I was returning at last to the Dream Archipelago, landscape of my childhood imaginings. In the days of mental torment in the hospital, when food had seemed to shout abuse at me, and light sang discordant melodies for my eyes, and my mouth would only utter pain and hurt, a consolation lay in my remembered dreams of the islands. In reality I had been through the Archipelago only once, aboard the troop carrier on my way to war, and had then only glimpsed from afar the verdant islands in their sapphire sea. Their remoteness had been like a taunt. I urged to return to them, as others around me also urged.
‘You must go to Salay,’ a rehabilitation orderly said to me while I lay recovering, over and over. ‘I was on Salay once, and have never forgotten what happened to me there.’
‘Tell me about it! What happened to you there?’
‘No … I cannot describe it. You have to go yourself. Or try Muriseay, the biggest island. I know someone who was posted there, guarding the neutrality of the Dream Archipelago, or that’s what they told him. That wasn’t what happened at all. Or Paneron. Have you heard about the women on Paneron, and what they do to you?’
‘Why are you tantalizing me?’
‘You’re going to the islands when you leave here, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you should know.’
But I knew nothing then. On the ferry heading towards Luice, I did think about the women on Paneron. I knew we were passing nowhere near Paneron. It was somewhere beyond the equator in the northern part of the Archipelago. I studied the chart of the Midway Sea on the wall in the main saloon, trying to locate the other islands I had been told about. There was Salay, there were the Serques, there was the Ferredy Atoll, Paneron far away by the Aubrac Chain, the Ganntens, the great chain of reefs and skerries known as the Swirl. And there was Winho, where a nurse called Slenje had once told me she was from. Because of Slenje, I had many times thought about travelling to Winho. How far could I go in the Archipelago, how many islands could I visit, in the mere forty-nine days that remained? Paneron or Winho, the Aubracs or Muriseay?
I found a seat on the bow deck and mused about women, a subject that now I was away from hospital was never far from my mind. There were dozens of women travelling on the boat with me, and I could see many from where I was sitting. A part of me longed to have them all. There was one sitting opposite me, leaning against the white-painted side of the boat and stretching out her bare legs in the sunshine. I had been idly appraising her, wondering if she really was as pretty as I thought or if I only thought that because it was so long since I had been amongst civilians. She noticed I was looking at her and she returned my stare, forthrightly looking at me with invitation hinted at in her eyes. It was so long, so long ago. She was the first woman I had really looked at, the first I had singled out from the crowd. I turned away from her, wanting to choose, not to rush at the first woman I saw, nor to accept the first who stared back at me.
She made me think again of Slenje. I decided to try to find Slenje.
Slenje had nursed me for a time in the hospital. It was then that she had told me about Winho, her home island. While I lay in my hospital bed, the bewildering images chasing through my mind, Slenje sat beside me for several nights and spoke about her life. She described the sea, the reefs, the shallow lagoons, the towering range of thickly forested mountains, the little towns built on the fertile plains between the mountains and the lagoons. In my torments, the fevered attacks of synaesthesia, Slenje’s presence had been balm to my agony: she spoke like musk, laughed with the texture of spring water and made me love with feelings of deep vermilion. She talked endlessly to me, knowing that I could not reply and perhaps thinking that I might not even hear. In fact I heard everything she said. She told me of her life at home, of her mother dying when she was little, her beleaguered father moving to find work on another island, leaving her and her sisters to stay with a neighbour, other children in the strange house, other girls, the endless grind of poverty. Then the Faiandland troops passing through and the poverty deepening. The realization came to Slenje, but reluctantly, that there was always one infallible way for young women to make quick and easy money from an army. We became whores, she said, laughing with a sound of glass shattering and falling around me. All the girls she knew. I ducked away, clenching my eyes tightly closed, waiting for her to tell me that the troops had moved on. They did leave Winho at last, moving on south and away from the Archipelago, and most of the whores ceased to be whores. Slenje grew up, she said, milk flowing from her lips. She wanted something better for herself so she moved to another island where she could train to become a nurse. She travelled south and there she was at last beside my bed, talking into the nights. But one night Slenje was there beside me no more and another nurse took her place. Later I found out that there had been some kind of trouble on Winho, and Slenje had returned home suddenly.
I looked again on the chart for Winho, noticing only now and for the first time that it was within the area of the Archipelago marked as still under military occupation. Luice too, which was only three islands away from Winho. How could that be, since the Dream Archipelago was widely thought to have been demilitarized? The chart was dated two years earlier. I knew that in the constantly changing fortunes of war nothing remained the same for long. I had to go there to find out.
Three days later I was on Winho and I heard the news I least wanted to hear. Slenje was dead.
Winho had already been occupied once by the Faiandlanders, but our troops had fought their way in and liberated the island. Under the terms of the Covenant of Neutrality we had withdrawn afterwards, but Faiandland had moved in a second time, illegally. Now we were back in control yet again but this time we had placed small town garrisons across the island, intending to maintain the peace. It was during the second round of fighting that Slenje had left the hospital where I was, but soon after she arrived home, and along with many other civilians, she became a casualty of the fighting.
