As I stared out of the window, my gaze lost its focus and turned inwards. It had been a tricky sort of day from the very beginning. My alarm clock had failed to go off, and I jerked awake at five-past six, which was twenty minutes later than usual. I had been in the middle of a dream, but the dream had faded, leaving nothing except the dimly remembered sensation of a cold wind blowing against my skin, and even then, still half-asleep, I knew that the partial and elusive nature of that memory would frustrate me, and that I would carry that feeling around with me all day. There was something about Vishram’s proposal that reminded me of the dream. They shared a sketchy quality, a seemingly deliberate ambiguity, as though they belonged to the same family of experiences. I swung back into the room, trusting that if I plunged into my paperwork once more, if I buried these ambiguities beneath the weight of familiar problems, then I could forget again. I didn’t hold out too much hope, though. What was it about these hints and glimpses that disturbed me so?
Seen from above, Pneuma looked a little like an hour-glass, the narrowest point of which measured scarcely a mile across, and it was here, right in the city centre in other words, and a leisurely fifteen-minute stroll from my office, that I had been lucky enough to find a flat.
On leaving work that day, I set off through the park, as usual. Most people moved about on foot, or else rode bicycles. Cars were more or less extinct. As for the underground, it had been deemed both antiquated and unsafe, not to mention bad for the health, and the authorities had shut it down years ago. Our city was a clean, quiet place in which snatches of music could often be heard. Taking off my jacket, I folded it over my arm. It was a warm evening, and groups of students sat in casual circles on the grass. Rows of green-and-white-striped deckchairs faced down the slope, awaiting collection by the park-keeper. To the west, and back-lit by the setting sun, I could see the sheer pale concrete of the Hilton, its rooftop bristling with all manner of aerials and lightning conductors. The Blue Quarter’s capital – Aquaville – lay just beyond, with its rheumatic population and its network of canals.
On nearing the north side of the park, I turned down a narrow passageway. It ran between two walled gardens, under a block of flats and out into a cul-de-sac so small and well concealed that hardly anybody knew it existed. Stafford Court stood at the far end, its entrance flanked by two miniature bay trees in square black tubs. As I walked into the lobby, the caretaker’s front door opened. Kenneth Loames was an amiable, if slightly cloying man – the human equivalent of glue, I sometimes felt, or chewing-gum; once he made contact, he was almost impossible to dislodge. Normally I slipped by unnoticed, or tried to, but on this occasion, unfortunately, he had spotted me and, still more ominous, he had a subject, he said, that he would like to raise with me. I waited by the lift as Loames searched for the right phrasing.
‘I’ve got flies,’ he said at last.
I looked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘In my living-room. There are flies.’ He gestured vaguely towards the half-open door behind him.
‘It has been very mild,’ I said, pushing the call button on the lift.
Loames stood beside me, gazing benignly at the illuminated numbers. ‘You’ve not noticed any flies, though, Mr Parry? In your flat?’
‘I can’t say I have.’
Loames was nodding to himself ‘. So,’ he said. ‘Busy at the moment?’
‘Pretty busy, yes.’
His head angled in my direction, eyes sharpening a little. He asked all the usual questions, but I could often sense others lurking just beneath, like predatory fish. He seemed to suspect that there were things he wasn’t being told, and with some justification – in my case, at least.
The lift doors finally slid open.
‘Well,’ Loames said, ‘if you should see anything –’
‘I’ll let you know.’ I stepped into the lift and pressed the button for my floor. ‘Have a good evening, Mr Loames.’
When I walked into my flat, the phone was ringing. Thinking it might be the caretaker again, I picked up the receiver and rather wearily said, ‘Yes?’
There was a soft pause. ‘Thomas? Are you all right?’
The voice belonged to my girlfriend, Sonya Visvikis. She had called to tell me that the people we were supposed to be seeing the following night had cancelled. We could still have dinner, though, just the two of us – or did I think that was a bit dull? Not at all, I said. Actually, I’d prefer it. I could be with her by eight. I paused, thinking she might say something else, but the line fell quiet. In the silence, I heard a faint whine and I glanced round, first one way, then the other, expecting to see one of Loames’s flies, but there was nothing there. The noise must have come from outside. A distant ambulance, perhaps. A gust of cold wind from my dream.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Sonya said.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Why?’
‘I don’t know. You sound different.’
‘I just ran into Mr Loames,’ I said. ‘He’s got flies, apparently.’
Sonya laughed.
‘He wanted to know if I’d got any,’ I said.
By now Sonya was laughing so hard that she could barely speak.
We had only been seeing each other for about four months, but I had loved her laughter the moment I heard it. It was voluptuous, somehow, and resonant, so much so that I often imagined she had a musical instrument inside her, something exquisitely crafted, one of a kind.
After the phone-call was over, I cooked myself a light supper, then I moved to the sofa by the window and tried to read. I couldn’t concentrate, though. My head buzzed, as if with interference. I had a feeling of incompleteness, of things being just out of reach. Towards nine o’clock I put on my jacket, picked up my keys and left the flat, thinking a walk might help me to relax.
