Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  Then he noticed me standing by the coffee table and rallied himself. Smiling affably, he strolled up to me and held my shoulders. He steered me towards the Alice mirror, as if we were about to step together into its glassy deeps. He swerved away at the last moment and pushed me to the door, laughing soundlessly to himself.

  ‘Paul, sit by the pool and give it some thought.’ Before propelling me into the avenue, he whispered fiercely: ‘Think, Paul. Think like a psychopath …’

  30

  Nietzsche on the Beach

  AFTER LEAVING PENROSE, I needed breakfast, and the strongest coffee I could make. Dust lay over the swimming pool, an overnight veil disturbed by the feeble movements of a waterlogged fruit fly, struggling against the meniscus that gripped its wings in a mirror harder than glass. Sympathizing with the creature, whose predicament matched my own, I searched for the damp footprints that usually marked Jane’s race back to the house and a long bath, earphones over her soapy head as the Walkman played Debussy.

  But the tiled verge was dry in the late November sun. I walked to the terrace and stepped into the hall, where I bruised my shins against two of my leather suitcases. I gripped the handles, and guessed from their weight that they held my entire wardrobe.

  Upstairs, drawers slammed as Jane roamed the cupboards. The punitive jolts of Carmina Burana sounded from the bedroom, a call to marital strife. Without thinking, I knew that Jane was throwing me out, and felt a deep regret that we would never drive the RN7 back to Paris together. Our marriage had ended, like those of my friends, in a mess of trivial infidelities and questions with no conceivable answers.

  I had reached the villa at midnight, after an evening in Antibes with Frances Baring. From the clinic Jane had earlier called me to say she would be late, and suggested that I see a film in Cannes. But as I tiptoed past the darkened lounge the faint moonlight revealed that she had recruited other company to amuse her. The carpet was marked by almost lunar ridges, left by heel marks that belonged to neither Jane nor myself.

  Aware of Frances’s scent on my hands, I moved to the children’s room, and slept soundly among Tenniel’s amiable menagerie. I woke at seven and telephoned Wilder Penrose from the bathroom, determined to confront him with the criminal reality of Eden-Olympia.

  Jane was still asleep when I left to see Penrose. She lay facedown, an infected puncture point on the inside of her thigh oozing a faint lymph. I eased back the drawer of the dressing table and counted the used syrettes, hoping that my arithmetic was at fault.

  Jane breathed quietly, an ageing Alice in an expurgated chapter of her own book. Careful not to wake her, I kissed her open lower lip, still marked by the paste of another woman’s lipstick.

  I met her on the landing, dragging a suitcase from the bedroom. As always, she had recovered quickly from the dose of diamorphine. She wore jeans and white vest, a garb she had abandoned soon after arriving at Eden-Olympia. But her skin was pale and putty-coloured, and her face seemed toneless. She had cut her left hand on one of the suitcase locks, but had yet to notice the blood.

  She saw me watching from the door, reached into a wardrobe and pulled out a heavy rucksack.

  ‘Paul? You can help me. Stick that on the bed.’

  ‘Sure. Tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about. You’re leaving half an hour from now.’

  ‘I’m leaving? Why?’

  ‘We’re both leaving. We’re saying goodbye to Eden. I’ve told personnel to post an angel with a flaming sword by the gate.’

  ‘Jane …’ I stepped through the clutter of unpaired shoes that she was rooting from the cupboard, placed my hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet, surprised by how much weight she had lost. ‘Calm down. Now when exactly are we leaving?’

  ‘Now. Today. As soon as I’m packed.’

  ‘And where are we going?’

  Jane shrugged, staring at the chaos of half-filled suitcases. ‘England, London, Paris, anywhere. Away from here.’

  I reached out to the radio on the bedside table and switched off the French concert commentator. ‘Why? You have another six-month contract to run.’

  ‘I’ll take a week’s compassionate leave. We’ll simply not come back.’

