The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

  “No. I used to.”

  “Suppose you were to start again. You could smoke as many cigarettes as you wished, and you would never develop lung cancer. That’s definite. But you could still contract bronchitis or emphysema, and carbon monoxide would put a strain on your heart. The treatment won’t prevent you from being killed in a road accident, and it won’t stop you drowning, and you can still get hernias and chilblains, and you can still break your neck. We can stop the body degenerating, and we can help you build immunity to infections, but if you abuse yourself you can still find ways of causing damage.”

  Reminders of a body’s frailties: ruptures and fractures and bruises. The weaknesses one knew about, tried not to think about, observed in other people, overheard in shop conversations. I was developing sensibilities about health I had never had before. Did the acquisition of immortality simply make one more aware of death?

  I said to Lareen: “How long does this take?”

  “Altogether, about two or three weeks. There’ll be a short recovery period after the operation tomorrow. As soon as the consultant thinks you’re ready, the enzyme injections will start.”

  “I can’t stand injections,” I said.

  “They don’t use hypodermic needles. It’s a bit more sophisticated than that. Anyway, you won’t be aware of the treatment.”

  “You mean I’ll be anaesthetized?” A sudden dread.

  “No, but once the first injections are made you’ll become semi-conscious. It probably sounds frightening, but most patients have said they found it pleasant.”

  I valued my hold on consciousness. Once, when I was twelve, I was knocked off my bicycle by a bully, and suffered concussion and three days’ retrospective amnesia. The loss of those three days was the central mystery of my childhood. Although I was unconscious for less than half an hour, my return to awareness was accompanied by a sense of oblivion behind me. When I returned to school, sporting a black eye and a splendidly lurid bandage around my forehead, I was brought face to face with the fact that those three days had not only existed, but that I had existed within them. There had been lessons and games and writ ten exercises, and presumably conversations and arguments, yet I could remember none of them. During those days I must have been alert, conscious and self-aware, feeling the continuity of memory, sure of my identity and existence. An event that followed them, though, eradicated them, just as one day death would erase all memory. It was my first experience of a kind of death, and since then, although unconsciousness itself was not to be feared, I saw memory as the key to sentience. I existed as long as I remembered.

  “Lareen, are you an athanasian?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then you’ve never experienced the treatment.”

  “I’ve worked with patients for nearly twenty years. I can’t claim any more than that.”

  “But you don’t know what it feels like,” I said.

  “Not directly, no.”

  “The truth is, I’m scared of losing my memory.”

  “I understand that. My job here is to help you regain it afterwards. But it’s inevitable that you must lose what you now have as your memory.”

  “Why is it inevitable?”

  “It’s a chemical process. To give you longevity we must stop the brain deteriorating. In the normal thanatic body brain cells never replicate, so your mental ability steadily declines. Every day you lose thousands of brain cells. What we do here is induce replication in the cells, so that however long you live your mental capacity is unimpaired. But when the replication begins, the new cellular activity brings almost total amnesia.”

  “That’s precisely what frightens me,” I said. A mind sliding away, life receding, continuity lost.

  “You’ll experience nothing that will scare you. You will enter the fugue state, which is like being in a continuous dream. In this, you’ll see images from your life, remember journeys and meetings, people will seem to speak to you, you will feel able to touch, experience emotions. Your mind will be giving up what it contains. It’s just your own life.”

  The hold released, sentience dying. Entry into fugue, where the only reality was dream.

  “And when I come round I’ll remember nothing about it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s what surgeons always say, isn’t it? They believe it comforts people.”

  “It’s true. You’ll wake up here in this chalet. I’ll be here, and your friend, Seri.”

  I wanted to see Seri. I wanted Lareen to go away.

  “But I’ll have no memory,” I said. “They’ll destroy my memory.”

  “It can be replaced. That’s my job.”

  In the fugue the dream dispersed, leaving a void. Life returned later, in the form of this calm-eyed, patient woman, returning my memories to me as if she were a hand writing words on blank paper.

  I said: “Lareen, how can I know that afterwards I’ll be the same?”

  “Because nothing in you will be changed, except your capacity to live.”

  “But I am what I remember. If you take that away I cannot be the same person again.”

  “I’m trained to restore your memory, Peter. To do that, you’ve got to help me now.”

  She produced an attractively packaged folder, containing a thick wad of partially printed pages.

  “There isn’t as much time as we would normally have, but you should be able to manage this during the evening.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “You must be as frank and truthful as possible,” Lareen said, passing the folder to me. “Use as much space as you like. There’s spare paper in the desk.”

  The papers felt heavy, auguring hours of work. I glanced at rho first page, where I could write my name and address. Later, the questions dealt with school. Later, with friendships, sex and love. There seemed no end to the questions, each phrased carefully so as to promote frankness in my answer. I found that I could not read them, that the words blurred as I flicked the pages across.

  For the first time since sentence of death had been pronounced on me, I felt the stirrings of revolt. I had no intention of answering these questions.

