Seri opened the door within a few seconds of my ring.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said. “I was just about to telephone the office.”
“I slept late,” I said. “I didn’t realize there was anything urgent.”
“There isn’t…come in for a moment.”
I followed her in, any remaining intention of seeing her as a mere employee confounded by this new insight into her. How many lottery winners did she normally invite round to her flat? Today she was wearing a revealing open-neck shirt and a denim skirt, buttoned down the front. She looked as she had done the night before: youthful, attractive, divorced from the image the job gave her. I remembered that feeling of resentment when she left me to meet someone else, and while she closed the door I realized I was hoping the apartment would show no signs of some other man in her life. Inside it was very small: to one side there was a tiny bathroom—through the half-open door I glimpsed antique plumbing and clothes hanging up to dry—and to the other was a cramped living-cum-bedroom, cluttered with books, records and furniture. The bed, a single, was neatly made. The apartment backed on to a main street, and because the windows were open the room was warm and noisy.
“Would you like a drink?” Seri said.
“Yes please.” I had drunk a whole bottle of wine the evening before, and was feeling the worse for it. Another would clear my head…but Seri opened a bottle of mineral water and poured two glasses.
“I can’t get you a passage,” she said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “I tried one shipping line, but they won’t confirm reservations yet. The earliest I can get you on is next week.”
“Whatever is available,” I said.
There the business side of our meeting came to an end, as far as I knew. She could have told me this in the office, or left the message with one of the other staff, but clearly that was not all.
I had drunk my mineral water quickly; I liked it. “Why aren’t you at work today?”
“I’ve taken a couple of days off, and I need the break. I’m thinking of going up into the hills for the day. Would you like to come with me?”
“Is it far?”
“An hour or two, depending on whether the bus breaks down or not. Just a trip. I want to get out of town for a few hours.”
“All right,” I said. “I’d like that.”
“I know it’s a bit of a rush, but there’s a bus in a few minutes’ time. I was hoping you would get here earlier, so we could talk about it more. Do you need to collect anything from the hotel?”
“I don’t think so. You say we’ll be back by this evening?”
“Yes.”
Seri finished her drink, picked up her shoulder bag, and we went down to the road. The bus station was a short walk away: a dark, cavernous building with two ancient motor buses parked in the centre. Seri led the way to one of them. It was already more than half full, and the aisle between the two double rows of seats was blocked by other passengers standing up to talk to their friends. We squeezed past, and found a pair of seats near the back.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“A village I found last year. A few visitors go there, but it’s usually very quiet. You can get a good meal, and there’s a river where you can swim.”
A few minutes later the driver climbed aboard, and moved down the bus taking the fares. When he reached us I offered to pay, but Seri already had a note in her hand.
“This is on the Lotterie,” she said.
The bus was soon out of the centre of the city and moving through broader streets lined with elderly and crumbling apartment buildings. The drabness of the area was emphasized by the pure white light of the midday sun, and relieved only by a horizontal forest of brightly coloured washing, hanging on lines sus pended between the buildings. Many of the windows were broken or boarded up, and children scattered in the road as the bus clanked through. Whenever we slowed children jumped on the running board and clung to the side, while the driver snarled at them.
The last of the children dropped away, tumbling in the road side dust, when we reached a steel bridge thrown high over the gorge of the river. As we crossed I could see on the clean water below the other face of Muriseay Town: the white-painted yachts of visitors, the riverside cafés and bars, the chandlers’ shops, the boutiques.
On the other side of the gorge the road turned sharply inland, following the course of the river to our right. I watched this view for some minutes, until Seri touched my arm to point out what could be seen through the other windows. Here a vast shanty town existed. Hundreds or thousands of makeshift dwellings had been thrown together out of every conceivable piece of waste material: corrugated iron, crates, auto tyres, beer barrels. Many of these mean houses were open to the sky, or sheltered beneath worn-out tarpaulins or plastic sheeting. None of the houses had windows, only crude holes, and very few of them had any kind of door. Adults and children squatted by the side of the road, watching with dull eyes as the bus went by. Rusty cars and old oil drums littered every flat space. Dogs ran wild everywhere.
I watched this sordid township with a feeling of vague but painful guilt, aware that Seri and I were the only two people on the bus dressed in new or clean clothes, that the other passengers probably recognized this as the “real” Muriseay, that they had no economic access either to my hotel or Seri’s apartment. I recalled the ribbon development of luxury homes I had seen from the ship, and my thoughts about the glamorized image of the islands portrayed in the media.
I looked away, to my side of the bus, but now the road had wandered away from the river and the shanty town extended here too. I watched the tumbledown shacks as we passed and tried to imagine what it must be like to live there. Would I even consider the Lotterie treatment, I wondered, if I lived in a place like that?
At last the bus left the township and entered open countryside. Far ahead the mountains rose. Some of the patched land was being cultivated, but much of it lay empty.
