How could English spread through the Anchipelago as the language of authority, of the professions, of newspapers, of shopkeepers?
Like everything now, it heightened my trust of the inner life, deepened my distrust of external reality.
The further north we sailed, the fewer were the passengers on board. The nights were cool, and I spent more time inside my cabin. On the last day I woke with a feeling that I was now ready to land. I spent the morning in reading through my manuscript for the last time, feeling that at last I could read it with total understanding.
It seemed to me that it could be read on three levels.
The first was contained in the words I had actually written, the typewritten text, describing those anecdotes and experiences which had so confused Seri.
Then there were the pencilled substitutions and deletions made by Seri and Lareen.
Finally there was what I had _not_ written: the spaces between the lines, the allusions, the deliberate omissions and the confident assumptions.
I who had been written about. I who had been assumed to have written. I of whom I remembered, for whom I could anticipate.
In my words was the life I had lived before the treatment on Collago. In Seri's amendments was the life I had assumed, existing imi quotes and faint pencil markings. In my omissions was the life I would return to.
Where the manuscript was blank, I had defined my future.
24
There was one last island before Jethra: a high, grim place called Seevl, approached at evening. All I knew of Seevl was that Seri told me she had been born there, that it was the closest island to Jethra. Our call in Seevl seemed unusually long: a lot of people disembarked and a considerable quantity of cargo was loaded. I paced the deck impatiently, wanting to finish my long journey.
Night fell while we were in Seevl Town, but once we had left the confined harbour and rounded a dark, humping headland, I could see the lights of an immense city on the low coastline ahead. The wind was cold and there was a considerable ground swell.
The ship was quiet; I was one of the few passengers aboard.
Then someone came and stood behind me, and without turning I knew who it was.
Seri said: "Why did you run away from me?"
"I wanted to go home."
She slipped lien hand around my arm and pressed herself against me. She was shivering.
"Are you angry with me for following you?"
"No, of course not." I put my arm around her, kissed her on the side of her cold face. She was wearing a thin blouson over her shirt. "How did you find me?"
"I got to Seevl. All the ships for Jethra stop there. It was just a question of waiting for the right one to come."
"But why did you follow?"
"I want to be with you. I don't want you to be in Jethra."
"It's not Jethra I'm going to."
"Yes it is. Don't delude yourself."
The city lights were nearer now, sharply visible over the blackly heaving swell. The clouds above were a dark and smudgy orange, reflecting the glow. Behind us, the few islands still in sight were indistinct, neutral shapes. I felt them slipping away from me, a release from the psyche.
"This is where I live," I said. "I don't belong in the islands."
"But you've become a part of them. You can't just put them behind you."
"That's all I _can_ do."
"Then you'll leave me too."
"I had already made that decision. I didn't want you to follow." She released my arm and moved away. I went after her and held her again. I tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away. "Seri, don't make it more difficult. I've got to go back to where I came from."
"It won't be what you expect. You'll find yourself in Jethra, and that's not what you're looking for."
"I know what I'm doing." I thought of the emphatic nature of the manuscript: the inarguable blankness of what was to come.
The ship had hove to a long way from the entrance to the harbour. A pilot cutter was coming out, black against the city-bright sea.
"Peter, please don't go on with this."
"There's someone I'm trying to find."
"Who is it?"
"You've read the manuscript," I said. "Her name is Gracia."
"Please stop. You're going to hurt yourself. You mustn't believe anything written in that manuscript. You said at the clinic that you understood, that everything it said was a kind of fiction. Gracia doesn't exist, London doesn't exist. You imagined it all."
"You were with me in London once," I said. "You were jealous of Gracia then, you said she upset you."
"I've never been out of the islands!" She glanced at the glowing city, and the hair flattened across her eyes. "I've never even been there, to Jethra."
"I was living with Gracia, and you were there too."
"Peter, we met in Muriseay, when I was working for the Lotterie."
"No . . . I can remember everything now," I said.
She faced me, and I sensed something new. "If that was so, you wouldn't be looking for Gracia. You know the truth is that Gracia's dead! She killed herself two years ago, when you had a row, before you went away to write your manuscript. When she died you couldn't admit it was your fault. You felt guilty, you were unhappy ... all right. But you mustn't believe that she's still alive, just because your manuscript says so."
Her words shocked me; I could feel the earnestness in her.
"How do you know this?" I said.
"Because you told me in Muriseay. Before we left for Collago."
"But that's the period I can't remember. It's not in the manuscript."
"Then you can't remember everything!" Seri said. "We had to wait a few days for the next ship to Collago. We were staying imi Muriseay Town. I had a flat there, and you moved in with me. Because I knew what would happen when you took the treatment, I was getting you to tell me everything about your past. You told me then . . . about Gracia. She committed suicide, and you borrowed a house from a friend and you went there to write everything out of your system."
"I don't remember," I said. Behind us the pilot cutter had come alongside, and two men in uniform were boarding the ship. "Is Gracia her real name?"
"It's the only name you told me . . . the same as in the manuscript."
"Did I tell you where I went to write the manuscript?"
"In the Murinan Hills. Outside Jethra."
"The friend who lent me the house . . . was his name Cohan?"
"That's right."
One of Seri's insertions: pencil above typewritten line. Underneath Colan's name, scored through lightly, Edwin Miller, friend of the family.
Between the two names a space, a blankness, a room painted white, a sense of landscape spreading out through the white walls, a sea filled with islands.
"I know Gracia's alive," I said. "I know because every page of my story is imbued with her. I wrote it for her, because I wanted to find her again."
"You wrote it because you blamed yourself for her death."
"You took me to the islands, Seri, but they were wrong and I had to reject you. You said I had to surrender to the islands to find myself. I did that, and I'm free of them. I've done what you wanted." Seri seemed not to be listening. She was staring away from me, across the heaving water to the headlands and moors black behind the city. "Gracia's alive now because you're alive. As long as I can feel you and see you, Gracia's alive."
"Peter, you're lying to yourself. You know it isn't true."
"I understand the tnuth, because I found it once."
"There's no such thing as truth. You are living by your manuscript, and everything in it is false."
We stared together towards Jethra, divided by a definition.
Thene was a delay on the ship, a hoisting of a new flag, then at last we moved forward at half speed, steering a course, avoiding hidden underwater obstacles. I was impatient to land, to discover the city.