'I'm not sure why.' A door on the floor above opened, and footsteps crossed the landing. A moment later a man came quickly down the stairs, pa.s.sed without acknowledging us, and went out of the main door. 'I've probably said too much,' Luce said, once he was gone. She was speaking more quietly now. 'We're not supposed to know about Adjacent.'

'But they couldn't keep something like that secret.'

'I think they try. I shouldn't even have told you that name. It's officially called something else, but that's a seigniory secret too. Please forget I said anything.'

'Tomak isn't an illegal immigrant,' I said. 'He was involved in the war, he was injured. He was brought here because of the hospitals.'

'Then he won't be there where I said.'

'In Adjacent?'

'I'm sorry I'm in a hurry.'

She moved away from me, clearly regretting having said what she had. I rarely saw her again after that, and I began to understand that she was probably avoiding me.

That was in fact the only direct mention I ever heard made of the camp. Because of the possibility that Tomak had been sent there, I naturally tried to investigate, but in a way that I was quickly learning to identify as habitually Prachoit my enquiries were met with vagueness, denials, evasions.

I once even tried to locate the place myself, driving north from Beathurn along the coast. Nowhere called Adjacent, or anything like it, showed on any maps. All I had to go on was Luce's vague description. There was indeed a large area of swampland by a river estuary, roughly where she had described it, but it was either left unmarked on maps or described as undeveloped land. It was impossible to get to it by road, as I discovered when I tried. Barricaded warnings about floods, subsidence, fallen bridges, and so on, blocked the way, and after trying one or two of the roads that looked as if they might lead there. I soon gave up.

For all the time I remained on Prachous, the place called Adjacent was a kind of vacancy on the island there but not there, a non-place that everyone knew about but that no one had ever been to, and certainly would not discuss with me.

It was an early step on my way to becoming more able to fit in with life on Prachous, although there was a part of my outlook which would never let me surrender entirely to it. My parents were peasants we lived on a humble farm deep in poor and unyielding countryside, but my father and mother were strict and idealistic, disdaining bourgeois values. Some of that rubbed off on me, but even so I admit the generous life in Beathurn came easily to me. After several months I knew that my search for Tomak was becoming an excuse, a way for me to justify remaining on Prachous long after it was necessary.

One day, walking along the high reinforced harbour wall in Beathurn, enjoying the dazzling sunshine and the cooling sea breeze, relishing the bright colours of the yachts and motor boats, the glistening sea and the endless distant roar of breaking waves, I had one of those moments of self-reappraisal that, in their suddenness, can transform your outlook.

So much time had elapsed since I had last seen Tomak, even longer since we had been able to speak intimately, and even beyond that much longer since we had spent any time alone together. We had been close since we were in our early teens, and were still young when the war tore us apart. I had spoken to him only briefly as the invasion was erupting around us, in a chaos of fire and explosions and collapsing buildings. Tomak had gone to face that war I had escaped it.

Many months had pa.s.sed since I landed my aircraft on that gra.s.sy Prachoit airstrip, the engine coughing and misfiring as the last drops of fuel were pumped into the carburettor. I had grown, matured, changed, experienced much. It was not that my love for Tomak was immature, but the person I had been then felt distant, remote even from me. The world I knew and had lived in with him no longer existed. Maybe Tomak too would never again exist for me.

20.

I moved house and found more friends. A house on a hill became available so I negotiated for it and took it over. I began to fill it with the sort of furniture I liked, put paintings on the wall, stacked the shelves with books and records and started the long task of re-landscaping the overgrown garden. The balance on my numbered loan account grew steadily larger.

I looked for and soon found a job. I had never had a proper job in my life, but for most of the wealthier Prachoits finding work was an option, not a necessity. It was one way of bringing down the t.i.thing debt, but otherwise there was no material advantage. I had found out that the type of loan I was using could be extended indefinitely. If I chose never to pay it back then it would only become payable if I wished to leave Prachous, or it would be seized on my death, when the Seigniory would take whatever a.s.sets I had in settlement.

It was fairly easy for me to find a job I could do. I worked for a while as a secretarial a.s.sistant, light duties, three days a week, not because that interested me but because I thought it would help familiarize me with some of the ordinary commercial life of Beathurn.

