Chronopolis

by J. G. Ballard

  He showed no signs, however, of being prepared to contact his superiors at the Department of Justice, and Constantin’s impatience continued to mount. He now used their morning and afternoon chess sessions as an opportunity to hold forth at length on the subject of the shortcomings of the judicial system, using his own case as an illustration, and hammered away at the theme of his innocence, even hinting that Malek might find himself held responsible if by any mischance he was not granted a reprieve.

  “The position I find myself in is really most extraordinary,” he told Malek almost exactly two months after his arrival at the villa. “Everyone else is satisfied with the court’s verdict, and yet I alone know that I am innocent. I feel very like someone who is about to be buried alive.”

  Malek managed a thin smile across the chess pieces. “Of course, Mr. Constantin, it is possible to convince oneself of anything, given a sufficient incentive.”

  “But Malek, I assure you,” Constantin insisted, ignoring the board and concentrating his whole attention upon the supervisor, “this is no death cell repentance. Believe me, I know. I have examined the entire case from a thousand perspectives, questioned every possible motive. There is no doubt in my mind. I may once have been prepared to accept the possibility of my guilt, but I realize now that I was entirely mistaken—experience encourages us to take too great a responsibility for ourselves, when we fall short of our ideals we become critical of ourselves and ready to assume that we are at fault. How dangerous that can be, Malek, I now know. Only the truly innocent man can really understand the meaning of guilt.”

  Constantin stopped and sat back, a slight weariness overtaking him in the cold room. Malek was nodding slowly, a thin and not altogether unsympathetic smile on his lips as if he understood everything Constantin had said. Then he moved a piece, and with a murmured “excuse me” left his seat and went out of the room.

  Drawing the lapels of the dressing gown around his chest, Constantin studied the board with a desultory eye. He noticed that Malek’s move appeared to be the first bad one he had made in all their games together, but he felt too tired to make the most of his opportunity. His brief speech to Malek, confirming all he believed, now left nothing more to be said. From now on whatever happened was up to Malek.

  “Mr. Constantin.”

  He turned in his chair and, to his surprise, saw the supervisor standing in the doorway, wearing his long gray overcoat.

  “Malek—?” For a moment Constantin felt his heart gallop, and then controlled himself. “Malek, you’ve agreed at last, you’re going to take me to the Department?”

  Malek shook his head, his eyes staring somberly at Constantin. “Not exactly. I thought we might look at the garden, Mr. Constantin. A breath of fresh air, it will do you good.”

  “Of course, Malek, it’s kind of you.” Constantin rose a little unsteadily to his feet, and tightened the cord of his dressing gown. “Pardon my wild hopes.” He tried to smile to Malek, but the supervisor stood impassively by the door, hands in his overcoat pockets, his eyes lowered fractionally from Constantin’s face.

  They went out onto the veranda toward the French windows. Outside the cold morning air whirled in frantic circles around the small stone yard, the leaves spiraling upward into the dark sky. To Constantin there seemed little point in going out into the garden, but Malek stood behind him, one hand on the latch.

  “Malek.” Something made him turn and face the supervisor. “You do understand what I mean, when I say I am absolutely innocent. I know that.”

  “Of course, Mr. Constantin.” The supervisor’s face was relaxed and almost genial. “I understand. When you know you are innocent, then you are guilty.”

  His hand opened the veranda door onto the whirling leaves.

  The Watchtowers

  The next day, for some reason, there was a sudden increase of activity in the watchtowers. This began during the latter half of the morning, and by noon, when Renthall left the hotel on his way to see Mrs. Osmond, seemed to have reached its peak. People were standing at their windows and balconies along both sides of the street, whispering agitatedly to each other behind the curtains and pointing up into the sky.

  Renthall usually tried to ignore the watchtowers, resenting even the smallest concession to the fact of their existence, but at the bottom of the street, where he was hidden in the shadow thrown by one of the houses, he stopped and craned his head up at the nearest tower.

  A hundred feet away from him, it hung over the Public Library, its tip poised no more than twenty feet above the roof. The glass-enclosed cabin in the lowest tier appeared to be full of observers, opening and shutting the windows and shifting about what Renthall assumed were huge pieces of optical equipment. He looked around at the further towers, suspended from the sky at three hundred feet intervals in every direction, noticing an occasional flash of light as a window turned and caught the sun.

  An elderly man wearing a shabby black suit and wing collar, who usually loitered outside the library, came across the street to Renthall and backed into the shadows beside him.

  “They’re up to something all right.” He cupped his hands over his eyes and peered up anxiously at the watchtowers. “I’ve never seen them like this as long as I can remember.”

  Renthall studied his face. However alarmed, he was obviously relieved by the signs of activity. “I shouldn’t worry unduly,” Renthall told him. “It’s a change to see something going on at all.”

