So in seeing at last an island of real economic substance I viewed it with a kind of double vision. One part of me was still receptive and involved, trying to see and understand everything in objective terms. But another part, deeper and more irrational, could not help but see this concrete-slab coastline of Muriseay with the received glamour of popular culture.
The beaches were therefore crowded with the indulgent rich, tanning themselves in the golden sunshine of Muriseay's legendary heat. Everyone was a tax-exile, philanderer or remittanceman; the modern yachts moored a short distance offshore were the scenes of nightly gambling and murder, a place for playboys and high-class whores, corrupt and fascinating. Behind the modern apartment blocks I visualized the squalid hovels of the peasant islanders, parasitic on the visitors, contemptuous of them, yet servile. Just like the films, just like the cheap paperbacks that filled the bookstalls of Jethra.
Thorrin and Dellidua Sineham were on deck, standing beside the rail further down the ship. They too were gazing interestedly across at the shore, pointing at the coastal buildings, talking together. The tattily romantic version of Muriseay faded, and I walked down and lent them the glasses. Those villas and apartments would be mostly occupied by decent, ordinary people like the Sinehams. I stayed with them for a while, listening to them talk excitedly of their new home and life. Thorrin's brother and his wife were already here, and they were in the same village, and they had been getting the apartment ready.
Later, I went back to my place alone and watched the terrain change as we moved further south. Here the hills came down to the sea, breaking as cliffs, and the blocks of flats were hidden from view; soon we were passing shores as wild as any I had seen in the islands. The ship was close inshore, and through the glasses I could see the flash of birds in the trees that grew to the edge of the cliffs.
We reached what I first assumed was the niouth of a river, and the ship turned and headed upstream. Here the water was deep and calm, a stupendous bottle green, the sun shafting down through it. On either bank was dense jungle of monstrous aroids, unmoving in the humid silence.
After a few minutes in this airless channel it became clear that we had turned inland between an offshore island and the mainland, because it opened out into a vast, placid lagoon, on the far side of which was the sprawl of Muriseay Town.
Now, with the end of the long voyage imminent, I felt a strange sense of insecurity. The ship had become a symbol of safety, the object that had fed me and carried me, that I returned to after venturing ashore. I had grown used to the boat, and knew my way about it like I knew the apartment I had left in J
ethra. To leave it would he to take a second step into strangeness. We impose familiarity on our surroundings; from the deck of the ship the scenery merely passed, but now I had to disembark, set foot in the islands.
It was a return to the inner-directed self I had temporarily lost when I boarded the ship. Unaccountably I felt nervous of Muriseay, yet there was no logical reason for this. It was just a transit, a place to change ships. Also, I was expected in Muriseay. There was an office of the Lotterie-Collago here, and the next leg of the journey was one they would arrange.
I stood in the prow of the ship until it had docked, then went back to find the Sinehams. I wished them luck, said goodbye, then went down to my cabin to collect my holdall.
A few minutes later I was heading up the quay, looking for a taxi to take me into town.
7
The offices of Lotterie-Collago were in a shaded side street about five minutes' drive from the harbour. I paid off the taxi driver and he drove quickly away, the dusty old saloon car bouncing noisily on the cobbles. At the far end of the street the car turned into the harsh brilliance of sunlight, joining the chaos of traffic that roared past.
The offices were like a large showroom, fronting the street with two plate glass windows. Behind, there were no lights on but at the far end, away from the doors and behind a small forest of potted plants, there was a desk and some cabinets. A young woman sat there, looking through a magazine.
I tried the doors, but they were locked. The young woman heard me, looked up and acknowledged me. I saw her take down some keys.
I was still only a few minutes away from the lulling, lazy routines of shipboard life, but already Muriseay Town had instilled in me an acute sense of culture shock. Nothing I had seen in any of the small islands had prepared me for this busy, hot and noisy city, nor was it like anywhere I knew at home.
Muriseay, experienced raw, seemed like a chaos of cars, people and buildings. Everyone nloved with astonishing yet mysterious purpose. Cars were driven faster than anyone would have dared in Jethra, accompanied by heavy braking, sharp cornering and constant use of the horn. Street signs, in two languages, obeyed no apparent overall system, nor even consistency in their use. Shops in the streets were open to the world, quite unlike the prim emporia of Jethra's main boulevards, and their goods spilled out in a colourful mess across the pavements. Discarded boxes and bottles were all over the place. People lounged around in the sun, lying in the grassy squares, leaning against the walls of buildings or sitting under the bright canopies of the open-air bars and restaurants. One street had been completely blocked by what appeared to be an impromptu football match, causing my driver to swear at me and reverse violently and dangerously into the main street. Further complicating the city were the buses, which hurtled down the centres of the carriageways, passengers bulging from windows and doorways, and claiming right of way by sheer nerve alone. The layout of the city seemed to have no overall design, being a warren of criss-crossing narrow streets between the ramshackle brick buildings; I was used to the stately avenues of Jethra, built, according to tradition, sufficiently wide for a full company of Seigniorial troops to march abreast.
All this was glimpsed and absorbed in the few minutes I was in the taxi, whirled through the streets in a sort of car I had only ever before seen in movies. It was a huge, battered old saloon, spattered with dust and dried mud, the windscreen plastered with dead insects. Inside, the seats were covered with synthetic fur, and were far too soft for comfort; one sank into them with a feeling of excessive and cloying luxury. The fascia of the car was tarnished chrome and peeling wood veneer; the inside of the windscreen was stuck all over with photographs of women and children. A dog lay asleep on the back seat, and shrilling, distorted pop music was blasting from the radio. The driver steered with only one hand on the wheel, the other out of the window and clasping the roof, slapping in time with the music. The car swooped through corners, setting up a banging noise from the suspension and a rocking motion inside.
The whole city was a new kind of sensation: a feeling of careless indifference to many things I took for granted_quiet, safety, laws, consideration towards others. Muriseay Town seemed to he a city in eternal conflict with itself. Noise, heat, dust, white light; a teeming, shouting and colliding city, uneven and untidy, yet charged with life.
But I did not feel unsafe, and neither was I excited, except in a way best described as cerebral. The taxi driver's careering progress through the milling traffic was something that took the breath away, but it was in a larger context of confusion and disorder. A car driven like that in Jethra would certainly crash within a few moments, if not stopped by the police, but in Muriseay Town everything was at the same level of chaos. It was as if I had somehow crossed over into another universe, one where the degree of activity had been perceptibly increased: reality's tuner had been adjusted, so noises were louder, colours were brighter, crowds were more dense, heat was greater, time moved faster. I felt a curious sense of diminished responsibility, as if I were in a dream. I could not be hurt or endangered in Muriseay, because I was protected by the dangerous chaos of normality. The car would not crash, those ancient leaning buildings would never fall, the crowds would always skip out of the way of the traffic, because we were in a place of higher response, a place where mundane disasters simply never occurred.