The job hardly ate into my free time, and I continued to make my sightseeing expeditions in my car. I discovered the unique network of cable-cars that had been put up on the tall range of mountains that lay to the north of the town. These high and slightly nerve-racking rides were popular with everyone in Beathurn, because of the sensational and breathtaking views they offered of the town, the coastline and some of the surrounding countryside. I rode on the cable cars most weekends, particularly relishing the cool air close to the summits of these mountains. I also enrolled in a local gymnasium and in my spare time worked out three times a week. A colleague gave me a bicycle which would fold down and fit in the back of my car, so that I could drive out to the less accessible areas of the island and ride across the wild terrain. I joined a local book-readers' group, I took up dancing and I became a patron of our local theatre, Il-Palazz Dukat Aviator, the Grand Aviator Palace, which I loved because of its logo, a stylized airman in leather cap and goggles, with a racy propeller-driven aircraft in the background.

As a volunteer patron of the theatre I was one of several who took it in turns to carry out routine tasks behind the scenes. My own duty was to work with the wardrobe department, arranging for the costumes to be collected and cleaned after a performance. There was a contract laundry in the town all I had to do was drive the costumes across to the laundry, then either wait while the cleaning was carried out, or return to pick them up later.

One afternoon in the warmest season I went to Il-Palazz as usual to collect that week's laundry. After I had parked my car at the back of the theatre and was walking around to the side entrance, a tall young man in dark clothes and with a tangle of unruly hair came out through the door into the narrow alleyway. The theatre is a deep building, reaching back a long way from the road. As I had only just entered the alley from the car park we were a distance apart. He did not look in my direction at all, but everything about his appearance sent a thrill of recognition through me. He turned away and walked quickly towards the front of the building, where the main entrance was.

I stood in shock, staring after him, frozen into immobility by seeing him. It was Tomak!

I called his name at once, then hurried after him. He was too far away to have heard me so I called again, much more loudly. My voice cracked with excitement. He turned the corner, walking down the road away from the theatre. It seemed to me that he had heard me because for a moment his head turned in my direction, but almost at once he pa.s.sed behind a tall hedge. I had glimpsed him face-on! As I walked quickly down the alley I expected him to pause, or look back at me, but he did not.

I ran the remaining distance but as I turned to follow him along the road I saw him opening the pa.s.senger door of a car, preparing to climb in. He was speaking to the driver. I called his name again, this time fearful that he was for some reason deliberately ignoring me. Once again he looked back at me, but then he lowered himself into the car and slammed the door. It drove away at once.

In the confusion, the sudden rising of excitement, I hardly knew what to do. I desperately tried to remember what I could of the car, but it was a neutral grey colour, a popular model there were thousands like it on the streets of Beathurn. There had been a licence plate of course, but I had not thought to look properly. The grey car was already far away I could see that it had halted at the junction where the road leads down towards the port, but then it moved on, heading away from the sh.o.r.e. I could no longer see it.

I hurried inside the theatre, hoping someone might know who the man was and how I could contact him. There was no matinee performance that day so much of the building's interior was darkened. The tech crew were away from the theatre until the evening show. I found the front-of-house manager but he had not noticed anyone going in or out. Backstage I came across two scenery riggers they were just returning from lunch and had seen no one they did not recognize. The same was true of Ellse, the wardrobe manager, whom I worked with regularly. She said she knew that Madame Wollsten, the community manager, was interviewing someone, but had no more details. I found the manager straight away but all she would tell me was that a magician from the town had called in to try to obtain a booking from her. Would that have been the man I saw leaving the building? She shrugged her shoulders, losing interest.

I completed my errand with the laundry, dropped off the clean costumes at the theatre and then returned home. My thoughts and emotions were still running wild. That young man had been Tomak! But it couldn't have been Tomak. He looked just like him, but the information I was given before I arrived on this island was that Tomak had suffered burns to his head and shoulders. It was this knowledge that had lent an edge of urgency to my search for him. The man I glimpsed outside the theatre showed no sign of injury.

And if that was the magician Madame Wollsten had told me about, then of course it could not be Tomak. Unless Tomak and he were one, unless Tomak had for some incomprehensible reason become a stage performer, an illusionist it was too fantastic to consider.

After having been pushed into the background for a long while, Tomak became my obsession again. The thought that he might be living in the same town as me, not only alive but apparently unharmed, was something I could not ignore. That night I lay awake for hours, wondering what I should do, while an entirely separate part of my mind was arguing that it was a coincidence, that he was someone who only resembled Tomak, who was not him, who could not be him.

The next day I walked into the town, wandering through the most populous parts, scanning the face of every man I saw. I walked slowly through the streets for hours, sweltering in the heat, desperate to see him.

