Authors: J.G. Ballard
Crash (11 page)
Almost mesmerized by this reverie, I was abruptly aware of the dented fender of Vaughan’s Lincoln only a few feet behind Catherine’s sports car. Vaughan surged past me, crowding along the roadway as if waiting for her to make a mistake. Startled, Catherine took refuge in front of an airline bus in the nearside lane. Vaughan drove alongside the bus, using his horn and spotlights to force the driver back, and again cut in behind Catherine. I moved ahead along the centre lane, shouting to Vaughan as I passed him, but he was signalling to Catherine, pumping his headlamps at her rear fender. Without thinking, Catherine pulled her small car into the courtyard of a filling station, forcing Vaughan into a heavy U-turn. Tyres screaming, he swung around the ornamental flower-bed with its glazed pottery plants, but I blocked his way with my own car.
Excited by all this, Catherine sat among the scarlet fuel pumps, her eyes flashing at Vaughan. The wounds on my legs and chest ached from the effort of keeping up with them. I stepped from my car and walked across to Vaughan. He watched me approach as if he had never seen me before, scarred mouth working on a piece of gum as he gazed at the airliners lifting from the airport.
‘Vaughan, you’re not on a bloody stunt track now.’
Vaughan made a brief pacifying gesture with one hand. He hooked the gear lever into reverse. ‘She enjoyed
it, Ballard. It’s a form of compliment. Ask her.’
it, Ballard. It’s a form of compliment. Ask her.’
He reversed in a wide circle, almost running down a passing pump attendant, and set off across the early afternoon traffic.
VAUGHAN was right. Catherine’s sexual fantasies began more and more to involve him. At night, as we lay together in our bedroom, we approached Vaughan through the pantheon of our familiar partners like Vaughan himself tracking us through the lobbies of the terminal buildings.
‘We must get some more hash.’ Catherine looked up at the traffic lights sweeping across the windows. ‘Why is Seagrave so obsessed with these film actresses? You say he wants to crash into them?’
‘Vaughan put the idea into his head. He’s using Seagrave in some experiment.’
‘What about the wife?’
‘She’s under Vaughan’s thumb.’
‘And you?’
Catherine lay with her back to me, buttocks pressed into my groin. As I moved my penis I looked past my scarred navel at the cleft between her buttocks, as immaculate as a doll’s. I held her breasts in my hands, her rib cage crushing my wristwatch into my forearm. Catherine’s passive stance was deceptive; from long practice I knew that this was the prelude to an erotic fantasy, a slow and circular inspection of some fresh sexual quarry.
‘Am I under his thumb? No. But it’s difficult to know where the centre of his personality is.’
‘You don’t resent him taking all those photographs? It sounds as if he’s using you.’
I began to play with Catherine’s right nipple. Not yet ready for this, she took my hand and placed it around her breast.
‘Vaughan annexes people to him. There’s still a strong element of the TV personality about his whole style.’
‘Poor man. These girls he picks up — some of them are just children.’
‘You keep coming back to them. It isn’t sex that Vaughan is interested in, but technology.’
Catherine pressed her head into the pillow, a familiar gesture of concentration.
‘Do you like Vaughan?’
I moved my fingers to her nipple again and began to erect it. Her buttocks moved on to my penis. Her voice was pitched on a low, thick note.
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘He fascinates you, doesn’t he?’
‘There is something about him. About his obsessions.’
‘His flashy car, the way he drives, his loneliness. All the women he’s fucked there. It must smell of semen …’
‘It does.’
‘Do you find him attractive?’
I drew my penis from her vagina and placed the head against her anus, but she pressed it back into her vulva with a quick hand.
‘He’s very pale, covered with scars.’
‘Would you like to fuck him, though? In that car?’
I paused, trying to delay the orgasm rushing like a tidal race up the shaft of my penis.
‘No. But there is something about him, particularly as he drives.’
‘It’s sex – sex and that car. Have you seen his penis?’