Even so I became obsessed with finding her, needing to be convinced that she had really died. For two more days I paced about the streets of the town, searching for her and enquiring about her. She was well known and well remembered, but the answer was the same: Slenje the nurse was dead, was dead.
On the second day I suffered yet another attack of synaesthesia. The pastel-coloured cottages, the lush vegetation and the streets of dried mud became a nightmare of beguiling smells and flavours, terrifying sounds and bizarre textures. I stood for an hour in the main street of the town, convinced that Slenje had been swallowed: the houses ached like decaying teeth, the road was yielding and hairy like the surface of a tongue, the tropical flowers and trees were like half-chewed food and the warm wind that came in from the sea was like foetid breath.
When the attack had run its course I drank two large glasses of iced beer in a local bar, then went to the garrison and found a junior officer of my own rank.
‘You’ll suffer from it all your life,’ the lieutenant said.
‘The synaesthesia?’
‘You ought to be invalided out of the army. Once you lose your judgment …’
‘Don’t you think I’ve tried?’ I said. ‘All they would let me have is sick leave.’
‘You’re more of a danger to your own company than to the enemy.’
‘I know it,’ I said, with bitterness.
We were walking through the enclosed inner ward of the castle where the company of soldiers was garrisoned. It was suffocatingly hot in the sun, for no breath of wind could reach down into the deep yard. The castle battlements were being patrolled by young soldiers in dark blue uniforms, who paced slowly to and fro, ever alert for a return of the enemy. These guards wore full battledress, including the recently introduced gas-proof hoods that covered their heads, faces and shoulders.
‘I’m looking for a woman,’ I said.
‘There are plenty in the town. You want any woman, or some-one in particular?’
‘A particular woman,’ I said. ‘Sh
e was a nurse, but before that she worked as a whore. The local people say she was killed.’
‘They’re probably right.’
‘I wondered if there was anywhere that kept the records of casualties.’
‘Not us. Maybe the civil authorities. You could ask.’ We had strolled up to one of the battlements, and now were staring out across the roofs of the town, towards the silver, sun-dazzling sea. ‘If you want a woman it’s not difficult to find another. You know how to look. Or use one of the ones we have here. We keep twenty whores in the garrison. Medically certificated, nice-looking women. Keep away from the local women.’
‘Because of disease?’ I said.
‘In a sense. They’re all off-limits. No loss.’
‘Tell me about it.’
The lieutenant said, ‘We’re fighting a war. The town is full of enemy infiltrators.’
I glanced at him and noted his bland, non-committal expression as he said this.
‘That sounds like official policy from section HQ,’ I said. ‘What’s the truth?’
‘No different.’
We continued our walk around the fort and I decided not to leave until I heard a fuller explanation. The lieutenant spoke about the part he had played in the Dream Archipelago campaign and how he had twice been involved in liberating this island. It became obvious that he hated the place. He warned me about the ease with which you could pick up tropical infections, be bitten by large insects, undergo abuse or threats from the populace, suffer through the endless heat of the days and the humidity of the tropical nights. I listened with simulated interest. He told me about some of the atrocities carried out by the Faiandlanders while they occupied the island and I listened with real interest.
‘They performed experiments here,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Not with the synaesthetics. Something else. We never found out what. Their laboratories have been dismantled.’
‘By the army?’
‘No, civilian scientists appointed by staff officers. It was almost the first thing they did after we landed. The town was closed to all troops, then afterwards we found out there had been some kind of scare.’
‘And what did happen to the women?’
‘The local people have been infiltrated,’ the lieutenant said, and although we paced together about the sun-hot ward for another hour I learned no more. As I left the castle one of the black-hooded guards on the battlements fainted from the heat, and collapsed against the high rampart.
Night was falling as I went back into the centre of Winho Town. Many of the townspeople were walking slowly through the streets. Now that I had abandoned my search for Slenje, finally accepting that she was dead, I was able to see with a new clarity and I observed the town more objectively than before. The tropical evening was still and humid, with no trace of a breeze, but the oppressive heat could not by itself explain the way people were moving about. Everyone I saw walked slowly and painfully, shuffling along as if lamed. The hot darkness seemed to amplify sounds: there was the sound of cranes and ships from the harbour, distant engines, a strain of melancholy music from an open window, insects rasping high in the trees, but the only sound made by the huge crowd was the painful shuffling of their feet.
While I waited in the street I reflected that in this stage of my recovery I had ceased to be frightened of the hallucinations brought on by the synaesthesia. It no longer seemed odd to me that certain kinds of music should be visualized as strands of coloured lights, that I should be capable of imagining the circuitry of the army monitoring equipment in terms of geometric shapes, that words should have palpable textures, such as furry or metallic, that strangers should exude emotional colouring or hostility without even glancing in my direction.
A small boy ran across the street and darted behind a tree. He stared towards me from behind it. A tiny stranger: he emanated none of the nervousness his manner indicated, but playfulness and curiosity.
