These contradictions, which I carefully stored in my mind and thought about when I was alone, interested me more than all the bare facts I was learning. I failed to understand them, though.
Only when the second kind of distraction grew in importance was I able to make patterns.
Because soon I started having fragmentary memories of my illness.
I still knew very little about what had been done to me. That I had undergone some form of major surgery was obvious. My head had been shaved, and there was an ugly pattern of scar tissue on my neck and lower skull, behind my left ear. Smaller operation scars were on my chest, back and lower abdomen. In an exact parallel with nw mental state, I was weak but I _felt_ fit and energetic.
Certain mental images haunted me. They did so from the time I was first aware, but only when I found out what was real in the world could I identify these images as phantasms. After much thought I concluded that at some point in my illness I must have been delirious.
These images therefore had to be flashing memories of my life before my illness!
I saw and recognized faces, I heard familiar voices, I felt myself to he in certain places. I could not identify any of them, but they nevertheless had a quality of total authenticity.
What was confusing about them was that they were utterly different, in tone and feeling, from the so-called facts about myself coming from Lareen and Seri.
What was compelling about them, though, was that they were congruent with the discrepancies I was picking up from Seri.
When she stuttered or hesitated, when she contradicted herself, when Lareen interrupted her, then it was I felt Seri was telling the truth about me.
At times like these I wanted her to say more, to repeat her mistake. It was much more interesting! When we were alone I tried to urge her to he frank with me, but she would never admit to her errors. I was incapable of pressing her too far: my doubts were too great, I was still too confused.
Even so, after several days of this, I knew two separate versions of myself.
The authorized version, according to Lareen and Seri, went like this: I had been born in a city called Jethra in a country called Faiandland. My mother's name was Cotheran Gilmoor, changed to Sinclair on her marriage to my father, Franford Sinclair. My mother was now dead. I had a sister named Kalia.
She was married to a man named Yallow; this was his first name only. Kalia and Yallow lived in Jethra, and they were childless. After school I had gone to university, obtaining a good degree in chemistry. I worked for some years in industry as a formulation chemist. In the recent past I had contracted a serious brain condition, and had travelled to the island of Collago in the Dream Archipelago to receive specialist treatment. On the way to Collago I had met Seri and we had become lovers. As a consequence of the surgery I had suffered amnesia, and now Seri was working with Lareen to restore my memory.
On one level of my mind I accepted this. The two women painted a convincing picture of the world: they told me of the war, of the neutrality of the islands, of the upheavals in most people's lives because of the war. The geography of the world, its politics, economy, history, societies, all these were described to me plausibly and evocatively.
The ripple of my external awareness spread to the horizon, and beyond.
But then there was my perseveration, based on the inconsistencies, and in my inner universe the ripples collided and collapsed.
They told me I had been born in Jethra. They showed it to me on a map, there were photographs I could look at. I was a Jethran. However, one day, describing Jethra while she glanced at the typewritten pages, Seri had accidentally said "London". It shocked me. (In my delirium I had experienced a sensation that was located and described by the word. It was certainly a place, it might or might not have been where I was horn, but it existed in my life and it was called "London".) My parents. Seri and Lareen said my mother was dead. I felt no shock or surprise, because this I had known. But they told me, quite emphatically, that my father was alive. (This was an anomaly. I was confused, within my other confusions. My father was alive, my father was dead . . . ... which was it?
Even Seri seemed unsure.)
My sister. She was Kalia, two years older than me, married to Yallow.
Yet once, quickly corrected by Lareen, Seri had called her "Felicity". Another unexpected jolt: in my delirious images the sister presence was called
"Felicity". (And other doubts within doubts. When Lareen or Seri spoke of Kalia, they imparted a feeling of sibling warmth to our relationship. From Seri I sensed friction, and in my delirium I had experienced hostility and competitiveness.)
My sister's husband and family. Yallow featured only peripherally in my life, but when he was mentioned it was in the same terms of comforting warmth as Kalia. (I knew Yallow by another name, but I could not find it. I waited for Seri to make another slip, but in this she was consistent. I knew that
"Felicity" and her husband, whom I thought of as "Yallow", had children; they were never mentioned.)
My illness. Something inconsistent here, but I could not trace it. (Deep inside me I was convinced I had never been ill.) Then, finally, Seri herself. Of all her contradictions this was the least explicable. I saw her every day for hours at a time. She was daily explaining to me, in effect, both herself and her relationship with me. In an ocean of cross-currents and hidden depths, she was the only rock of reality on to which I could crawl. Yet by her words, her sudden frowns, her gestures, her hesitations, she created doubt in me that she existed at all. (Behind her was another woman, a complement. I had no name for her, just a total belief in her existence. This other Seri, the _doppelgänger_, had haunted my delirium. She,
"Seri", was fraught and fickle, unreliable and temperamental, affectionate and very sexual. She invoked in me strong passions of love and protectiveness, but also of anxiety and self-interest. Her existence in my underlife was so deep-rooted that sometimes it was as if I could touch her, sense her fragrance, hold her thin hands in mine.)
19
The doubts about my identity became a permanent and familiar part of my life. If I dwelt on them I saw myself in reverse image, subtly different, like a black-and-white photograph printed from the wrong side of the negative. But my central preoccupation was my return to health, because with every day that passed I felt stronger, fitter, more equipped to return to the normal world.
Seri and I would often go for long walks through the grounds of the clinic. Once, we went with Lareen to Collago Town and watched the bustle of the traffic and the ships in the harbour. There was a swimming pool at the clinic, as well as courts for squash and tennis. I exercised every day, enjoying the sensation of my body returning to co-ordination and fitness. I started regaining the weight I had lost, my hair grew again, I tanned in the warm sunshine, and even the operation scars began to fade. (Doctor Corrob told me they would vanish altogether within a few weeks.) Meanwhile, other skills returned. I learned to read and write quite quickly, and although I had difficulty with vocabulary, Lareen lent me one of the clinic's retraining books, and after a few hours I was in command of the language. My mental receptivity continued: anything I came across that was novel to me could he learned--or relearned, as Lareen insisted--with speed and thoroughness.
Soon I developed taste. Music, for instance, had been at first an intimidating scramble of noises, but later I was able to detect melody, then harmony, and then, with a sense of triumph, I discovered that some kinds of music were more enjoyable than others. Food was another area where I developed likes and dislikes. My sense of humour became tuned: I discovered that bodily functions had a limited scope for fun, and that some jokes were more amusing than others. Seri moved back from her hotel to live in the chalet with me.