  ‘Professor Kalman won’t like that. It could damage your career.’

  ‘Staying here will finish it. Believe me, the last thing they want is another English doctor going insane.’

  ‘Jane …’ I tried to take her shoulders, but she sidestepped me, marking the pattern of her bare feet in the talc like an evasive dance step. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Completely compos mentis.’ She stared at herself in the dressing-table mirror, jaw thrust forward. ‘No, I’m not all right. And nor are you. Where’s the getaway car? I don’t want to drive to Calais in the little Peugeot.’

  ‘The Jag’s outside. Tell me why you want to leave. Is it anything I’ve done?’

  ‘Have you done anything? I’m amazed.’ Jane rolled her eyes in mock alarm. She placed her hands on my chest. ‘Dear husband, you’re a decent and kindly man – more or less – and I want to keep you that way. I don’t know where you stay out all night and I won’t ask. I hope she’s sweet and appreciates you. But I’m sure of one thing – remain here any longer and you’ll end up like the rest of us.’

  ‘Jane, why now? Has something worried you – the business at the Cardin Foundation?’

  ‘Cardin? Not my favourite schmutter. You mean the robbery at Miramar?’

  ‘You’ve heard about it?’

  ‘Simone and I saw it on the news. Alain was driving through Théoule as the gang sped off and tried to stop them. Poor man, he was covered with bruises. I had to patch him up.’ She rubbed the infected needle mark on her thigh. ‘Alain said he saw you later at the Villa Grimaldi.’

  ‘A stag night, laid on by Pascal Zander.’

  ‘Ghastly man. I’m glad I wasn’t there. He invents imaginary venereal symptoms so he can roll out his big cannon. It’s quite a spectacle. He’s perpetually tumescent in a nasty way.’

  ‘A good reason for leaving. So it isn’t me that you want to get away from?’

  ‘I want to get away from myself.’ She sat on the bed, hands over her small breasts as if feeling her tender nipples. ‘There are too many mirrors in this house and I don’t like what I see in them. Outside the clinic I hardly exist. I’m tired all the time and I keep picking up small infections. For the last two months I’ve had swollen tonsils – if you tried to kiss me you’d never get your tongue in my mouth.’

  ‘Have you talked to Penrose?’

  ‘Wilder Penrose … for a clever man he has some odd ideas. He thinks we need to freshen up our sex life. How, he didn’t quite say – something about prepubertal girls. I told him that wasn’t your scene, you liked them a good bit older. That’s why you married me. Isn’t it?’

  ‘You know it is.’

  ‘Good …’ She stared at my hands as I sat beside her, her eyes slightly out of focus. She raised my fingers to her lips, and caught a strange scent clinging to the nails. Her eyes sharpened, and she glanced at me without comment. ‘Paul… you know I’m going to bed with Simone?’

  ‘No. But I guessed.’

  ‘I was so sleepy, it happened before I realized it. I thought we were playing girls in the dorm, but she had other ideas. You’re not upset?’

  ‘A little. We talked it through long ago. Have you …?’

  ‘Since school? Once. Heterosexuality is hard work – men make it into a big effort. When I get back from the clinic I’m too tired for all those emotions. With Simone I can switch off.’

  ‘What about Alain?’

  ‘He likes to watch. Sorry, Paul … you’re too sane. If we stay here any longer I’ll go to bed with Alain. I don’t want that to happen.’

  She sniffled into a corner of the sheet. Searching for a tissue, I pulled back the dressing-table drawers, and exposed the clutch of ampoules in her valise. ‘Jane … all this pethidine. How muc
h can you take?’

  ‘They’re nothing. Better for me than too many double scotches.’

  ‘The diamorphine? It’s pure heroin.’

  ‘I’m all right!’ She closed the drawer, and then stared at me curiously. ‘You never tried to stop me. Not seriously. That’s a little surprising.’

  ‘You’re the doctor, you know how to handle the stuff.’

  ‘No.’ Jane took my chin, forcing me to look her in the face. ‘You’re keeping an eye on me, Paul. I’m your guinea pig. You want to know what happens to people in Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘That may be true. I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized it.’

  ‘It’s part of your search for David Greenwood. You’re totally obsessed with him. Why? Because we were lovers once? It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Never long enough.’ I felt myself sink slightly. ‘David was making a stand against Eden-Olympia. It’s the proving ground for a new kind of world, and he couldn’t cope with that.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to Wilder. Nietzsche on the beach – Philip Glass could set it to music.’

  ‘He’s serious, but he’s starting to give himself away. I need more time, Jane. That’s why I’d like to stay on for a while. Let me explain it to you, and then you can decide if we leave.’

  ‘All right …’ She leaned against me, her breathing shallow, her putty skin giving off a stale odour that I had never noticed. As I listened to her slow heartbeat I knew how deeply exhausted she was.

  I cleared a space among the suitcases and laid her on the bed, straightening the pillow under her head. I sat beside her, holding her hands between mine, and thought about her affair with Greenwood, and their quick sex probably snatched at Guy’s in darkened laundry rooms. Jane was fond of me, but our marriage had been the last of her hippie gestures, the belief that impulsive acts alone gave meaning to life. Sex and drugs had to be casually dispensed, as a way of defusing the myths around them.

  ‘Paul … I’m going to sleep for a little.’ Jane smiled at me as I stroked her damp forehead. Together we listened to an approaching publicity plane that climbed the valley from the coast, bringing to the business park its tidings of another marina complex or discount furniture sale. A few hundred yards from us Wilder Penrose would be standing at his kitchen window, watching the wavering pennant as he laid his own very different plans for the new Riviera.

  PART II

  31

  The Film Festival

  ON THE ROOF of the Noga Hilton the samurai warrior had lowered his sword, as if unable to decide how many of the thousands of heads in the Croisette he would strike from their shoulders. His black helmet, the size of a small car, tilted towards the sea, moving jerkily as the Japanese technicians swarmed over his back, their arms deep in his electromechanical heart.

  But the crowd’s attention had turned to a trio of stretch limousines emerging from the drive of the Martinez. The onlookers surged against the railings, angry cries sounding a clear threat above the excitement. Hands patted the sleek roofs of the vehicles, fingers pressed at the tinted windows and left their smeared prints on the glass. A middle-aged woman in a baseball cap fired a canister of liquid confetti over the last Cadillac, entrails of iridescent air-weed that clung to the radio masts. Glamour moved through Cannes at five miles an hour, too fast to satisfy their curiosity, too slow to slake their dreams.

  I sat at my table in the Blue Bar, waiting for Frances Baring to join me. After avoiding me for a week, hiding behind the answerphone at Marina Baie des Anges, she had called my mobile, a wilfully cryptic edge to her voice. She suggested that we have an early-evening drink in Cannes, though the Croisette was the last place for a secret rendezvous.

  Ten feet from my kerbside table the limousines moved on towards the Palais des Festivals between the lines of police and security men. Helicopters circled the Palm Beach headland, waiting to land at the heliport, like paramilitary gunships about to strafe the beachside crowds. Their white-suited passengers, faces masked by huge shades, stared down with the gaze of gangster generals in a Central American republic surveying a popular uprising. An armada of yachts and motor cruisers strained at their anchors two hundred yards from the beach, so heavily freighted with bodyguards and television equipment that they seemed to raise the sea.

  Yet a short walk from the Croisette, as I had seen while driving down the Rue d’Antibes, the Cannes Film Festival might not have existed. Elderly ladies in silk suits and pearls strolled in their unhurried way past the patisseries or exchanged gossip in the salons de thé. Toy poodles soiled their favourite pavements, and tourists scanned the estate agents’ displays of new apartment complexes, ready to invest their savings in a prefabricated dream of the sun.

  The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit.

