The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

  Semell was a dry island, with olive trees growing on the rocky hills. Old men sat in the shade; I heard a donkey braying somewhere behind the town.

  After Semell I began to tire of the ship and its slow, devious voyage through the islands. I was bored with the noises and routines of the ship: the rattle of chains, the constant sound from the engine and the pumps, the voluble dialect conversations of the deck passengers. I had given up eating on the ship, and now bought fresh bread, cooked meat and fruit whenever we stopped at an island. I drank too much. I found the few conversations I had with other passengers repetitive and predictable.

  I had boarded the ship in a state of extreme receptivity, open to the new experience of travel, to the discovery of the Archipelago. Now, though, I began to miss my friends at home, and my family. I remembered the last conversation I had had with my father, the night before I left Jethra: he was against the prize and feared that as a result of it I would choose to stay on in the islands.

  I was abandoning much for the sake of a lottery ticket, and I still questioned what I was doing.

  Part of the answer lay in the manuscript I had written a couple of summers before. I had brought it with me, stuffed into my leather holdall, but I had packed it without re-reading it, just as I had never re-read it since leaving the cottage. The writing of my life, of telling myself the truth, had been an end in itself.

  Since that long summer in the Murinan Hills overlooking Jethra I had entered a muted phase of life. There had been no upsets, few passions. I had had lovers, but they had been superficial relationships, and I had made a number of new acquaintances but no new friends. The country had recovered from the recession that put me out of a job, and I had gone back to work.

  But writing the manuscript had not been a wasted effort. The words still held the truth. It had become a kind of prophecy, in the pure sense of being a teaching. I therefore had a feeling that somewhere in those pages would be some kind of internal guidance about the lottery prize. It was this I needed, because there was no logical reason for refusing it. My doubts came from within.

  But as the ship moved into hotter latitudes, my mental and physical sloth increased. I left my manuscript in my cabin, I postponed any thoughts about the prize.

  On the eighth day we came to open sea, with the next group of islands a faint darkening on the southern horizon. Here was one of the geographical boundaries and beyond it lay the Lesser Serques, with Muriseay at their heart.

  We made only one islandfall in the Serques before Muriseay, and by the early afternoon of the next day the island was in sight.

  After the confusion of islands behind us, arriving off Muriseay was like once again approaching the coast of a continent. It seemed to stretch forever into the distance beyond the coast. Blue-green hills ran back from the coastline, dotted with white-painted villas and divided up by winding, curving highways that strode across the valleys on great viaducts. Beyond the hills, almost on the horizon as it seemed, I could see brown-purple mountains, crowned with cloud.

  At the very edge of the sea, following the coastline, was a ribbon development of apartments and hotels, modern, tall, balconied. The beaches below were crowded with people, and brightly coloured by huge sunshades and cafeterias. I borrowed a pair of binoculars and stared at the beaches as we passed. Muriseay, seen thus, was like the stereotype of the Archipelago depicted in films, or described in pulp fiction. In the Faiandland culture the Dream Archipelago was synonymous with a leisured class of sun-loving émigrés, or the indigenous islanders. Depictions of the sort of small islands I had been passing were rate; there was more plot material in a heavily populated place like Muriseay. Romantic novels and adventure films were frequently set in a never-never world of Archipelagan exotica, Complete with casinos, speed-boats and jungle hide-outs. The natives were villainous, corruptible or simple; the visiting class either wealthy and self-indulgent, or scheming madmen. Of course, I recognized the fiction in this fiction, but it was nevertheless potent and memorable.

  So in seeing at last an island of real economic substance I viewed it with a kind of double vision. One part of me was still receptive and involved, trying to see and understand everything in objective terms. But another part, deeper and more irrational, could not help but see this concrete-slab coastline of Muriseay with the received glamour of popular culture.

