The Gradual (29 page)

‘You promised to look after her,’ Jacj said.

‘I did – I thought you were coming home and I think she waited too. Djahann had a long life, a happy life. She often slept in your bedroom, on your bed. She seemed always to miss you. She became old and at the end she died peacefully. She was never in pain. I buried her in our garden and I marked her grave.’

He exhaled, and I heard an intermittence, a controlled sob.

But the weapon came up again, and he tensed his shoulders.

‘If you leave now, sir,’ he said. ‘I need not arrest you.’

He swiftly clipped the fabric mask over his face again, but he did not replace his opaquely dark glasses. His breathing was still unsteady.

The other three soldiers had left the truck and were moving up the road towards us.

‘The deserter has been secured, Captain,’ one of them said. ‘We have given him water, according to regulations.’

Jacj took the black caps he had been carrying in his belt, and handed them over. The two soldiers replaced them, straightening the stiff fabric, settling them exactly over their foreheads.

‘Jacj – may I contact you again?’ I said. ‘Tell me how, tell me where you’ll be.’

‘If you leave now, sir,’ he said. ‘I need not arrest you.’

The machine pistol was pointing straight at my chest. With his other hand the Captain took the pair of dark glasses from his pocket and slipped them back on.

‘I am not who you think,’ he said. I backed away from him, frightened again of the deadly weapon. He went on, ‘I have no brother. I carry no violin. I have a warrant for your arrest and if you resist me any longer I will be forced to restrain you physically. I am an escouade leader, I have an open brief to apprehend deserters and a statutory order that enables me to detain or eliminate witnesses. You are such a witness and a fugitive from our country, at risk of instant death, but if you leave now, sir, I will not arrest you.’

His enigmatic face, hidden, hiding. His light stature. The voice.

I turned away from him, then looked back. He remained poised, the weapon trained directly at my chest.

‘Jacj?’ I said.

‘No. Leave now, Sandro!’

I stumbled away. I hurried back up the road. I did not look back. As I rounded the curve in the road, the two soldiers on the barrier saw me approaching and one of them raised the pole. I went quickly through, then once I was away from them, when the village was no longer in sight, I started to run. I ran in the merciless sunshine, through the hot still air of the country lane, dense with flowers, busy with birds, running until I had to stop at last to collect my breath. I leaned over, clasping my knees with my hands, staring down at the gravel.

Once again a litany of island names: Foort, the Ferredy Atoll, Mesterline, the Coast of Helvard’s Passion, Lillen-cay, Salay, Fellenstell. They seemed to speed past, even though the ferries followed their usual circuitous routes, made their slow ports of call. I changed from ship to ship. I watched the varying chronometers on the walls of my cabins, absolute time, ship time. I met with the adepts, they adjusted my detriment. My stave became increasingly scored. I stayed in hotels, some humble, some grand, some awful. I burned on sunny decks, I sweated in unventilated cabins. I drank too much alcohol. I was lonely, emotionally drained, undecided about practical things, abandoned by music, beaten by life. I was not attending to what I saw, what I went past, what happened to me.

I was obsessed with thoughts of my lost brother.

How could I not be? Jacj was the last remaining member of my family. He was all I had of the past life, the growing up that had made me what I have become. When he joined the army his childhood ended, but so too did mine. Now, nearly half a century later, I was grown into a man, and Jacj – into a soldier, a boy soldier with a slight body and the voice of a teenager.

I travelled only to put distance behind me, to use up the distance that lay ahead. Distance was time: absolute time, my time, ship time. My brother and I were separated by distance, but also by the years lost and gained in repeated detriments, the temporal tides that eroded reality, the gradual encroachment of time. It was difficult to understand rationally – it was impossible to comprehend emotionally. The gradual was a kind of endless, in explicable madness.

For the time it took to make most of these voyages I thought of no one else but Jacj. The tragedy of a life lost to the military. The tragedy of two brothers who could not recognize each other. The tragedy of lost music, because his music had gone from his life and mine was slipping away from me. The tragedy of his great youth, my advancing years.