The only thing I knew, but then not with total certainty, was that the man I had seen leaving the theatre was almost certainly the magician. He must be living somewhere in the town.

I started to ask around, trying to find out if anyone I was in contact with knew or had ever heard of any magicians in Beathurn. None had. Later I contacted a conjurers' professional organization in Prachous Town, but the only member they had in Beathurn was now elderly and semi-retired.

I made a habit of walking through the centre of town most days, sometimes even diverting to one of the outer suburbs, always hoping to find him. Several weeks went by with nothing, but then at last I saw him again.

21.

Close to the centre of Beathurn there is a pleasant, tree-filled square, set aside for pedestrians and people who want to relax over a quiet meal in the open air: there are several restaurants fronting the pedestrian area, and a couple of cafe-bars. The square is virtually closed to traffic, which is confined to a narrow road running along one side. This peaceful and attractive place is in front of the main building of the Mult.i.technic University and is a natural meeting area, not only for the students, who congregate there in their hundreds, but for everyone else too.

While making my regular forays in search of Tomak I almost invariably went through the square, thinking it was one of the more likely places he would be.

And so it turned out. One morning, while walking to work, I pa.s.sed through the square, not in fact at that moment thinking of Tomak or trying to see him. Then I did: he was sitting alone at a table for two, a newspaper spread out in front of him, a pen in one hand while he solved some kind of puzzle, and a cup of coffee in the other. Next to his hand was a plate with the crumbs left over from something he had eaten.

Of course I came to a halt, staring across at him. He was unaware of me, reaching forward with his pen from time to time to mark a square of letters printed in the newspaper. My first instinct was to approach him, but since I saw him at the theatre a few weeks had pa.s.sed. I wanted to be careful.

I walked past the cafe, turned around, walked back. He was ordering something from the waiter, so I stood still until he had finished, thinking he might glance around, notice me. He did not. I waited until the waiter brought him his order, a second cup of coffee, then went to one of the empty tables. When the waiter came across I ordered a coffee for myself.

If the man I thought was Tomak noticed me, he did not act on it. If it was Tomak surely he would recognize me? I sat still at my table, trying not to stare, but being constantly aware of him. Who could he be? If not Tomak he looked identical to the young man I had lost when the war broke out. A magician? It stretched credulity, but all I knew was that this man reminded me in every way of Tomak apart from the facial resemblance, which was uncannily close, he had the same hair, the same colouring, sat hunched over his newspaper in a way that was completely familiar to me.

He settled his bill, folded his newspaper, which he tossed into a waste receptacle beside the main door of the cafe, then walked out into the square. He did not pa.s.s directly by my table, but he was close, so close.

I was thrown by this encounter to such an extent that as he walked off into the busy square it did not occur to me to follow him. By the time I thought about it he had disappeared into the crowds.

The next morning I went to the same place at the same time, and to my relief he was there again. I took a table on the far side of the cafe's concourse, from where I could look at him without feeling obvious about it. I ordered a croissant and a cup of black coffee, and while I toyed with them I thought again about the dilemma presented to me by this man. I now understood that the conflict was between heart and head.

If it really was Tomak, the man I had known and loved, why did he not recognize me? Why did he show no trace of the injuries about which I had been given such explicit, shocking and authoritative information? Of course, he might be pretending not to know me, but I could not think of a single reason why he should do that. Or another possibility: the injuries he received might have been different from the ones I had heard about: maybe he had suffered traumatic amnesia, so that much of his past life was forgotten?

On the other hand, my calm head told me that it was not Tomak at all, that it could not be him, that it was an amazing coincidence. A coincidence of his dark and often untidy hair, of his wide eyes, his high cheekbones, his broad shoulders, his easy way of sitting. When the man smiled I saw Tomak smile and I went rigid inside, uplifted by remembered happiness, laid low by a sense of abandonment.

I knew there was only one way to find out. I had to resolve it by speaking to him directly. I signed for what I'd eaten, then stood up and started across the cafe concourse, my heart thumping with sudden nervousness. As I did so a young woman made her way quickly towards him across the square, waving her hand. She wound her way sinuously through the tables, went directly to him and leaned down to kiss him on both cheeks. Laughing, she sat down on the chair opposite his. He squeezed her hand across the table, smiling.

I halted. I backed away.

