Christopher Priest: The Watched

The way across land was through dense jungle, and an approach from the sea was difficult because along the entire rocky coastline there was only one small jetty. The Qataari community seemed to be self-sufficient in every way, and their customs, culture, and social structure were all but unknown. The Qataari were thought to be of unique cultural importance in the world: their society apparently represented an evolutionary link between the civilized nations of the north, the people of the Archipelago, and the barbarians and peasants of the south. Several ethnologists had visited the peninsula over the years, but all had been frustrated in their work by the same silent waiting that Jenessa had described. Only one aspect of their life had been established, although its details were as much conjecture as knowledge: the Qataari dramatized. Aerial photographs, and the reports of visitors, revealed that there were open-air auditoria by every village, and there were always people gathered there. The speculation was that the Qataari depended on drama as a symbolic means of action: for decision-making, for the resolution of problems, for celebrations. What few pieces of Qataari literature had reached the world’s libraries were baffling to a non-Qataari readership: the prose and verse were impenetrably elliptical, and any character named played a symbolic role, as well as having a seemingly endless list of contracted, familiar, or formal names, and appeared to represent a part in a scheme much larger than what could be inferred as the subject matter. The writing of theses on Qataari literature was a popular activity in northern universities. The few Qataari who traveled, who visited the northern continent, spoke obliquely of such matters, seeing themselves as actors in a cultural play. One Qataari, in Ordier’s country a few years before, had been secretly filmed while he was alone; evidently deep within a personal drama, the Qataari remonstrated with himself, declaimed to an imaginary audience, wept and shouted. A few minutes later the same man had been seen at a public reception, and no one present had discerned anything unusual about his behavior. The war had come, inevitably, to the Qataari peninsula. It had begun when one of the two combatant sides had started the construction of a deep-water refueling base on the northernmost tip of the peninsula. As this was an area hitherto unclaimed by either side, it constituted a breach of whatever neutrality the Qataari had enjoyed until then. The opposing side had invaded the peninsula, and before long a devastating struggle had begun. Soon the Qataari knew, as the rest of their continent knew, the shattering totality of the war, with its neural dissociation gases, its scintillas, its scatterflames, its acid rains. The villages were flattened, the rose plantations burned, the people killed in thousands; in a few weeks the Qataari society was destroyed. A relief mission was sent from the north, and within a few more weeks the surviving Qataari were evacuated unresisting from their homeland. They had been brought to Tumo—one of the islands nearest to the peninsula—and a refugee camp had been built for them. They were housed and fed by the Tumoit authorities, but the Qataari, independent as ever, did what they could to close their camp to the outside world. In the first few days huge canvas screens had been put up around the perimeter fence, silent guards stood by all the entrances. Everyone who had entered the camp since—medical teams, agricultural advisers, builders—returned with the same report: the Qataari were waiting. It was not polite waiting, it was not impatient waiting. As Jenessa had said, it was a cessation of activity, a long silence. Ordier realized that Jacj Parren and Jenessa were still arguing, and that Parren was addressing him: “…You say that if we climbed this ridge of yours, we should see guards?” “Yes.” Jenessa answered for him.

“But why are they there? I thought they never left the camp.” “They’re growing roses in the valley. The Qataari roses.” Parren leaned back in his chair with a grunt of satisfaction. “Then at least they can be studied doing that!” Jenessa looked helplessly at Ordier across the table. He stared back at her, trying not to reveal anything with his expression. He was sitting forward with his elbows on the edge of the table, his hands linked in front of his face. He had had a shower before driving to Jenessa’s apartment this evening, but a certain fragrance was still on his skin. He could smell it as he looked back at her, feeling a trace of the pleasant sexual arousal that was induced by the petals of the Qataari rose.

Jacj Parren and his wife were staying in an hotel in Tumo Town, and the next morning Jenessa went round to see them. Ordier left with her, and they walked together as far as his car. Their embrace in the street was cool for the benefit of passers-by; it was no reflection of the night they had passed together, which had been more than usually passionate. Ordier drove slowly back to his house, more reluctant than he could remember to succumb to the temptations of the cell in the folly wall, but at the same time more intrigued than ever about what he might see. The conversation over dinner had done that for him. It had reminded him of the guilty associations with Jenessa, both as a sexual partner and as someone who had a genuine scientific

