2 - Three: A Collage of Possibilities

Summary

Redirecting the Death Drive

Three begins after one of the three protagonists, only ever known as ‘S’, is dead, and ends just before her death. Though it is not a mystery story as such, the book revolves around the question of S's mysterious death, perhaps by drowning in uncertain circumstances. Three is composed of alternating sections, some of which are in S's words, and some of which narrate the conversations and activities of the book's other main characters, Leonard and Ruth. An example of the former is S's written diary, which is preoccupied with the relationship between her, ‘L’ and ‘R’ (Leonard and Ruth), with her growing desire to visit a lake in the middle of the mountains, and with thoughts of death and drowning: ‘How easy for a body to drift out, caught up in a current, and never be discovered, or for anyone ever to be certain.’

The text of S's diary and the book as a whole end with:

Today the first signs of sharpness in the air. The mist rises up from the ground lying in thin frost. The boat is ready, as planned. And all that's necessary now is a note. I know nothing will change. (143)

S has made preparations for a boat trip to the lake in the mountains: ‘The boat is ready, as planned. And all that's necessary now is a note.’ S's fantasy about drowning and the note mentioned here suggest suicidal ideation – as does the despair of ‘I know nothing will change’ – but it is just a suggestion, and on the opening page of the book Ruth admits ‘we can't really be sure could so easily have been an accident the note just a melodramatic touch’ (1). Pervading uncertainty about S's death means it is only ever a possible suicide – ‘could so easily have been an accident’ – and as Juliet Jacques rightly remarks, the multiple form(s) and resulting ambivalent narrative of Three insist that what seems to be suicidal ‘ideation does not necessarily mean that S's death was self-inflicted’. When thinking about her own death, S observes, ‘My certainty shall be their confusion’ (53); other characters and the reader remain uncertain about whatever this supposed ‘certainty’ is, and the narrative as a whole remains in unresolved ‘confusion’.