I stood by the edge of the cafe area, staring across. Who was she? She was young I guessed she was still in her teens. She was barely out of childhood, on the brink of womanhood. A student at the university? She had come across the square from that direction. She was glowing with youth: she had a slim, agile body, long delicate hands, her fair hair was drawn back in a pony-tail. She was wearing tight white jeans and a loose jacket. Sungla.s.ses were propped up on her brow. As she sat with Tomak, she crossed and uncrossed her legs, spoke vivaciously, made him laugh. She rarely looked away from him. He was her first love, the one she would remember just as I was remembering, for the rest of her life, for the rest of mine.

The waiter brought her a soft drink with ice, which she sipped, staring at Tomak across the rim of the gla.s.s. He was telling her something, waving his hands expressively. I knew that gesture. I knew all his mannerisms.

She was too old to be his daughter or he was too young to have a daughter of that age. But could they be lovers? She looked as if she was at least seven or eight years younger than him. They were acting together as if they knew each other well, were close or intimate friends, but once she had sat down opposite him he let go of her hand and seemed to be content just to chat casually with her. They were both smiling a lot and the girl was leaning towards him with her elbows on the table, holding her drink in both hands.

I was incapable of moving away. I stood there at the edge of the square, where the paths crossed the gra.s.sy parkland and the tables belonging to the restaurants and cafes spread out across their allotted areas. I knew that I was probably making myself prominent by standing so still, staring so obviously across the cafe concourse, but I felt paralysed by the discovery of this young friend of his.

Tomak sometimes glanced around expressively while he spoke to her, and once or twice his gaze came in my direction. He must have noticed me there, yet somehow he still did not recognize me.

They left the table, sc.r.a.ping back their chairs, then straightening them before they walked away. He let her go first. They walked past me, as close to me as Tomak had been when he left the cafe the day before. Once they were in the open he walked beside her, his arms swinging at his side. They did not touch each other.

I let them get a long way ahead of me, then I followed. I maintained the distance, but because they were walking slowly, sauntering, wrapped up in each other's company, I was soon catching up with them. I went more slowly. I dawdled behind them for a long time, certain they must realize they were being followed, but they were preoccupied with each other. I was confused, anguished, but also full of a kind of awkward happiness.

I knew I should turn away, walk home, leave these carefree and infatuated young people to each other, but it was just not possible. My rationale for being here on this island was Tomak, and in some mystifying, unsatisfactory but undeniable way, I had at last found him. Walking away was not a decision I felt I could take.

They walked slowly past the shopping area of the town then entered a narrow street, a place of deep shade created by the tall houses on each side. He led her to the door of an old building, where there had once been a restaurant at street level, with several storeys above. The windows were all bricked up. Tomak unlocked the door and she went in before him. He followed, slammed the door and I heard the lock turn.

I hurried home, collected my car, and when the couple emerged from that secretive-looking building some two hours later I was parked un.o.btrusively at the far end of the street.

By keeping them at a distance, driving deviously, watching, following, I eventually discovered where Tomak lived.

22.

What then followed was a sequence of events which I am not proud of, and was not proud of at the time, but such were my intense feelings about Tomak that I could hardly have acted otherwise. Every spare moment I had I devoted to trying to solve the deeply personal mystery that this man presented. I had to come to some kind of understanding of the turbulent feelings he aroused, and the enigma that surrounded him.

I soon learned his regular movements about the town: there were certain bars or restaurants he favoured, houses or apartments he sometimes visited. He walked everywhere, having no car or other vehicle. Once I saw him being driven again by the friend who owned the small grey car I had seen outside the theatre.

I followed him whenever he went to meet his young companion. He saw her once or twice every week, always in the cafe in the square by the university, and after a relaxed conversation they would walk to the large old building and lock themselves inside. I had to wait for them to emerge, fighting down my feelings of sadness and jealousy. I envied what appeared to me to be their unworried life together.

In the evenings, when he appeared never to meet her, I regularly went to watch the entrance to his apartment from the darkened streets outside the building.

On one evening of intense humidity, in a wave of hot air flooding across the town from the simmering interior of the island, I took up what I believed was a secure position close to his apartment. Thunder rumbled out at sea. I was in a shadowed place from which one window was visible, often uncurtained at night. I could also see the main door to the apartment block. I could observe when he left or arrived. The lighted window did not give on to a room it was a hall or pa.s.sageway of some kind. I rarely saw him there, except when he moved to and fro between the rooms, but it was enough of a view to prove to me, more or less beyond doubt, that he never took his young girlfriend to the apartment. But I was more obsessively interested in the man who had been Tomak than in the girl.

