The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
Page 138
de Beauvoir, Simone, 176
de Gaulle, Charles, conversations with HRH, 319–47, 356–79, 401
Dealey Plaza (Dallas, Texas), rumoured presence of HRH, 435
Dietrich, Marlene, 234, 371, 435
E
Ecclesiastes, Book of, 87
Eckhart, Meister, 265
Einstein, Albert, first Princeton visit by HRH, 203; joint signatory with HRH and R. Niebuhr of Roosevelt petition, 276; second and third Princeton visits, 284; death-bed confession to HRH, 292
Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D., 218, 227, 232
Eliot, T. S., conversations with HRH, 209; suppresses dedication of Four Quartets to HRH, 213
Ellis, Havelock, 342 Everest, Mt., 521
F
Fairbanks, Douglas, 281
Faulkner, William, 375
Fermi, Enrico, reveals first controlled fission reaction to HRH, 299; terminal cancer diagnosed by HRH, 388; funeral eulogy read by HRH, 401
Fleming, Sir Alexander, credits HRH, 211
Ford, Henry, 198
Fortune (magazine), 349
Freud, Sigmund, receives HRH in London, 198; conducts analysis of HRH, 205; begins Civilization and its Discontents, 230; admits despair to HRH, 279
G
Gandhi, Mahatma, visited in prison by HRH, 251; discusses Bhagavadgita with HRH, 253; has dhoti washed by HRH, 254; denounces HRH, 256
Garbo, Greta, 381
George V, secret visits to Chatsworth, 3, 4–6; rumoured liaison with Mrs Alexander Hamilton, 7; suppresses court circular, 9; denies existence of collateral Battenburg line to Lloyd George, 45
Goldwyn, Samuel, 397
Grenadier Guards, 215–18
Gstaad, 359
H
Hadrian IV, Pope, 28, 57, 84, 119, 345–76, 411, 598
Hamilton, Alexander, British Consul, Marseilles, 1, 3, 7; interest in topiary, 2; unexpected marriage, 3; depression after birth of HRH, 6; surprise recall to London, 12; first nervous breakdown, 16; transfer to Tsingtao, 43
Hamilton, Alice Rosalind (later Lady Underwood), private education, 2; natural gaiety, 3; first marriage annulled, 4; enters London society, 5; beats George V at billiards, 5, 7, 9, 23; second marriage to Alexander Hamilton, 3; dislike of Marseilles, 7; premature birth of HRH, 8; divorce, 47; third marriage to Sir Richard Underwood, 48
Hamilton, Henry Rhodes, accident-proneness, 118; age, sensitiveness about, 476; belief in telepathy, 399; childhood memories, 501; common man, identification with, 211; courage, moral, 308, physical, 201; generosity, 99; Goethe, alleged resemblance to, 322; hobbies, dislike of, 87; illnesses, concussion, 196; hypertension, 346; prostate inflammation, 522; venereal disease, 77; integrity, 89; languages, mastery of, 176; Orient, love of, 188; patriotism, renunciation of, 276; public speaking, aptitude for, 345; self-analysis, 234–67; underdog, compassion for, 176; will-power, 87
Hamilton, Indira, meets HRH in Calcutta, 239; translates at Gandhi interviews, 253; imprisoned with HRH by British, 276; marries HRH, 287; on abortive Everest expedition, 299; divorces HRH, 301
Hamilton, Marcelline (formerly Marcelline Renault), abandons industrialist husband, 177; accompanies HRH to Ankor, 189; marries HRH, 191; amuses Ho Chi-minh, 195; divorces HRH, 201
Hamilton, Ursula (later Mrs Mickey Rooney), 302–7, divorces HRH, 308
Hamilton, Zelda, rescued from orphanage by HRH, 325; visit to Cape Kennedy with HRH, 327; declines astronaut training, 328; leads International Virgin Bride campaign, 331; arrested with HRH by Miami police, 344; Frankfurt police, 359; divorces HRH, 371; wins Miss Alabama contest, 382; go-go dancer, 511; applies for writ of habeas corpus, 728
Harriman, Averell, 432
Harry’s Bar, Venice, 256
Hayworth, Rita, 311
Hemingway, Ernest, first African safari with HRH, 234; at Battle of the Ebro with HRH, 244; introduces HRH to James Joyce, 256; portrays HRH in The Old Man and the Sea, 453
Hiroshima, HRH observes atomic cloud, 258
Hitler, Adolf, invites HRH to Berchtesgaden, 166; divulges Russia invasion plans, 172; impresses HRH, 179; disappoints HRH, 181
Hydrogen Bomb, HRH calls for world moratorium on manufacture, 388
I