The air that closed around me as I stepped through the glass doors had a dense, humid quality I would never have associated with October. An Indian summer, people were calling it. The first in years. I walked down the street, then along the passageway, and came out into the park, the deckchairs all stacked away now, the students gone. I hesitated for a moment, looking down the path. In the distance, I could see a man standing quite still, his face turned towards me. Afraid it might be Loames again, I struck out across the grass. Loames … I suddenly realised that the name had a melancholic aspect to it. The way it referred to the earth, even the lugubrious vowels. Extraordinary I hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe one day his name would appear on my desk, on a list of people being recommended for a transfer, and Stafford Court would have to find a new caretaker.
A few minutes later, I emerged in front of a building that used to be the palace, its austere façade reminding me, as always, of cold ash, then I walked slowly westwards, through a square of cream-coloured houses with black balconies, before turning south towards the river. By the time I reached the embankment I was sweating lightly under my clothes. I leaned on the stone parapet and looked out over the water. Had I been able to swim across, I would have found myself in the Blue Quarter. There had been a bridge here once, but it had been dismantled during the Rearrangement. Only bridges that complemented the partitioning of the city had survived. In the Red Quarter, for instance, we had several of our own, since we had been granted territory on both sides of the river, but in stretches where the river itself had become the border all the bridges had been destroyed. The roads that had once led to them stopped at the water’s edge, and stopped abruptly. They seemed to stare into space, no longer knowing what they were doing there or why they had come. During my early twenties I was gripped by the sense of history that emanated from such places; they were like abandoned gateways, entrances to forgotten worlds. Also, of course, I felt that I had stumbled on a physical embodiment of my own experience. There were bridges down inside me too. There was the same sense of brutal interruption.
I walked on, passing through the muted pools of light that lay beneath each of the street lamps. Like many people of my age, I’d had
two names, two lives. Once, I had been someone called Matthew Micklewright, but that person no longer existed, and I wasn’t even curious about him now. It was just too long ago, too remote – too unlikely. What’s the point of clinging to something that has gone? What good does it do? That old name had become as hollow and empty as a husk. A name deprived of breath, of meaning. A name without a face. And then the night when my life began again … A strange beginning. Soldiers, bright lights. The cold. And me being lifted, as if by surgeons, into a new world – and crying probably, though I couldn’t remember that. But every birth is merciless, perhaps. Then the lorry, the train, and all the hardships and uncertainties of the holding station –
I put a hand on the parapet, my heart seeming to bounce against the inside of my ribs. The dream I had woken with that morning had come back in its entirety. I had been walking in a sunlit garden. A strong wind pushed at the trees and bushes, and the grass rippled on the ground. It was cold in the garden – though like someone who had drunk too much I couldn’t feel it. Or if I could, then only as a delicious extra layer to my skin. For a long time that was all I knew – the sunlight on the grass, the wind, the ceaseless rushing sound of leaves … And then I saw a boy with light-brown hair standing motionless beneath a tree. He didn’t seem to have noticed me, despite the fact that I was walking towards him. He didn’t see me. Not even when I stood in front of him. He was naked, I realised. Somehow this hadn’t registered until that moment. I looked all around, but couldn’t find his clothes. The tree shuddered in the wind. The trunk wasn’t visible, nor were the branches. Only a huge murmuring cloud of leaves, which seemed held together by some supernatural force.
Staring out across the water, I trembled, as if the cold wind of the dream had jumped dimensions and was in the world with me. The boy was Jones. Even though he had light-brown hair. Even though he wasn’t standing on one leg.
Jones.
Like me, he would be in his thirties by now. Was it true that he’d been sent to an asylum? What had become of him? Had he survived?
The following day I met Vishram in the lobby, as arranged, and we took a tram across town. In fifteen minutes we were standing in a grand but decaying square only a few hundred yards from the border. Though Vishram had stepped out on to the pavement with an air of sublime equanimity, he had brought me, at lunchtime, to the very heart of Fremantle, the red-light district. Here you could find establishments that catered to every taste, no matter how esoteric or degenerate, venery being the one vice to which those of a sanguine disposition were known to be susceptible.
Vishram paused outside a house that looked residential, then climbed the steps and pressed an unmarked bell. The door clicked open. A cool, tiled hallway stretched before us. The staircase curved up towards another door which stood ajar and through which came, in muffled form, the familiar hum and clatter of a crowded restaurant. Once upstairs, we were escorted into a space that skilfully contrived to be both generous and intimate. Lamps with scarlet shades stood on each table, deflecting attention from the height of the ceiling, while curtains of the same colour framed the three tall windows that overlooked the square. The waitresses wore white blouses and black skirts. They were all young and good-looking, and at least two of them knew Vishram by name.
‘I see you’re a regular,’ I observed once our food had arrived.
He didn’t look up from the wood pigeon that he was preparing to dissect. ‘They make an exceptional crème brûlée,’ he said. ‘It’s a weakness of mine.’
‘I didn’t know you had any weaknesses.’
