The Gradual (7 page)

Finally, Msr Axxon returned to the podium.

‘I have to conclude on a serious note,’ he said, after we had quieted down. ‘Music is an international language. It crosses and eliminates borders. But I am afraid there are other borders you must never forget. While you are travelling in the Dream Archipelago, remember that the country you are representing, this one, is still engaged in war. By law, by custom, by habit, by agreement, every island you are going to visit is neutral territory. Islanders are accustomed to peace and it is a peace that has lasted hundreds of years. They will come to your concerts for the music, for the fact that you are artists, they will know that you yourselves are not belligerents. They also know that the war this country is engaged in happens to be, thankfully, in a sort of abeyance for the time being, but even so you will be expected to respect their neutrality in every conceivable way.’

He reached behind him and produced a compact holdall, sturdily made. He held it up.

‘This is something you must have with you at all times,’ he went on. ‘There will be no official interference with you while you are on tour – you can be certain of that. There is no overall government authority in the Archipelago but there is a diplomatic body known as the Seignioral Council. The Council have authorized this tour, but they have to be certain that every one of you is fully prepared for your short visit to the islands. It is therefore a condition that each of you must carry one of these packs.’

He opened the top flap, gave us a glimpse of what was inside.

‘Now – I know you’ll be pleased to learn that not everything in this pack is the product of bureaucracy. You’ll find an informal jacket which will identify you as a member of the orchestra. Also, a cap, just for fun, but the sun can be bright in the islands. All your travel and identity documents have been placed inside, entry and exit visas, and so on. Before you go home tonight you must be sure to collect your own pack and sign for it. You’ll also discover that your hosts have been generous to you. In each of these holdalls you will find a selection of vouchers, which can be used while travelling. They include restaurants, shops, museums, even some of the bars in the towns you will be visiting. There is money inside your holdalls. The currency in the islands is called the simoleon and the Council have given everyone on the tour one hundred simoleons for day-to-day spending. This money is not part of your agreed fee for the tour, which will be paid separately.’

As he delivered his agreeable speech, Msr Axxon was unpacking the holdall he had in his hand, showing the various items to us, then placing them back inside. I was smiling as cheerfully as everyone else, truly looking forward to the adventure that lay ahead.

Alone on the train returning home, I opened the holdall I had signed for and checked through the contents. I was relieved to be reunited with my passport, which I had obtained only two weeks before. I looked at all the various visas that had been carefully impressed on the inner pages. I found the Archipelagian currency and transferred it to my wallet, wondering how much it would be worth.

At the bottom of the holdall was a hard object. I pulled it out to have a look. Msr Axxon had shown us one while he was at the podium, waving it aloft like a small sword and saying it was called a stave. The familiar musical word had raised a brief laugh of recognition from the crowd. Axxon had not said much about it, except that it should be kept safely inside the holdall and carried throughout the journey.

The stave was a short wooden stick or staff: the wood was bare, unvarnished, but sanded to a fine finish and so smooth that it was almost soft to the touch. The end of the stave had been shaped and rounded. At the other end it had a handle made of metal and another kind of wood, bonded to the main shaft. Engraved into the metal part of the handle were some words which I could not understand but which I assumed were in island demotic:
Istifade mehdudiyyet bir sexs – doxsan gün
.

I gripped the stave, held it up, looked closely at it under the lights of the railway carriage. I wanted to wave it about, in the way Msr Axxon had done, but there were other people on the train with me. I slipped it back into the holdall.

The next day I went with Alynna to visit my parents. They were still in our old family house, which always appeared to me far smaller and more cramped than it had been when I was living there as a child. Because I had been so busy in recent months, and because I maintained regular contact with my mother over the phone, we had not visited them in over a year. But as soon as we arrived I realized their lives had deteriorated noticeably since my last visit.

The place was looking shabby and cluttered: cardboard boxes were stacked in the hallway and up the staircase. The main room at the front of the house was crammed with furniture and more boxes. My parents appeared to spend their days in the cosy music room at the back – the piano was still there, but also mounds of sheet music, as well as hundreds of old newspapers stacked in and around the fireplace. Unwashed food plates and odd pieces of cutlery lay on the floor. The curtains were closed but hanging irregularly from the runners, one of which was coming away from the wall. Sunlight glanced in at an angle. There was an unpleasant background smell.

Alynna and I had brought our violins with us, thinking of our last visit when we had played together with both parents late into the evening, but this time, as soon as we realized what was happening, we placed our instrument cases out of sight in the hall.

Throughout most of the time we were there my father remained seated wordlessly in an armchair behind the grand piano, almost hidden from the rest of us by the framed photographs on the lid. He raised a hand in greeting when we arrived. Alynna went around and tried to speak to him.

Grief had taken my parents, denying them any pleasures of life or hopes for the future. I knew as soon as we walked in what was causing it. It was because of Jacj, still missing, still at war somewhere, years and years later. There were photographs of him on the piano – he looked like a boy, he was still a boy in those pictures. The letter he had sent before he was shipped away to the south was in a frame, standing at the front of the photographs. The only hope we had of ever seeing Jacj again lay in that letter, those fading photographs. So many years had passed without him.

Jacj’s absence was eternally in the background of everything I did. Whatever had happened to him gave me feelings of dread, misery, guilt, horror, helplessness, but you cannot work up these emotions every day, every hour. I feared for him, was terrified of the news that I felt would come inevitably: he was dead, he had gone missing in action, he was horrifically wounded, he had deserted and been shot by officers. All these I pondered.

Yet the time went by, I had my own life, no bad news came, but neither did Jacj return. I never forgot him, was always aware of how he had been taken, but also, as the years went by, I found it increasingly difficult to remember him. Dread, misery and helplessness were bad enough, but guilt was the hardest to deal with.