I was sailing nearer to Temmil. Every ship I boarded, every timetable I consulted, had a port of call in Hakerline, the resort island adjacent to Temmil. I knew that I had only to remain on a ship, virtually any ship, and I would end up in that place with the view of the narrow strait and the dark volcano.

I broke my journey in the Salay Group – Salay consisted of five large islands set around a central lagoon, like the petals of some immense flower. Many of the passengers I was travelling with were heading for Salay. It was a popular tourist attraction, the place islanders liked to visit to take a vacation. I noticed then that the saloons of some of the ships had large paintings or photographs of Salayean views. I could see what an attractive place it was, how at some other time, in some other mood, it might have been the sort of place I would enjoy visiting. The time was wrong, though. I simply needed a break, a period of solitude, an opportunity to rethink, reconsider.

The ship called at all five of the Salayean islands, and I chose to disembark at the one called Salay Raba – the name meant it was the fourth of the five islands. It appeared to be the least commercially developed of the group. I rented an apartment in the main town, paying in advance for fifteen days. I settled down to rethink, reconsider, as I desperately needed to do.

I was calm and contemplative in my thoughts and actions for the first ten days or so, coming to understand, perhaps, a little of what Jacj had endured under the military régime, but then I realized that a couple had moved into the apartment directly below mine. It was only a few days after I had arrived. I knew nothing about them, although their names suddenly appeared on a tag in the hallway: Emwarl and Sophi. The names were familiar – they were often used in Glaund. This was confirmed when I overheard them speaking to each other in the hall. They were speaking Glaundian.

My first reaction was a friendly thought: that I should be interested to meet them and perhaps hear news from home. Almost at once, though, I was on my guard. Memories of the arrest warrant were still fresh. How much of a coincidence could it be that a couple should be placed here, on a remote island on the other side of the world from Glaund, in the apartment below mine?

I moved out of the apartment that night, dozed on a bench in the harbour office until dawn, then crossed to Salay Tielet, third island of the five. I checked into a small pension in a backstreet, and set about finding the next ship that would be sailing to Hakerline. I had to wait in a jittery mood for two more days, but in the end I caught a small ferry to the island of Fellenstel. The voyage took three days. In Fellenstel, without delay, without seeking the help of an adept, I took the first ship I could find that would call at Hakerline.

Absolute time, ship time, were hours apart. I had not attended to the gradual. I found it difficult to sleep on the narrow bunk in the cabin deep in the ship, and during the airless nights I would watch the twin dials of the chronometers,
Mutlaq Vaqt
and
Kema Vaqt
, as they steadily drifted further from synchronization.

Three days later, give or take whatever hours I had lost, or gained, I was standing at the rail of the ship as it closed on Hakerline Promise, the name of the main port. I saw a murmuration of brightly coloured water-birds bursting up from the lagoon in the late afternoon sunlight, and watched while the dense swarm took shape and reshape as the birds swooped across the sea away from the harbour wall. Pleasure boats speeded around my arriving ferry, some of them blowing their horns in welcome. I looked across the wide lagoon towards the forest which touched on the edge of town, the trees growing down to the edge of the water, many of them leaning precariously over the waves.

I did not want to leave the ship – I felt safe on the ship, anonymous, unknown to those who might still be seeking me.

I had spent so long travelling and sailing that it had become almost second nature to me. I knew, though, I was at the end of that: all that remained was a short trip across the narrows to Temmil. Afterwards I would settle.

An adept came up behind me and I was pleased to discover it was Kan. I had not seen her since sheltering from the storm with her in Demmer Insula. Until this moment I had not been aware she was on the ship – indeed, I had not seen any of the adepts aboard, although as soon as I saw Kan again I realized she and the rest of them must have been somewhere there with me. I was convinced she was one of the youngest of the adepts: they all looked youthful, but Kan had a kind of innocent glow that I liked. I was pleased to see her, and I turned towards her with a smile of greeting.

‘I want sixty Hakerline talents,’ she said without preamble, moving to my side. ‘Please pay in cash before the ship docks.’

