Returning to Mill, there is not much I can say about it as a place. It is murderously hot here most of the year. We have snakes, hostile bats and large poisonous insects, but you learn to live with them. The ‘winter’ is short. The only difference between that and the rest of the year is that it rains day and night for three weeks. It remains almost as hot and the humidity is awful.
All the Ferredy islands are small. They are considered uniquely scenic and unspoiled. We have a few hills, hundreds of beaches, long stretches of forest, few roads, no railways, no airport. Everyone gets around by boat. The lagoon is fringed with many tall trees. Because the place is so photogenic you often see photographers or film crews working around the lagoon. They idealize the place but they would feel differently if they had to live here. My parents’ house is in a shallow valley where there is a stream and a view of the lagoon. There is a small town on the other side of our island, with a dentist, doctor, a few shops, a hotel, not much else. I want to leave!
My first name is Moylita, and thank you for asking. It’s a family first name, back through at least the last two generations. My mother is also called Moylita. I do normally sign my name with an initial, but I have been wondering, should I get any of my work published, if I should stay with that or use my full name. Do you have any suggestions?
You see, I am determined to ignore your depressing advice about not trying to be a writer! I am going to make good.
Yours sincerely,
Moylita Kaine
Dear Mr Kammeston,
I am extremely sorry I suggested paying you a visit on Piqay. I realize how presumptuous it must have seemed to you, and I will not mention it again. I know how busy you must be.
Yours sincerely,
Moylita Kaine
Dear Mr Kammeston,
I cannot tell you how surprised and pleased I was to hear from you again.
I assumed I had mortally offended you, because your last letter, nearly three years ago, was so terse and final. It is wonderful to receive your latest letter, sounding so full of life and at ease with yourself. I know that many good things must have happened for you in the intervening period, and I am happy to respond to your friendly enquiries.
But let me say immediately that although your last letter did upset me for a while, I soon realized I was the one who had overstepped the mark.
I want to bring you up to date with what I have been doing, partly because you have so kindly enquired, but also because so many things have changed in my life.
Yes, I did travel to Muriseay as I had been intending. I stayed on for much longer than originally planned. While I was there I was able to buy copies of all your books, including Exile in Limbo, the one you told me you were writing. It is of course a marvellous novel, everything I had hoped. For me, reading it was even more thrilling than usual, having known just a little about it while it was in progress.
In addition, I found a job on Muriseay, I found a place to live and, after a few months of uncertainty about what either of us really wanted, a husband. His name is Rarq, he is a teacher, and although we live on Muriseay we recently travelled back to Mill because my mother has been ill. Your letter was waiting for me here when I arrived. We shall be staying for a while longer but if you choose to write back to me please send to the poste restante address at the top of this letter. We will be returning to Muriseay soon because Rarq has to start a new semester.
I do understand the explanation you have given me, in your most recent letter, about why you felt you had to pour cold water on my literary aspirations. You are completely right: I did half-expect you to write back, give me a pat on the head and tell me everything was going to be fine. I should have known that you of all writers would never do such a thing.
I could not say this before. When you tried to put me off I was at first saddened because I thought you weren’t taking me seriously. But then I realized what should have been obvious all along, that you could not have read a single word I have written. It must be what you say to all young people who ask you about becoming a writer. I imagine you receive many letters of the same sort as mine. Once I realized that what you said wasn’t personal I knew what I had to do. I guess now that it was what you intended all along. You made me think hard, made me consider my priorities, made me test my level of ambition and judge my ability as honestly as possible. In short you stiffened my resolve.
I am not yet a real author, in the sense of having a book published, but for the last two or three years I have been submitting poems and short stories to various magazines, and several of them have been accepted and printed. I have even made a little money. I don’t suppose you have seen them and I’m not hoping, by mentioning them to you now, that you will ask to see them.
However, I have also started a little book reviewing, and I am wondering if you already know about this? Was it this that led you to writing to me again, and in such a friendly way? Because (in case it did somehow elude you) one of the first novels I was given to review was Exile in Limbo! And the review was not for some small-circulation literary magazine, but for the Islander Daily Times. I could hardly believe my luck when they offered the book to me for review. I now have two copies!
I hope you have read my review. If not I will certainly send you a cutting from the newspaper. I want it to please you, although I am familiar with something you said recently in an interview, that you never read reviews of your novels. Perhaps sometimes you are willing to make an exception to this rule?
All the time I was reading Exile I wanted simply to lay it aside and talk to you about it. My review is of course quite restrained and objective, but perhaps if you were to read it you would realize just how important to me this book really was.
Finally, the news that is for me the biggest of all. I said that I am not yet a published novelist, and I am not. But I am just about at the point of completing my first novel. If I hadn’t had to visit my sick mother I should probably have finished it by now. I feel as if I have been writing it for most of my life.