As I described Vaughan to her I listened to my voice rising slightly above the sounds of our bodies. I itemized the elements that constituted Vaughan’s image in my mind: his hard buttocks held within the worn jeans as he rolled himself on to one hip to leave the car; the sallow skin of his abdomen, almost exposing the triangle of his pubis as he lounged behind the steering wheel; the horn of his half-erect penis pressing against the lower rim through the damp crotch of his trousers; the minute nodes of dirt he picked from his sharp nose and wiped on the indented vinyl of the door panel; the ulcer on his left index finger as he handed me the cigarette lighter; his hard nipples through the frayed blue shirt brushing against the horn boss; his broken thumbnail scratching at the semen stains on the seat between us.
‘Is he circumcised?’ Catherine asked. ‘Can you imagine what his anus is like? Describe it to me.’
My description of Vaughan continued, more for Catherine’s benefit than for my own. She pressed her head deep into the pillow, right hand in a fierce dance as she forced my fingers to manipulate her nipple. Although stirred by the idea of intercourse with Vaughan, it seemed to me that I was describing a sex act involving someone other than myself. Vaughan excited some latent homosexual impulse only within the cabin of his car or driving along the highway. His attraction lay not so much in a complex of familiar anatomical triggers – a curve of exposed breast, the soft cushion of a buttock, the hair-lined arch of a damp perineum – but in the stylization of posture achieved between Vaughan and the car. Detached from his automobile, particularly his own emblem-filled highway cruiser, Vaughan ceased to hold any interest.
‘Would you like to sodomize him? Would you like to
put your penis right into his anus, thrust it up his anus? Tell me, describe it to me. Tell me what you’d do. How would you kiss him in that car? Describe how you’d reach over and unzip his trousers, then take out his penis. Would you kiss it or suck it straightaway? Which hand would you hold it in? Have you ever sucked a penis?’
put your penis right into his anus, thrust it up his anus? Tell me, describe it to me. Tell me what you’d do. How would you kiss him in that car? Describe how you’d reach over and unzip his trousers, then take out his penis. Would you kiss it or suck it straightaway? Which hand would you hold it in? Have you ever sucked a penis?’
Catherine had taken over the fantasy. Whom did she see lying beside Vaughan, herself or me?
‘ … do you know what semen tastes like? Have you ever tasted semen? Some semen is saltier than others. Vaughan’s semen must be very salty …’
I looked down at her blonde hair that covered her face, at her hips kicking as she carried herself towards her orgasm. This was one of the first times that she had envisaged me in a homosexual act, and the intensity of the fantasy surprised me. She shuddered through her orgasm, her body in a rigor of pleasure. Before I could reach out to embrace her she turned over, lying face downwards to let my semen run from her vagina, then pulled herself from the bed and stepped briskly into the bathroom.
During the next week, Catherine drifted through the departure lounges of the airport like a queen in rut. Watching her from my car as Vaughan kept her within his aberrant gaze, I felt my loins surging, my penis pressing against the steering wheel.
‘HAVE you come?’
Helen Remington touched my shoulder with an uncertain hand, as if I were a patient she had worked hard to revive. As I lay against the rear seat of the car she dressed herself with abrupt movements, straightening her skirt around her hips like a department-store window-dresser jerking a garment on to a mannequin.
On our way to the Road Research Laboratory I had suggested that we park among the reservoirs to the west of the Airport. During the previous week Helen had shifted her field of interest away from me, as if allocating myself and the accident to a past life whose reality she no longer recognized. I knew that she was about to enter that period of unthinking promiscuity through which most people pass after a bereavement. The collision of our two cars, and the death of her husband, had become the key to a new sexuality. During the first months after his death she moved through a series of rapidly consumed affairs, as if taking the genitalia of all these men into her hands and her vagina would in some way bring her husband back to life, and that all this semen mixed within her womb would quicken the fading image of the dead man within her mind.
The day after her first sexual act with me, she had
taken another lover, the junior pathologist at Ashford Hospital. From him she moved through a succession of men: the husband of a fellow woman doctor, a trainee radiologist, the service manager at her garage. What I noticed about these affairs, which she described in an unembarrassed voice, was the presence in each one of the automobile. All had taken place within a motor-car, either in the multi-storey car-park at the airport, in the lubrication bay of her local garage at night, or in the laybys near the northern circular motorway, as if the presence of the car mediated an element which alone made sense of the sexual act. In some way, I assumed, the car re-created its role in the death of her husband within the new possibilities of her body. Only in the car could she reach her orgasm. Yet one evening, as I lay in my car with her on the roof of the multi-storey car-park at Northolt, I felt her body stiffen in a rictus of hostility and frustration. I placed my hand on the dark triangle of her pubis, the moisture turning it silver in the darkness. She pulled her arms away from me and stared at the cabin of the car, as if about to tear her exposed breasts on this trap of glass and metal knives.