Impostors, HRH troubled by, 157, 198, 345, 439
Inchon, Korea, HRH observes landings with Gen. MacArthur, 348
Interlaken, Bruno Walter lends villa to HRH, 401
International Congress of Psychoanalysis, HRH stages anti-psychiatry demonstration, 357
Ives, Burl, 328
J
Jerusalem, HRH establishes collegium of Perfect Light Movement, 453; attempted intercession by HRH in Arab-Israeli war, 444; HRH designs tomb, 478
Jesus Christ, HRH compared to by Malraux, 476
Jodrell Bank Radio-telescope, 501
Joyce, James, 256
Juan Les Pins, 347
Jupiter, planet, HRH suggests existence of extra-terrestrial observers, 331; urges re-direction of space programme to, 342
K
Kennedy, Cape, HRH leads Perfect Light Movement demonstration, 411
Kennedy, John F., President, declines to receive HRH, 420; ignores danger warnings, 425; mourned by HRH, 444
Kierkegaard, Soren, 231
Koran, 118
L
Lancaster, Mrs Burt, 411
Lawrence, T. E., HRH compared to by Koestler, 334
Lévi-Strauss, C., 422
Life (magazine), 199, 243, 331, 357, 432
Limited Editions Club, 345
Louis XIV, 501
M
Malraux, André, 239, 345, 399, 476
Mann Act, HRH charged under, 345
McCall’s (magazine) 201, 234, 329, 333
Menninger Clinic, HRH confined, 477; receives treatment, 479–85; discharged, 491; re-admitted, 495
Menuhin, Yehudi, lends Palm Springs villa to HRH, 503
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, offer to HRH, 511
Miranda, Carmen, 377
N
Nato, 331, 356, 571
Nice, 45
Niebuhr, R., conversations with HRH, 270–5; admiration for HRH, 276; lends villa to HRH, 288; expresses reservations about HRH, 291
Nietzsche, 99
Nobel Prize, HRH nominated for, 220, 267, 342, 375, 459, 611
O
Oberammergau, 117
Oedipus Complex, 42–9, 87, 451
Old Bailey, first trial of HRH, 531; prosecution case, 533–7; hung jury, 541; second trial, 555; surprise intervention of Attorney-General, 561; acquittal of HRH, 564
Oswald, Lee Harvey, befriended by HRH, 350; inspired by HRH, 354; discusses failure of the Presidency with HRH, 357–61; invites HRH to Dallas, 372
Oxford Book of Religious Verse, 98, 116
P
Pasternak, Boris, conversations with HRH, 341–4
Paul VI, Pope, praises Perfect Light Movement, 462; receives HRH, 464; attacked by HRH, 471; deplores messianic pretensions of HRH, 487; criticises Avignon counter-papacy established by HRH, 498; excommunicates HRH, 533
Perfect Light Movement, conceived by HRH, 398; launched, 401; charitable activities praised by Nehru, Lyndon B. Johnson, Pierre Trudeau, 423; medical mission to Biafra, 456; criticised by International Red Cross, 477; denounced by World Council of Churches, 499; criminal prosecution of, 544; disbandment, 566; reconstituted, 588; designated a religion by HRH, 604; first crusade against Rome, 618; infiltrated by CIA, 622
Pill, the, denounced by HRH, 611
Q
Quai d’Orsay, expresses alarm at HRH initiatives in Third World, 651; concludes secret accords with Britain, United States and USSR, 666
Quixote, Don, HRH compared to by Harold Macmillan, 421
R
Rapallo, HRH convalesces in, 321
Reader’s Digest (magazine), 176
Rockefeller Foundation, dissociates itself from HRH, 555
Rubinstein, Helena, 221, 234, 242
S
Schweitzer, Albert, receives HRH, 199;
performs organ solo for HRH, 201; discusses quest for the historical Jesus with HRH, 203–11; HRH compared to by Leonard Bernstein, 245; expels HRH, 246
Sex-change, rumoured operation on HRH, 655
Stanwyck, Barbara, 248
Stork Club, 231
T
Tangier, secret visit by HRH, 653–5
Technology, HRH renunciation of, 409
Telepathy, HRH interest in, 241; conducts experiments, 349–57; claims powers of, 666
Tenth Convocation of Perfect Light Movement, 672; proclamation of HRH’s divinity, 685
Time (magazine), cover stories on HRH, 267, 359, 492, 578, 691
Tynan, Kenneth, 451
U
United Nations Assembly, seized by Perfect Light Movement, 695–9; HRH addresses, 696; HRH calls for world war against United States and USSR, 698
V
Versailles, Perfect Light Movement attempts to purchase, 621
Vogue (magazine), 356
W
Westminster Abbey, arrest of HRH by Special Branch, 704