  The beaches were therefore crowded with the indulgent rich, tanning themselves in the golden sunshine of Muriseay’s legendary heat. Everyone was a tax-exile, philanderer or remittance man; the modern yachts moored a short distance offshore were the scenes of nightly gambling and murder, a place for playboys and high-class whores, corrupt and fascinating. Behind the modern apartment blocks I visualized the squalid hovels of the peasant islanders, parasitic on the visitors, contemptuous of them, yet servile. Just like the films, just like the cheap paperbacks that filled the bookstalls of Jethra.

  Thorrin and Dellidua Sineham were on deck, standing beside the rail further down the ship. They too were gazing interestedly across at the shore, pointing at the coastal buildings, talking together. The tattily romantic version of Muriseay faded, and I walked down and lent them the glasses. Those villas and apartments would be mostly occupied by decent, ordinary people like the Sinehams. I stayed with them for a while, listening to them talk excitedly of their new home and life. Thorrin’s brother and his wife were already here, and they were in the same village, and they had been getting the apartment ready.

  Later, I went back to my place alone and watched the terrain change as we moved further south. Here the hills came down to the sea, breaking as cliffs, and the blocks of flats were hidden from view; soon we were passing shores as wild as any I had seen in the islands. The ship was close inshore, and through the glasses I could see the flash of birds in the trees that grew to the edge of the cliffs.

  We reached what I first assumed was the mouth of a river, and the ship turned and headed upstream. Here the water was deep and calm, a stupendous bottle green, the sun shafting down through it. On either bank was dense jungle of monstrous aroids, unmoving in the humid silence.

  After a few minutes in this airless channel it became clear that we had turned inland between an offshore island and the mainland, because it opened out into a vast, placid lagoon, on the far side of which was the sprawl of Muriseay Town.

  Now, with the end of the long voyage imminent, I felt a strange sense of insecurity. The ship had become a symbol of safety, the object that had fed me and carried me, that I returned to after venturing ashore. I had grown used to the boat, and knew my way about it like I knew the apartment I had left in Jethra. To leave it would be to take a second step into strangeness. We impose familiarity on our surroundings; from the deck of the ship the scenery merely passed, but now I had to disembark, set foot in the islands.

  It was a return to the inner-directed self I had temporarily lost when I boarded the ship. Unaccountably I felt nervous of Muriseay, yet there was no logical reason for this. It was just a transit, a place to change ships. Also, I was expected in Muriseay. There was an office of the Lotterie-Collago here, and the next leg of the journey was one they would arrange.

  I stood in the prow of the ship until it had docked, then went back to find the Sinehams. I wished them luck, said goodbye, then went down to my cabin to collect my holdall.

  A few minutes later I was heading up the quay, looking for a taxi to take me into town.

  7

  The offices of Lotterie-Collago were in a shaded side street about five minutes’ drive from the harbour. I paid off the taxi driver and he drove quickly away, the dusty old saloon car bouncing noisily on the cobbles. At the far end of the street the car turned into the harsh brilliance of sunlight, joining the chaos of traffic that roared past.

  The offices were like a large showroom, fronting the street with two plate glass windows. Behind, there were no lights on but at the far end, away from the doors and behind a small forest of potted plants, there was a desk and some cabi
nets. A young woman sat there, looking through a magazine.

  I tried the doors, but they were locked. The young woman heard me, looked up and acknowledged me. I saw her take down some keys.

  I was still only a few minutes away from the lulling, lazy routines of shipboard life, but already Muriseay Town had in stilled in me an acute sense of culture shock. Nothing I had seen in any of the small islands had prepared me for this busy, hot and noisy city, nor was it like anywhere I knew at home.