taken another lover, the junior pathologist at Ashford Hospital. From him she moved through a succession of men: the husband of a fellow woman doctor, a trainee radiologist, the service manager at her garage. What I noticed about these affairs, which she described in an unembarrassed voice, was the presence in each one of the automobile. All had taken place within a motor-car, either in the multi-storey car-park at the airport, in the lubrication bay of her local garage at night, or in the laybys near the northern circular motorway, as if the presence of the car mediated an element which alone made sense of the sexual act. In some way, I assumed, the car re-created its role in the death of her husband within the new possibilities of her body. Only in the car could she reach her orgasm. Yet one evening, as I lay in my car with her on the roof of the multi-storey car-park at Northolt, I felt her body stiffen in a rictus of hostility and frustration. I placed my hand on the dark triangle of her pubis, the moisture turning it silver in the darkness. She pulled her arms away from me and stared at the cabin of the car, as if about to tear her exposed breasts on this trap of glass and metal knives.
The deserted reservoirs lay around us in the sunlight, an invisible marine world. Helen wound up her window, shutting out the noise of a climbing airliner.
‘We won’t come here again – you’ll have to find somewhere else.’
I had felt the same fall in excitement. Without Vaughan watching us, recording our postures and skin areas with his camera, my orgasm had seemed empty and sterile, a jerking away of waste tissue.
In my mind I visualized the cabin of Helen’s car, its
hard chrome and vinyl, brought to life by my semen, transformed into a bower of exotic flowers, with creepers entwined across the roof light, the floor and seats lush with moist grass.
hard chrome and vinyl, brought to life by my semen, transformed into a bower of exotic flowers, with creepers entwined across the roof light, the floor and seats lush with moist grass.
Looking across at Helen, as she accelerated along the open deck of the motorway, I suddenly wondered how I could hurt her. I thought of taking her again along the route of her husband’s death – perhaps this would reengage her sexual need for me, rekindle whatever erotic hostility she felt for me and the dead man.
As we were guided through the gates of the Laboratory Helen sat forward over the steering wheel, her slim arms holding it in a strange grip. Her body formed an awkward geometry with the windshield pillars and the angle of the steering column, almost as if she were consciously mimicking the postures of the crippled young woman, Gabrielle.
We walked from the crowded car-park to the test sites. With the research scientist who had greeted us Helen discussed projected Ministry legislation on anti-roll bars. Two lines of damaged cars had been drawn up on the concrete. The bodies of plastic mannequins sat in the crumpled hulls, their faces and chests splintered by the collisions, wound areas marked in coloured panels on their skulls and abdomens. Helen stared at them through the empty windshields, almost as if they were patients whom she hoped to treat. As we strolled through the gathering visitors in their smart suits and flowered hats Helen reached through the starred windows and caressed the plastic arms and heads.
This dreamlike logic hung over the entire afternoon. In the bright afternoon light the several hundred visitors
took on the appearance of mannequins, no more real than the plastic figures which would play the roles of driver and passengers in a front-end collision between a saloon car and a motorcycle.
took on the appearance of mannequins, no more real than the plastic figures which would play the roles of driver and passengers in a front-end collision between a saloon car and a motorcycle.
This sense of disembodiment, of the unreality of my own muscles and bones, increased when Vaughan appeared. In front of me, the engineers were shackling the motorcycle to the cradle which would be propelled along its steel rails towards the saloon car seventy yards away. Metering coils led from both vehicles to the recording devices set up on a line of trestle tables. Two cine-cameras were in position, the first mounted alongside the track, lens aimed at the point of impact, the second pointing downwards from an overhead gantry. A video-tape device was already playing back on to a small screen a picture of the engineers adjusting the sensors in the car’s engine compartment. A family of four mannequins sat in the car – a husband, wife and two children – coils attached to their heads, chests and legs. Already the anticipated injuries they would suffer had been marked on their bodies; complex geometric shapes in carmine and violet zoned across their faces and thoraxes. An engineer settled the driver for the last time behind his steering wheel, arranging his hands in the correct ten-to-two position. Over the loudspeaker system the commentator, a senior principal scientific officer, welcomed the guests to this experimental crash and jocularly introduced the occupants of the car – ‘Charlie and Greta, imagine them out for a drive with the kids, Sean and Brigitte …’
At the far end of the track, a smaller group of technicians prepared the motorcycle, securing the boom camera attached to the cradle which would travel down the rails. The visitors – Ministry officials, road safety engineers,
traffic specialists and their wives – had gathered around the point of impact, like a crowd at a race track.
