The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

  The first of the two came from the way in which we worked.

  A typical day would begin with either Seri or Lareen waking me. They would give me food, and in the early days help me wash and dress, and use the lavatory. When I was sitting up, either in bed or in one of the chairs, Doctor Corrob would call to make one of his perfunctory examinations of me. After that, the two women would settle down to the serious work of the day.

  To teach me they used large files of papers, which were frequently consulted. Some of these papers were handwritten, but the majority, in a large and rather dog-eared heap, were typewritten.

  Of course I listened with close attention: my craving for knowledge was rarely satisfied in one of these sessions. But simply because I was listening so attentively, I kept noticing inconsistencies.

  They showed themselves in different ways between the two women.

  Lareen was the one of whom I was more wary. She seemed strict and demanding, and there was often a sense of strain in her. She appeared to be doubtful of many of the things she talked to me about, and naturally this colouration transferred itself to my understanding. Where she doubted, I doubted. She rarely referred to the typewritten pages.

  Seri, though, transmitted uncertainties in another way. Whenever she spoke I became aware of contradictions. It was as if she was inventing something for me. She almost always used the typewritten sheets, but she never actually read from them. She would sit with them before her, and use them as notes for what she was saying. Sometimes she would lose track, or would correct herself; sometimes she would even stop what she was saying and tell me to ignore it. When she worked with Lareen beside her she was tense and anxious, and her corrections and ambiguities came more often. Lareen several times interceded while Seri was speaking, drawing my attention to her instead. Once, in a state of obvious tension, the two women left me abruptly and walked together across the lawns, speaking intently; when they returned, Seri was red-eyed and subdued.

  But because Seri was kind to me, and kissed me, and stayed with me until I fell asleep, I believed her more. Seri had her own uncertainties, and so she seemed more human. I was devoted to them both, but Seri I loved.

  These contradictions, which I carefully stored in my mind and thought about when I was alone, interested me more than all the bare facts I was learning. I failed to understand them, though.

  Only when the second kind of distraction grew in importance was I able to make patterns.

  Because soon I started having fragmentary memories of my illness.

  I still knew very little about what had been done to me. That I had undergone some form of major surgery was obvious. My head had been shaved, and there was an ugly pattern of scar tissue on my neck and lower skull, behind my left ear. Smaller operation scars were on my chest, back and lower abdomen. In an exact parallel with my mental state, I was weak but I felt fit and energetic.

  Certain mental images haunted me. They did so from the time I was first aware, but only when I found out what was real in the world could I identify these images as phantasms. After much thought I concluded that at some point in my illness I must have been delirious.

  These images therefore had to be flashing memories of my life before my illness!

  I saw and recognized faces, I heard familiar voices, I felt myself to be in certain places. I could not identify any of them, but they nevertheless had a quality of total authenticity.

  What was confusing about them was that they were utterly different, in tone and feeling, from the so-called facts about myself coming from Lareen and Seri.

  What was compelling about them, though, was that they were congruent with the discrepancies I was picking up from Seri.

  When she stuttered or hesitated, when she contradicted herself, when Lareen interrupted her, then it was I felt Seri was telling the truth about me.

  At times like these I wanted her to say more, to repeat her mistake. It was much more interesting! When we were alone I tried to urge her to be frank with me, but she would never admit to her errors. I was incapable of pressing her too far: my doubts were too great, I was still too confused.

  Even so, after several days of this, I knew two separate versions of myself.

  The authorized version, according to Lareen and Seri, went like this: I had been born in a city called Jethra in a country called Faiandland. My mother’s name was Cotheran Gilmoor, changed to Sinclair on her marriage to my father, Franford Sinclair. My mother was now dead. I had a sister named Kalia. She was married to a man named Yallow; this was his first name only. Kalia and Yallow lived in Jethra, and they were childless. After school I had gone to university, obtaining a good degree in chemistry. I worked for some years in industry as a formulation chemist. In the recent past I had contracted a serious brain condition, and had travelled to the island of Collago in the Dream Archipelago to receive specialist treatment. On the way to Collago I had met Seri and we had become lovers. As a consequence of the surgery I had suffered amnesia, and now Seri was working with Lareen to restore my memory.

  On one level of my mind I accepted this. The two women painted a convincing picture of the world: they told me of the war, of the neutrality of the islands, of the upheavals in most people’s lives because of the war. The geography of the world, its politics, economy, history, societies, all these were described to me plausibly and evocatively.

  The ripple of my external awareness spread to the horizon, and beyond.

  But then there was my perseveration, based on the inconsistencies, and in my inner universe the ripples collided and collapsed.

  They told me I had been born in Jethra. They showed it to me on a map, there were photographs I could look at. I was a Jethran. However, one day, describing Jethra while she glanced at the typewritten pages, Seri had accidentally said “London”. It shocked me. (In my delirium I had experienced a sensation that was located and described by the word. It was certainly a place, it might or might not have been where I was born, but it existed in my life and it was called “London”.)

