. I walked as close as I could without crossing the barrier, and watched these people from the world beyond mine as they went through the routines of handing in their tickets and collecting their baggage. I wondered when the ship would be sailing again, and where it was next headed. Would it be to one of the islands Seri had named?
Later, when I was walking back to the town, I noticed a small passenger bus loading up by the quay. A sign on the side announced that it belonged to the Lotterie-Collago, and I looked with interest at the people sitting inside. They seemed apprehensive, staring silently through the windows at the activity around them. I wanted to talk to them. Because they came, so to speak, from
a world of the mind that existed before the treatment, I saw them as an important link with my own past. Their perception of the world was undoctored; what they took for granted was all that I had lost. If this was consistent with what I had learned, then many of my doubts would be allayed. And for my part, there was much I could suggest to them.
I had experienced what they had not. If they knew in advance what the after-effects would be, it might help them to a speedier recovery. I wanted to urge them to use these last few days of individual consciousness to leave some record of themselves, some personal definition or memento by which they might rediscover themselves.
I moved in closer, peering in through the windows of the coach. A girl in an attractive, tailored uniform was checking names against a list, while the driver was stowing luggage in the back. A middle-aged man sitting by a window was nearest to me, so I tapped on the glass. He turned, saw me there, then quite deliberately looked away.
The girl noticed me, and leaned through the door.
“What are you doing?” she called to me.
“I can help these people! Let me speak to them!”
The girl narrowed her eyes. “You’re from the clinic, aren’t you? Mr…Sinclair.”
I said nothing, sensing that she knew my motives and would try to stop me. The driver came round from the back of the vehicle, shouldered past me and climbed up to the driving seat. The girl spoke briefly to him, and without further delay he started the engine and drove off. The coach moved slowly through the traffic, then turned into the narrow avenue that led up the hill towards the clinic.
I walked away, running my fingers over my newly regrown hair, realizing that it marked me out in the town. On the far side of the harbour, passengers from the ship were clustering around the elixir stalls.
I reached the quieter side streets and wandered slowly past the shop fronts. I was beginning to understand the mistake I had made with those people: anything I said to them now would of course be forgotten as soon as their treatment began. And their role as representatives of my past was a fallacy. Everyone else had the same undoctored quality: the passers-by in the street, the staff at the clinic, Seri.
I walked until I felt footsore, then made my way up the hill to the clinic.
Seri was waiting for me in the chalet. She had an untidy pile of papers on her knee, and was reading through them. It took me a few seconds to realize it was the manuscript.
“You’ve got it!” I said, and sat down beside her.
“Yes…but conditionally. Lareen says you’re not to read it alone. I’ll go through it with you.”
“I thought you agreed to let me read it by myself.”
“I agreed only to get it back from Lareen. She thinks you’ve recovered well, and so long as I explain the manuscript to you she has no objection to you knowing what it’s about.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get started.”
“This instant?”
“I’ve been waiting all day for this.”
Seri flashed a look of anger at me, and threw her pencil on the floor. She stood up, letting the pages slide into a curling heap by her feet.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Nothing, Peter. Not a damned thing.”
“Come on…what is it?”
“God, you’re so selfish! You forget I have a life too! I’ve spent the last eight weeks in this place, worrying about you, thinking about you, talking to you, teaching you, being with you. Don’t you think there might be other things I want to do? You never ask how I am, what I’m thinking, what I’d like to do…you just take it for granted I’m going to go on being here indefinitely. Sometimes, I couldn’t give a damn about you and your wretched life!”
She turned away from me, staring out of the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was stunned by her vehemence.
“I’m going to leave soon. There are things I want to do.”
“What sort of things?”
“I want to see a few islands.” She turned back to me. “I’ve got my own life, you know. There are other people I can be with.”
There was nothing I could say to this. I knew almost nothing about Seri or her life, and indeed had never asked about it. She was right: I took her for granted, and because it was so true I was speechless. My only defence, one I could not bring myself to summon at that moment, was that as far as I knew I had not asked her to be with me, that from the first days of my new consciousness she had always been there, and because I had not been taught to question it I never had.
I stared down at the untidy pile that was the manuscript, wondering if I should ever know what secrets it contained.
We left the chalet, went for one of our curative walks through the grounds. Later, we ate supper in the refectory, and I encouraged Seri to talk about herself. It was not a token gesture prompted by her frustration: by losing her temper with me Seri had opened my mind to yet another area of my ignorance.
I was beginning to appreciate the scale of the sacrifice Seri had made for me: for nearly two months she had done all the things she said, while I, petulant and child-like, rewarded her with affection and trust, seeking only myself.
Quite suddenly, because I had never thought of it before, I became scared she would abandon me.
Feeling chastened by this I walked back with her to the chalet and watched as she tidied up the scattered manuscript pages. She checked through them to make sure they were in correct order. We sat down next to each other on my bed, and Seri riffled the corners, counting.
“All right, these First few pages are not too important. They explain the circumstances in which you started writing. London is mentioned once or twice, and a few other places. A friend was helping you out after you had had some bad luck. It’s not very interesting.”
“Do you mind if I look?” I took the sheets from her. It was as she had said: the man who had written this was a stranger to me, and his self-justifications seemed elaborate and laboured. I put the pages to one side. “What’s next?”
“We get into difficulties straight away,” Seri said, holding the page for me to see and pointing with her pencil. “‘I was born in 1947, the second child of Frederick and Catherine Sinclair’. I’ve never even heard of names like that!”
“Why have you changed them?” I said, seeing that pencil lines had been scored through the names. Above them she, or Lareen, had pencilled in the names I knew as being my parents’ correct ones: Franford and Cotheran Sinclair.
“We could check those. The Lotterie has them on file.”
I frowned, appreciating the difficulties I had made for the two women. In the same paragraph there were several more deletions or substitutions. Kalia, my elder sister, had been named as “Felicity”, a word which I had learned meant happiness or joy, but which I had never heard used as a name. Later, I discovered that my father had been “wounded in the desert”—an extraordinary phrase—while my mother had been operating a switchboard in “government offices” in somewhere called “Bletchley”. After the “war with Hitler”, my father had been among the first men to return home, and he and my mother had rented a house on the outskirts of “London”. It was here that I had been born. Most of these obscure references had been crossed out by Seri, but “London” had been changed to “Jethra”, giving me a pleasant feeling of reassurance and familiarity.
Seri led me through a couple of dozen pages, explaining each separate difficulty she had found and telling me the reasons for the substitutions she had made. I agreed with them all, because they so obviously made sense.
The narrative continued in its mundane yet enigmatic way: this family had continued to live outside “London” for the first year of “my” life, and then they had moved to a northern city called “Manchester”. (This too had been changed to Jethra.) Once in “Manchester” we reached descriptions of “my” first memories, and with this the confusions came thick and fast.
“I had no idea,” I said. “How on earth did you manag
e to make sense of this?”
“I’m not sure we have. We’ve had to leave a lot of it out. Lareen was extremely angry with you.”
“Why? It’s hardly my fault.”
“She wanted you to fill out her questionnaire, but you refused. You said that everything we needed to know about you was in this.”
I must have sincerely believed that at the time. At some stage of my life I had written this incomprehensible manuscript, devoutly believing that it described myself and my background. I tried to imagine the sort of mentality that could have held such a belief, against all reason. Yet my name was on the first page. Once, before the treatment, I had written this and I had known what I was doing.
I felt a poignant loneliness for myself. Behind me, as if beyond an unscalable wall, was an identity, purpose and intelligence that I had lost. I needed that mind to explain to me what had been written.
I glanced through the rest of the pages. Seri’s deletions and substitutions continued. What had I intended?
The question was more interesting to me than the details. In answering it I should gain an insight into myself, and thus into the world I had lost. Had it been these fictitious names and places—the Felicitys, the Manchesters, the Gracias—that had come to me in my delirium, haunting me afterwards? Those delirious images remained a part of my consciousness, were a fundamental if inexplicable part of what I had become. To ignore them would be to turn my back on understanding more.
I was still mentally receptive, still urging to learn.
After a while I said to Seri: “Can we go on?”
“It doesn’t become any clearer.”
“Yes, but I’d like to.”
She took a few pages from me. “Are you sure this means nothing to you?”