I know I began it not long after our first round of letters, so you can see how many years it has taken. It is extremely long and fantastically complex. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to keep all the details of the story in my head as I wrote. It is largely based on the ideas and social theories of one of the people I most admire, Caurer of Rawthersay – I know you must know of her, because she has often cited your novels and your ideas in her essays and presentations. I have called her ‘Hilde’ in the novel.
Writers of course give invented names to their characters, but sometimes readers try to see through that. I’m aware that will probably happen with my book, but I hope and suspect that few people will be able to connect Hilde with Caurer. I genuinely believe I have assimilated Caurer’s work and created Hilde as an embodiment of her ideas, rather than giving her Caurer’s appearance or personality.
I feel safe in confiding this to you. I have always sensed that you are the moral and intellectual equal of Caurer.
Well, although I know nothing is certain, I am confident I will find a publisher for the novel. I now have a literary agent and she tells me she has already received enquiries from two companies in Muriseay. Naturally, I shall let you know the moment it becomes certain.
Meanwhile, I should love to know if you have ever met Caurer?
In closing, let me repeat how pleased I am to be back in contact with you. I loved receiving your letter and I have read it a dozen times already. I am sorry this reply is so long, but it is thrilling to me that we are writing to each other again.
We are both a little older than we were before, but one matter has not changed in any way. I believe you are our greatest living writer and that your finest work is yet to come. I am impatient to read it.
Yours affectionately,
Moylita K
Dear Mr Kammeston,
Nine months have gone by since I last wrote to you, and still you do not reply. I have learned from your unexpected silences that you are
easily upset by the simplest or most innocently intended remarks, so I have to assume that something I said in that letter has offended you.
I have searched my conscience and scoured my memory, but I cannot think for the life of me what it might have been.
All I can say is that I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart. If I gave offence it was unintentional, or maybe just clumsy. I would ask your forgiveness, even though I realize that something complex and deeply personal has been disagreeable to you from knowing me. I have no idea what it might be.
If you feel unable to continue with this correspondence then I must of course respect your wishes.
I want to say in closing that I shall always treasure having exchanged a few letters with you. No matter what, I shall forever love the work that you do, and encourage other people to read it as intently as I always have.
Yours sincerely,
Moylita Kaine
PS: My publishers have just sent me my presentation copies of my first novel, The Affirmation. As it is dedicated to you I hope you will accept the enclosed copy, which I send in all humility and the hope you will understand everything that lies behind it.
MK
FOORT
BE WELCOME
FOORT is of medium size, one of the Manlayl group of islands in the northern subtropical zone. Its name in patois is rendered as BE WELCOME, of which there is more to say.
Foort has several features which make it unusual, not to say unique, in the Archipelago. One of these is that it has a self-sustaining economy. It is almost entirely independent of other islands. It exports nothing and imports only essentials. Few people from other islands ever visit it; few residents of Foort ever travel to other islands. There is a ferry service but the ships that call do so at irregular intervals and are invariably en route to somewhere else. Foort is a brief stopping place, a port of call. In many ways, Foort is an island that is in but not of the Archipelago.
As facilities for visitors are few, and it has little of historical or cultural interest, we shall not devote much space to it in this gazetteer. One of our researchers did visit the island in the preparation of this book, so we know our information is up to date. For the sake of completeness, and the likelihood that some of our readers will have relatives living on Foort, here are a few facts about the place.
Firstly, its patois name is a fake. There never was an indigenous population who would make you welcome. Throughout the island you will see odd references to the island’s mythical past, restaurants and streets and parking lots named after presumed indigenous greats or events of the past – our researcher noted in Foort Town that there was a ‘King Alph’ housing development, a market square named ‘Victory Plaza’, a bistro called the ‘Old Castle Restaurant’, and so on. All this is false. Until the modern property developers moved in, Foort was a barren island of sandy soil and rocky foreshore, with a single mountain at the western end and a range of sand dunes in the east.
A more accurate patois name would be ISLAND OF CONDOMINIUM. The gleaming white towers of Foort dominate the skyline as you approach from any direction across the sea.
The only low or humble buildings on Foort are those of the people who have flocked to the island in search of work. They are the builders, cleaners, security guards, domestic servants, drivers, gardeners, shop-keepers.
There are twenty-seven golf courses on Foort. There are more than one hundred digital television channels. There are five private airstrips. Restaurants and wine bars are found in every street. Alcohol is inexpensive. Nursing and residential homes are numerous. There are three cinemas, one theatre, several dance halls and five casinos. There is a large lending library, with a range of books but a much wider range of videos imported from the northern countries. Every condo is surrounded by a gated private park. The beaches are clean and patrolled by security guards.