  My parents. Seri and Lareen said my mother was dead. I felt no shock or surprise, because this I had known. But they told me, quite emphatically, that my father was alive. (This was an anomaly. I was confused, within my other confusions. My father was alive, my father was dead…which was it? Even Seri seemed unsure.)

  My sister. She was Kalia, two years older than me, married to Yallow. Yet once, quickly corrected by Lareen, Seri had called her “Felicity”. Another unexpected jolt: in my delirious images the sister presence was called “Felicity”. (And other doubts within doubts. When Lareen or Seri spoke of Kalia, they imparted a feeling of sibling warmth to our relationship. From Seri I sensed friction, and in my delirium I had experienced hostility and competitiveness.)

  My sister’s husband and family. Yallow featured only peripherally in my life, but when he was mentioned it was in the same terms of comforting warmth as Kalia. (I knew Yallow by another name, but I could not find it. I waited for Seri to make another slip, but in this she was consistent. I knew that “Felicity” and her husband, whom I thought of as “Yallow”, had children; they were never mentioned.)

  My illness. Something inconsistent here, but I could not trace it. (Deep inside me I was convinced I had never been ill.)

  Then, finally, Seri herself. Of all her contradictions this was the least explicable. I saw her every day for hours at a time. She was daily explaining to me, in effect, both herself and her relationship with me. In an ocean of cross-currents and hidden depths, she was the only rock of reality on to which I could crawl. Yet by her words, her sudden frowns, her gestures, her hesitations, she created doubt in me that she existed at all. (Behind her was another woman, a complement. I had no name for her, just a total belief in her existence. This other Seri, the doppelgänger, had haunted my delirium. She, “Seri”, was fraught and fickle, unreliable and temperamental, affectionate and very sexual. She invoked in me strong passions of love and protectiveness, but also of anxiety and self-int
erest. Her existence in my underlife was so deep-rooted that sometimes it was as if I could touch her, sense her fragrance, hold her thin hands in mine.)

  19

  The doubts about my identity became a permanent and familiar part of my life. If I dwelt on them I saw myself in reverse image, subtly different, like a black-and-white photograph printed from the wrong side of the negative. But my central preoccupation was my return to health, because with every day that passed I felt stronger, fitter, more equipped to return to the normal world.

  Seri and I would often go for long walks through the grounds of the clinic. Once, we went with Lareen to Collago Town and watched the bustle of the traffic and the ships in the harbour. There was a swimming pool at the clinic, as well as courts for squash and tennis. I exercised every day, enjoying the sensation of my body returning to co-ordination and fitness. I started me gaining the weight I had lost, my hair grew again, I tanned in the warm sunshine, and even the operation scars began to fade, (Doctor Corrob told me they would vanish altogether within a few weeks.)

  Meanwhile, other skills returned. I learned to read and write quite quickly, and although I had difficulty with vocabulary, Lareen lent me one of the clinic’s retraining books, and after a few hours I was in command of the language. My mental receptivity continued: anything I came across that was novel to mc could be learned—or relearned, as Lareen insisted—with speed and thoroughness.

  Soon I developed taste. Music, for instance, had been at first an intimidating scramble of noises, but later I was able to detect melody, then harmony, and then, with a sense of triumph, I discovered that some kinds of music were more enjoyable than others. Food was another area where I developed likes and dislikes. My sense of humour became tuned: I discovered that bodily functions had a limited scope for fun, and that sonic jokes were more amusing than others. Seri moved back from her hotel to live in the chalet with me.

  I was restless to be leaving the clinic. I thought I was back to normal and was tired of being treated like a child. Lareen often angered me, with her pedantic insistence that my lessons continue; my sense of taste was developing here too, and I was resenting the fact that things were still being explained to me. Now that I could read I did not see why she could not merely give me the notes she worked from, nor let me read those typewritten sheets.

  A breakthrough of sorts came with a paradox. One evening, while having dinner in the refectory with Lareen and Seri, I happened to mention I had lost the pen I had been using.

  Seri said: “It’s on the desk. I gave it to you this afternoon.”

  I remembered then, and said: “Yes, of course.”

  It was a trivial exchange, but one that made Lareen look sharply at me.

  “Had you forgotten?” she said.

  “Yes…but it doesn’t matter.”

  Suddenly, Lareen was smiling, and this in itself was so welcome a change that I smiled too, without understanding.

  “What’s funny?” I said.

  “I was beginning to think we had made you into a superman. It’s good to know you can be absent-minded.”

  Seri leaned over the table and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “Welcome back.”

  I stared at them both, feeling aggressive. They were exchanging glances, as if they had been waiting for me to do something like this.

  “Have you set me up for this?” I said to Seri.

  She laughed, but it was happily. “It just means you’re normal again. You can forget.”

  For some reason I felt sulky about this; I was a domestic pet that had learned a trick, or a child who could dress himself. Later, though, I understood better. To be able to forget—or rather, to be able to remember selectively—is an attribute of normal memory. While I was learning voraciously, accumulating facts, remembering everything, I was abnormal. Once I began to forget, I became fallible. I recalled my restlessness of the past few days, and I knew that my capacity for learning was nearly full.