‘They will bring Jacj home soon,’ my mother said that day. She mentioned units of other young men who had been drafted a few months before Jacj. ‘The 275th Battalion returned safely. They release them in order, don’t they? It can’t be much longer before Jacj is home.’

She was waiting for the return of the 289th. She spoke optimistically but vaguely of the regular bulletins broadcast by the military junta. News came through every week – I had listened to some of those broadcasts until I realized what they really were.

My mother took comfort from the junta’s imprecise announcements of a successful skirmish here, a routing of enemy troops there, a victory, a tactical retreat, a new stronghold established, a long march across icy terrain to reinforce other sections, a minimum of casualties. She pointed to the heaps of old newspapers. The facts were always encouraging. Few young Glaundian soldiers ever seemed to be injured, while the other side, those fighting for the Faiandland Alliance, were said to suffer horrific losses. The war was not likely to come to an end soon, but our cause was prevailing. Victory was inevitable. One day.

We stayed with them as late as we could but it was depressing to see my parents in such a state. Alynna had cooked a light meal while we were there, and my father sat next to me while we ate.

‘I have played your records, Sandro,’ he said.

‘Do you like them?’ I was pleased.

‘I do like them.’ A little later he said, ‘I have played your records, Sandro.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

I tried to explain about the tour, about to begin in less than forty-eight hours, but I don’t think either of them understood.

As we returned home, Alynna said, ‘Do you realize you have almost never talked to me about Jacj? What you remember about him, what he’s like, what your feelings are.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said. ‘Therefore I never know what to say. I lost my brother before I knew I was going to lose him. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘He’s just over four years older than me.’

‘So he would be … middle aged now?’

‘Early middle age,’ I said.

‘Isn’t that too old to be a serving soldier?’

‘I always thought he was too young to be a soldier. The longer this goes on the more I think that. Seeing those old photographs today—’

She said, ‘We ought to visit your parents more often.’

‘Yes,’ I said, but I was thinking of the tour, unavoidably close. ‘We’ll go to see them again as soon as I’m back.’

‘Would you like me to visit them while you’re away?’

‘It’s only a few weeks. Let’s wait until I’m home again.’

I remember those words. Now.

I was demoralized by seeing my parents. I should have cancelled the tour but I did not. The heart of my work would have died. I knew that my images of the ocean and its clustered islands were the product of dreams, of fancy, of guesswork, of uninformed wondering. To complete my work, to take on the great and serious works that I then believed lay ahead, it was essential to experience the Dream Archipelago directly.

The tour began with a gala concert in the main auditorium of the Federal Hall in Glaund City. Alynna was there with me – I had no formal part in the concert, so we sat together in reserved seats close to the front, soaking up the sumptuous, subtle sounds of a first-class orchestra playing three works from the repertoire of great classics. At the end, flowers were presented, speeches were made, tears were shed. The applause was thunderous, the orchestra played a brief light-hearted orchestral encore, then left the stage while the audience stood and cheered. Alynna and I spent our last night together in a hotel, and in the morning we said goodbye.

The port adjacent to Glaund City is called Questiur, and our first ship to the islands was moored there, waiting for us to board. In common with everyone else I had never been into Questiur. For years it was used exclusively as a naval base, and all civilians were barred from it. Because the war was in a kind of limbo, at least as far as the home countries were concerned, an area of the main harbour was open for non-military shipping.

We were driven in a convoy of buses from the hotel straight to the quay. There was a delay boarding the ship because we had to be sure all the instruments were with us and accounted for. I saw my violin case being unloaded in the first batch, so while I waited for the others I walked briefly along the huge quay, past where our ship was moored.

Now that I was breaking free of a world based almost entirely on the inner mind, I was curious to see one of the places which for so long had been a state secret. The day was dark under a sky of grey, scudding clouds. The wind bore stinging pellets of ice. The harbour was a bleak and disquieting place, with many of the dockside buildings derelict. I was glad to hurry back down the quay and stride up the gangplank into the warmth of the ship.

I was late into my bunk that night, because for all of us on the tour this journey was a step into newness, an escape into a different life. Everyone I spoke to seemed uplifted, excited, speaking more loudly and emphatically than usual. The mood was infectious. The saloons and dining areas of the ship were luxurious and well stocked. The ship must have moved away from its mooring while we were eating, because a background vibration from the engines, which I had been aware of since I boarded, became louder and more insistent. The ship was soon under way as we went out into the open sea.

After our first onboard meal many of us moved to the nearest bar and our celebrations continued. Standing there with the other musicians, listening to what people were saying, joining in, laughing with the rest of them, I was relaxing in a way that was almost unique in my life. Glaund was away, Glaund was behind us. We were sailing to peace and neutrality, the calm vigour of island air, island seas. I wanted to be there now – I was already there now, I realized, enjoying the unfocusing effect of the alcohol.

In a period of relative quietness I stood alone by the bar with a large glass of whisky in my hand, feeling the ship moving beneath me, to and fro, up and down, a twisting motion side to side – gentle, unthreatening, a sense of movement forward, a purpose, a destination. Some of my colleagues had said the ship’s movements made them feel queasy, and they had left the saloon, presumably to return to their cabins, but I felt no such malaise. I wanted the ship to thrust forward into the swell of the sea, speed up, take us more quickly to our first landing on an island.

By the time I returned to my cabin, finding my way there somehow through the muddle of all that drink, I was mellow and sleepy. I rolled into my bunk with a feeling of pleasurable surrender to the comforts of onboard life.

In the morning I was aware of the ship’s noises and movement before I was fully awake. I turned over, then back again, stretching and snoozing, feeling the vibration of the engines deep beneath me. I pressed my fingers lightly against the metal wall: the gentlest tremor teased me, like the touch of violin strings.