I step closer.

‘Do you see any marks?’ He points to the name Madara. ‘Do you see any difference in the wood?’

I have to admit I do not.

‘Then,’ he says, barely bothering to conceal his triumph, ‘You have to concede that you are wrong.’

‘You said yourself an expert craftsman could have done it.’

‘You misunderstand. But, never mind.’ He turns away from me, his back to the wall. ‘You say you know a great deal about history but I am not sure you have learnt from it. Nevertheless it has been a pleasure talking with you. I enjoy the exchange of ideas. You must come again and we can continue our discussion. Of course you should announce yourself when you do and not walk around like a thief.’ I cannot tell if he is serious or not. ‘But for now you must go.’ He walks off.

At the entrance to the hall he turns around, looks me in the eyes and says, ‘Madara was our first ruler. In some ways a truly great man.

He wrote our constitution. He saved us all from starvation. But he was brutal, too brutal. Perhaps a man of his time. Then that time ended and he could no longer be a man of his time. He had to go. He had to end. That is his story. Abel took over. His was the true vision, a vision that healed us and gave us stability and a sense of purpose, an identity we have come to cherish.’

I am too stunned to reply. I can only watch the Marshal leave. But then I shout, ‘You cannot deny me forever, Jura. You will have to reckon with me in the end.’

I turn back to the wall, run my palm over the wood again. I walk out of the room, out of the building, out of the courtyard. As I go I look up at the window. Perhaps a shadow, a hand, a pale face. Perhaps nothing.

I have left without answers but I will be back. If I can’t get answers from the Marshal, I will find them myself. I will find proof of what is being done here. I will find Abel and Tora.

I walk quickly to Abel’s house again. I knock hard at the door, place my ear to the wood and listen intently. There is nothing. Once more I knock and listen.

After a few moments I tiptoe away from the door to the window. I cannot see through it. The sun shines brightly on the pane and blinds me. I place my face against the glass. At first I can see nothing. One by one objects become visible: the stone floor, a chair, a table, a chest against a wall. On the chest a jug and basin. At the far end of the room a passageway deeper into the house. The chair has been knocked over.

Peering to my left I can make out where the door should be but cannot see it as it is just behind a wall that juts out, blocking my vision. I imagine someone standing there, waiting for me to leave. I press further into the glass, using my hands placed around my face to block out the glare of the sun. The floor is covered in a grey film of dust. It is thin, just a few days old.

It is obvious to me by now that I will get no easy answers. Few people look at me in the streets. One, the judge, has run away from me.

The two, three hundred people whose names I knew have vanished. A Marshal who is plainly not a leader of men. A woman who pretends not to know me or her predecessor, pretends reluctantly perhaps, out of duty, obligation. That I do not know.

They seem to be trying to forget. That would be a tragedy. It is only the weak who forget their past. If you kill a man who has no memory of his place in the world, none of the ties that bind him to his community, can you say you have really killed a man at all? What is a man but his past and his companions? There would be no loss felt. With peoples too. Only a weak people forgets its past, a nation that can be wiped out and restarted without anyone noticing. In place of a history, only a silence with no one to hear it. A pathetic people and if that is what they choose then they deserve what comes to them.

My people have been given a history by war. They were trimmed down the better to face an inhospitable world. That is the history of these people. The man running away, the one who knocked me over, the people sitting in the kitchens ignoring me, the Marshal, Elba, they should not forget where they came from. Born of hunger and necessity they are the survivors, they are the ones that had to bear the burden of the future, a future that the weak impinged upon. Do they feel guilt?

That is not their burden. There is no question of guilt anywhere in this land, there has been no guilt since we first started fighting, since we first started slitting each other’s throats in a frantic bid to survive.

These people do not have the imagination to feel guilt. They do not have the right to feel it.

Is it simply a case of forcing them into remembrance, forced memory? Is it simply a case of gathering enough proof so they cannot deny me, until they take a breath and pluck up the courage to stare the past – and me – in the face?

Duty is what they should feel. Not guilt but duty. They have a duty as the last representatives of a once-dominant species to remember that which came before. For we have nothing else.

It is disappointing to me what they seem to have become. Shadows.

Ghosts. Have I created them like this? Have I scared them into hiding in the corners like children? No. I too am the product of a shattered world. But I showed how it can be mended, how it can be pulled together piece by bloody piece.

I see them approach from afar, one much taller than the other. Elba and Amhara. They have already seen me. I stop and wait for them to come closer. Amhara wears a red coat. Again I am reminded of when I first saw her. I have the same feeling now I had then.

‘Morning,’ Elba says.

‘Hello Elba. Hello Amhara.’ The girl looks at the ground.

Elba continues, ‘I am sorry if I was abrupt last night.’

I shake my head.

‘Would you like to try again?’ she asks.

‘Try calling again?’

‘No. Well, yes. I am trying to invite you to dinner again,’ she says.

‘Tonight?’

‘I would like that,’ I reply.

‘Good.’ She does not say goodbye but turns and is off. I watch them make their way down the street. At the corner, Amhara turns to look at me. I wave at her. She does not wave back.

There is a limit to what I can do during daylight but there are at least two things. I can start knocking on doors, trying to find someone who I recognise or someone who will talk to me. I can also head back into the orange groves and to the clearing in the middle of it, the place where we hanged the weak.

Of course there is the risk that they will shut the gates when I am out and not allow me back in but I will have to take that risk. I want to find evidence of my work. Some documents were stored in a hut on the site and if they are still there might help my case.

On my way to the gates I see Andalus in the distance. I am annoyed at his wanderings but I cannot keep him close, in my vision, all the time and still pursue the truth.

I am not used to limitations. On the island the limits were only of my choosing.

I call to him but he is too far off. He is a grey shape in the distance, a shape broken up by the heat mirage. I am reminded of the first morning at the town gates. I run to catch up with him. He turns a corner and is gone. I beat the wall of a house with my fist. The door to the house opens. It opens towards me. I can see a man’ s shadow between gap and frame. I wait for him to show his face. He does not come out. The door begins to close. I shout and run towards it but I am too late.

I walk through the trees, through the dappled, green light, dragging my hands through the grass and along the bark of the trees.

I walk through the light, the sun cooled by the shade of the citrus leaves. I lift my hands to my face. I smell the acids, the oils. I realise, in some ways I am entranced by my old town, by what it has become. Entranced and frustrated. Can one give oneself over to love completely that which is not perfect, that which is wrong?