There are no massage parlours, strip joints, table-dancing bars or escort services, and there is no red light district. Violent crime does not occur on Foort, but there are occasional cases of dishonesty and these are dealt with effectively by the authorities. Havenic regulations are non-existent, but shelterate laws are in existence. Anti-importunate rules are strict, and erotomanes are not tolerated.
On the extreme eastern edge of the island there is reputed to be a sand dune which lights up at night. Speculating that this might be one of the coastal installations built by the artist Tamarra Deer Oy, who is known to have spent time on Foort, our researcher went to the location. He was unable to find it, or at least to pick out which of the many hundreds of dunes it might be. He met several people who claimed to have seen it, but two of them told him that the power supply was intermittent and in need of repair. No one knew how to do that. Oy himself left Foort a long time before.
There are few freshwater springs on Foort, and no rivers. All water on the island is either recycled or produced by the huge desalination plant on the north coast. A light pall of pollution, created by the plant, as well as by the heavy traffic and the thousands of air-conditioning devices in the condos, hangs over the island.
There is a network of roads that serve all parts of the island. Traffic is continuous, night and day. Every urban street has a track alongside it, used by the mobility vehicles of the halt and the elderly.
The biggest service and retail industries on the island are based on property: the supply of furniture and flooring, painting and decorating, garden maintenance, and so on. The demand from buyers for property is normally matched by the availability caused by death or incapacity. Almost the entire population is expatriate, people who have chosen to abandon the rigours of life under the wartime economies of the northern countries. Apart from the expense of buying property on the open market there are no immigration restrictions, although a return to the mainland is made difficult to the point of impossibility.
People from both warring alliances are welcome on Foort, and all mainland languages are spoken. Although the seignioral authorities maintain there is no zoning in Foort Town, people from the Faiand Alliance do tend to live in one part of the town, the Glaundians in another. There are expat-themed events all year round, with nostalgic playing of familiar music, cooking of traditional dishes and the wearing of folk costumes. Our researcher attended one of these events, and was surprised not only by how late at night it ran, but how uncontrollably drunk most of the people became.
Currency: all.
GANNTEN ASEMANT
FRAGRANT SPRING
GANNTEN ASEMANT is one of the smaller islands in the Gannten Chain. Its existence would barely be known outside the Chain if it were not for one remarkable event, which was a personal appearance by the artist Dryd Bathurst.
The occasion was a retrospective exhibition of his works, in which many of his smaller pieces were planned to be included, while four or five of his epic oils would also be hung. The gallery set the date for the private view and sent invitations to a select number of guests. Although there were not many of them they did live in many different parts of the Archipelago. Because of the distances involved, the invitations went out a long way ahead of the event. The select few were all known admirers of Bathurst’s work, regular patrons or representatives of major galleries, or his professional acquaintances and colleagues. Because of Bathurst’s itinerant ways, and his habit of arriving unannounced and departing in haste, few of these people had previously met him in person.
The press and visual media were not invited to the show. Bathurst had a lifelong aversion to publicity, both for himself and for his work. He never allowed TV cameras anywhere near him or his paintings, so no one present was expecting to see any of the television channels there. However, the almost total absence of print or internet journalists was surprising to some. It implied that Bathurst was entering a new and perhaps contradictory period of his life. The exhibition itself suggested he was seeking acceptance. The absence of the media indicated he wanted to shun fame.
In fact, one reporter did turn up, having blagge
d a ticket from another invitee. The journalist was a young trainee called Dant Willer, who was working on the local newspaper, the Ganntenian News. As events turned out, this young reporter’s presence transformed what was intended to be a private party into an incident with many consequences.
The gallery was a small and until then insignificant one, called the Blue Lagoon. Before Bathurst’s arrival on the island it was known only for local paintings by enthusiasts and amateurs, sold to tourists. For the gallery owner, a man called Jel Toomer, it was a genuine scoop, because at this time Bathurst’s reputation, personal as well as professional, was a constant talking point.
His distinction as a painter of symbolic or portentous landscapes was never higher, with wealthy collectors practically fighting with each other to buy his huge canvases. In addition, there was a veritable industry of theoretical, analytical and academic papers attempting to unravel the enigmas perceived in the paintings.
His wider influence was also felt in the work of scores of young or emerging artists who were eager to identify themselves as socius Bathurst Imagists.
He was also routinely denigrated as an exhibitionist, a dauber, a plagiarist, a populist, a coxcomb, an obscurantist and an opportunist. Much else was said – privately, but in a more energetically vindictive and heartfelt way – by a string of husbands, fathers, fiancés and brothers, on a large number of islands throughout the Archipelago.
Dryd Bathurst’s celebrity was not then wholly for his work. Endless tittle-tattle and gossip surrounded the more public aspects of his private life, filling the popular tabloids and celebrity magazines, which otherwise had no discernible interest in art. Stories about Bathurst’s exploits, and alleged exploits, were told, re-told and endlessly embellished.
The Islanders Page 10