traffic specialists and their wives – had gathered around the point of impact, like a crowd at a race track.
As Vaughan arrived, striding on his long, uneven legs from the car-park, everyone looked round, watching this black-jacketed figure advance towards the motorcycle. I myself half expected him to mount the machine and drive it down the rails at us. The scars on his mouth and forehead caught the air like sabre wounds. He hesitated, watching the technicians lift the plastic motorcyclist – ‘Elvis’ – on to his machine, and then strode on towards us, beckoning to Helen Remington and myself. He scanned the visitors with a somehow offensive gaze. Once again he struck me as being a strange mixture of personal hauntedness, complete confinement in his own panicky universe, and yet at the same time open to all kinds of experiences from the outer world.
Vaughan pushed his way through the visitors. In his right hand he carried a bundle of publicity folders and R.R.L. handouts. He bent over Helen Remington’s shoulder as she looked up at him from her chair in the front row.
‘Have you seen Seagrave?’
‘Was he supposed to come?’
‘Vera telephoned me about him this morning.’ He turned his attention to me, tapping the bundle of handouts in his grip. ‘Get all the paper you can, Ballard. Some of the stuff they give away – “Mechanisms of Occupant Ejection”, “Tolerances of the Human Face in Crash Impacts” … ’ As the last of the engineers stood back from the test car Vaughan nodded appreciatively, and commented
sotto voce
, ‘The technology of accident simulation at the R.R.L. is remarkably advanced. Using this set-up they could duplicate the Mansfield and Camus crashes – even Kennedy’s – indefinitely.’
sotto voce
, ‘The technology of accident simulation at the R.R.L. is remarkably advanced. Using this set-up they could duplicate the Mansfield and Camus crashes – even Kennedy’s – indefinitely.’
‘They’re trying to reduce the number of accidents here, not increase it.’
‘I suppose that’s a point of view.’
The commentator had called the crowd to order. The test crash was about to take place. Vaughan had forgotten me, starting forward like a patient suburban voyeur half asleep over his binoculars. His right hand, shielded by the publicity folders, was manipulating his penis through the fabric of his trousers. He squeezed the distal end, almost forcing the glans through the threadbare cloth, index finger rolling back the foreskin. All the while his eyes moved up and down the collision course, taking in every detail.
The electric winches which propelled the catapult began to drum at the rails, the cables tautening. Vaughan’s hand worked away at his groin. The engineer in charge stepped back from the motorcycle and signalled to his assistant by the catapult. Vaughan switched his attention to the car in front of us, its four plastic occupants sitting up stiffly as if
en route
to a chapel meeting. Vaughan glanced at me over his shoulder, his face hard and flushed, as if making sure that I was involved.
en route
to a chapel meeting. Vaughan glanced at me over his shoulder, his face hard and flushed, as if making sure that I was involved.
With a loud jerk, the motorcycle sped down the track, its cables clanking between the metal rails. The mannequin rider sat well back, the onrushing air lifting his chin. His hands were shackled to the handlebars like a kamikaze pilot’s. His long thorax was plastered with metering devices. In front of him, their expressions equally vacant, the family of four mannequins sat in their vehicle. Their faces were marked with cryptic symbols.