  After the meal we returned to the chalet, and Lareen collected her papers.

  “I’ll recommend your discharge soon, Peter,” she said. “Perhaps by the end of the week.”

  I watched her sort her papers into a neat pile, and slip them into her folder. She put the typewritten pages into her bag.

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” she said to Seri. “I think you can tell Peter the truth about his illness.”

  The two women exchanged smiles, and again I felt that paranoia. The sense that they knew more about me than I did was grating on me.

  As soon as Lareen had left, I said: “Now what did that mean?”

  “Calm down, Peter. It’s very simple.”

  “You’ve been keeping things back from me.” And more, which I could not say; the constant awareness of the contradictions. “Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

  “Because the truth is never clear-cut.”

  Before I could contest that she told me quickly about the treatment: I had won a lottery, and the clinic had changed me so that I would live forever.

  I received this information without questioning it; I had scepticism which to test it, and anyway it was secondary to my real interest. From the revelatory manner in which Seri spoke, I was expecting something that might explain her contradictions…but nothing came.

  As far as my inner universe was concerned I had learned nothing.

  By not telling me this before, the two women had been indirectly lying. How could I ever know what other omissions and evasions there were?

  I said: “Seri, you’ve got to tell me the truth.”

  “I have done.”

  “There’s nothing else you should tell me?”

  “What else is there?”

  “How the devil do I know?”

  “Don’t lose your temper.”

  “Is that like being absent-minded? If I get angry, does that make me less than perfect? If so, I’m going to be doing it much more often.”

  “Peter, you’re an athanasian now. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “It means that one day I’m going to die, but that you never will. That almost anyone you meet will die before you do. You’ll live forever.”

  “I thought we’d agreed I was less than perfect.”

  “Oh, you’re just being stupid now!”

  She pushed past me and went out on to the verandah. I heard her walking to and fro on the wooden boards, but then she slumped into one of the chairs.

  I suppose, in spite of my resistance to the idea, that I was psychologically child-like still, because I was incapable of keeping my anger. A few moments later, full of contrition, I went out to her and put my arms around her shoulders. Seri was stiff with frustration at me and she resisted at first, but after a while she turned her head and rested her face against my shoulder. She said nothing. I listened to the night insects, and watched the flashing lights on the distant sea.

  When her breathing had steadied, I said: “I’m sorry, Seri. I love you, and I’ve no reason to be angry with you.”

  “Don’t say any more about it.”

  “I’ve got to, because I want to explain. All I can be is what you and Lareen have made me. I’ve no idea who I am or where I came from. If there’s something you haven’t shown me, or told me about, or given me to read, then I can never become that.”

  “But why should it make you angry?”

  “Because it’s frightening. If you’ve told me something untrue I’ve no power to resist it. If you’ve left something out I’ve no way of replacing it.”

  She drew away from me and sat facing me. The soft light from the window lit her face. She looked tired.

  “The opposite is true, Peter.”

  “The opposite of what?”

  “That we’re keeping something from you. We’ve done everything we can to be honest with you, but it’s been almost impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Just now…I told you
that you’ve been made into an athanasian. You hardly reacted.”

  “It means nothing to me. I don’t feel I’m immortal. I am what you’ve made me believe I am.”

  “Then believe me about this. I was with you before you took the treatment, and we talked about now, about what would happen after the operation. How can I convince you? You didn’t want the treatment because you were scared of losing your identity.”

  I suddenly had an insight into myself before this had happened: frightened of what might happen, frightened of this. Like those delirious images it was temptingly coherent. How much of him, myself, remained?

  I said: “Does everyone go through this?”

  “Yes, it’s exactly the same. The athanasia treatment causes amnesia, and all the patients have to be rehabilitated afterwards. This is what Lareen does here, but your case has given her special problems. Before you came here you wrote an account of your life. I don’t know why you wrote it, or when…but you insisted that we use it as the basis for restoring your identity. It was all a rush, there was no time. The night before the operation I read your manuscript, and I found you hadn’t written an autobiography at all! I don’t know what you would call it. I suppose it’s a novel, really.”

  “You say I wrote this?”

  “So you claimed. You said it was the only thing that told the truth about you, that you were defined by it.”

  “Is this manuscript typewritten?” I said.

  “Yes. But you see, Lareen normally works with—”

  “Is that the manuscript Lareen brings every morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why haven’t I been allowed to read it?” Something I had written before my illness; a message to myself. I had to see it!

  “It would only confuse you. It doesn’t make sense…it’s a sort of fantasy.”

  “But if I wrote it then surely I would understand it!”

  “Peter, calm down.” Seri turned away from me for a few seconds, but she reached back to take my hand. Her palm was moist. Then she said: “The manuscript, by itself, doesn’t make sense. But we’ve been able to improvise. While we were together, before you and I got to this island, you told me a few things about yourself, and the Lotterie has some details on file. There are a few clues in the manuscript. From all this we’ve pieced together your background, but it’s not completely satisfactory.”