EIGHTEEN

This much I knew for sure:

My name was Peter Sinclair, I was thirty-one years old, and I was safe. Beyond this, all was uncertain.

There were people looking after me, and they went to great lengths to reassure me about myself. I was totally dependent on them, and I was devoted to them all. There were two women and a man. One of them was an attractive, fair-haired young woman called Seri Fulten. She and I were extremely fond of each other because she was always kissing me, and, when no one else was around, she played with my genitals. The other woman was older; her name was Lareen Dobey, and although she tried to be kind to me I was a little frightened of her. The man was a doctor named Corrob. He visited me twice a day, but I never grew to know him very well. I felt rejected by him.

I had been seriously ill but now I was recovering. They told me that as soon as I was better I should be able to lead a normal life, and there was no chance of a relapse. This was very reassuring to know, because I was in pain for a lot of the time. At first my head was bandaged, my heart rate and blood pressure were constantly monitored, and a number of smaller surgical scars on other parts of my body were protected by plasters, later, one by one, these were removed and the pain began to ease.

My state of mind, described broadly, was one of intense curiosity. It was a most extraordinary feeling, a mental appetite that seemed insatiable. I was an extremely interested person. There was nothing that bored me or alarmed me or seemed irrelevant to my interests. When I awoke in the mornings, for just one example, the sheer novelty of the feeling of sheets around me was enough to hold my full attention. Sensations flooded in. The experiences of Warmth and Comfort and Weight and Fabric and Friction were enough sensations to entertain my untrained mind with all the permutations and nuances of a symphony. (Music was played to me every day, exhausting me.) Bodily functions were an astonishment! Just to breathe or to swallow was a miracle of pleasure, and when I discovered farting, and that I could imitate the noise with my mouth, it became my funniest diversion. I quickly worked out how to masturbate, but this was just a phase which ended when Seri took over. Going to the lavatory was a source of pride.

Gradually I became aware of my physical surroundings.

My universe, as I perceived it, was a bed in a room in a small chalet in a garden on an island in a sea. My awareness spread around me like a ripple of consciousness. The weather was warm and sunny, and during most days the windows by my bed were opened, and when I was allowed to sit up in a chair I was put either by the open door or on a small, pleasant verandah outside. I quickly learned the names of flowers, insects and birds, and saw how subtle were the ways in which each depended on the other. I loved the scent of honeysuckle, which came most pleasantly at night. I could remember the names of everyone I met: friends of Seri and Lareen, other patients, orderlies, the doctors, the man who every few days mowed the grass that surrounded the little white-painted room in which I lived.

I hungered for information, for news, and I devoured every morsel that came my way.

As the physical pain receded I became aware that I lived in ignorance. Fortunately, it seemed that Seri and Lareen were there to supply me information. Either or both of them were there with me throughout the days, at first nursing me while I was most ill, later answering the primitive questions I framed, later still spending painstaking hours with me, explaining me to myself.

This was the more complex, intangible, inner universe, and it was infinitely more difficult to perceive.

My principal difficulty was that Seri and Lareen could only speak to me from outside. My sole question—”Who am I?”—was the only one they could not answer directly. Their explanations came to me from without my inner universe, confusing me utterly. (An early puzzle: they addressed me in the second person, and for some time I thought of myself as “you”.)

And because everything was spoken, so first I had to understand what they said before I could work out what they meant, it lacked conviction. My experience was wholly vicarious.

Because I had no choice I had to trust them, and in fact I depended on them for everything. But it was inevitable I would soon start thinking for myself, and as I did, as my questions were directed inwards, two things emerged which threatened to betray that trust.

They crept up on me, bringing insidious doubts. They might have been connected, they might have been quite distinct; I had no way of knowing. Because of my passive role, endlessly learning, it took me days even to identify them. By then it was too late. I had ceased to respond, and a counter-reaction had been set up in me.

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 l 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-interest. 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.)