He laid down his knife and fork, then pressed his napkin to his mouth. Above the folds of crisp white linen, his eyes were amused, benevolent, and ever so slightly long-suffering.
‘There’s a conference in three weeks’ time,’ he said. ‘We’re thinking of sending you along.’
‘It’s been a while since I attended a conference. I always seem to be too busy.’
‘It’s in the Blue Quarter,’ Vishram added casually.
I reached for the mineral water and poured myself another glass. I was aware of having to concentrate on every movement I made, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem. My lungs felt oddly shallow.
‘The Blue Quarter,’ I said.
Vishram smiled faintly. ‘You would miss Rearrangement Day,’ he went on, ‘but they’ll probably organise some kind of celebration over there.’ Lowering his eyes, he brushed a few breadcrumbs from the tablecloth with the backs of his fingers. ‘Though with phlegmatics, of course, one can never be too sure.’
I watched the bubbles rising in my glass. What was being proposed was both a privilege and an affirmation of the Department’s faith in me – not many were trusted with a visit to another part of the divided kingdom – and, though I had thought the opportunity might present itself at some point, I certainly hadn’t expected it so soon.
The Blue Quarter.
The words glowed inside my head, buzzing sleepily like neon. I was breathing a little easier now. Was I supposed to feel like this? What was I supposed to feel like? I glanced at Vishram, but his deceptively blank gaze was fixed on one of the more sinuous waitresses as she threaded her way among the tables.
From a political standpoint, the Blue Quarter had always been a laughing-stock. The past fifteen years had seen thirteen different administrations, each one a coalition, the result being that even decisions taken at the highest levels were constantly reversed and nothing ever got done. As for the citizens themselves, they were reputed to be gentle and unflappable, if a little slow. They had a mystical side as well, by all accounts. In ancient times, the Druid would have been phlegmatic. So would the witch. But in the end I preferred not to generalise, and despite the fact that my job required me to group people together I somehow knew the reality of the Blue Quarter would be more subtle and complex than I’d been led to believe.
‘I would need a thorough briefing,’ I said at last.
Vishram’s eyes reverted to my face, and I thought I saw the shadow of something perverse swimming in their dark-brown depths, but then it was gone and there was only receptivity – the composed, indulgent look of someone who spends his life listening to problems and dispensing advice.
‘Of course. But you’d be willing to go?’
I looked at him. Was this a trick question?
‘Some people don’t trust themselves,’ Vishram said. ‘They think they’d be tempted in some way – or altered. What’s more, there’s the old superstition about the border-crossing itself, that one might be mysteriously depleted by the experience, that one might lose a part of oneself – that one might suffer injury or harm.’
Vishram directed his gaze towards the windows. Compared to the room in which we sat, with its intimate lighting and its clandestine atmosphere, the trees in the middle of the square seemed wan, over-exposed.
‘It always reminds me of how primitive people were said to feel about being photographed,’ he went on. ‘They thought their souls were being stolen.’
I leaned back in my chair.
‘But you’re not worried about any of that,’ Vishram said.
It was more of an assertion than an enquiry, and I just held his gaze and smiled.
He nodded. ‘Aquaville,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be a magical city. The canals, the Turkish baths, the water-taxis … Apparently they have an indoor ocean too. You can go surfing half a mile below the surface of the earth.’
I examined Vishram closely for a moment – his manicured fingernails, his elegant yet portly physique. ‘You’ve never been surfing, have you?’
He appeared to place a cough inside his fist.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought not.’
That night I cycled over to Sonya’s place on the south side of the river. I had met her in a park in June, at the evening performance of an opera. She had walked up to me at the interval, her beauty as classic and unforced as the single string of pearls she was wearing and the slingbacks that she carri
ed carelessly in her left hand. We knew someone in common, she said. A professor at the university. When she put her glass of wine down, the shape of her fingers showed in the condensation. That, oddly, was the decisive moment. Looking at that glass, I could imagine exactly how we might touch each other. I asked if I could see her again, and she wrote her phone number on the back of my programme. Within a few days, we had met twice, and on our third date, after dinner at a jazz club, she took me back to her flat and we made love. Like everybody else I had been close to, she believed I was a quality engineer – whatever that is, as she would always add with a crooked smile. I thought at first that she might be a journalist, or even an actress – with her olive skin and dark-brown hair she resembled a famous film star of the previous century – but she worked at the Public Library, in the rare books department. She didn’t make much money. I was happy to help her with her everyday expenses, though – buying clothes, paying bills, and so on. Since we both valued our independence, we had kept our own flats, but we tried to see each other at least two or three times a week. She had been married once, when she was in her early-twenties, but she’d had no children. Since she was older than I was, almost thirty-seven, I sometimes wondered what kind of future she imagined for herself, but she had given me no indication that she was dissatisfied with the way things were going. I didn’t find it difficult to picture the children we might have together – skinny, dark-eyed, with a laughter as rich and rare as hers.
I waited until we were settled in her living-room with a bottle of chilled white wine, then I told her my news. ‘Sonya, they want me to go to a conference next month. It’s in the Blue Quarter.’
Divided Kingdom Page 9