The Day of Creation (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by J. G. Ballard
Authors: J. G. Ballard
Ads: Link
higher note of an aircraft engine. Fifty feet above the forest canopy a helicopter of the provincial gendarmerie was approaching the airstrip. Once owned by a French oil consortium, its shabby paintwork still carried the company’s livery on the dented plates of its hull, over which were superimposed the gendarmerie insignia. At the controls a fair-haired European pilot peered through his windshield, surprised to see the bizarre tableau below him.
As a million dead leaves swirled into the air I tried to wave the helicopter away. My feet slipped in the soft earth, sending a shower of pebbles into the water around the girl. She winced and pinched herself, then paddled more furiously, hunting down each dilatory eddy and speeding it on its way.
Deafened by the helicopter’s engine, and happy to misinterpret my signal, the tractor driver released his clutch and propelled the vehicle into the rampart, sinking the huge blade into the earth shoulder. I slid down the shifting slope, as the soil and beer cans spilled around my waist, shouting to the girl in the coracle and urging her to move out of danger. Confused by the noise and the cascade of gravel, the three soldiers holding back the oak piles began to loosen the halyards of their derrick and tip the giant logs into the water.
‘Hold on – not yet …!’ I waved to them with the flare pistol, but their faces were confused by the whirling dust and the noise of the helicopter. Trying to include the circling craft in her composition, Miss Matsuoka stood with her back to the straining logs, eyes fixed to the viewfinder of her camera.
The earth slipped below my feet, a soft, swift avalanche into the peppered surface of the water. I found myself sitting in the muddy shallows at the foot of the rampart, as a cascade of earth, gravel and garbage poured around me. Huge logs were tumbling into the current only a dozen feet away, and I caught a last glimpse of Miss Matsuoka stumbling among them, face stunned and hair dishevelled, the flying suit torn from one shoulder. Twisting between them was the plastic coracle. The child flailed with her paddle through the clouds of earth and spray. The helicopter had overflown the airstrip, the pilot unnerved by the sight of part of the runway shoulder disappearing beneath his landing rails. Miss Matsuoka had vanished and an empty silver sleeve floated on the brown foam.
The ledge on which I sat sank beneath me. An intact section of the rampart fell foward into the river, and the wave of displaced water swept me off my feet. Carried into the yellow depths, I saw one of the oak logs rolling above my head like the wheel of a truck. I felt myself drawn down, and my feet touched the wall of a funnel within the gravel-bed, that cavern from which the stream had first emerged and which my body would fill, setting the Mallory free at last to run its course.
The House of Women
Around me I could hear the voices of women, muffled as they made their beds in rooms always somewhere beyond my sight. Softened by the thick drapes that hung from the doors of the veranda, the low sing-song murmur moved between them as they worked. In my mind the liquid clicks of their dialect merged with the sounds of the river tapping at the terrace below the veranda, so that the brown waves seemed to draw the endless chatter from the hidden rooms of the breeding station and were in turn teased on their way by the voices of these invisible women playing among their beds.
For three weeks I had rested on the veranda, sitting in the high steel cot which the nuns at Port-la-Nouvelle had purchased for their ageing priest, and on whose hard Victorian springs the poor man had died. For days I listened to the women, but never caught what they were saying. The large house had been converted into a maze of bedrooms in which the women murmured all day like the contented inmates of a seraglio, falling silent only when they entered the veranda.
Every day they bathed naked in the river
As a million dead leaves swirled into the air I tried to wave the helicopter away. My feet slipped in the soft earth, sending a shower of pebbles into the water around the girl. She winced and pinched herself, then paddled more furiously, hunting down each dilatory eddy and speeding it on its way.
Deafened by the helicopter’s engine, and happy to misinterpret my signal, the tractor driver released his clutch and propelled the vehicle into the rampart, sinking the huge blade into the earth shoulder. I slid down the shifting slope, as the soil and beer cans spilled around my waist, shouting to the girl in the coracle and urging her to move out of danger. Confused by the noise and the cascade of gravel, the three soldiers holding back the oak piles began to loosen the halyards of their derrick and tip the giant logs into the water.
‘Hold on – not yet …!’ I waved to them with the flare pistol, but their faces were confused by the whirling dust and the noise of the helicopter. Trying to include the circling craft in her composition, Miss Matsuoka stood with her back to the straining logs, eyes fixed to the viewfinder of her camera.
The earth slipped below my feet, a soft, swift avalanche into the peppered surface of the water. I found myself sitting in the muddy shallows at the foot of the rampart, as a cascade of earth, gravel and garbage poured around me. Huge logs were tumbling into the current only a dozen feet away, and I caught a last glimpse of Miss Matsuoka stumbling among them, face stunned and hair dishevelled, the flying suit torn from one shoulder. Twisting between them was the plastic coracle. The child flailed with her paddle through the clouds of earth and spray. The helicopter had overflown the airstrip, the pilot unnerved by the sight of part of the runway shoulder disappearing beneath his landing rails. Miss Matsuoka had vanished and an empty silver sleeve floated on the brown foam.
The ledge on which I sat sank beneath me. An intact section of the rampart fell foward into the river, and the wave of displaced water swept me off my feet. Carried into the yellow depths, I saw one of the oak logs rolling above my head like the wheel of a truck. I felt myself drawn down, and my feet touched the wall of a funnel within the gravel-bed, that cavern from which the stream had first emerged and which my body would fill, setting the Mallory free at last to run its course.
The House of Women
Around me I could hear the voices of women, muffled as they made their beds in rooms always somewhere beyond my sight. Softened by the thick drapes that hung from the doors of the veranda, the low sing-song murmur moved between them as they worked. In my mind the liquid clicks of their dialect merged with the sounds of the river tapping at the terrace below the veranda, so that the brown waves seemed to draw the endless chatter from the hidden rooms of the breeding station and were in turn teased on their way by the voices of these invisible women playing among their beds.
For three weeks I had rested on the veranda, sitting in the high steel cot which the nuns at Port-la-Nouvelle had purchased for their ageing priest, and on whose hard Victorian springs the poor man had died. For days I listened to the women, but never caught what they were saying. The large house had been converted into a maze of bedrooms in which the women murmured all day like the contented inmates of a seraglio, falling silent only when they entered the veranda.
Every day they bathed naked in the river
Similar Books