  Before the other could reply he turned on his heel and strode away along the pavement. It took him ten minutes to reach the street in which Mrs. Osmond lived, and he fixed his eyes firmly on the ground, ignoring the few passers-by. Although dominated by the watchtowers—four of them hung in a line exactly down its center—the street was almost deserted. Half the houses were untenanted and falling into what would soon be an irreversible state of disrepair. Usually Renthall assessed each property carefully, trying to decide whether to leave his hotel and take one of them, but the movement in the watchtowers had caused him more anxiety than he was prepared to admit, and the terrace of houses passed unnoticed.

  Mrs. Osmond’s house stood halfway down the street, its gate swinging loosely on its rusty hinges. Renthall hesitated under the plane tree growing by the edge of the pavement, and then crossed the narrow garden and quickly let himself through the door.

  Mrs. Osmond invariably spent the afternoon sitting out on the veranda in the sun, gazing at the weeds in the back garden, but today she had retreated to a corner of the sitting room. She was sorting a suitcase full of old papers when Renthall came in.

  Renthall made no attempt to embrace her and wandered over to the window. Mrs. Osmond had half-drawn the curtains and he pulled them back. There was a watchtower ninety feet away, almost directly ahead, hanging over the parallel, terrace of empty houses. The lines of towers receded diagonally from left to right toward the horizon, partly obscured by the bright haze.

  “Do you think you should have come today?” Mrs. Osmond asked, shifting her plump hips nervously in the chair.

  “Why not?” Renthall said, scanning the towers, hands loosely in his pockets.

  “But if they’re going to keep a closer watch on us now they’ll notice you coming here.”

  “I shouldn’t believe all the rumors you hear,” Renthall told her calmly.

  “What do you think it means then?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea. Their movements may be as random and meaningless as our own.” Renthall shrugged. “Perhaps they are going to keep a closer watch on us. What does it matter if all they do is stare?”

  “Then you mustn’t come here any more!” Mrs. Osmond protested.

  “Why? I hardly believe they can see through walls.”

  “They’re not that stupid,” Mrs. Osmond said irritably. “They’ll soon put two and two together, if they haven’t already.”

  Renthall took his eyes off the tower and looked down at Mrs. Osmond patiently. “My dear, this house isn’t tapped. Fo
r all they know we may be darning our prayer rugs or discussing the endocrine system of the tapeworm.”

  “Not you, Charles,” Mrs. Osmond said with a short laugh. “Not if they know you.” Evidently pleased by this sally, she relaxed and took a cigarette out of the box on the table.

  “Perhaps they don’t know me,” Renthall said dryly. “In fact, I’m quite sure they don’t. If they did I can’t believe I should still be here.”

  He noticed himself stooping, a reliable sign that he was worrying, and went over to the sofa.

  “Is the school going to start tomorrow?” Mrs. Osmond asked when he had disposed his long thin legs around the table.

  “It should do,” Renthall said. “Hanson went down to the Town Hall this morning, but as usual they had little idea of what was going on.”

  He opened his jacket and pulled out of the inner pocket an old but neatly folded copy of a woman’s magazine.

  “Charles!” Mrs. Osmond exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”

  She took it from Renthall and started leafing through the soiled pages.

  “One of my sources,” Renthall said. From the sofa he could still see the watchtower over the houses opposite. “Georgina Simons. She has a library of them.”

  He rose, went over to the window and drew the curtains across.

  “Charles, don’t. I can’t see.”

  “Read it later,” Renthall told her. He lay back on the sofa again. “Are you coming to the recital this afternoon?”

  “Hasn’t it been canceled?” Mrs. Osmond asked, putting the magazine down reluctantly.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Charles, I don’t think I want to go.” Mrs. Osmond frowned. “What records is Hanson going to play?”

  “Some Tchaikovsky. And Grieg.” He tried to make it sound interesting. “You must come. We can’t just sit about subsiding into this state of boredom and uselessness.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Osmond said fractiously. “But I don’t feel like it. Not today. All those records bore me. I’ve heard them so often.” “They bore me too. But at least it’s something to do.” He put his arm around Mrs. Osmond’s shoulders and began to play with the darker unbleached hair behind her ears, tapping the large nickel earrings she wore and listening to them tinkle.

  When he put his hand onto her knee Mrs. Osmond stood up and prowled aimlessly around the room, straightening her skirt.

  “Julia, what is the matter with you?” Renthall asked irritably. “Have you got a headache?”

  Mrs. Osmond was by the window, gazing up at the watchtowers. “Do you think they’re going to come down?”

  “Of course not!” Renthall snapped. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”

  Suddenly he felt unbearably exasperated. The confined dimensions of the dusty sitting room seemed to suffocate reason. He stood up and buttoned his jacket. “I’ll see you this afternoon at the Institute, Julia. The recital starts at three.”

  Mrs. Osmond nodded vaguely, unfastened the French windows and ambled forward across the veranda into full view of the watch-towers, the glassy expression on her face like a supplicant nun’s.

  As Renthall had expected, the school did not open the next day. When they tired of hanging around the hotel after breakfast he and Hanson went down to the Town Hall. The building was almost empty and the only official they were able to find was unhelpful.

  “We have no instructions at present,” he told them, “but as soon as the term starts you will be notified. Though from what I hear the postponement is to be indefinite.”