interest in the Qataari, that going to the folly awoke in him. At the start he had made the excuse to himself that what he saw was so insignificant, so fragmentary, that it was irrelevant. But his knowledge of the Qataari had grown, and with it the secret… and a tacit bond had been tied: to speak of the Qataari would be to betray a trust he had created in his own mind. As he parked the car and walked up to the house, Ordier added further justification to his silence by reminding himself of how much he had disliked Parren and his wife. He knew that prolonged exposure to the seductive laziness of Tumoit life, and to the laxity of the ways of the Archipelago in general, would change Parren in the end, but until then he would be an abrasive influence on Jenessa. She would seek the Qataari more eagerly, renewing her own interest in their affairs. The house was stuffy from being closed for the night, and Ordier walked around the rooms, opening the windows, throwing back the shutters. There was a light breeze, and in the garden that he had neglected all summer the overgrown flowers and shrubs were waving gently. He stared at them, trying to make up his mind. He knew that the dilemma was one of his own making, and could be resolved by the simple decision never to go up to the folly again; he could ignore the Qataari, could continue with his life as it had been until the beginning of this summer. But the conversation the evening before had heightened his awareness of the Qataari, reminded him of the special curiosities they aroused. It was not for nothing that the romantic and erotic impulses of the great composers, writers, and artists had been stimulated by the Qataari, that the legends and daydreams persisted, that the societies of the north had been so thoroughly permeated by the enigma that there was hardly a graffito that did not reflect it, nor a pornographic fiction that did not perpetuate it. Voluntary abstention from his obsession was an agony to Ordier. He distracted himself for a time by taking a swim in his pool, and then later by opening one of the chests he had had sent from the mainland and setting the books on shelves in his study, but by midday the curiosity was like a nagging hunger, and he found his binoculars and walked up the ridge to the folly.

More petals had appeared in the cell in his absence. Ordier brushed them away from the slit with his fingers, then turned his binoculars towards the Qataari camp, which lay on the far side of the shallow valley. On this day, as on all days, the high screens surrounding it were drawn tightly together. The breeze was stirring them, and great slow ripples moved laterally across the canvas blinds. His glasses did not have the necessary magnification, but Ordier nevertheless felt a sense of intrigue, hoping that the wind would momentarily lift the skirt of screens so that he might glimpse what lay behind. In front of the camp, spreading across the floor of the valley, was the plantation of Qataari roses: a sea of scarlet and pink and green. So closely were the bushes planted that from this elevation Ordier could see the yellow, clayey soil only at the edge of the plantation. He stared for a few minutes, relishing the privilege he was stealing. It was the workers in the rose plantation he had first watched from this cell. Last night, listening to the dinner conversation, he had heard Parren speak of the possibility of seeing the Qataari at work in the roses; remembering his own excitement of discovery, Ordier had for the first and only time felt a trace of sympathy with the man. There was a small group of Qataari men standing amongst the roses and talking volubly. After a while, two of them walked away and picked up large panniers. They walked slowly between the rosebushes, plucking the largest, reddest flowers. They were quite unaware of his silent watching. Ordier found this undetected intrusion into the Qataari privacy to be deeply exciting and satisfying. The weeks he had been spying on the Qataari had taught him to be systematic, and Ordier looked with the binoculars at each of the rose-pickers in turn. Many of them were women, and it was at these he looked most carefully. There was one woman in particular he was seeking; she had been amongst the rose-pickers the first time he noticed her. He knew her, quite simply, as the one. He had never given her a name, not even a familiar one as shorthand for his recognition of her. She did remind him, in some ways, of Jenessa, but with the abundant opportunities he had had to watch her he now acknowledged that whatever similarities he had once discerned were the product of guilt. She was younger than Jenessa, taller, undeniably more beautiful. Where Jenessa was dark in hair and complexion, with an attractive combination of sensuality and intelligence, the Qataari woman, the Qataari girl, had fragility and vulnerability trapped in the body of a sexually mature woman. Sometimes, when she was near the folly, Ordier had seen a captivating expression in her eyes: knowingness and hesitation, invitation and wariness. Her hair was golden, her skin was pale; she had the classic proportions of the Qataari ideal. She was, for Ordier, the embodiment of Vaskarreta’s avenging victim. And Jenessa was real, Jenessa was available. The Qataari girl was remote and forbidden, forever inaccessible to him. When he had made sure the girl was not in the rose plantation, Ordier lowered the binoculars and leaned forward until his forehead was pressing against the rough rock slab, placing his eyes as near as possible. He looked down toward the arena the Qataari had built at the foot of the folly wall, and saw her at once. She was standing near one of the twelve hollow metal statues that surrounded the leveled area. She was not alone—she was never alone—and the others, although apparently paying little attention to her, were circling her. They were tidying up and preparing the arena: the statues were being cleaned and polished, the gravelly soil of the arena floor was being swept, and handfuls of the Qataari rose-petals were being scattered in all directions. The girl was watching this. She was dressed as usual in red: a long, enfolding garment that lay loosely and bulkily on her body like a toga, but which was made up of many different panels of fabric, lying one on top of the other. Silently, slowly, Ordier raised the binoculars to his eyes, and focused them on her face. The magnification at once lent him the illusion that he was nearer to her, and as a consequence, he felt much more exposed to her. Seeing her as closely as this, Ordier noticed at once that the garment was tied loosely at the neck, and was slipping down on one side. He could see the curve of her shoulder, and just beneath it the first hint of the rise of her breast; if she moved quickly, or leaned forward, the garment would fall away to expose her. He stared at her, transfixed by her unconscious sexuality. There was no noticeable signal for the beginning of the ritual; the preparations led imperceptibly to the first movements of the ceremony. The two women scattering the rose petals turned from casting them across the sandy floor to throwing them over the girl. Twelve of the men, until then apparently still cleaning the statuary, pulled open the hinged backs of each figure and took up their places inside, and the remaining men began to circle the arena as the girl stepped forward to take her place at the center.