The Dream Archipelago

  The war came eventually to the Qataari Peninsula when the troops from Faiandland had begun constructing a deep-water refuelling base on one side of the peninsula. As Qataari territory was a hitherto undisputed area it constituted a breach of whatever neutrality the Qataari had enjoyed until then. Soon the Federated States had mounted a full-scale invasion of the peninsula and the Qataari duly suffered the shattering totality of the war, with its neural dissociation gases, its scintillas, its scatterflames, its acid sprays. The villages were flattened, the rose plantations burned, the people killed in thousands. Within a few weeks the Qataari society was destroyed.

  A relief mission was sent from the north and during a short ceasefire the surviving Qataari were evacuated unresisting from their homeland. After living in many temporary colonies they had been brought finally to Tumo, where a refugee camp was built for them in the remote valley at the eastern end of the island. At first they were supplied by the Tumoit authorities but within a remarkably few days the Qataari had begun asserting their own individuality. They erected huge canvas screens around the perimeter fence and set their guards at every access point. Conditions within were said to be primitive and unsanitary and the authorities did what they could to deal with these problems, but everyone who entered the camp after the screens first appeared – medical teams, agricultural advisers, builders, social workers – returned with the same report: the Qataari were waiting.

  It was not polite waiting, it was not impatient waiting. It was a simple cessation of activity, a long silence.

  In time, many but not all of the screens had come down as the Qataari refashioned the buildings inside the camp to their own choosing and the settlement had gradually expanded across the wide area they had been allocated. Today, the outward appearance of much of the refugee camp, seen from a distance, was not exceptional, given the landscape, the building materials that were available, and so on. But the impossibility of making contact with the Qataari remained. Large screens still shrouded many parts of the settlement.

  Ordier realized that Jacj Parren and Jenessa were continuing to argue and that Jacj was addressing him.

  ‘… you say that if we climbed the ridge by your house we should see Qataari guards?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenessa answered for him, apparently realizing that Ordier had been letting his thoughts wander for a few moments.

  ‘But why are they there? Along the ridge? I thought they never left the camp.’

  ‘The whole valley has been given over to the Qataari,’ Jenessa said. ‘Much of the land is under cultivation.’

  ‘Subsistence farming, presumably.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They grow roses in the valley. The Qataari roses.’

  Parren looked satisfied. ‘Then at least they can be studied doing that!’

  Jenessa looked helplessly across the table at Ordier. He stared back at her, trying not to reveal anything with his expression. He was sitting forward with his elbows on the edge of the wooden table, his hands linked in front of his face. He had taken a shower before driving to Jenessa’s apartment this evening but even so a certain fragrance was still present on his skin. He could smell it as he looked back at her, experiencing a trace of the pleasant sexual arousal that was induced by the smell of the petals of the Qataari rose.

  Jacj Parren and his wife were staying in one of the hotels down by the harbour in Tumo Town. Jenessa went to see them the next morning and Ordier left her apartment at the same time. They walked together as far as his car, embracing coolly. It was no hint of the night they had just spent together, which had been unusually wakeful and passionate.

  Ordier drove slowly back to his house, thinking about lovemaking and Jenessa. He was more reluctant than he could remember to succumb to the temptations of the cell in the folly wall, but at the same time he was more intrigued than ever about what he might see. Talking about the Qataari had renewed his interest. When it had all begun he had made the excuse to himself that what he saw was so insignificant, so fragmentary, that it was only of mild curiosity value. But as the weeks went by his knowledge of the Qataari had grown and with the knowledge so had the secret. A bond between him and the refugees had been tacitly tied. To speak of what he knew would be to betray a trust he had created in his own mind.

  As he parked the car and walked up to the house Ordier added further justification to his silence by reminding himself how much he had disliked Parren and his wife. He wanted to say nothing to encourage the man. He knew that prolonged exposure to the seductive laziness of Tumoit life, not to mention the general laxity of Archipelagian ways, would change Parren in the end but until then he would be an abrasive influence on Jenessa. She would seek the Qataari more eagerly, take a closer interest in their affairs.

  The house was stuffy from being closed for the night. Ordier walked around the rooms, opening the windows, throwing back the shutters. There was a light breeze and in the garden that he had been neglecting all summer the overgrown flowers and shrubs were waving gently. He stared at them while he tried to make up his mind.

  He knew that the dilemma was one of his own making and could be resolved by a simple decision never to climb up to the folly again. If he did he could thereafter ignore the Qataari, could continue with his life as it had been until the beginning of this long equatorial summer. But he was a man with an addiction who thought that quitting was simply a matter of deciding when to do it. The lure of that hidden cell was still acting powerfully upon him. The conversation the evening before had heightened his awareness of the mystery of the Qataari, reminded him of the special and intense curiosities they aroused.

  It was not for nothing that the romantic and erotic impulses of the great composers, philosophers, writers and artists had been stimulated by the Qataari, that the legends and daydreams persisted, that the societies of the north had been so thoroughly permeated by the enigma that there was not a work of art that did not directly or indirectly summon Qataari-inspired images. Even down at the level of the gutter there was hardly a graffito that did not hark back to Qataari influence, nor a pornographic fiction that did not perpetuate the myths.