Wight, Isle of, incarceration of HRH, 712–69
Windsor, House of, HRH challenges legitimacy of, 588
Y
Yale Club, 234
Younghusband, Lord Chancellor, denies star chamber trial of HRH, 722; denies knowledge of whereabouts of HRH, 724; refuses habeas corpus appeal by Zelda Hamilton, 728; refers to unestablished identity of HRH, 731
Z
Zanuck, Daryl F., 388
Zielinski, Bronislaw, suggests autobiography to HRH, 742; commissioned to prepare index, 748; warns of suppression threats, 752; disappears, 761
1977
THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT
Within a few minutes the next attack will begin. Now that I am surrounded for the first time by all the members of my family it seems only fitting that a complete record should be made of this unique event. As I lie here – barely able to breathe, my mouth filled with blood and every tremor of my hands reflected in the attentive eye of the camera six feet away – I realize that there are many who will think my choice of subject a curious one. In all senses, this film will be the ultimate home-movie, and I only hope that whoever watches it will gain some idea of the immense affection I feel for my wife, and for my son and daughter, and of the affection that they, in their unique way, feel for me.
It is now half an hour since the explosion, and everything in this once elegant sitting room is silent. I am lying on the floor by the settee, looking at the camera mounted safely out of reach on the ceiling above my head. In this uneasy stillness, broken only by my wife’s faint breathing and the irregular movement of my son across the carpet, I can see that almost everything I have assembled so lovingly during the past years has been destroyed. My Sèvres lies in a thousand fragments in the fireplace, the Hokusai scrolls are punctured in a dozen places. Yet despite the extensive damage this is still recognizably the scene of a family reunion, though of a rather special kind.
My son David crouches at his mother’s feet, chin resting on the torn Persian carpet, his slow movement marked by a series of smeared hand-prints. Now and then, when he raises his head, I can see that he is still alive. His eyes are watching me, calculating the distance between us and the time it will take him to reach me. His sister Karen is little more than an arm’s length away, lying beside the fallen standard lamp between the settee and the fireplace, but he ignores her. Despite my fear, I feel a powerful sense of pride that he should have left his mother and set out on this immense journey towards me. For his own sake I would rather he lay still and conserved what little strength and time are left to him, but he presses on with all the determination his seven-year-old body can muster.
My wife Margaret, who is sitting in the armchair facing me, raises her hand in some kind of confused warning, and then lets it fall limply on to the stained damask arm-rest. Distorted by her smudged lipstick, the brief smile she gives me might seem to the casual spectator of this film to be ironic or even threatening, but I am merely struck once again by her remarkable beauty. Watching her, and relieved that she will probably never rise from her armchair again, I think of our first meeting ten years ago, then as now within the benevolent gaze of the television camera.
The unusual, not to say illicit, notion of actually meeting my wife and children in the flesh had occurred to me some three months earlier, during one of our extended family breakfasts. Since the earliest days of our marriage Sunday mornings had always been especially enjoyable. There were the pleasures of breakfast in bed, of talking over the papers and whatever else had taken place during the week. Switching to our private channel, Margaret and I would make love, celebrating the deep peace of our marriage beds. Later, we would call in the children and watch them playing in their nurseries, and perhaps surprise them with the promise of a visit to the park or circus.