  “Is that the committee’s decision?” Renthall asked. “Or just another of the town clerk’s brilliant extemporizings?”

  “The school committee is no longer meeting,” the official said. “I’m afraid the town clerk isn’t here today.” Before Renthall could speak he added, “You will, of course, continue to draw your salaries. Perhaps you would care to call in at the treasurer’s department on your way out?”

  * * *

  Renthall and Hanson left and looked about for a cafe. Finally they found one that was open and sat under the awning, staring vacantly at the watchtowers hanging over the rooftops around them. Their activity had lessened considerably since the previous day. The nearest tower was only fifty feet away, immediately above a disused office building on the other side of the street. The windows in the observation tier remained shut, but every few minutes Renthall noticed a shadow moving behind the panes.

  Eventually a waitress came out to them, and Renthall ordered coffee.

  “I think I shall have to give a few lessons,” Hanson remarked. “All this leisure is becoming too much of a good thing.”

  “It’s an idea,” Renthall agreed. “If you can find anyone interested. I’m sorry the recital yesterday was such a flop.”

  Hanson shrugged. “I’ll see if I can get hold of some new records. By the way, I thought Julia looked very handsome yesterday.” Renthall acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow of his head. “I’d like to take her out more often.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Well, just at present, you know.” Hanson inclined a finger at the watchtowers.

  “I don’t see that it matters particularly,” Renthall said. He disliked personal confidences and was about to change the subject when Hanson leaned forward across the table.

  “Perhaps not, but I gather there was some mention of you at the last Council meeting. One or two members were rather critical of your little ménage à deux.” He smiled thinly at Renthall, who was frowning into his coffee. “Sheer spite, no doubt, but your behavior is a little idiosyncratic.”

  Controlling himself, Renthall pushed away the coffee cup. “Do you mind telling me what damned business it is of theirs?”

  Hanson laughed. “None, really, except that they are the executive authority, and I suppose we should take our cue from them.” Renthall snorted at this, and Hanson went on, “as a matter of interest, you may receive an official directive over the next few days.”

  “A what?” Renthall exploded. He sat back, shaking his head incredulously. “Are you serious?” When Hanson nodded he began to laugh harshly. “Those idiots! I don’t know why we put up with them. Sometimes their stupidity positively staggers me.”

  “Steady on,” Hanson demurred. “I do see their point. Bearing in mind the big commotion in the watchtowers yesterday the Council probably feel we shouldn’t do anything that might antagonize them. You never know, they may even be acting on official instructions.”

  Renthall glanced contemptuously at Hanson. “Do you really believe that nonsense about the Council being in touch with the watchtowers? It may give a few simpletons a sense of security, but for heaven’s sake don’t try it on me. My patience is just about exhausted.” He watched Hanson carefully, wondering which of the Council members had provided him with his information. The lack of subtlety depressed him painfully. “However, thanks for warning me. I suppose it means there’ll be an overpowering air of embarrassment when Julia and I go to the cinema tomorrow.”

  Hanson shook his head. “No. Actually the performance has been canceled. In view of yesterday’s disturbances.”

  “But why—?” Renthall slumped back. “Haven’t they got the intelligence to realize that it’s just at this sort of time that we need every social get-together we can organize? People are hiding away in their back bedrooms like a lot of frightened ghosts. We’ve got to bring them out, give them something that will pull them together.”

  He gazed up thoughtfully at the watchtower across the street. Shadows circulated behind the frosted panes of the observation windows. “Some sort of gala, say, or a garden fete. Who could organize it, though?”

  Hanson pushed back his chair. “Careful, Charles. I don’t know whether the Council would altogether approve.”

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t.” After Hanson had left he remained at the table and returned to his solitary contemplation of the watcht
owers.

  For half an hour Renthall sat at the table, playing absently with his empty coffee cup and watching the few people who passed along the street. No one else visited the cafe, and he was glad to be able to pursue his thoughts alone, in this miniature urban vacuum, with nothing to intervene between himself and the lines of watchtowers stretching into the haze beyond the rooftops.

  With the exception of Mrs. Osmond, Renthall had virtually no close friends in whom to confide. With his sharp intelligence and impatience with trivialities, Renthall was one of those men with whom others find it difficult to relax. A certain innate condescension, a reserved but unmistakable attitude of superiority held them away from him, though few people regarded him as anything but a shabby pedagogue. At the hotel he kept to himself. There was little social contact between the guests; in the lounge and dining room they sat immersed in their old newspapers and magazines, occasionally murmuring quietly to each other. The only thing which could mobilize the simultaneous communion of the guests was some untoward activity in the watchtowers, and at such times Rent-hall always maintained an absolute silence.

  Just before he stood up a square thickset figure approached down the street. Renthall recognized the man and was about to turn his seat to avoid having to greet him, but something about his expression made him lean forward. Fleshy and dark-jowled, the man walked with an easy rolling gait, his double-breasted check overcoat open to reveal a well-tended midriff. This was Victor Boardman, owner of the local flea-pit cinema, sometime bootlegger and procurer at large.