The Islanders (45 page)

Our fingers briefly touched as I took the glass from her.

She stood straight before me as I gulped the water gratefully. She was taller than I had expected, smooth-skinned, not smiling but not unfriendly, steady in her gaze, wearing a pale blue dress, a broad-brimmed white hat.

She said, ‘I admired your book more than I can say.’

I felt overcome with amazed pride and contrary humility. ‘Thank you, Madame Caurer – I didn’t think you would know the book. That’s not why I’m here –’

‘How long have you been out in this heat?’

I just shook my head.

The gate slowly opened making a whirring noise, a motor somewhere hidden. Nothing now separated me from her. She still had not moved – the frosted flagon of cold glass unsteady in her hand. She stood erect, regarding me seriously and with a sudden intensity. I felt so scruffy, unsuitable, dressed in clothes not even good enough for scrambling around lost ruins, let alone meeting this woman. I straightened myself, to try to meet her steady regard as equally as I could. Caurer of Rawthersay, standing there, an arm’s length away.

I had never seen her before, not even a picture. But I stared back at her, dizzy with a sense of recognition. She was me, we looked alike! It was as if a mirror had been thrown up in front of me. I raised one hand. She lifted her own, the one not gripping the jug. I felt the same intensity in me that I was sensing in her. My head began to swim. I could not hold the upright posture, because something had happened to weaken me. I slumped, looking down at the ground. I focused on my legs, my bare feet loosely strapped inside the sandals, and was ashamed of the dirt and dust that begrimed me, the black lines between and around my toes.

She stepped forward quickly, caught me as I fell. The flagon dropped to the ground, and broke in a splashing crash on the hard surface of the drive. She had caught me with one strong arm, her body sagging to brace herself against my weight. Without the jug in her hand she gripped me with her other arm, her leg jolting us both as she changed position. I slumped against her, the fabric of her dress against my face. I felt the tumbler fall from my hand. I thought stupidly of all the broken glass around us. Then I smelled her scent, a light fragrance of mint, or flowers, or something that flew. The warmth of her body, the reassuring grip of her arms. She shifted her weight again, so that she was able to hold me better. I closed my eyes, felt safe, hot, dizzy, grimy, ashamed, thankful, but above all safe in her arms. I knew my knees had given out, that if she let go of me I would crash to the floor. The cicadas rasped around us, the sun was an endless blaze.

I was next aware of being half carried, half dragged. Two strong young men, one on each side, one shaved bald, the other straggle-haired. They were encouraging me, trying to make me feel secure. They urged me on with soft words. My bare feet scraped lightly along the dusty floor, my arms thrown intimately around the men’s necks. It was cool inside the house, the shutters down, a draught of blown air, shiny boards with pale rugs scattered, tall potted plants, terracotta ornaments, a decorated screen, a cushioned bench, long fronds over the windows.

Caurer stood beside me, her wide-brimmed hat now knocked to an angle, not yet adjusted, my dirty sandals dangling from her fingers. She was a slender woman, grey-haired, pale-eyed, in the senior years of her life, a presence of immense but silent power. I was stunned to be with her. Still she wore that same serious, uncritical regard. I hardly dared look at her, this woman who looked just like me.

In the distance, somewhere above, sounds of movement. I was in a school.

An hour later I had almost recovered. I had taken a shower and Caurer found me some clothes I could borrow. I had drunk a lot of water, and eaten a light lunch. At times I was alone, as Caurer had work to do in the school.

But at the end of the afternoon she and I were alone together in her first-floor study, and I realized during that intense conversation that without in any way planning or rehearsing it, I had spent most of my life searching for this woman, to know her.

Later I returned on my moped to Smuj Town through the dusty evening heat and the overhanging trees, the swarming midges and emerging moths, the gradually quieting cicadas. In the town the evening promenadá was beginning, the measured ambling around the squares and along the shore, the gay colours and flamboyant hairstyles, the calling and gesticulating and laughing, the young men on their motorbikes, the busy cafés and restaurants, the sound of guitars.

The next day I packed my luggage, went to the harbour office for a refund on my ship’s return passage, and then was driven in a taxi to the school on the plain in the hills, behind the trees, beyond the gate, next to the ruined city.

Postscript

I wrote most of my essay during the first two or three days on Smuj. I completed it later when I was living in the school house. I despatched it to the newspaper together with my resignation, and I never discovered if it was published or not. I suspect not.

Madame Caurer and I worked together for several years. Officially, my role was to liaise with the media on behalf of the Caurer Foundation, ensuring that what was printed or reported about the work still going on was accurate and true to Caurer’s intentions and wishes. In practice, much of my real work was to act as her confidante, her personal assistant and at times her adviser. Once or twice, when she felt the strain of travel or the pressure of crowds would be too great for her, I went in her place, never speaking, never pretending more than the quiet illusion my features created. When Caurer’s health at last began to fail, I became in effect her nurse, although of course she had a full medical team on her staff. I was with her when she died, having become, in her own words, her most trusted and intimate companion. We were of an age, we were so alike in every way.

It was seven years after her earlier, false death. The harmless imposture was over. This time there was a quiet burial in the grounds of her home, and the only attenders were the members of her inner circle.

Everyone at the Foundation says I still look just like Caurer, but I make no use of that any more. She is gone.

Winho

CATHEDRAL

W
INHO
is the so-called island of whores. It is a place of thrilling natural beauty, with a towering range of mountains rising from the western coast and occupying much of the interior. Thick forest covers the remaining plain and the lower slopes of the mountains. The island is reefed, with a series of encircling shallow lagoons, rich and diverse in sea-life. Many small towns have been built on the fertile strip between forest and sea. Until the second Faiandland invasion the traditional activities in this area were farming and fishing. Set in a subtropical latitude, Winho rejoices in warm and dry weather for most of the year. The rainy season lasts for only two months. The prevailing wind on the island is known locally as the K
ADIA
, ‘blowing upwards to the mountains’ – in reality it is part of the system of equatorial trade winds.

