feasting my eyes on the brashly coloured flowers and

  fields, the glinting rivers, the deep shade of the trees, the blue and yellow glare of the sunlit shores, the golden

  skins of the Mester people. Images leapt through my

  mind, making me crave for some artistic outlet by which

  I could capture them.

  That was how I began sketching, knowing I was not

  yet ready for paint or pigments.

  By this time I was able to earn enough money to af-

  ford to live in a small rented apartment. I supported my-

  self by working in the kitchen of one of the harbour-side bars. I was eating well, sleeping regularly, coming to

  terms with the extra mental blankness with which the

  war had left me. I felt as if my four years under arms had merely been time lost, an ellipsis, another area of forgotten life. In Mesterline I began to sense a full life extending around me, an identity, a past regainable and a future that could be envisaged.

  I bought paper and pencils, borrowed a tiny stool, be-

  gan the habit of setting myself up in the shade of the

  harbour wall, quickly drawing a likeness of anyone who

  walked into sight. I soon discovered that the Mesters were natural exhibitionists—when they realized what I was doing most of them would laughingly pose for me, or offer

  to return when they had more time, or even suggest they

  could meet me privately so that I could draw them again

  and in more intimate detail. Most of these offers came

  from young women. Already I was finding Mester women

  irresistibly beautiful. The harmony between their loveli-

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  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  ness and the drowsy contentment of the Mesterline life

  inspired vivid graphic images in my mind that I found

  endlessly alluring to try to draw. Life spread even more

  fully around me, happiness grew. I started dreaming in

  colour.

  Then a troopship arrived in Mesterline Town, breaking

  its voyage southwards to the war, its decks crammed with

  young conscripts.

  It did not dock in the harbour of the town but moored

  a distance offshore. Lighters came ashore bringing hard

  currency to buy food and other materials and to replenish water supplies. While the transactions went on, an escouade of black-caps prowled the streets, staring intently at all men of military age, their synaptic batons at the

  ready. At first paralysed with fear at the sight of them, I managed to hide from them in the attic room of the

  town’s only brothel, dreading what would happen if they

  found me.

  After they had gone and the troopship had departed, I

  walked around Mesterline Town in a state of dread and

  disquiet.

  My litany of names had a meaning after all. It was not

  simply an incantation of imagined names with a ghostly

  reality. It constituted a memory of my actual experience.

  The islands were connected but not in the way I had been

  trusting—a code of my own past, which when deciphered

  would restore me to myself. It was more prosaic than

  that: it was the route the troopships took to the south.

  Yet it remained an unconscious message. I had made it

  mine, I had recited it when no one else could know it.

  I had been planning to stay indefinitely in Mesterline,

  but the unexpected arrival of the troopship soured every-

  1 9 5

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  thing. When I tried next to draw beneath the harbour

  wall I felt myself exposed and nervous. My hand would

  no longer respond to my inner eye. I wasted paper, broke

  pencils, lost friends. I had reverted to being a steffer.

  On the day I left Mesterline the youngest of the

  whores came to the quay. She gave me a list of names,

  not of islands but of her friends who were working in

  other parts of the Dream Archipelago. As we sailed I

  committed the names to memory, then threw the scrap of

  paper in the sea.

  Fifteen days later I was on Piqay, an island I liked but

  which I found too similar to Mesterline, too full of memories that I was transplanting from the shallow soil of my memory. I moved on from Piqay to Paneron, a long journey that passed several other islands and the Coast of Helvard’s Passion, a stupendous reef of towering rock,

  shadowing the coast of the island interior that lay beyond.

  I had by this time travelled so far that I was off the

  edge of the map I had purchased, so I had only my mem-

  ory of the names to guide me. I waited eagerly for each

  island to appear.

  Paneron at first repelled me: much of its landscape

  was formed from volcanic rock, black and jagged and

  unwelcoming, but on the western side there was an enor-

  mous area of fertile land choked with rainforest that

  spread back from the shore as far as I could see. The coast was fringed with palms. I decided to rest in Paneron

  Town for a while.

  Ahead lay the Swirl, beyond that vast chain of reefs

  and skerries were the Aubracs, beyond even those was

  the island I still yearned to find: Muriseay, home of my

  most vivid imaginings, birthplace of Rascar Acizzone.

  1 9 6

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  The place, the artist—these were the only realities I

  knew, the only experience I thought I could call my own.

  Another year of travel. I was confounded by the thirty-five islands of the Aubrac Group: work and accommodation

  were difficult to find in these underpopulated islets and I lacked the funds simply to sail past or around them. I had to make my way slowly through the group, island by island,

  working for subsistence, sweltering under the tropical sun.