  Muriseay, experienced raw, seemed like a chaos of cars, people and buildings. Everyone moved with astonishing yet mysterious purpose. Cars were driven faster than anyone would have dared in Jethra, accompanied by heavy braking, sharp cornering and constant use of the horn. Street signs, in two languages, obeyed no apparent overall system, nor even consistency in their use. Shops in the streets were open to the world, quite unlike the prim emporia of Jethra’s main boulevards, and their goods spilled out in a colourful mess across the pavements. Discarded boxes and bottles were all over the place. People lounged around in the sun, lying in the grassy squares, leaning against the walls of buildings or sitting under the bright canopies of the open-air bars and restaurants. One street had been completely blocked by what appeared to be an impromptu football match, causing my driver to swear at me and reverse violently and dangerously into the main street. Further complicating the city were the buses, which hurtled down the centres of the carriageways, passengers bulging from windows and doorways, and claiming right of way by sheer nerve alone. The layout of the city seemed to have no overall design, being a warren of criss-crossing narrow streets between the ramshackle brick buildings; I was used to the stately avenues of Jethra, built, according to tradition, sufficiently wide for a full company of Seigniorial troops to march abreast.

  All this was glimpsed and absorbed in the few minutes I was in the taxi, whirled through the streets in a sort of car I had only ever before seen in movies. It was a huge, battered old saloon, spattered with dust and dried mud, the windscreen plastered with dead insects. Inside, the seats were covered with synthetic fur, and were far too soft for comfort; one sank into them with a feeling of excessive and cloying luxury. The fascia of the car was tarnished chrome and peeling wood veneer; the inside of the windscreen was stuck all over with photographs of women and children. A dog lay asleep on the back seat, and shrilling, distorted pop music was blasting from the radio. The driver steered with only one hand on the wheel, the other out of the window and clasping the roof, slapping in time with the music. The car swooped through corners, setting up a banging noise from the suspension and a rocking motion inside.

  The whole city was a new kind of sensation: a feeling of careless indifference to many things I took for granted—quiet, safety, laws, consideration towards others. Muriseay Town seemed to be a city in eternal conflict with itself. Noise, heat, dust, white light; a teeming, shouting and colliding city, uneven and untidy, yet charged with life.

  But I did not feel unsafe, and neither was I excited, except in a way best described as cerebral. The taxi driver’s careering progress through the milling traffic was something that took the breath away, but it was in a larger context of confusion and disorder. A car driven like that in Jethra would certainly crash within a few moments, if not stopped by the police, but in Muriseay Town everything was at the same level of chaos. It was as if I had somehow crossed over into another universe, one where the degree of activity had been perceptibly increased: reality’s tuner had been adjusted, so noises were louder, colours were brighter, crowds were more dense, heat was greater, time moved faster. I felt a curious sense of diminished responsibility, as if I were in a dream. I could not be hurt or endangered in Muriseay, because I was protected by the dangerous chaos of normality. The car would not crash, those ancient leaning buildings would never fall, the crowds would always skip out of the way of the traffic, because we were in a place of higher response, a place where mundane disasters simply never occurred.

  It was an exhilarating, dizzying feeling, one that told me that to survive here I had to adjust to the local ad hoc rules. Here I could do things I never dared at home. Sober responsibilities were behind me.

  So as I stood by the Lotterie-Collago office, waiting for the doors to be unlocked, I was still in the early throes of this new awareness. On the ship, receptive to the new though I had thought myself to be, in fact I had been moving in a protective bubble of my own life. I had brought attitudes and expectations with me. After just a few minutes in Muriseay the bubble had been popped, and sensations were still pouring in on me.

  The lock rattled and one of the two doors swung open.

  The young woman said nothing, but stared at me.

  “I’m Peter Sinclair,” I said. “I was told to come here as soon as I landed.”

  “Come in.” She held the door open, and I walked in to the shock of air conditioning. The office was dry, refrigerated, and the chill of it made me cough. I followed the girl to her desk.

  “I’ve got you down as Robert Sinclair. Is that you?”

  “Yes. I don’t use my first name.”