I was aware of the torpid stillness of the town. The oppressive weather was bearing down on the houses, keeping people inside. The storm seemed to be approaching no closer to the sh.o.r.e. Sometimes I saw lightning flickering far off to the east. Traffic moved in the distance but there were no cars in the streets around me. The normal noises of the city seemed hushed, muted. The birds were still. Leaves rustled above me as the hot, slow wind blew. I heard insects stridulating in the trees and bushes. Wherever my bare arms touched the side of my body, I felt the burning of inescapable heat. The town was waiting for the storm to break, relishing the prospect of a cleansing downpour.

'Who are you, and why the h.e.l.l are you following me?'

He was there without warning. He must have left the apartment block by another door, approached through the gardens or yards at the back of the buildings. He had emerged from a gated entrance close to where I always stood.

I was shocked into silence. Embarra.s.sed by being caught. Frightened of what he might do. But above all electrically aware of his closeness to me.

'You're stalking me. Why?' His voice was raised, angry.

I stumbled back, away from him, but there was an ornamental shrub behind me, bulging out into the street, above the containing wall. I normally depended on its foliage to conceal me as I waited but now it was blocking my escape.

A light came on, dazzling me. He was holding a battery torch, shining the beam into my face.

'Let me have a look at you!'

I said at last, but feebly, 'Tomak? It is you, isn't it?'

'Has someone sent you? Is it blackmail? Is that what it is?'

At last I was hearing him speak. Although he was angry his voice was the same as I remembered it, but now he was speaking in the Prachoit demotic, the popular language of people who were born on the island. I understood demotic but found it difficult to speak, unless I had time to think ahead about what I wanted to say.

Now I just said, 'Tomak! Please! Don't you remember me?'

'You look harmless enough. Why are you following me? Is it Ruddebet's father? Has he put you up to this? Is he paying you? What are you trying to find out about us?'

'I can't see you with that light in my eyes!' I cried. I was dazzled by the flashlight beam he was just a dark shape. 'I've been searching for you, Tomak. I heard you had been injured, suffered terrible burns. I came to find you. You must remember what we promised each other.'

'What you're doing is illegal. You probably think I'm not aware of you, but you've been following me all over town. Ruddebet too. What are you up to? She's just an innocent girl. It's a crime you know that? Stalking is dealt with by populace vengeance. Do you want me to call my neighbours?'

'Please listen to me. My name was Kirstenya when we were together. I've had to change it since I've been living here, but I was Kirstenya. Don't you remember? Kirstenya Rosscky. We were brought up as brother and sister, but when we grew up we fell in love with each other. War was breaking out around us, and I flew back home to find you. I did find you, close to where we lived. You were with a squad of your troops, trying to rescue people trapped in their houses, and dealing with the fires. Sh.e.l.ls were landing everywhere. There were awful explosions and aircraft were above us. Dive bombers! Don't you remember those terrifying bombers, Tomak? It was as if the whole city was on fire. I wanted you to escape with me, but you advised me to flee while I could, while I still had an aircraft. You told me there was a plan for the army and air force to regroup. You told me to go there, to a city a long way south of the invasion.'

'What's your name? I'm going to report you.'

'I flew to the other city, but although I waited as long as I could you never arrived. I had to move on, keep moving. I left messages for you everywhere I landed, because I was told I had to escape. I'm a qualified pilot you knew that. They needed me, the generals in charge. It doesn't matter how, but I got away. Then when I was safe, weeks later, I heard that the enemy had rounded up most of our army officers and they were taken to an isolated place, a forest somewhere, or an uninhabited island, and then ma.s.sacred. I was terrified you were among them.'

'I'll give you one last chance. If you promise to stop doing this I won't report you to the policier.'

'I just wanted to see you again. Don't you remember me?' I shouted the last words, losing control. 'When we were children, then later as we grew up. The flying! You must remember that? Your father was a flying ace. We went together to races and festivals.'

'Keep away from me. You understand? And if you see Ruddebet's father, tell him to mind his own business too.'

'Don't do anything, Tomak please! I'm sorry. I meant no harm.'

He still had not touched me, and he kept his distance from me. He switched off the torch at last.

'How do you know my name?' His voice was suddenly much quieter, less hostile.

Now I could see his face, half-lit by a street-lamp somewhere behind me. It was Tomak, it was not him. The physical resemblance was astonishing.

'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done this. I won't do it ever again.'