"I could replicate it for you," Lareen said, and laughed as if she had made a joke. "I mean, I'll get it photocopied for you. Then you can have the original back and I'll work with the copy."
I said: "That's what they're going to do to me, isn't it? I'm going to he photocopied. The only difference is that I won't get the original back.
I'll be given the copy, but the original will be blank."
"It was only a joke, Peter."
"I know, but you made me think."
"Do you want to reconsider filling out my questionnaire? If you don't trust the manuscript--"
"It's not that I distrust," I said. "I live by what I wrote, because I _am_ what I wrote."
I closed my eyes, turning away from her again. How could I ever forget that obsessive writing and rewriting, the warm summer, the hillside view of Jethra? I particularly remembered being on the verandah of the villa I had borrowed from Colan the evening I made my most exciting discovery: that recollection was only partial, that the artistic recreation of the past constituted a higher truth than mere memory. Life could be rendered in metaphorical terms; these were the patterns I mentioned to Lareen. The actual details of, for instance, my years at school were only of incidental interest, yet considered metaphorically, as an experience of learning and growing, they became a larger, higher event. I related to them directly, because they had been my own experiences, but they were also related to the larger body of human experience because they dealt with the verities. Had I merely recounted the humdrum narrative, the catalogue of anecdotal details in literal memory, I should have been telling only half the story.
I could not separate myself from my context, and in this my manuscript became a wholeness, describing my living, describing my life.
I therefore knew that to answer Lareen's questionnaire would produce only half-truths. There was no room for elaboration in literal answers, no capacity for metaphor, or for _story_.
Lareen was glancing at her wristwatch.
"Do you know it's after three?" she said. "You missed lunch, and you're not allowed food after four."
"Can I get a meal at this time?"
"At the refectory. Tell the staff you're starting treatment tomorrow, and they'll know what to give you."
"Where's Seri? Shouldn't she he back by now?"
"I told her not to be back before five."
"I want her with me tonight," I said.
"That's up to you and her. She mustn't be here when you go up to the clinic."
I said: "But afterwards, can I see her then?"
"Of course you can. We'll both need her." Lareen had tucked my manuscript under her arm, ready to take it away, but now she pulled it out again. "How much does Seri know about you, about your background?"
"We've talked a bit while we were travelling. We both talked about ourselves."
"Look, I've had an idea." Lareen held out the manuscript for me to take.
"I'll read this later, while you're in the clinic. Tonight, let Seri read this, and talk to her about it. The more she knows about you the better. It could be very important."
I took the manuscript back, thinking of the way my life and privacy were being invaded. In writing of myself I had exposed myself; in the manuscript I was naked. I had not written to promote or excuse myself; I had just been honest, and in the process had found myself frequently unlikable. For this reason, the very idea of someone else reading the manuscript would have been unthinkable a few weeks before. Yet two women I hardly knew were now to read my work, and presumably would know me as well as I knew myself.
Even as I resented the intrusion a part of me rushed towards them, urging them to close scrutiny of m identity. In their interpretation, passed back to me, I would become myself again.
After Lareen had left I walked across the sloping lawns to the refectory, and was given the authorized pre-treatment meal. The condemned man ate a light salad, and afterwards was still hungry.
Seri reappeared in the evening, tired from being in the sun all day and walking too far. She had eaten before returning, and again I glimpsed the effect of what was happening. Already our temporary liaison was disrupted: we spent a day apart, ate meals at different times. Afterwards our lives would proceed at different paces. I talked to her about what had happened during the day, what I had learned.
"Do you believe them?" she said.
"I do now."
Seri placed her hands on the sides of my face, touching my temples with light fingertips. "They think you will die."
"They're hoping it won't happen tonight," I said. "Very bad for publicity."
"You mustn't excite yourself."
"What does that mean?"
"Separate beds tonight."
"The doctor said nothing about sex."
"No, but I did."
The energy had gone out of her teasing, and I sensed a growing silence within her. She was acting like a concerned relative before an operation, making bad-taste jokes about bedpans and enemas, covering up a darker fear.
I said: "Lareen wants you to help with the rehabilitation."
"Do you want me to?"
"I can't imagine it without you. That's why you came, isn't it?"
"You know why I'm here, Peter." She hugged me then, but turned away after a few seconds, looking down.
"I want you to read something this evening," I said. "Lareen suggested it."
"What is it?"
"I haven't enough time to answer her questionnaire," I said, fudging the answer. "But before I left home I wrote a manuscript. My life story. Lareen's seen it, and she's going to use it for the rehabilitation. If you read it this evening, I can talk to you about it."
"How long is it?"
"Quite long. More than two hundred pages, but it's typewritten. It shouldn't take too long."
"Where is it?"
I passed it to her.
"Why don't you just talk to me, like you did on the boat?" She was holding the manuscript loosely, letting the pages spread. "I feel this is, well, something you wrote for yourself, something private."
"It's what you've got to use." I started to explain my motives for writing it, what I had been trying to do, but Seri moved away to the other bed and began to read. She turned the pages quickly, as if she was only skimming, and I wondered how much of it she could take in with such a superficial reading.
I watched her as she went through the first chapter, the long explanatory passage where I was working out my then dilemma, my series of misfortunes, my justification for self-examination. She reached the second chapter, and because I was watching closely I noticed that she paused on the first page and read the opening paragraph again. She looked back to the first chapter.
She said: "Can I ask you something?"
"Shouldn't you read a bit more?"
"I don't understand." She put down the pages and looked at me oven them.
"I thought you said you came from Jethra?"
"That's right."
"Then why do you say you were born somewhere else?" She looked again at the word. " 'London' . . . where's that?"
"Oh, that," I said. "That's an invented name . . . it's difficult to explain. It's Jethra really, but I was trying to convey the idea that as you grow up the place you're in seems to change. 'London' is a state of mind. It describes my parents, I suppose, what they were like and where they were living when I was born."
"Let me read," Seri said, not looking at me, staring down at the page.
She read more slowly now, checking back several times. I began to feel uncomfortable, interpreting her difficulties as a form of criticism. Because I had defined myself to myself, because I had never imagined that anyone else would ever read it, I had taken for granted that my method would be obvious.
Seri, the first person in the world to read my book, frowned and read haltingly, turning the pages forward and back.
"Give it back to me," I said at last. "I don't want you to read any more."
"I've got to," she said. "I've got to understand."
But time passed and not much was clear to her. She started asking me questions: