Cocaine Nights

by J. G. Ballard

  'Good, good… you're another Schumacher, Charles. It's fun being a passenger. The world looks different, as if one's seeing it in a mirror.'

  Crawford sat with his hands on the dashboard, enjoying the erratic ride, and directed me through the narrow streets to the Paseo Maritimo. Now and then his hand gripped mine as he steered the Porsche around a swerving motor-scooter, and I felt the over-developed thumb and index finger of the professional tennis player, the same combination that had left its imprint on my throat. Fingers, like keys, had a unique signature. I was sitting beside the man who had almost strangled me, and yet my anger had already given way to more confused emotions: a need for revenge, and curiosity as to his motives.

  He tapped the girl's diary on his knee, amused to see that I had reined in the powerful car and declined to show off its performance. As we approached the harbour I noticed his almost childlike pleasure in everything around him. My modest driving skills, a water-skier in the bay slaloming in and out of a speedboat's wake, elderly tourists marooned on a traffic island, all prompted the same cheerful smile, as if he were seeing the world afresh at every street corner.

  We drove along the lower corniche towards Marbella, past the beach bars, boutiques and creperies. At the western limits of Estrella de Mar a mole of concrete blocks jutted into the sea. A truck loaded with fairground booths sped towards us, and Crawford seized the wheel, turning the Porsche into its path. His foot crushed mine against the accelerator, throwing the car forward as the truck's klaxon blared past us.

  'Missed…' Crawford waved to the driver and steered the car on to the sandy verge beside the mole. 'A small errand, Charles. It won't take a moment.'

  He stepped from the car, inhaling the bright spray as the waves broke among the blocks. Still dazed by our close escape, I looked down at my bruised foot. The yellow paint on the toe-cap of my shoe echoed the cleat-marks of Crawford's trainer, the same print that I had seen stamped into the scattered soil on Frank's balcony.

  Shielding his eyes with the diary, Crawford gazed across the peninsula at the gutted shell of the Hollinger house.

  'A year from now some hotel or casino complex will stand there. On this coast the past isn't allowed to exist…'

  I locked the car and stood beside him. 'Why not keep the house as it is?'

  'As a tribal totem? A warning to all those time-share salesmen and nightclub touts? That's not a bad idea Buffeted by the wind, we walked to the rail at the end of the mole. Crawford glanced for a last time at the diary, smiling as he turned the pages of childish scrawl. He closed it, held it behind his head and tossed it far out into the waves, a long deep serve.

  'So… that's done. I wanted to find the date where she mentioned the baby – now I know how old it was.' He stared at the waves rolling in from North Africa, ice-cold crests sweeping towards the shore. 'Cocaine coming in, Charles… thousands of lines. Out of Africa always something white and strange.'

  I leaned against the rail and let the spray cool my face. The loose pages of the diary were churning in the foam beneath us, pink petals dashed among the concrete blocks.

  'Wouldn't Sanger have liked the diary? He was fond of her.'

  'Of course. He loved Bibi – everyone did. The whole Hollinger thing is a terrible shame. Bibi's is the one death I really regret.'

  'But you kept supplying her with hard drugs – according to Paula Hamilton she was a walking Palermo lab.'

  'Charles…' Crawford put a brotherly arm around my shoulders, but I half-expected him to hip-throw me over the rail into the seething waves. 'You have to understand Estrella de Mar. Yes, we gave her drugs – we wanted to free her from those sinister clinics up in the hills, from those men in white coats who know best. Bibi needed to soar over our heads, dreaming her amphetamine dreams, coming off the beach in the evening and leading everyone into the cocaine night.' Crawford lowered his eyes and gestured at the sea, asking the waves to witness what he was saying. 'Sanger and Alice Hollinger turned her into a lady's maid.'

  'The police found her in Hollinger's Jacuzzi. I don't suppose that was a film test?'

  'Charles, forget Hollinger's Jacuzzi.'

  'I'll try – it's an image that doesn't go away. Do you know who started the fire?'

  Crawford waited until the last of the diary pages had vanished in the foam. 'The fire? Well… I suppose I do.'

