The Complete Short Stories, Volume 2

by J. G. Ballard

  It soon became clear that Scranton’s celebrity was as threadbare as his shirt cuffs. Few tourists visited him, and often a whole afternoon passed without a single customer. Then the waiter would scrape the chairs around Scranton’s table, trying to distract him from his reveries of an imaginary moon. Indeed, on the fourth day, within a few minutes of Scranton’s arrival, the waiter slapped the table-top with his towel, already cancelling the afternoon’s performance.

  ‘Away, away … it’s impossible!’ He seized the newspaper that Scranton had found on a nearby chair. ‘No more stories about the moon …’

  Scranton stood up, head bowed beneath the awning. He seemed resigned to this abuse. ‘All right … I can take my trade down the street.’

  To forestall this, I left my seat and moved through the empty tables.

  ‘Mr Scranton? Perhaps we can speak? I’d like to buy you a drink.’

  ‘By all means.’ Scranton beckoned me to a chair. Ready for business, he sat upright, and with a conscious effort managed to bring the focus of his gaze from infinity to a distance of fifty feet away. He was poorly nourished, and his perfunctory shave revealed an almost tubercular pallor. Yet there was a certain resolute quality about this vagrant figure that I had not expected. Sitting beside him, I was aware of an intense and almost wilful isolation, not just in this foreign city, but in the world at large.

  I showed him my card. ‘I’m writing a book of criticism on the science-fiction cinema. It would be interesting to hear your opinions. You are Commander Scranton, the Apollo astronaut?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Good. I wondered how you viewed the science-fiction film … how convincing you found the presentation of outer space, the lunar surface and so on …’

  Scranton stared bleakly at the table-top. A faint smile exposed his yellowing teeth, and I assumed that he had seen through my little ruse.

  ‘I’ll be happy to set you straight,’ he told me. ‘But I make a small charge.’

  ‘Of course,’ I searched in my pockets. ‘Your professional expertise, naturally …’

  I placed some coins on the table, intending to hunt for a modest bank-note. Scranton selected three of the coins, enough to pay for a loaf of bread, and pushed the rest towards me.

  ‘Science-fiction films –? They’re good. Very accurate. On the whole I’d say they do an excellent job.’

  ‘That’s encouraging to hear. These Hollywood epics are not usually noted for their realism.’

  ‘Well … you have to understand that the Apollo teams brought back a lot of film footage.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ I tried to keep the amusement out of my voice. ‘The studios must have been grateful to you. After all, you could describe the actual moon-walks.’

  Scranton nodded sagely. ‘I acted as consultant to one of the Hollywood majors. All in all, you can take it from me that those pictures are pretty realistic.’

  ‘Fascinating … coming from you that has authority. As a matter of interest, what was being on the moon literally like?’

  For the first time Scranton seemed to notice me. Had he glimpsed some shared strain in our characters? This care-worn American had all the refinement of an unemployed car mechanic, and yet he seemed almost tempted to befriend me.

  ‘Being on the moon?’ His tired gaze inspected the narrow street of cheap jewellery stores, with its office messengers and lottery touts, the off-duty taxi-drivers leaning against their cars. ‘It was just like being here.’

  ‘So …’ I put away my notebook. Any further subterfuge was unnecessary. I had treated our meeting as a joke, but Scranton was sincere, and anyway utterly indifferent to my opinion of him. The tourists and passing policemen, the middle-aged women sitting at a nearby table, together barely existed for him. They were no more than shadows on the screen of his mind, through which he could see the horizons of an almost planetary emptiness.

  For the first time I was in the presence of someone who had nothing – even less than the beggars of Rio, for they at least were linked to the material world by their longings for it. Scranton embodied the absolute loneliness of the human being in space and time, a situation which in many ways I shared. Even the act of convincing himself that he was a former astronaut only emphasised his isolation.

  ‘A remarkable story,’ I commented. ‘One can’t help wondering if we were right to leave this planet. I’m reminded of the question posed by the Chilean painter Matta – “Why must we fear a disaster in space in order to understand our own times?” It’s a pity you didn’t bring back any mementoes of your moon-walks.’

  Scranton’s shoulders straightened. I could see him counting the coins on the table. ‘I do have certain materials …’

  I nearly laughed. ‘What? A piece of lunar rock? Some moon dust?’

  ‘Various photographic materials.’

  ‘Photographs?’ Was it possible that Scranton had told the truth, and that he had indeed been an astronaut? If I could prove that the whole notion of his imposture was an error, an oversight by the journalist who had investigated the case, I would have the makings of a front-page scoop … ‘Could I see them? – perhaps I could use them in my book … ?’

  ‘Well …’ Scranton felt for the coins in his pocket. He looked hungry, and obviously thought only of spending them on a loaf of bread.

  ‘Of course,’ I added, ‘I’ll provide an extra fee. As for my book, the publishers might well pay many hundreds of dollars.’ ‘Hundreds …’ Scranton seemed impressed. He shook his head, as if amused by the ways of the world. I expected him to be shy of revealing where he lived, but he stood up and gestured me to finish my drink. ‘I’m staying a few minutes’ walk from here.’

  He waited among the tables, staring across the street. Seeing the passers-by through his eyes, I was aware that they had begun to seem almost transparent, shadow players created by a frolic of the sun.

  We soon arrived at Scranton’s modest room behind the Luxor Cinema, a small theatre off Copacabana Avenue that had seen better days. Two former storerooms and an office above the projection booth had been let as apartments, which we reached after climbing a dank emergency stairway.

  Exhausted by the effort, Scranton swayed against the door. He wiped the spit from his mouth onto the lapel of his jacket, and ushered me into the room. ‘Make yourself comfortable …’

  A dusty light fell across the narrow bed, reflected in the cold-water tap of a greasy handbasin supported from the wall by its waste-pipe. Sheets of newspaper were wrapped around a pillow, stained with sweat and some unsavoury mucus, perhaps after an attack of malarial or tubercular fever.

  Eager to leave this infectious den, I drew out my wallet. ‘The photographs … ?’

  Scranton sat on the bed, staring at the yellowing wall behind me as if he had forgotten that I was there. Once again I was aware of his ability to isolate himself from the surrounding world, a talent I envied him, if little else.

  ‘Sure … they’re over here.’ He stood up and went to the suitcase that lay on a card table behind the door. Taking the money from me, he opened the lid and lifted out a bundle of magazines. Among them were loose pages torn from Life and Newsweek, and special supplements of the Rio newspapers devoted to the Apollo space-flights and the moon landings. The familiar images of Armstrong and the lunar module, the space-walks and splashdowns had been endlessly thumbed. The captions were marked with coloured pencil, as if Scranton had spent hours memorising these photographs brought back from the tideways of space.

  I moved the magazines to one side, hoping to find some documentary evidence of Scranton’s own involvement in the space-flights, perhaps a close-up photograph taken by a fellow astronaut.

  ‘Is this it? There’s nothing else?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Scranton gestured encouragingly. ‘They’re good pictures. Pretty well what it was like.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. I had hoped …’

  I peered at Scranton, expecting some small show of embarrassment. These fad
ed pages, far from being the mementoes of a real astronaut, were obviously the prompt cards of an impostor. However, there was not the slightest doubt that Scranton was sincere.

  I stood in the street below the portico of the Luxor Cinema, whose garish posters, advertising some science-fiction spectacular, seemed as inflamed as the mind of the American. Despite all that I had suspected, I felt an intense disappointment. I had deluded myself, thinking that Scranton would rescue my career. Now I was left with nothing but an empty notebook and the tram journey back to the crowded apartment in Ipanema. I dreaded the prospect of seeing my wife and my mother at the door, their eyes screwed to the same accusing focus.

  Nonetheless, as I walked down Copacabana Avenue to the tram-stop, I felt a curious sense of release. The noisy pavements, the arrogant pickpockets plucking at my clothes, the traffic that aggravated the slightest tendency to migraines, all seemed to have receded, as if a small distance had opened between myself and the congested world. My meeting with Scranton, my brief involvement with this marooned man, allowed me to see everything in a more detached way. The businessmen with their briefcases, the afternoon tarts swinging their shiny handbags, the salesmen with their sheets of lottery tickets, almost deferred to me. Time and space had altered their perspectives, and the city was yielding to me. As I crossed the road to the tram-stop several minutes seemed to pass. But I was not run over.

  This sense of a loosening air persisted as I rode back to Ipanema. My fellow passengers, who would usually have irritated me with their cheap scent and vulgar clothes, their look of bored animals in a menagerie, now scarcely intruded into my vision. I gazed down corridors of light that ran between them like the aisles of an open-air cathedral.

  ‘You’ve found a story,’ my wife announced within a second of opening the door.

  ‘They’ve commissioned an article,’ my mother confirmed. ‘I knew they would.’

  They stepped back and watched me as I made a leisurely tour of the cramped apartment. My changed demeanour clearly impressed them. They pestered me with questions, but even their presence was less bothersome. The universe, thanks to Scranton’s example, had loosened its grip. Sitting at the dinner table, I silenced them with a raised finger.

  ‘I am about to embark on a new career …’

  From then on I became ever more involved with Scranton. I had not intended to see the American again, but the germ of his loneliness had entered my blood. Within two days I returned to the café in the side-street, but the tables were deserted. I watched as two parties of tourists stopped to ask for ‘the astronaut’. I then questioned the waiter, suspecting that he had banished the poor man. But, no, the American would be back the next day, he had been ill, or perhaps had secretly gone to the moon on business.

  In fact, it was three days before Scranton at last appeared. Materialising from the afternoon heat, he entered the café and sat under the awning. At first he failed to notice that I was there, but Scranton’s mere presence was enough to satisfy me. The crowds and traffic, which had begun once again to close around me, halted their clamour and withdrew. On the noisy street were imposed the silences of a lunar landscape.

  However, it was all too clear that Scranton had been ill. His face was sallow with fever, and the effort of sitting in his chair soon tired him. When the first American tourists stopped at his table he barely rose from his seat, and while the photographs were taken he held tightly to the awning above his head.

  By the next afternoon his fever had subsided, but he was so strained and ill-kempt that the waiter at first refused to admit him to the café. A trio of Californian spinsters who approached his table were clearly unsure that this decaying figure was indeed the bogus astronaut, and would have left had I not ushered them back to Scranton.

  ‘Yes, this is Commander Scranton, the famous astronaut. I am his associate – do let me hold your camera …’

  I waited impatiently for them to leave, and sat down at Scranton’s table. Ill the American might be, but I needed him. After ordering a brandy, I helped Scranton to hold the glass. As I pressed the spinsters’ bank-note into his pocket I could feel that his suit was soaked with sweat.

  ‘I’ll walk you back to your room. Don’t thank me, it’s in my direction.’

  ‘Well, I could use an arm.’ Scranton stared at the street, as if its few yards encompassed a Grand Canyon of space. ‘It’s getting to be a long way.’

  ‘A long way! Scranton, I understand that …’

  It took us half an hour to cover the few hundred yards to the Luxor Cinema. But already time was becoming an elastic dimension, and from then on most of my waking hours were spent with Scranton. Each morning I would visit the shabby room behind the cinema, bringing a paper bag of sweet-cakes and a flask of tea I had prepared in the apartment under my wife’s suspicious gaze. Often the American had little idea who I was, but this no longer worried me. He lay in his narrow bed, letting me raise his head as I changed the sheets of newspaper that covered his pillow. When he spoke, his voice was too weak to be heard above the sound-tracks of the science-fiction films that boomed through the crumbling walls.