At last he came out and walked across to me, staring frankly at me.
‘Are you the man who was asking about Slenje?’ he said, scratching his groin.
‘Yes,’ I said, and instantly the child ran away. He was the only quick movement in the street.
A few minutes passed and I continued to stand in my place. I saw the boy again, running back across the street, zigzagging through the shuffling people. He ran towards a house, then vanished inside. A little while later two young women came slowly down the street, their arms linked. They walked directly to me. Neither of them was Slenje, but then I had not hoped.
One of them said, ‘It will cost you fifty.’
‘That’s all right.’
As she spoke I caught a glimpse of her teeth. Several appeared to be broken, giving her a sinister, demoniac appearance. She had long dark hair which looked unwashed, and she was plump. I looked at the other woman, who was short, with pale brown hair.
‘I’ll take you,’ I said to her.
‘It’s still fifty,’ said the first one.
‘I know.’
The young woman with the broken teeth kissed the other on both cheeks, then shuffled away. I followed the second woman as she headed down the street in the direction of the harbour.
I said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Does it matter?’ It was the first time she had spoken to me.
‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Did you know Slenje?’
‘Of course. She was my sister.’
‘Literally your sister?’
‘She was a whore. All whores are sisters.’
We passed along the quay, then turned into another more steeply sloping side street leading away from the harbour. No wheeled vehicles would ever come along this road because at intervals the gradient was so steep the surface had been fashioned into steps. The street stank of dog droppings. The young woman climbed slowly, pausing at each of the steps. She was breathing heavily in the warm air. I offered to take her arm but she snatched it away from my hand. She was not hostile, though, but proud, because she gave me a quick smile a moment later.
As we stopped at the unpainted door of a tall house she said, ‘My name is Elva.’
She opened the door and stepped inside.
I was about to follow her when I noticed that a numeral had been painted crudely on the bare wood of the door: . It caught my attention because ever since my illness I had developed distinct colour associations with numerals. The number had a firm synaesthetic association with pale blue, but the number on the door was painted in a yellowish white. For some reason it disconcerted me and as I looked at it the painted number seemed to change from white to blue, to white again. I knew then that another attack was beginning. Anticipating the worst I stepped quickly into the house behind the young woman and closed the door behind me, as if putting the numeral out of my sight would put off the attack.
It seemed to do the trick. As the woman switched on the light my mind cleared and the synaesthetic attack faded. I recoiled from the disturbing images but they were now a part of me. I followed Elva up a flight of uncarpeted stairs (she went slowly, placing one foot beside the other on each step) and I remembered the waves of vermilion arousal Slenje had inadvertently awakened in me as I lay helpless in the hospital. I tried perversely to will the attack to return, or continue, as if the synaesthesia would add an extra dimension to the act of sex.
We came to a small bedroom which was entered through a door by the top of the stairs. Although the room was close and airless in the heat it was tidy and smelt faintly of furniture polishing materials. It was a lit by a single light bulb, glaring harshly in the white-painted room.
Elva said, ‘I want the fifty now.’
It was the first time she had faced me as she spoke and in doing so she revealed her teeth. Like those of the dark-haired woman, Elva’s teeth were broken and jagged. I recoiled inwardly from the sight, this sudden fastidiousness making me feel uncertain of what I had been wanting or expecting from her, other than the obvious. Elva must have noticed my reaction,
because she raised her face more directly towards me and smiled in such a way as to make a humourless rictus that pulled back her lips from her teeth: I saw then that they were not broken by decay or by neglect, but that each tooth, upper and lower, had been filed down to a triangular, sharply pointed section.
She said, ‘The Faiandlanders did it.’
‘Just to you? And your sister?’
‘To all whores.’
‘And Slenje?’
‘No, Slenje they killed.’
I could not think what to say so I reached into my back pocket and took out my wad of banknotes. Most of the money was still in the high denomination notes I had been given when I left the hospital.
‘I only have a hundred,’ I said after searching through the notes, holding it out to her and returning the rest to my pocket.
‘I have change,’ she said. ‘Women who work always have coins.’
She took the note from me and opened a shallow drawer. She searched through it and while her back was turned I stared appraisingly at her body. In spite of what had been done to her legs, which made her move and walk like an old person, she must still have been in her early twenties. Her back was slender and her backside curved appealingly under her thin clothes. I felt sorry for her, because of what she had suffered, but I also felt the first surges of sexual energy.
At last she turned and showed me five silver ten-piece coins. She placed them in a neat pile on the top of the dresser.
I said to her, ‘Elva, you can keep the money. I think I will leave.’
I was shamed by the state she was in, ashamed of the intentions I had for her.
Her only reply was to lean down by the side of the bed and throw the switch of a power-point attached to the base of the wall. An electric fan whirred round, sending a welcome draught through the stuffy room. As she straightened, the stream of air momentarily pressed the flimsy fabric of her blouse across her breasts, and I saw her dark nipples were erect.