  'Who, though? I need to get Frank out of Zarzuella jail and back to London.'

  'He may not want to leave.' Crawford watched me, as if waiting for me to serve at a crucial tie-break. 'I could tell you who started the fire, but you're not ready yet. It's not just a matter of someone's name, but of coming to terms with Estrella de Mar.'

  'I've been here long enough. I understand what's going on.'

  'No – or you wouldn't be so obsessed with that Jacuzzi.

  Think of Estrella de Mar as an experiment. Something important may be taking place here, and I want you to be part of it.' Crawford held my arm, and led the way back to the Porsche. 'First, we'll go out for our ride. This time I'll drive, so you can take your eyes off the road. There's a lot to see… remember, white is the colour of silence.'

  Before he started the engine I said: 'Bibi Jansen-if you made her pregnant, where did it happen? In the Hollinger house?'

  'Good God, no!' Crawford seemed almost shocked. 'Even I wouldn't go that far. She visited Paula at the Clinic every Tuesday – I met her there once and we went for a drive.'

  'Where exactly?'

  'Into the past, Charles. Where she was happy again – just for an hour, but the longest and sweetest hour…'

  19 The Costasol Complex

  White silence. As we drove along the coast road, a mile to the west of Estrella de Mar, the outer-lying villas of the Residencia Costasol began to appear through the Aleppo pines that ran down to the deserted beach. The houses and apartments were set at various levels, forming a cascade of patios, terraces and swimming pools. I had visited the retirement pueblos at Calahonda and Torrenueva, but the Costasol complex was far larger than any others along the coast. Yet not a single resident was visible. No windows turned to catch the sun, and the entire development might have been empty, waiting for its first tenants to arrive and collect their keys.

  Crawford pointed to the crenellated wall. 'Look at it, Charles… it's a fortified medieval city. This is Goldfinger's defensible space raised to an almost planetary intensity – security guards, tele-surveillance, no entrance except through the main gates, the whole complex closed to outsiders. It's a grim thought, but you're looking at the future.'

  'Do the people here ever leave? They must go down to the beach.'

  'No, that's the eerie thing about it all. The sea's only two hundred yards away but none of the villas looks out on to the beach. Space is totally internalized…'

  Crawford turned off the coast road and freewheeled towards the entrance. Landscaped gardens the size of a small municipal park lay outside the Moorish gates and guardhouse. Flower- beds filled with cannas surrounded an ornamental fountain, reached by gravelled walks untouched by human feet since the day they were laid. Under an illuminated sign announcing 'The Residencia Costasol: Investment, Freedom, Security' was a road-map of the entire complex, a maze of winding avenues and culs-de-sac that emerged from their fastnesses to join the almost imperial boulevards radiating from the centre of the development.

  'The map isn't really for visitors.' Crawford stopped outside the guardhouse and saluted the security man watching us from his window. 'It's there to help the residents find their way home. Sometimes they make the mistake of leaving the place for an hour or two.'

  'They must go shopping. It's only a mile from Estrella de Mar.'

  'But few of them ever visit the town. They might as well be on an atoll in the Maldives or in the San Fernando Valley.' Crawford drove up to the security barrier. From his breast pocket he took out a smart card embossed with the Costasol logo and fed it into the security scanner. To the guard he said: 'We'll be here for an hour-we wor
k for Mrs Shand. Mr Prentice is your new entertainments officer.'

  'Elizabeth Shand?' I repeated as the barrier fell behind us and we entered the complex. 'Don't tell me the place is one of hers. By the way, who am I supposed to be entertaining, and how?'

  'Relax, Charles. I wanted to impress the security guard-the thought of being entertained always strikes terror into people. Betty buys and sells property everywhere. In fact, she's thinking of moving into here. A few of the villas are still unsold, along with empty retail units in the shopping mall. If someone could bring the place to life there's a fortune to be made – the people here are well-off.'

  'I can see.' I pointed to the cars parked in the driveways.

  'More Mercs and BMWs per square foot than in Dusseldorf or Bel Air. Who designed it all?'

  'The main developers were a Dutch-German consortium, with a Swiss consultancy handling the 'Human systems side?'

  Crawford slapped my knee, laughing cheerfully. 'You've got the jargon, Charles. I know you're going to be happy here.'

  'Heaven forbid… happiness looks as if it might infringe the local bye-laws.'

  We cruised down the north-south boulevard that ran towards the hub of the complex, a dual carriageway lined with tall palms whose parasols shaded the deserted pathways. Sprinklers turned their rainbows through the scented air, irrigating the crisply-mown grass of the central reservation. Set back within their walled gardens was a line of large villas, deep awnings over their balconies. Only the surveillance cameras moved to follow us. The dusty elephant hide of the palm trunks flickered with the reflected light of swimming pools, but there were no sounds of children playing or of anyone disturbing the almost immaculate calm.

  'So many pools,' I commented. 'And no one swimming…'

  'They're Zen surfaces, Charles. Breaking them is bad luck. These were the first houses here, built about five years ago. The final plots were filled last week. It may not look it, but the Residencia Costasol is popular.'

  'Mostly British?'

  'With a few Dutch and French-much the same mix as Estrella de Mar. But this is a different world. Estrella de Mar was built in the 1970s – open access, street festivals, tourists welcome. The Residencia Costasol is pure 1990s. Security rules. Everything is designed around an obsession with crime.'

  'I take it there isn't any?'

  'None. Absolutely nothing. An illicit thought never disturbs the peace. No tourists, no back-packers or trinket-sellers, and few visitors – the people here have learned that it's a big help to dispense with friends. Be honest, friends can be a problem – gates and front doors need to be unlocked, alarm systems disconnected, and someone else is breathing your air. Besides, they bring in uneasy memories of the outside world. The Residencia Costasol isn't unique. You see these fortified enclaves all over the planet. There are developments like this gearing up along the coast from Calahonda to Marbella and beyond.'

  A car overtook us, and the woman driver turned off the boulevard into a tree-lined avenue of slightly smaller villas. Watching her, I realized that I had seen my first resident.

  'And what do the people here do all day? Or all night?'

  'They do nothing. That's what the Residencia Costasol was designed for.'

  'But where are they? We've only seen one car so far.'

  'They're here, Charles, they're here. Lying on their sun-loungers and waiting for Paula Hamilton to arrive with a new prescription. When you think of the Costasol complex think of the Sleeping Beauty We left the boulevard and entered one of the dozens of residential avenues. Handsome villas stood behind their wrought-iron gates, terraces reaching to the swimming pools, blue kidneys of undisturbed water. Three-storey apartment houses were briefly visible beyond their drives, where groups of cars waited in the sun, so many dozing metal ruminants. Everywhere satellite dishes cupped the sky like begging bowls.

  'There must be hundreds of the dishes,' I commented. 'At least they haven't given up television.'

  'They're listening to the sun, Charles. Waiting for a new kind of light.'

  The road climbed the shoulder of a landscaped hill. We passed an estate of terraced houses and entered the central plaza of the complex. Car parks surrounded a shopping mall lined with stores and restaurants, and I pointed with surprise to the first pedestrians we had seen, unloading their supermarket trolleys through the tail-doors of their vehicles. To the south of the plaza lay a marina filled with yachts and powerboats, moored together like a mothballed fleet. An access canal led to the open sea, passing below a cantilever bridge that carried the coast road. A handsome clubhouse presided over the marina and its boatyard, but its terrace was deserted, awnings flared over the empty tables. The nearby sports club was equally unpopular, its tennis courts dusty in the sun, the swimming pool drained and forgotten.

  A supermarket stood inside the entrance to the shopping mall, next to a beauty salon with shuttered doors and windows. Crawford parked near a sports equipment store filled with exercycles and weightlifting contraptions, computerized heart monitors and respiration counters, arranged in a welcoming if steely tableau.

  'Clink, clank, think…' I murmured. 'It looks like a family group of robot visitors.'

  'Or a user-friendly torture chamber.' Crawford stepped from the car. 'Let's stroll, Charles. You need to feel the place at first-hand He fixed his aviator glasses over his eyes and glanced around the car park, counting the surveillance cameras as if calculating the best getaway route. The silence of the Residencia Costasol already seemed to dull his reflexes, and he began to practise his forehand and cross-court drives, feet springing as he waited to return an imaginary service.

  'Over here-if I'm right, there are signs of life…' He beckoned me towards the liquor store next to the supermarket, where a dozen customers hovered in the air-conditioned aisles and the Spanish check-out girls sat at their tills like marooned queens. The wall-to-ceiling display of wines, spirits and liqueurs was almost cathedral in its vastness, and a primitive cortical life seemed to flicker as the residents and their wives fitfully scanned the prices and vintages.

  'The Residencia Costasol's cultural heart,' Crawford informed me. 'At least they still have the energy to drink… the elbow reflex must be the last to go.'

  He stared at the silent aisles, working out his challenge to this eventless world. We left the liquor store and paused by a Thai restaurant, whose empty tables receded through a shadow world of flock wallpaper and gilded elephants. Next to it was an untenanted retail unit, a concrete vault like an abandoned segment of space-time. Crawford stepped through the litter of cigarette packets and lottery tickets, and read a faded notice announcing an over-fifties dance at the Costasol social centre.

  Without waiting for me, he walked through the unit and set off across the car park to the terraced villas that lined the western side of the plaza. Gravel gardens stocked with cactus plants and pallid succulents led to the shaded terraces, where the beach furniture waited like the armatures of the human beings who would occupy them that evening.

  'Charles, be discreet but look in there. You can see what we're up against…'

  Shielding my eyes from the sunlight, I gazed into one of the darkened lounges. A three-dimensional replica of a painting by Edward Hopper was visible below the awning. The residents, two middle-aged men and a woman in her thirties, sat in the silent room, their faces lit by the trembling glow of a television screen. No expression touched their eyes, as if the dim shadows on the hessian walls around them had long become a satisfactory substitute for thought.

  'They're watching TV with the sound turned down,' I told Crawford as we strolled along the terrace, past similar groups isolated in their capsules. 'What happened to them? They're like a race from some dark planet who find the light here too strong to bear.'

  'They're refugees from time, Charles. Look around you-there are no clocks anywhere and almost no one wears a wristwatch.'

  'Refugees? Yes… in some ways the place reminds me of the Third World. It's like a very up-mark
et favela in Rio, or a luxury bidonville outside Algiers.'

  'It's the fourth world, Charles. The one waiting to take over everything.'

  We returned to the Porsche and cruised around the plaza. I watched the villas and apartment houses, hoping for the sound of a raised human voice, a too-loud stereo system, the recoil of a diving board, and realized that we were witnessing an intense inward migration. The residents of the Costasol complex, like those of the retirement pueblos along the coast, had retreated to their shaded lounges, their bunkers with a view, needing only that part of the external world that was distilled from the sky by their satellite dishes. Standing empty in the sun, the sports club and social centre, like the other amenities engineered into the complex by its Swiss consultants, resembled the props of an abandoned film production.

  'Crawford, it's time to leave-let's get back to Estrella de Mar…'

  'You've seen enough?'

  'I want to hear that tennis machine of yours and the laughter of tipsy women. I want to hear Mrs Shand telling off the waiters at the Club Nautico – if she invests here she'll lose everything.'

  'Maybe. Before we go we'll look in at the sports club. It's semi-derelict but it has possibilities.'

  We passed the marina and turned into the forecourt of the sports club. A single car was parked by the entrance, but no one seemed to be present in the empty building. We stepped from the Porsche and strolled around the drained swimming pool, looking down at the canted floor that exposed its dusty tiles to the sun. A collection of hair-clips and wine glasses lay around the drainage vent, as if waiting for a stream to flow.

  Crawford sat back in a chair by the open-air bar, watching me while I tested the spring of the diving board. Handsome and affable, he gazed at me in a generous but canny way, like a junior officer selecting a raw recruit for a sensitive mission.