  Voluntary abstention from his obsession was an agony to Ordier. He occupied himself by taking a swim in his pool. Later he opened one of the long-neglected chests he had had sent over from the mainland and set the books it contained on shelves in his study. By midday, though, the curiosity was like a nagging hunger and so he found his binoculars and walked up the ridge to the folly.

  More petals had appeared in the cell in his absence. Ordier carefully brushed them away from the slit with his fingers, then raised the binoculars to his eyes and inched them forward. As he reached the stone wall he felt the metal lens hoods grating gently. He minutely shifted his position, using the tiny ledge as a way of balancing himself.

  The Qataari camp lay on the further side of the shallow valley. Several of the familiar canvas screens had been raised again, this time in the area Ordier had learned from Jenessa’s textbooks was thought to be where the children were schooled. The breeze was moving through the valley from the south, stirring the screens. Great slow ripples moved laterally across the canvas blinds. His glasses lacked the necessary magnification to bring them close in his vision, but Ordier nevertheless felt a sense of intrigue, hoping that the wind would momentarily raise the skirt of screens so that he might glimpse what lay behind.

  In front of the camp, spreading across the irrigated floor of the valley, was the plantation of Qataari roses: so closely were they planted that from Ordier’s elevation the plants made a sea of scarlet and pink and green.

  He stared intently for several minutes, panning the glasses slowly across the view, relishing the privilege of having this undetected look.

  It was the workers in the rose plantation he had first observed from the hidden cell. Last night, listening to the dinner conversation, he had heard Parren speak with some awe of the possibility of glimpsing the Qataari at work in the rose beds. Remembering his own initial excitement of
discovery, Ordier had felt a tiny tremor of sympathy for the man.

  None of the Qataari he could see had gone into the stance of patient waiting. He knew from this that he had not been detected.

  A small group of Qataari were standing amongst the roses, arguing volubly amongst themselves. After a while two of them walked away and collected large panniers. Pulling the huge baskets behind them they left the others and began patrolling slowly between the long rows of bushes, plucking the largest and reddest flowers and tossing them into the trailing panniers.

  The weeks during which he had been spying on the Qataari had taught Ordier to be systematic, so he looked with the binoculars at each of the rose pickers in turn. Many of them were women and it was at these he looked most carefully. There was one young woman in particular he was seeking. She had been one of the rose pickers the first time he had discovered he could look at the Qataari without being noticed. He had no name for her, of course, not even a familiar one he used to himself as shorthand. She did remind him in some ways of Jenessa, but after much soul-searching Ordier had privately admitted these reminders were only the product of guilt.

  She was younger than Jenessa, taller, undeniably more beautiful. Where Jenessa was dark in hair and complexion, attractively combining sensuality and intelligence, the Qataari woman had fragility and vulnerability trapped in the body of a sexually mature woman. Sometimes, when her work in the plantation had brought her closer to the folly, Ordier saw a captivating expression in her eyes: knowingness and hesitation, invitation and caution. Her hair was golden, her skin was pale and she had the classic proportions of the perceived Qataari ideal. She was, for Ordier, the embodiment of Vaskarreta’s avenging victim.

  Jenessa, though, was real. Jenessa was available. The Qataari woman was remote and forbidden, forever inaccessible to him.

  When he had made sure that she was not working in the rose plantation, Ordier lowered the binoculars and leaned forward until his forehead was pressing against the rough rock slab. With his eyes placed as near as possible to the slit, he looked down towards the arena the Qataari had built at the foot of the folly wall.

  He saw her at once. She was standing near one of the twelve hollow metal statues that surrounded the cleared and levelled circular area. She was not alone; Ordier had never seen her alone. She was one of a large group of both men and women making the arena ready, but she stood slightly apart from the others. They were tidying up and preparing the arena: the statues were being cleaned and polished by the men, while the women swept the gravelly soil of the arena floor and scattered handfuls of the Qataari rose petals in all directions.

  The young woman was watching the activity. She was dressed as usual in red: a long, enfolding garment that lay loosely and lightly on her body like a gauze toga, made up of several different panels of diaphanous fabric overlapping each other.

  Silently, taking great care not to draw attention to himself, Ordier raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused them on her face. The magnification at once lent him the illusion he was nearer to her. As a consequence he felt much more exposed to her.

  Seeing her so closely, Ordier noticed that the garment was tied loosely at her neck and was slipping down from her on one side. He could see the curve of her shoulder, the junction of her arm with the shoulder and the first hint of the rising of her breast. If she turned quickly or leaned forward the garment would undoubtedly slip away to reveal more of her body. Ordier stared at her, transfixed by her unconscious, almost careless, sexuality.

  There was no observable signal for the beginning of the ritual. The preparations led imperceptibly to the first transactions of the ceremony. The women scattering rose petals turned from casting them across the ground to throwing them over the young woman. The men who had been cleaning the statuary each moved round to the rear of individual figures. The backs of these were hinged. The men pulled them open and stepped inside, closing the hatches behind them.

