The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard

Author:J.G. Ballard [Ballard, J.G.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 0940642190
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 1969-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SUMMER CANNIBALS

Locus Solus. Through the dust-covered windscreen she watched him walk along the beach. Despite the heat he had been wandering about by himself for half an hour, as if following an invisible contour inside his head. After their long drive he had stopped on this isthmus of clinker only a few hundred yards from their apartment. She closed the novel lying on her knees, took out her compact and examined the small ulcer on her lower lip. Exhausted by the sun, the resort was almost deserted – beaches of white pumice, a few bars, apartment blocks in ice-cream colours. She looked up at the shutters, thinking of the sun-blackened bodies sprawled together in the darkness, as inert as the joints of meat on supermarket counters. She closed the compact. At last he was walking back to the car, an odd-shaped stone in one hand. A fine ash like milled bone covered his suit. She placed her arm on the window-sill. Before she could move the hot cellulose stung her skin.

The Yes or No of the Borderzone. Between the aluminium grilles of the balcony he could see the banks of the drained river half a mile away, piers of collapsing sand like the ruined columns of an ornamental canal. He turned his head on the pillow, following the white flex of a power cable as it angled its way around the bedroom door. A manoeuvre of remarkable chasteness. He listened to the water jet against the frosted panes of the shower stall. As the door opened the blurred profile of her body took on a sudden liquid focus, moving across the bedroom like a pink meniscus. She took a cigarette from his packet, then flashed the lighter in her preoccupied eyes. Head in a towel, she lay on the bedspread, smoking the wet cigarette.

B-Movie. He sat at the glass-topped table beside the news stand, watching the young woman pick through the copies of Oggi and Paris-Match. Her face, with its unintelligent eyes and pearl lips whispering like a child’s, was reflected in the stereotypes of a dozen magazine covers. He finished his drink and followed her through the arcade, curious to see her reaction. In the deserted open-air cinema she unlatched the door of the pay kiosk and locked it behind herself with a rusty key. Why on earth had he followed her? Suddenly bored by the young woman, he climbed the concrete aisle and walked among the empty seats, staring at the curved screen. She turned the pages of her magazine, watching him over her shoulder.

Love among the Mannequins. Unable to move, he lay on his back, feeling the sharp corner of the novel cut into his ribs. Her hand rested across his chest, nails holding the hair between his nipples like a lover’s scalp brought back for him as a trophy. He looked at her body. Humped against his right shoulder, her breasts formed a pair of deformed globes like the elements of a Bellmer sculpture.

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