We passed an airport on the right, surprising me. Air travel was supposed to be prohibited within the Archipelago, the airspace regulated by the Covenant of Neutrality. But to judge by the pylons of electronic sensors, and the ground-radar dishes, Muriseay Airport was as modern as any equivalent in the north. Approaching the terminal buildings I saw several large aircraft parked in the distance, but they were too far away for me to distinguish the markings.
“Is this a passenger airport?” I said quietly to Seri.
“No, purely military. Muriseay receives most of the troops from the north, but there are no camps here. The men are taken straight to ships, on the southern coast.”
Some friends of mine in Jethra were associated with a civil rights group, concerned with monitoring the Covenant. According to them, many of the larger islands were the sites of military transit- and rest-camps. These were not strictly in breach of the Covenant, but represented one of its odder aspects. Such camps were used by both sides, and sometimes by both armies at once. However, I had seen no sign of them, and guessed they must be situated a long way from the roads or regular shipping lanes.
The bus halted outside the airport, and most of the passengers climbed out, clutching their bundles and parcels. Seri said they would be the civilian staff: caterers, cleaners, and so on. Soon after we set off again, the well-paved road we had been following gave out, and became a dusty, pot-holed track instead. From here, the rest of the journey was marked by the constant lurching of the bus, the roaring of the engine in low gear and occasional bangs from the suspension. And dust: the tyres threw up clouds of dust and grit which flew in the open windows, griming our clothes, marking the tiny lines of the face and gritting between the teeth.
Seri became talkative, and as the track rose into the foothills and the countryside became greener, she told me about some of the islands she had visited and things she had seen. I discovered a few more facts about her: she had worked on ships for some time, she had learned how to weave, she had been married for a brief period.
A few minutes later the bus broke down. The driver investigated, and steam burst forth from the radiator.
Seri was smiling.
“I take it this always happens?” I said.
“Yes, but not as soon as this. It normally boils when we start climbing.”
After loud discussion with the passengers at the front, the driver set off back down the road towards the last village, accompanied by two of the men.
Unexpectedly, Seri slipped her hand into mine and leaned against me slightly. She squeezed my fingers.
“How much further are we going?” I said.
“We’re nearly there. The next village.”
“Couldn’t we walk? I’d like to stretch my legs.”
“Let’s wait. He’s only gone to get water. It doesn’t look steep, but it’s uphill all the way.”
She closed her eyes, resting her head on my shoulder. I stared ahead, looking at the bulk of the mountains now rising directly before us. Although we had climbed a long way since leaving the town, the air was still warm and there was hardly any wind. Vineyards stretched on either side of the road. I could see tall cypresses in the distance, black against the sky. Seri dozed for a while, but I was getting stiff so I roused her. I climbed down from the bus and walked a distance up the road, relishing the exercise and the sunshine. It was not as humid here, the air smelt different. I walked as far as the crest of the rise the bus had been climbing when it broke down, and here I stopped and looked back. The plain stretched out before me, wavering in the thermals, a fusion of greys and greens and ochrous yellows. In the distance, on the horizon, was the sea, but there was a haze and I could not see any other islands.
I sat down, and after a few minutes I saw Seri walking up the road to join me. As she sat down beside me she said: “The bus has broken down every time I’ve been on it.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not in a hurry.”
Again she slipped her hand into mine. “Why did you leave me there?”
I thought of excuses—fresh air, exercise, see the view—but changed my mind.
“I suppose I’m a bit shy of you,” I said. “Last night, when you left me in the bar, I thought I’d made a mistake.”
“I just had to see someone. A friend. I’d rather have been with you.” She was looking away, but she was holding my hand tightly.
Later, we saw the group of men returning to the bus with a can of water, so we walked down and took our seats again. In a few minutes the journey resumed, as dusty and lurching as before. Soon the road was rising through trees, turning into a pass in the mountains invisible from where we had halted, Tall eucalypts grew on each side of the track, the white bark peeling. Above, a ceiling of blueish-green leaves, glimpses of sky; below, a twisting shallow river, seen fleetingly through the trees. The pass curved, and the road with it, and for a minute I saw a superb mountainscape, rocks and trees and broad shoulders of scree. Water tumbled down the face of the rocks, bouncing and spuming through the gum trees to the river below. The dusty plain around Muriseay Town was lost to sight.
Seri was staring through the open window as if it was the first time she too had been along this road. I began to sense the scale of these mountains; by Faiandland standards they were low and unspectacular, because the High Massif in the north of the country contained the grandest mountain scenery in the world. Here on Muriseay, scale and expectations were smaller, the effect more compact yet more startling. One could relate emotionally to this scenery: it was human-sized without being domestic.
“Do you like it?” Seri said.
“Yes, of course.”
“We’re almost there.”
I looked ahead but could see only the track climbing through the trees into green penumbra.