  Even in this moribund state, Scranton’s example was a powerful tonic, and when I left him in the evening I would walk the crowded streets without any fear. Sometimes my former colleagues called to me from the steps of the newspaper office, but I was barely aware of them, as if they were planetary visitors hailing me from the edge of a remote crater.

  Looking back on these exhilarating days, I regret only that I never called a doctor to see Scranton. Frequently, though, the American would recover his strength, and after I had shaved him we would go down into the street. I relished these outings with Scranton. Arm in arm, we moved through the afternoon crowds, which seemed to part around us. Our fellow-pedestrians had become remote and fleeting figures, little more than tricks of the sun. Sometimes, I could no longer see their faces. It was then that I observed the world through Scranton’s eyes, and knew what it was to be an astronaut.

  Needless to say, the rest of my life had collapsed at my feet. Having given up my work as a translator, I soon ran out of money, and was forced to borrow from my mother. At my wife’s instigation, the features editor of the newspaper called me to his office, and made it plain that as an immense concession (in fact he had always been intrigued by my wife) he would let me review a science-fiction film at the Luxor. Before walking out, I told him that I was already too familiar with the film, and my one hope was to see it banned from the city forever.

  So ended my connection with the newspaper. Soon after, the two women evicted me from my apartment. I was happy to leave them, taking with me only the reclining sun-chair on which my wife passed most of her days in preparation for her new career as a model. The sun-chair became my bed when I moved into Scranton’s room.

  By then the decline in Scranton’s health forced me to be with him constantly. Far from being an object of charity, Scranton was now my only source of income. Our needs for several days could be met by a single session with the American tourists. I did my best to care for Scranton, but during his final illness I was too immersed in that sense of an emptying world even to notice the young doctor whose alarmed presence filled the tiny room. By a last irony, towards the end even Scranton himself seemed barely visible to me. As he died I was reading the mucus-stained headlines on his pillow.

  After Scranton’s death I remained in his room at the Luxor. Despite the fame he had once enjoyed, his burial at the Protestant cemetery was attended only by myself, but in a sense this was just, as he and I were the only real inhabitants of the city. Later I went through the few possessions in his suitcase, and found a faded pilot’s log-book. Its pages confirmed that Scranton had worked as a pilot for a crop-spraying company in Florida throughout the years of the Apollo programme.

  Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen. Curiously, the
pages torn from the news magazines seemed more real than the pilot’s log-book. The photographs of Armstrong and his fellow astronauts were really of Scranton and myself as we walked together on the moon of this world.

  I reflected on this as I sat at the small café in the side-street. As a gesture to Scranton’s memory, I had chosen his chair below the awning. I thought of the planetary landscapes that Scranton had taught me to see, those empty vistas devoid of human beings. Already I was aware of a previous career, which my wife and the pressures of everyday life had hidden from me. There were the years of training for a great voyage, and a coastline similar to that of Cape Kennedy receding below me …

  My reverie was interrupted by a pair of American tourists. A middle-aged man and his daughter, who held the family camera to her chin, approached the table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the man asked with an over-ready smile. ‘Are you the … the astronaut? We were told by the hotel that you might be here …’

  I stared at them without rancour, treating them to a glimpse of those eyes that had seen the void. I, too, had walked on the moon.

  ‘Please sit down,’ I told them casually. ‘Yes, I am the astronaut.’

  1985

  THE SECRET HISTORY OF WORLD WAR 3

  Now that World War 3 has safely ended, I feel free to comment on two remarkable aspects of the whole terrifying affair. The first is that this long-dreaded nuclear confrontation, which was widely expected to erase all life from our planet, in fact lasted barely four minutes. This will surprise many of those reading the present document, but World War 3 took place on 27 January 1995, between 6:47 and 6:51 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The entire duration of hostilities, from President Reagan’s formal declaration of war, to the launch of five sea-based nuclear missiles (three American and two Russian), to the first peace-feelers and the armistice agreed by the President and Mr Gorbachev, lasted no more than 245 seconds. World War 3 was over almost before anyone realised that it had begun.