Winho was invaded twice by Faiand forces in the days before the Covenant of Neutrality had been ratified or could be enforced. The first invasion led to occupation and fortification by Faiandland and it lasted for almost a decade. After a violently resisted counter-invasion by Federation forces, Winho was eventually liberated and demilitarized. Loss of civilian life was on a disastrous scale, and there was extensive damage to property.

For about ten years Winho existed under a relatively benign Federation suzerainty, but as the Covenant took shape and gained global recognition the Glaundians had to leave.

Faiandland almost immediately re-occupied Winho, allegedly because of an administrative error but in reality because of its strategic position. There were also unfounded Faiand suspicions that the Federation was continuing to use the island as a base. By this time, the Federation forces were engaged elsewhere and Winho was left unprotected. In the name of retribution horrifying atrocities were performed on many of the inhabitants, including pseudo-scientific experiments on human subjects, physical mutilation of most of the women of child-bearing age and the deportation of all males over the age of ten years. In deep poverty, many of the surviving women were forced either to flee the island, or as large R&R camps were set up for Faiand troops they went into prostitution.

Even after the Covenant rules once again removed the Faiandland occupying force, the impoverished island became renowned for its brothel culture, heavily dependent on the passage of troopships to sustain the economy. Major efforts by people from neighbouring islands to lend assistance came to nothing, because the central problem remained unresolved: the abducted menfolk of Winho could not be located, and even in the present day no mass grave has ever been found. It is clear that they were massacred. The grim search for the final resting place continues.

Winho has been for many years a focus of concern throughout the Archipelago. Caurer visited Winho and set up one of her special schools, which still exists and is regarded as a beacon of hope for the long-term regrowth of Winho culture. Caurer said she was desolated by what she found, and said afterwards that if ever her work had to be directed towards one island instead of to them all, it would be to Winho.

At another time, both Chaster Kammeston and Dryd Bathurst were on Winho, during the period when Kammeston was researching his biography of the artist. He was on the island for nearly two weeks. This is the only known series of meetings between the two. Bathurst had set up a studio on the waterfront of Winho Town, where he was tackling three of the main canvases in his Ruination sequence. We have only Kammeston’s account of what happened when the two men met, which he describes in taut and restrained language in the pages of the biography. What Kammeston does not reveal there is what he wrote in his diary, and later in one of his letters to Caurer: he was so disgusted by Bathurst’s private life that he abandoned work on the biography for nearly two years, only resuming it when Bathurst’s reputation as a painter of apocalyptic landscapes was without precedent. Persuaded by the greatness of the man’s artistic gift, and of course by pressure from his publisher, Kammeston completed his biography. He said later that it was the least of his books. To this day it is never included in official listings of his published works.

Another visitor to Winho, whose presence on the island was not known until long after she had left, was the novelist Moylita Kaine. She and her husband moved to Winho Town and rented a house in the hills overlooking the main bay while she conducted detailed research into what had happened during the two terrible periods of occupation. When she and her husband left Winho, two of the women she had met in the course of her researches travelled back with them to Muriseay, where they remained afterwards with their two families of seven children.

Three years later, Kaine published the novel that was to establish her reputation:
Hoel Vanil
. It is an unchallenged masterpiece. H
OEL
V
ANIL
is the local name for the steep valley in the hills behind Winho Town in which the Faiand KZ was built. It was from here the men-folk were shipped away, and it was inside its low, concrete buildings that the brutal experiments on the women were conducted.

Hoel Vanil is now known prosaically as River Valley, and all external trace of the camp has long been removed. Two underground shelters remain. These were built by the slave labour of the Winho men, before the remainder who survived the underground workings were taken away. The shelters were used for a short period by the Faiandlanders as an ammunition store. The people of Winho Town never go anywhere near River Valley.

The island’s economy is still sustained mainly by the arrival of troopships heading north or south. As these belong to the combatant powers they are beyond the laws of the Archipelago. Winho remains in crisis, a tragic, deep-rooted problem with no foreseeable solution.

Strict shelterate laws exist, rigidly enforced. Recently, visa laws have been revised, allowing visitors to remain for a maximum of forty-eight hours only. Deserters are not allowed entry and are forcibly returned to their units if discovered.

Currency: all acceptable, including paper money paid to the troops. This is exchangeable at par with the Archipelagian simoleon.

Yannet

DARK GREEN / SIR

T
HE
D
ESCANT

Two people came to the small island of Y
ANNET
– a woman and a man. They both had curious names, and the names were curiously similar, but until they went to Yannet the woman called Yo and the man called Oy had never met in person.

They were both aware of each other. Yo and Oy were artists, conceptual creators of installations that were misunderstood by the public and condemned by critics. Both artists were harassed and had their work suppressed by the authorities. Neither of them cared. They thought of themselves as art guerrillas, one step ahead of their antagonists, always moving on from one installation to the next. As people they were otherwise unalike.

Yannet stood at a sub-tropical latitude in the midst of a cluster of islands known as the L
ESSER
S
ERQUES
. It was politically little different from most of the other islands in the Archipelago, in that it had a feudal economy and was governed by a Seignior in name and the partially elected Seigniory in practice. There was only one main area of population: Yannet Town itself, the capital and port, situated at the southern tip of the peninsula the islanders called H
OMMKE
(rendered in patois as ‘dark green’). The town was a place of light industries, electronics studios and games developers. Many highly paid jobs were to be found in Yannet Town.