  The rest of the people, roughly the same number of men and women, took up positions around the edge of the small arena, standing in the spaces between the various statues.

  The woman stepped forward to take her place at the centre.

  This much was familiar to Ordier; soon the chanting would begin. Each time he watched the enigmatic ritual unfold Ordier was certain that the events had been slightly developed beyond the ones he had witnessed the time before. If not, then the events were mounted to convey the idea that he was about to see more. The dual possibilities of the woman’s sexual role became increasingly tantalizing.

  The chanting began: soft and low, inharmonious. The woman rotated slowly where she stood, swaying slightly as she shifted the position of her feet, scuffing at the petals around her, the garment swinging loosely about her limbs. It slipped lower on her shoulder as Ordier had anticipated and as the panels lifted and fluttered Ordier saw glimpses of ankle, elbow, breast, hip. It was obvious that she was naked beneath it. As she turned she looked briefly but intently at each of the men standing at the edge. It could have been a challenge, a dare, an invitation, a selection. It was impossible for Ordier to decide which it was.

  More petals were thrown and as the young woman turned in the small arena her feet trampled and crushed them. Ordier fancied he could smell the scent as it rose towards him, although he knew that most of the intoxicating fragrance came from the petals he had found in the cell.

  The next stage was also one Ordier had witnessed several times before. One of the women who had been throwing the petals put down her basket and stepped directly towards the centre of the arena. As she stood before the young woman she tore at the front of her own bodice, pulling aside the fabric to bare her breasts. Another woman stepped forward, shouldering aside the first. She too bared her chest. Then a man ran into the arena, seized both women and dragged them backwards out of the arena, clearly admonishing them. While this was going on a third woman dashed forward, tearing at her clothes. Another man went quickly to her and pulled her back.

  The young woman at the centre was starting to respond, moving her hands voluptuously across her own body and tugging with short, impatient motions at the light fabric that covered her. Gradually, the panels of thin fabric were working loose.

  Ordier watched it all, wondering, as he often wondered, where it was to lead. He was impatient to see the rest of the ritual because in the past the ceremony had never proceeded much beyond this point. He lowered his binoculars and leaned forward again, watching the whole scene.

  He was obsessed with the beautiful young woman. In his fantasies he could easily imagine that the ceremony took place here, beneath the wall of the folly, for him, for him exclusively. He dreamed that she was being prepared for him, readied for him, that she was a sexual offering.

  But those were the fantasies for later, for his solitude. When he was here, actually watching the Qataari ritual unfold, he was acutely aware of his role as a secret intruder into their world, an observer as incapable of affecting the proceedings as was, it seemed, the young woman herself.

  Ordier’s passivity, though, concerned only his lack of intervention. In another more basic way he was becoming deeply involved, because whenever he watched the events below his hiding place in the cell he was sexually aroused. He could again feel the tightness in his groin, the swelling and hardness of physical excitement. He stared down at the familiar scene, watching what was for him the secondary interest of the brief naked displays of the other women.

  Then the young woman in the centre moved, and Ordier snapped back his attention on to her. As one of the women went across to her, already pulling at the strings of her bodice, she moved to meet her. She snatched at one of the long hanging panels of her scarlet garment, tossing it away from her. It fell lightly like a veil on the petals.

  Ordier, with the binoculars once again jammed against his eyes, saw an infuriatingly brief glimpse of the nakedness beneath, but then she turned away and her flimsy garment swung across to cover most of her once again.

/>   She took two halting steps; she stumbled, then fell forward. She collapsed into the part of the central area where the petals had been laid the deepest. A flurry of them flew up around her. Before they had settled a man strode across to her and stood above her. He prodded her with his foot, then used all his strength to push her, lifting and rolling her over on to her back.

  She appeared to be unconscious. The flimsy gown was in disarray, its loose panels spreading and twisting about her supine body. Her legs and arms were bare and where she had torn the veil away a strip of diagonal nakedness was revealed. It ran between her breasts, across her stomach, across one hip. Through his binoculars Ordier could see the pale pink aureole surrounding one nipple and a few curling strands of her pubic hair.

  The man stood over her, apparently ready to take her. He was half crouching and his hand was at his groin, energetically rubbing his genitals.

  Ordier watched, surrendering at last to the excitement of sexual pleasure. As he came to physical climax, releasing wetly into his clothes, he saw through the shaking lenses of the binoculars that the young woman had opened her eyes and was staring upwards with a dazed expression, her lips apart, her head shaking slightly to and fro.

  She seemed to be looking straight at him.

  Ordier moved back from the crack in the wall, ashamed and embarrassed.

  Two days later Jacj and Luovi Parren came to Ordier’s house in the early morning. After breakfast the two men set off towards the ridge, leaving Jenessa to entertain Luovi.

  At Ordier’s suggestion Parren had brought with him a pair of strong boots. They climbed roped together, but Parren was overweight and a novice and he slipped almost as soon as they began the ascent. He slithered down the crumbling face of a large slab, brought up short when Ordier managed to take his weight on the rope.

  Ordier secured the rope then scrambled down to him. The portly little man had regained his feet and was looking ruefully at grazes on his arm and leg, showing through rents in his clothes.