  A limousine with Eden-Olympia pennants paused in the stalled traffic outside the Blue Bar. Hoping to catch sight of Jane, I stood up at my table. With Simone and Alain Delage, she was attending a seven-o’clock reception for a Franco-German film financed by one of the business park’s merchant banks. After the premiere they would move on to a fireworks party at the Villa Grimaldi and watch the Cannes night turn into a second day.

  As the limousine crept forward, a chorus of fists drumming on its roof, I saw the fleshy figure of Pascal Zander lounging across the rear seat. Three young women, as blankly self-conscious as starlets, sat beside him, together trying to light his cigar. They waved like novice queens at the crowd, aware that they had crossed the threshold where celebrity and the illusion of celebrity at last fused for a few exhilarating hours.

  A Chinese man carrying a camcorder strode through the spectators, searching for a target of opportunity. Followed by a Scandinavian woman with a clipboard, he took a short cut through the Blue Bar and brushed my shoulder, almost knocking me from my feet. I sat down clumsily, wincing over my inflamed knee. As Zander’s limousine pulled away, I thought again how odd it was that I had to visit the Cannes Film Festival, and be assaulted by tourists, in the hope of meeting my wife.

  In the months since Jane’s panic attempt to leave Eden-Olympia I had seen less and less of her. We shared the same swimming pool, breakfast room and garage, but our lives were drawing away from each other. Jane had committed herself for good to the business park. Long hours of work, a diamorphine night and weekends with Simone Delage made up her world. I was still uneasy over the syrettes in her dressing table, but she had found professional success at Eden-Olympia. She had been profiled in the London medical press, and was completing the diagnostic tests that would soon link every employee in Eden-Olympia and Sophia-Antipolis.

  At the same time, the most advanced system of preventive medicine in Europe had been unable to cure my knee injury. The rogue infection had flared up again, a hospital-bred bacterium that resisted antibiotics, rest and physiotherapy. This old barometer of my discontents was forecasting stormy weather. Taking pity on me as I limped around the house in the small hours, Jane made up a solution of muscle relaxant and painkiller. She taught me how to inject myself, and the modest doses were the only effective relief that any of the clinic’s highly paid physicians had offered.

  The helicopters clattered above the beach, cameras filming from open doorways. A small riot had started outside the Carlton. According to an American couple at the next table, a leading Hollywood star had promised to emerge from the front entrance, only to discover that a riva
l studio’s production was advertised on a huge billboard above his head. He had turned back into the hotel and slipped out through a rear exit, leaving a rattled publicity woman to make his apologies. Even as she shouted through her megaphone a dozen hands were rocking a TV location van. A Cannes policeman sprawled across the windscreen like a stuntman, shouting to the hotel’s security team as the crowd cheered him on.

  Exhausted by the noise, I left the table to a middle-aged German tourist, who managed the feat of sitting in my chair before I could rise fully to my feet. I wiped my hands on his shoulder and limped to the toilets at the rear of the bar. I locked myself into a cubicle, and took the leather hypodermic wallet from my jacket. Leaning against the washbasin, I lifted my injured leg onto the lavatory lid and rolled my trouser to the knee. The surgical scars had faded, but the pain still nagged, a cry for help that sounded steadily from beneath the floorboards of my mind.

  I broke the seal on the unlabelled phial and drew three ccs into the hypodermic. Avoiding the cluster of old puncture points, I injected the pale solution into the fold of smooth skin on the inner surface of my knee. I counted to twenty as the subcutaneous shot brought its slow but deep relief, pushing the pain further from me, like furniture moved to the far corners of a stage.

  Letting my leg fall to the floor, I shouted through the door at an impatient woman rattling the lock. She stepped into another cubicle, and I sat across the washstand, my back to the mirror, letting the tap water run across my hands. As my chest warmed, I thought of Jane, dazzling as any film star in her minuscule black frock, the fur stole around her shoulders, walking into the Palais des Festivals with Alain and Simone Delage.