  Now that I was travelling again my interest in drawing returned. In some of the busier Aubrac ports I would again set up my easel, draw for hire, for centimes and sous.

  On AntiAubracia, close to the heart of the group of is-

  lands, I bought some pigments, oils and brushes. The

  Aubracs were a place largely devoid of colour: the flat,

  uninteresting islands lay under bleaching sunlight, the

  sand and pale gravel of the inland plains drifted into the towns on the constant winds, the pallid eggshell blue of

  the shallow lagoons could be glimpsed with every turn of

  the head. The absence of bright hues was a challenge to

  see and paint in colour.

  I saw no more troopships, although I was always on

  my guard for their passing or arrival. I was still following their route because when I asked the island people about

  the ships they knew at once what I meant and therefore

  what my background must be. But reliable information

  about the army was hard to glean. Sometimes I was told

  that the troopships had stopped travelling south; some-

  times that they had switched to a different route; some-

  times I was told they only passed in the night.

  My fear of the black-caps kept me on the move.

  Finally, I made a last sea-crossing and arrived one

  1 9 7

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  night on a coal-carrier in Muriseay Town. From the upper

  deck, as we moved slowly through the wide bay that led

  to the harbour mouth, I viewed the place with a feeling of anticipation. I could make a fresh start here—what had

  happened during the long-ago shore leave was insignifi-

  cant. I leaned on the rail, watching the reflections of

  coloured lights from the town darting on the dark water.

  I could hear the roar of engines, the hubbub of voices, the traces of distorted music. Heat rolled around me, as once before it had rolled from the town.

  There were delays in docking the ship and by the time

  I was ashore it was after midnight. Finding somewhere to

  sleep for the night was a priority. Because of recent hard-ships I was unable to pay to stay anywhere. I had faced

  the same problem many times in the past, slept rough

  more often than not, but I was none the less tired.

  I headed through the clamouring traffic to the back

  streets, looking for brothels. I was assaulted by a range of sensations: breathless equatorial heat, tropical perfumes of flowers and incense, the endless racket of cars, motor-bikes and pedicabs, the smell of spicy meat being cooked

  on smoking sidewalk stalls, the continuous flash and daz-

  zle of neon advertising, the beat of pop music blaring out tinnily from radios on the food-stalls and from every window and open doorway. I stood for a while on one of the

  street corners, laden down with my baggage and my paint-

  ing equipment. I turned a full circle, relishing the exciting racket, then put down my baggage and, like the Mester

  people savouring the rains, I raised my arms in exaltation and lifted my face to the glancing nighttime sky, orange-hued above me, reflecting the dancing lights of the city.

  Exhilarated and refreshed I took up my load more

  willingly and went on with my search for brothels.

  1 9 8

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  I came to one in a small building two blocks away

  from the main quay, attained by a darkened door in an

  alley at the side. I went in, moneyless, throwing myself

  on the charity of the working women, seeking sanctuary

  for the night from the only church I knew. The cathedral

  of my dreams.

  Because of its history, but more because of its marina,

  shops and sunbathing beaches, Muriseay Town was a

  tourist attraction for wealthy visitors from all over the Dream Archipelago. In my first months on the island I

  discovered I could make a lucrative income from painting

  harbour scenes and mountain landscapes, then display-

  ing them on a section of wall next to one of the large

  cafés in Paramoundour Avenue, the street where all the

  fashion houses and smart nightclubs were situated.

  In the off-seasons, or when I simply grew tired of

  painting for money, I would stay in my tenth-floor studio above the city centre and dedicate myself to my attempts

  to develop the work pioneered by Acizzone. Now that I

  was in the town where Acizzone had produced his finest

  paintings I was able at last to research his life and work in full, to understand the techniques he had employed.

  Tactilism was by this time many years out of vogue, a

  fortunate state of affairs as it allowed me to experiment without interference, comment or critical interest. Ultrasound microcircuitry was no longer in use, except in the

  market for children’s novelties, so the pigments I needed were plentiful and inexpensive, although at first difficult to track down in the quantities I needed them.

  I set to work, building up the layers of pigments on a

  series of gesso-primed boards. The technique was intri-

  cate and hazardous—I ruined many boards by a single

  1 9 9

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  slip of the palette knife, some of them close to the mo-

  ment of completion. I had much to learn.

  Accepting this I made regular visits to the closed-case

  section of the Muriseayan Town Museum, where several

  of Acizzone’s originals were stored in archive. The female curator was at first amused that I should take an interest in such an obscure, unfashionable and reputedly obscene

  artist, but she soon grew used to my repeated visits, the long silent sessions I spent inside the locked sanctums

  when I was alone, pressing my hands, my face, my limbs,

  my torso, to Acizzone’s garish pictures. I was submerged

  in a kind of frenzy of artistic absorption, almost literally soaking up Acizzone’s breathtaking imagery.