  “I don’t need this,” I said to Lareen. I tossed the questionnaire on to the desk. “I’ve already written my autobiography, and you’ll have to use that.”

  I turned away from her, feeling angry.

  “You heard what the doctor said, Peter. If you don’t co-operate they’ll make you leave the island tonight.”

  “I’m co-operating, but I’m not going to answer those questions. It’s all written down already.”

  “Where is it? Can I see it?”

  My manuscript was on my bed, where I had left it. I gave it to her. For some reason I was unable to look at her. As it was briefly in my hands the manuscript had transmitted a sense of reassurance, a link with what was soon to become my forgotten past.

  I heard Lareen turn a few of the pages, and when I looked back at her she was reading quickly from the third or fourth page. She glanced at the last page, then set it aside.

  “When did you write this?”

  “Two years ago.”

  Lareen stared at the pages. “I don’t like working without the questionnaire. How do I know you’ve left nothing out?”

  “Surely that’s my risk?” I said. “Anyway, it’s complete.” I described the way I had written, how I had set myself the task of expressing wholeness and truth on paper.

  She turned again to the last page. “It isn’t finished. Do you realize that?”

  “I was interrupted, but it doesn’t matter. I was almost at the end, and although I did try to finish it later, it seemed better the way it is.” Lareen said nothing, watching me and manipulating more from me. Resisting her, I said: “It’s unfinished because my life is unfinished.”

  “If you wrote it two years ago, what’s happened since?”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?” I was still feeling hostile to her, yet in spite of this her str
ategic silences continued to influence me. Another came, and I was unable to resist it. “When I wrote the manuscript I found that my life formed into patterns, and that everything I had done fitted into them. Since I finished writing I’ve found that it’s still true, that all I’ve done in the last two years has just added details to a shape.”

  “I’ll have to take this away and read it,” Lareen said.

  “All right. But take care of it.”

  “Of course I’ll be careful.”

  “I feel it’s a part of me, something that can’t be replaced.”

  “I could replicate it for you,” Lareen said, and laughed as if she had made a joke. “I mean, I’ll get it photocopied for you. Then you can have the original back and I’ll work with the copy.”

  I said: “That’s what they’re going to do to me, isn’t it? I’m going to be photocopied. The only difference is that I won’t get the original back. I’ll be given the copy, but the original will be blank.”

  “It was only a joke, Peter.”

  “I know, but you made me think.”

  “Do you want to reconsider filling out my questionnaire? If you don’t trust the manuscript—”

  “It’s not that I distrust,” I said. “I live by what I wrote, because I am what I wrote.”

  I closed my eyes, turning away from her again. How could I ever forget that obsessive writing and rewriting, the warm summer, the hillside view of Jethra? I particularly remembered being on the verandah of the villa I had borrowed from Colan the evening I made my most exciting discovery: that recollection was only partial, that the artistic recreation of the past constituted a higher truth than mere memory. Life could be rendered in metaphorical terms; these were the patterns I mentioned to Lareen. The actual details of, for instance, my years at school were only of incidental interest, yet considered metaphorically, as an experience of learning and growing, they became a larger, higher event. I related to them directly, because they had been my own experiences, but they were also related to the larger body of human experience because they dealt with the verities. Had I merely recounted the humdrum narrative, the catalogue of anecdotal details in literal memory, I should have been telling only half the story.

  I could not separate myself from my context, and in this my manuscript became a wholeness, describing my living, describing my life.

  I therefore knew that to answer Lareen’s questionnaire would produce only half-truths. There was no room for elaboration in literal answers, no capacity for metaphor, or for story.

  Lareen was glancing at her wristwatch.

  “Do you know it’s after three?” she said. “You missed lunch, and you’re not allowed food after four.”

  “Can I get a meal at this time?”

  “At the refectory. Tell the staff you’re starting treatment tomorrow, and they’ll know what to give you.”

  “Where’s Seri? Shouldn’t she be back by now?”

  “I told her not to be back before five.”

  “I want her with me tonight,” I said.

  “That’s up to you and her. She mustn’t be here when you go up to the clinic.”

  I said: “But afterwards, can I see her then?”

  “Of course you can. We’ll both need her.” Lareen had tucked my manuscript under her arm, ready to take it away, but now she pulled it out again. “How much does Seri know about you, about your background?”

  “We’ve talked a bit while we were travelling. We both talked about ourselves.”

  “Look, I’ve had an idea.” Lareen held out the manuscript for me to take. “I’ll read this later, while you’re in the clinic. Tonight, let Seri read this, and talk to her about it. The more she knows about you the better. It could be very important.”

  I took the manuscript back, thinking of the way my life and privacy were being invaded. In writing of myself I had exposed myself; in the manuscript I was naked. I had not written to promote or excuse myself; I had just been honest, and in the process had found myself frequently unlikable. For this reason, the very idea of someone else reading the manuscript would have been unthinkable a few weeks before. Yet two women I hardly knew were now to read my work, and presumably would know me as well as I knew myself.