I was startled by her abrupt manner but in truth I had become used to the adepts’ brusque way of opening the transaction.

‘I was hoping to see you again, after we left Demmer,’ I said.

‘Sixty talents. There is not much time before we dock.’

I produced my stave. ‘Don’t you wish to read this?’

‘Not now.’

‘So you just want the money?’ She nodded. ‘I would need to change notes in the office,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t I pay you later, Kan? Or I have plenty of simoleons.’

‘I will wait for you here. I need talents. Who told you my name? You are not supposed to know!’

‘I knew it before – when we were in Demmer Insula. Someone must have told me – I think it was you. Maybe one of the other adepts.’

‘Which others? I am alone.’

‘The group you work with.’

‘I am alone,’ she said again. ‘I have not been to Demmer. No adept goes there. The gradual is neutral on Demmer.’

She was giving me a sharp, suspicious look, then she glanced away, apparently annoyed with me.

I did not press the point.

So, once again, I had to spend time below decks, lining up with a few other passengers to change money in the purser’s bureau, while the bustle and noise of the ship’s arrival went on around us. I would have much preferred to be out on the deck, enjoying the sunlight and watching as the resort of Hakerline Promise came into view. Although I mostly enjoyed the pleasures of solitude I was often lonely while a long voyage went on. I had found Kan attractive company when we together, all too briefly, that time on Demmer.

Or perhaps we had not been. Whatever was true was whatever she told me, not what I remembered. It was sometimes a shock to remind myself of the madness of the gradual.

I just wanted to disembark, find somewhere to stay, then in the morning take the first ferry I could to Temmil.

By the time I completed the transaction and climbed back to the boat deck to find Kan the ship had stopped moving. I thought at first we must have docked but then I saw that the vessel had hove to some distance away from the narrow entrance to the harbour. I could see members of the crew in the bow of the ship, doing something with the winch mounted there. As I looked for Kan I noticed that while I was below-decks the ship had manoeuvred around towards the harbour entrance. The island of Temmil was in view. The tall cone of the mountain Gronner was glowing with reflected sunlight, made a deep orange by the quality of the afternoon light, or because of whatever plants might be growing on the slopes.

I found Kan and handed her the cash, which she counted twice, pedantically, before she accepted it. She slipped it into a small leather purse, which she wore on a cord around her neck.

‘Now your stave.’

‘You didn’t want it before.’

‘Now.’

I had in fact been waiting for her to ask for it, so I had it ready. She held it in one hand so that it was upright, then ran the fingertips of her other hand lightly down the wooden blade. Her eyes were half closed.

When she looked at me again her demeanour had changed. She smiled, handed the stave towards to me with a playful pass, pretending to tug it back so that I could not reach it. She kept hold if it, fingers of both hands lightly gripping it.

‘Now I understand what you say about Demmer. You must have been there.’

‘You can tell that from the stave? Don’t you remember the storm while we were there?’

‘Demmer is never recorded,’ she said. ‘I do not go there. But you were in Foort, so it is likely. And you came to Hakerline before?’

‘Is all this on the stave?’

I was uncertain of her mood. She had transformed in an instant from someone making a cool business deal to informal, almost teasing friendliness. It was so sudden I could not believe it was genuine.

‘No – not everything is shown. But the Shelterate records are here. You were touring with an orchestra—’

‘That was during my first visit to the islands.’

‘Big detriment lost. How did you manage when you were home? Was difficult? But you are a piano player and violinist. A composer too! Why did you not say? You went to many islands, big success. Then Temmil. Big success. Then here to Hakerline.’

‘We returned home after we left Hakerline.’

‘You were concerned about what you might find when you were home. I see now. Yes. You were worried about a relative. An older brother?’

‘Does it say what his name is?’

‘Jacjer Sussken. Is that right?’

‘What else is recorded there?’ I said, reaching out to take it from her. This time she let it go.

I looked closely at it but the dozens of etched lines made no sense to me. Much of my life was recorded somehow there, or at least the actions and movements I had made. The loss or gain of gradual time, the entries and exits to islands. Little pieces of information I must have let slip, or deliberately imparted.