One of the anecdotal facts taught in schools about the Dream Archipelago, and one which I heard the other passengers repeat many times, was that the islands were so numerous and so close together that from every single island at least another seven could be seen. I never doubted this, except to think it was probably an understatement; even from the relatively low eminence of the ship's deck I could frequently see more than twelve separate islands.
It was extraordinary to reflect that I had spent my life in Jethra without awareness of this totally strange place. Two days' sailing from Jethra and I felt I had travelled to another world, yet I was still closer to home than, say, the mountain passes in the north of Faiandland.
And if I continued to travel, south or west or east through the Archipelago, I could sail for months and still see the same unfolding diversity, impossible to describe, impossible even to absorb when seeing it.
Large, small, rocky, fertile, mountainous and flat; these simple variations could be seen in an afternoon, to just one side of the ship. The senses became dulled to the scenic variety, and the imagination took over. I began to see the islands as designs on a painted cyclorama, one hauled smoothly past the ship, endlessly inventive, meticulously fabricated.
But then came our ports of call, confounding the fancy.
Our brief visits to islands were the real regulators of the ship's day.
Ports disrupted everything. I soon learned this, and gave up trying to eat or sleep by the clock. The best time to sleep was mid-voyage, because then the ship had a steady rhythm to it, and the food in the restaurant was also better, because then the crew was eating.
The ship was always expected, whether we docked at noon or midnight, and its arrival was obviously an event of some importance. Crowds were generally waiting on the quay, and behind them stood rows of trucks and carts to take away the cargo and mail we brought. Then there was the chaotic exchange of deck passengers, and as they came or left there were always arguments, greetings or farewells, suddenly remembered last messages shouted to the shore, disrupting our otherwise placid existence. In the ports we were reminded that we were a ship: something that called, something that carried, something from outside.
I always left the ship when I could, and made brief explorations of the little towns. My impressions were superficiaclass="underline" I felt like a tourist, unable to see beyond the war memorials and palm trees to the people beyond. Yet the Archipelago was not meant for tourists, and the towns had no guides or currency exchanges, no museums of local culture. On several islands I tried to buy picture postcards to send home, but when at last I found some I discovered that mail to the north could only be sent by special permit. By trial and error I worked out a few things for myself: the usage of the archaic non-decimal currency, the difference between the various kinds of bread and meat on sale, and a ruleof-thumb guide to how prices compared with home.
Mathilde sometimes accompanied me on these expeditions, and her presence was enough to blind me to surroundings. All the time I was with her I knew I was nlaking a mistake, yet she continued to attract me. I think we were both relieved, although in my case it was a perverse kind of relief, when on the fourth day we came to Semell Town and she disembarked. We went through the motions of making all arrangement to meet again, even though her voice was glib with insincerity. When she was ashore I stood by the ship's rail and watched her walk along the concrete wharf, her pale hair shining in the sunlight. A car was waiting to meet her. I saw a man load her bags into the back, and before she climbed in she turned towards the ship. She waved briefly to me, then she was gone.
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 newt 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. Bluegreen hills ran hack 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 emigrés, or the indigenous islanders. Depictions of the sort of small islands I had been passing were rare; there was more plot material in a heavily populated place like Muriseay. Roniantic 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.