  My eyes too had needed to adjust to the relative dimness of the office, because when she got to her desk and faced me, I noticed the girl’s appearance for the first time. She bore a remarkable physical similarity to Mathilde Englen.

  “Won’t you sit down?” She indicated the visitors’ chair.

  I did as she said, making a small production of putting my holdall to one side. I needed a few moments to collect myself. The resemblance between her and Mathilde was extraordinary! Not in detail, but in colouring, hair, body shape. I supposed than if the two women could be seen together it would not be so obvious, but for the last few days I had been holding a mental image of Mathilde and suddenly to meet this girl came as a distinct surprise. The generalities of my memory image were fulfilled exactly.

  She was saying: “My name is Seri Fulten, and I am your Lotterie representative here. Any help I can give you while you’re here, or—”

  It was the company speech, and it drifted over and past me. She was shaped in the company mould: she was wearing the same bright red uniform of skirt and jacket I had seen on the staff in the Jethran Lotterie office, the sort of clothes that are worn in hotel receptions, car rental firms, shipping offices. It was attractive in a bland way, but sexless and multi-national. Her one gesture to individuality was a small badge pinned to her lapel: it had the face of a well-known pop singer.

  I did find her attractive, but then the company image supposed I would. Beyond that, the coincidence with Mathilde was setting up distracting resonances.

  I said, when she had finished her patter: “Have you been waiting here just for me?”

  “Somebody had to. You’re two days late.”

  “I’d no idea.”

  “It’s all right. We contacted the shipping line. I haven’t been sitting here for two days.”

  I judged her to be in her late twenties, and either married or living with someone. No ring, but that meant nothing anymore.

  She opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a neatly packaged folder of papers.

  “You can have this,” she said. “It tells you everything you need to know about the treatment.”

  “Well, I haven’t quite decided yet—”

  “Then read this.”

  I took the file from her and glanced through the contents. There were several glossily printed pages of photographs, presumably of the athanasia clinic, and further on a series of questions and answers printed out. Going through the sheets gave me the chance to look away from her. What had happened? Was I seeing Mathilde in her? Unsuccessful with one woman, I find another who happens to look rather like her, and so transfer my attention?

  With Mathilde I had always felt I was making a mistake, yet I went on with the pursuit; she, nobody’s fool, had deflected me. But suppose I had been making a mistake, that I had mistaken Mathilde for someone else? In a reversal of causality, I had thought Mathilde wa
s this girl, the Lotterie rep?

  While I had been ostensibly going through the photographs, Seri Fulten had opened what I presumed was the Lotterie file on me.

  She said: “I see you’re from Faiandland. Jethra.”

  “Yes.”

  “My family came from there originally. What’s it like?”

  “Parts of it are very beautiful. The centre, round the Seignior’s Palace. But they’ve built a lot of factories in the last few years, and they’re ugly.” I had no idea what to say. Until I left Jethra I had never really thought about it, except as the place I lived in and took for granted. I said, after a pause: “I’ve already forgotten it. For the last few days all I’ve been aware of is the islands. I’d no idea there were so many.”

  “You’ll never leave the islands.”

  She said it in the same colourless way she had recited the company speech, but I sensed that this was a different kind of slogan.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s just a saying. There’s always somewhere new to go, another island.”

  The short fair hair, the skin that showed pale through the superficiality of tan. I suddenly remembered finding Mathilde on the boat deck, sunbathing with her chin turned up to avoid a shadow on her neck.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Seri said.

  “Yes, please. What have you got?”

  “I’ll have to look. The cabinet’s usually locked.” She opened another drawer, looking for a key. “Or we could check you into your hotel, and have a drink there.”

  “I’d prefer that,” I said. I had been travelling too long; I wanted to dump my luggage.

  “I’ll have to check the reservation. We were expecting you two days ago.”

  She picked up the phone, listened to the receiver then worked the rest up and down a few times. She frowned, and drew in her breath sharply. After a few seconds I heard the line click, and she started dialling.