All these activities, of course, like our family life itself, were made possible by television. At that time neither I nor anyone else had ever dreamed that we might actually meet in person. In fact, age-old though rarely invoked ordinances still existed to prevent this – to meet another human being was an indictable offence (especially, for reasons I then failed to understand, a member of one’s own family, presumably part of some ancient system of incest taboos). My own upbringing, my education and medical practice, my courtship of Margaret and our happy marriage, all occurred within the generous rectangle of the television screen. Margaret’s insemination was of course by AID, and like all children David’s and Karen’s only contact with their mother was during their brief uterine life.
In every sense, needless to say, this brought about an immense increase in the richness of human experience. As a child I had been brought up in the hospital crèche, and thus spared all the psychological dangers of a physically intimate family life (not to mention the hazards, aesthetic and otherwise, of a shared domestic hygiene). But far from being isolated I was surrounded by companions. On television I was never alone. In my nursery I played hours of happy games with my parents, who watched me from the comfort of their homes, feeding on to my screen a host of video-games, animated cartoons, wild-life films and family serials which together opened the world to me.
My five years as a medical student passed without my ever needing to see a patient in the flesh. My skills in anatomy and physiology were learned at the computer display terminal. Advanced techniques of diagnosis and surgery eliminated any need for direct contact with an organic illness. The probing camera, with its infra-red and X-ray scanners, its computerized diagnostic aids, revealed far more than any unaided human eye.
Perhaps I was especially adept at handling these complex keyboards and retrieval systems – a finger-tip sensitivity that was the modern equivalent of the classical surgeon’s operative skills – but by the age of thirty I had already established a thriving general practice. Freed from the need to visit my surgery in person, my patients would merely dial themselves on to my television screen. The selection of these incoming calls – how tactfully to fade out a menopausal housewife and cut to a dysenteric child, while remembering to cue in separately the anxious parents – required a considerable degree of skill, particularly as the patients themselves shared these talents. The more neurotic patients usually far exceeded them, presenting themselves with the disjointed cutting, aggressive zooms and split-screen techniques that went far beyond the worst excesses of experimental cinema.
My first meeting with Margaret took place when she called me during a busy morning surgery. As I glanced into what was still known nostalgically as ‘the waiting room’ – the visual display projecting brief filmic profiles of the day’s patients – I would customarily have postponed to the next day any patient calling without an appointment. But I was immediately struck, first by her age – she seemed to be in her late twenties – and then by the remarkable pallor of this young woman. Below close-cropped blonde hair her underlit eyes and slim mouth were set in a face that was almost ashen. I realized that, unlike myself and ev
eryone else, she was wearing no make-up for the cameras. This accounted both for her arctic skin-tones and for her youthless appearance – on television, thanks to make-up, everyone of whatever age was 22, the cruel divisions of chronology banished for good.
It must have been this absence of make-up that first seeded the idea, to flower with such devastating consequences ten years later, of actually meeting Margaret in person. Intrigued by her unclassifiable appearance, I shelved my other patients and began our interview. She told me that she was a masseuse, and after a polite preamble came to the point. For some months she had been concerned that a small lump in her left breast might be cancerous.
I made some reassuring reply, and told her that I would examine her. At this point, without warning, she leaned forward, unbuttoned her shirt and exposed her breast.
Startled, I stared at this huge organ, some two feet in diameter, which filled my television screen. An almost Victorian code of visual ethics governed the doctor/patient relationship, as it did all social intercourse. No physician ever saw his patients undressed, and the location of any intimate ailments was always indicated by the patient by means of diagram slides. Even among married couples the partial exposure of their bodies was a comparative rarity, and the sexual organs usually remained veiled behind the most misty filters, or were coyly alluded to by the exchange of cartoon drawings. Of course, a clandestine pornographic channel operated, and prostitutes of both sexes plied their wares, but even the most expensive of these would never appear live, instead substituting a pre-recorded film-strip of themselves at the moment of climax.
These admirable conventions eliminated all the dangers of personal involvement, and this liberating affectlessness allowed those who so wished to explore the fullest range of sexual possibility and paved the way for the day when a truly guilt-free sexual perversity and, even, psychopathology might be enjoyed by all.
Staring at the vast breast and nipple, with their uncompromising geometries, I decided that my best way of dealing with this eccentrically frank young woman was to ignore any lapse from convention. After the infra-red examination confirmed that the suspected cancer nodule was in fact a benign cyst she buttoned her shirt and said:
‘That’s a relief. Do call me, doctor, if you ever need a course of massage. I’ll be delighted to repay you.’