Seri shouldered her bag and made her way up the aisle to the front of the bus. She spoke briefly to the driver. In a few moments we came to a part of the road where it opened out, and where two wooden benches had been built at the side. The bus halted, and we climbed down.
9
A path led down from the road, worn from the undergrowth to expose the soil. Stripped tree-branches had been laid in the ground at intervals to provide crude steps, and in the steepest places there was a handrail. We descended rapidly because the soil was dry and firm, and almost before the sound of the bus’s engine had faded into the distance we saw the roofs of a village below us.
The path opened out on to a levelled area, where several cars were parked, and from here we came straight into the centre of the village. This was a pleasing double row of well-preserved old buildings. One or two had been converted to shops: there was a souvenir shop, a small restaurant and a garage. Because we were both hungry we went straight to the restaurant, and sat at one of the tables under the trees at the back.
It was good to sit down without the intrusive racket of the bus, or the flying grit; we were in the shade, the river flowed at the end of the garden and high in the trees overhead were birds invisible to us, making a strange and abrupt bell-like call. The meal was a dish called valti. Native to Muriseay it was a colourful mixture of rice, beans, tomatoes and meat, served in a spicy saffron-coloured sauce. Seri and I spoke little, but we had become detectably closer to each other.
Afterwards, we walked through the village until we came to the river. Here, a broad lawn had been laid and a number of people were sitting around, relaxing in the shade of the trees. It was a peaceful place, made oddly more silent by the river sounds and the birdsong. A wooden bridge, rustic but solid, led across to the other side where another path climbed erratically through the trees. There was a great stillness to the air, and the smell of the eucalypts, reminding me obscurely of childhood medicines, hung thick in the warm day. Below, we could hear the river on the stones.
We had not climbed far when we came to a single-bar gate across the path. Seri slipped two coins into a box, and we went through. Beyond the gate the path went more steeply up the hillside, leading to a narrow cleft in the rock. We clambered through, and I saw that the corners and angles of the rock had been worn smooth by feet. Now the path went down, while the walls of rock steepened above us. A few small trees and bushes grew on the ground beside us, but the rock was bare, crowned with foliage, darkening the vale.
Three people were walking back along the path towards us, but they passed without saying anything. It was oppressively quiet in the tiny valley, and the few things Seri and I said to each other were in hushed voices. It was the same sort of quietude adopted by non-believers who visit a church; here in the mountains the same serene stasis existed.
I heard the sound of water, and as the path turned towards the tallest face of rock I saw the pool.
There was a spring in the rock, flowing across a flat surface, and trickling out over the edge were a number of tiny waterfalls. They poured down into the dark pool below, making a sonorous dripping noise, amplified into a hollow echoing by the concave wall of rock behind. The pool itself was black, with an illusion of greenness from the overhanging shrubbery. Its surface trembled continuously, while the unceasing water fell from above.
Although the air in the valley was as warm as elsewhere, there was a chill quality given by the sound of the water. Unaccountably, I felt myself shiver, the nervous tic that brings an unexplained shudder, the feeling that is said to be like someone walking over your grave. The pool was beautiful in a simple way, but it had a presence I could not like. It was cluttered with incongruity.
Hanging from the lip of the water shelf was a bizarre array of househ
old items. There, in the flow of water, someone had dangled an old shoe. Next to it swung a child’s knitted jacket, bobbing as the water turned it. Then there was a pair of sandals, a wooden matchbox, a ball of string, a raffia basket, a necktie, a glove. They had a faint sheen of greyness, unclearly seen as the water poured over and through them.
This juxtaposition had an eerie, unexplained quality to it, like a sheep’s heart nailed to a door, a token of ritual magic.
Seri said; “They’re petrifying, turning to stone.”
“Not literally.”
“No…but there’s something in the water. Silica, I think. Anything hung in the water builds up a coating.”
“But why should anyone want a stone shoe?”
“That’s the people who run the souvenir shop. They put most of the stuff here, although anyone can leave something. The people in the shop say it will bring you luck. It’s just a novelty, really.”
“Is this what you brought me to see?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why, Seri?”
“I’m not sure. I thought you’d like it here.”
We sat down together on the grass, regarding the petrifying pool and its motley of domestic fetishes. While we were there, more people walked through the vale and visited the pool. They were in a group of about ten, with children running around and making a noise. They made much of the objects dangling in the falls, and one of the men was photographed leaning out over the pool with his hand in the trickling water. Afterwards, as they walked away, he was still pretending his hand had been turned to stone, as he wielded it like a rigid claw.
I wondered what would happen if something living really was laid out beneath the falling water. Would it too acquire a veneer of stone, or would skin reject it? Obviously a human being or an animal would simply not keep still or stay long enough. A corpse, though, could probably turn to stone; organic death to inorganic permanence.
The Affirmation Page 9