  The ultrasonics produced by the tactile pigments oper-

  ated directly on the hypothalamus, promoting sudden

  changes in serotonin concentrations and levels. The in-

  stantaneous result of this was to generate the images ex-

  perienced by the viewer—the less obvious consequence

  was to cause depression and long-term loss of memory.

  When I left the museum after my first adult exposure to

  Acizzone’s work I was shattered by the experience. While

  the erotic images created by the paintings still haunted

  me, I was almost blind with pain, confusion and a sense

  of unspecified terror.

  After my first visit, I returned unsteadily to my studio

  and slept for nearly two days. When I awoke I was chas-

  tened by what I had discovered about the paintings. Ex-

  posure to tactilist art had a traumatic effect on the viewer.

  I felt a familiar sense of blankness behind me. Memory

  had failed. Somewhere in the recent past, when I was

  travelling through the islands, I had missed visiting some of them.

  2 0 0

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  The litany was still there and I recited the names to

  myself. Amnesia is not a specific: I knew the names but

  in some cases I had no memory of the islands. Had I been

  to Winho? To Demmer? Nelquay? No recollections of any

  of them, but they had been on my route.

  For two or three weeks I returned to my tourist paint-

  ing, partly to gain some cash but also for a respite. I

  needed to think about what I had learned. My memories

  of childhood had been all but eradicated by something.

  Now I had a firm idea that it was my immersion in Aciz-

  zone’s art.

  I continued to work and gradually I found my vision.

  The physical technique was fairly straightforward to

  master. The difficulty, I discovered, was the psychological process, transferring my own passions, cravings, compul-sions to the artwork. When I had that, I could paint suc-

  cessfully. One by one my painted boards accumulated in

  my studio, leaning against the wall at the back of the

  long room.

  Sometimes, I would stand at the window of my studio

  and stare down across the bustling, careless city below,

  my own shocking images concealed in the pigments be-

  hind me. I felt as if I were preparing an arsenal of potent imagic weapons. I had become an art terrorist, unseen

  and unsuspected by the world at large, my paintings no

  doubt destined to be misunderstood in their way as Aciz-

  zone’s masterpieces had been. The tactilist paintings were the definitive expression of my life.

  While Acizzone, who in life was a libertine and roué,

  had portrayed scenes of great erotic power, my own im-

  ages were derived from a different source: I had lived a

  life of emotional repression, repetition, aimless wander-

  2 0 1

  C H R I S T O P H E R P R I E S T

  ing. My work was necessarily a reaction against Acizzone.

  I painted to stay sane, to preserve my memory. After

  that first exposure to Acizzone I knew that only by put-

  ting myself into my work could I recapture what I had

  lost. To view tactilist art led to forgetting, but to create it, I found now, led to remembering.

  I drew inspiration from Acizzone. I lost part of myself.

  I painted and recovered.

  My art was entirely therapeutic. Every painting clari-

  fied a fresh area of confusion or amnesia. Each dab of the palette knife, each touch of the brush, was another detail of my past defined and placed in context. The paintings

  absorbed my traumas.

  When I drew back from them, all that could be seen

  were bland areas of uniform colour, much the same as

  Acizzone’s work. Stepping up close, working with the

  pigments, or pressing my flesh against the stippled layers of dried paint, I entered a psychological realm of great

  calm and reassurance.

  What someone else would experience of my tactilist

  therapy I did not care to think. My work was imagic

  weaponry. The potential was concealed until the mo-

  ment of detonation, like a landmine waiting for the

  press of a limb.

  After the first year, when I was working to establish my-

  self, I entered my most prolific phase. I became so productive that to make space for myself I arranged to move some of the more ambitious pieces to a vacant building I had

  come across near the waterfront. It was a former dancing

  club, long abandoned and empty, but physically intact.

  Although there was an extensive basement, with a

  warren of corridors and small chambers, the main hall

  2 0 2

  T H E D I S C H A R G E

  was an enormous open area, easily large enough to take

  any number of my paintings.

  I kept a few of the smaller pieces in my studio, but the

  larger ones and those with the most potent and disturb-

  ing images of fracture and loss I stored in the town.

  I stacked the biggest paintings in the main hall of the

  building, but some nervous dread of discovery made me

  conceal the smaller pieces in the basement. In that maze

  of corridors and rooms, ill-lit and haunted by the stale

  fragrances of past occupiers, I found a dozen different

  places to hide my pieces.

  I was constantly rearranging my work. Sometimes I

  would spend a whole day and night, working without a

  break in the near-darkness, obsessively shifting my art-

  work from one room to another.