  Even as I resented the intrusion a part of me rushed towards them, urging them to close scrutiny of my identity. In their interpretation, passed back to me, I would become myself again.

  After Lareen had left I walked across the sloping lawns to the refectory, and was given the authorized pre-treatment meal. The condemned man ate a light salad, and afterwards was still hungry.

  Seri reappeared in the evening, tired from being in the sun all day and walking too far. She had eaten before returning, and again I glimpsed the effect of what was happening. Already our temporary liaison was disrupted: we spent a day apart, ate meals at different times. Afterwards our lives would proceed at different paces. I talked to her about what had happened during the day, what I had learned.

  “Do you believe them?” she said.

  “I do now.”

  Seri placed her hands on the sides of my face, touching my temples with light fingertips. “They think you will die.”

  “They’re hoping it won’t happen tonight,” I said. “Very bad for publicity.”

  “You mustn’t excite yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Separate beds tonight.”

  “The doctor said nothing about sex.”

  “No, but I did.”

  The energy had gone out of her teasing, and I sensed a growing silence within her. She was acting like a concerned relative before an operation, making bad-taste jokes about bedpans and enemas, covering up a darker fear.

  I said: “Lareen wants you to help with the rehabilitation.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I can’t imagine it without you. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

  “You know why I’m here, Peter.” She hugged me then, but turned away after a few seconds, looking down.

  “I want you to read something this evening,” I said. “Lareen suggested it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I haven’t enough time to answer her questionnaire,” I said, fudging the answer. “But before I left home I wrote a manuscript. My life story. Lareen’s seen it, and she’s going to use it for the rehabilitation. If you read it this evening, I can talk to you about it.”

  “How long is it?”

  “Quite long. More than two hundred pages, but it’s typewritten. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Where is it?”

  I passed it to her.

  “Why don’t you just talk to me, like you did on the boat?” She was holding the manuscript loosely, letting the pages spread. “I feel this is, well, something you wrote for yourself, something private.”

  “It’s what you’ve got to use.” I started to explain my motives for writing it, what I had been trying to do, but Seri moved away to the other bed and began to read. She turned the pages quickly, as if she was only skimming, and I wondered how much of it she could take in with such a superficial reading.

  I watched her as she went through the First chapter, the long explanatory passage where I was working out my then dilemma, my series of misfortunes, my justification for self-examination. She reached the second chapter, and because I was watching closely I noticed that she paused on the first page and read the opening paragraph again. She looked back to the first chapter.

  She said: “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shouldn’t you read a bit more?”

  “I don’t understand.” She put down the pages and looked at me over them. “I thought you said you came from Jethra?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why do you say you were born somewhere else?” She looked again at the word. “‘London’…where’s that?”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “That’s an invented name…it’s difficult to explain. It’s Jethra really, but I was trying to convey
the idea that as you grow up the place you’re in seems to change. ‘London’ is a state of mind. It describes my parents, I suppose, what they were like and where they were living when I was born.”

  “Let me read,” Seri said, not looking at me, staring down at the page.

  She read more slowly now, checking back several times. I began to feel uncomfortable, interpreting her difficulties as a form of criticism. Because I had defined myself to myself, because I had never imagined that anyone else would ever read it, I had taken for granted that my method would be obvious. Seri, the first person in the world to read my book, frowned and read haltingly, turning the pages forward and back.

  “Give it back to me,” I said at last. “I don’t want you to read any more.”

  “I’ve got to,” she said. “I’ve got to understand.”

  But time passed and not much was clear to her. She started asking me questions:

  “Who is Felicity?”

  “What are the Beatles?”

  “Where is Manchester, Sheffield, Piraeus?”

  “What is England, and which island is it on?”

  “Who is Gracia, and why has she tried to kill herself?”

  “Who was Hitler, what war are you talking about, which cities had they bombed?”

  “Who is Alice Dowden?”

  “Why was Kennedy assassinated?”

  “When were the sixties, what is marijuana, what is a psychedelic rock?”

  “You’ve mentioned London again…I thought it was a state of mind?”

  “Why do you keep talking about Gracia?”

  “What happened at Watergate?”

  I said, but Seri did not seem to hear: “There’s a deeper truth in fiction, because memory is faulty.”

  “Who is Gracia?”

  “I love you, Seri,” I said, but the words sounded hollow and unconvincing, even to me.

  16

  “I love you, Gracia,” I said, kneeling on the threadbare carpet beside her. She was sprawled against the bed, half on, half off, no longer crying but silent. I was always uncomfortable when she said nothing, because it became impossible to comprehend her. Sometimes she was silent because she was hurt, sometimes because she simply had nothing to say, but sometimes because it was her way of taking revenge on me. She said my own silences were manipulative of her. Thus the complexities doubled, and I no longer knew how to behave. Even her anger was sometimes false, leading me to a response that she would call predictable; inevitably when her anger was real I took her less seriously, infuriating her more.