A harsh whipping noise came towards us, the sound of the metering coils skating along the grass beside the rail. There was a violent metallic explosion as the motorcycle struck the front of the saloon car. The two vehicles
veered sideways towards the line of startled spectators. I regained my balance, involuntarily holding Vaughan’s shoulder, as the motorcycle and its driver sailed over the bonnet of the car and struck the windshield, then careened across the roof in a black mass of fragments. The car plunged ten feet back on its hawsers. It came to rest astride the rails. The bonnet, windshield and roof had been crushed by the impact. Inside the cabin, the lopsided family lurched across each other, the decapitated torso of the front-seat woman passenger embedded in the fractured windshield.
veered sideways towards the line of startled spectators. I regained my balance, involuntarily holding Vaughan’s shoulder, as the motorcycle and its driver sailed over the bonnet of the car and struck the windshield, then careened across the roof in a black mass of fragments. The car plunged ten feet back on its hawsers. It came to rest astride the rails. The bonnet, windshield and roof had been crushed by the impact. Inside the cabin, the lopsided family lurched across each other, the decapitated torso of the front-seat woman passenger embedded in the fractured windshield.
The engineers waved to the crowd reassuringly and moved towards the motorcycle, which lay on its side fifty yards behind the car. They began to pick up the sections of the cyclist’s body, tucking the legs and head under their arms. Shavings of fibreglass from its face and shoulders speckled the glass around the test car like silver snow, a death confetti.
The loudspeaker addressed the crowd again. I tried to follow the commentator’s words, but my brain failed to translate the sounds. The ugly and violent impact of this simulated crash, the rupture of metal and safety glass, and the deliberate destruction of expensively engineered artefacts, had left me lightheaded.
Helen Remington held my arm. She smiled at me, nodding encouragingly as if urging a child across some mental hurdle. ‘We can have a look at it again on the Ampex. They’re showing it in slow-motion.’
The crowd was moving towards the trestle tables, voices lifting again in relieved chatter. I turned back, waiting for Vaughan to join us. He was standing among the empty seats, eyes still fixed on the wrecked car. Below his waistband a pool of semen darkened the crotch of his trousers.
Ignoring Helen Remington, who moved away from us with a faint smile, I stared at Vaughan, uncertain what to say to him. Faced with this junction of the crashed car, the dismembered mannequins and Vaughan’s exposed sexuality, I found myself moving through a terrain whose contours led inside my skull towards an ambiguous realm. I stood behind Vaughan, staring at his muscular back, hard shoulders swinging under his black jacket.
Beside the Ampex machine the visitors were watching the motorcycle as it crashed once again into the saloon car. Sections of the collision were replayed in slow motion. In a dream-like calm, the front wheel of the motorcycle struck the fender of the car. As the rim collapsed, the tyre sprung inwards upon itself to form a figure of eight. The tail of the machine rose into the air. The mannequin, Elvis, lifted himself from his seat, his ungainly body at last blessed by the grace of the slow-motion camera. Like the most brilliant of all stunt men, he stood on his pedals, legs and arms fully stretched. His head was raised with its chin forwards in a pose of almost aristocratic disdain. The rear wheel of the motorcycle lifted into the air behind him, and seemed about to strike him in the small of the back, but with great finesse the rider detached his feet from the pedals and inclined his floating body in a horizontal posture. His hands were still attached to the handlebars, now moving away from him as the cycle somersaulted. The metering coils severed one wrist, and he launched himself into a horizontal dive, head raised so that his face became a prow, bearing its painted wound areas towards the oncoming windshield. His chest struck the bonnet of the car, grazing its polished cellulose like a surfboard.
Already, as the vehicle moved back under the impact
of the first collision, the four occupants of the car were themselves moving towards the second collision. Their smooth faces pressed on into the advancing windshield as if eager to see the chest glider soaring up the bonnet of the car. Both the driver and his woman passenger rolled forwards to meet the windshield, touching it with the crowns of their lowered heads at the same moment as the motorcyclist’s profile struck the glass. A fountain of spraying crystal erupted around them, through which, as if in celebration, their figures were taking up ever more eccentric positions. The motorcyclist continued on his horizontal path through the emblazoned windshield, his face torn away by the centrally mounted driving mirror. His left arm detached itself at the elbow as it struck the windshield pillar, and was swept up through the fountain of glass to join the debris chasing the inverted body of the motorcycle three feet above his spine. His right arm moved through the fractured windshield, losing first its hand on the guillotine of the near-side windshield wiper, and then its forearm against the face of the front-seat woman passenger, taking with it her right cheekbone. The motorcyclist’s body slewed gracefully to one side in an elegant slalom, his hips striking the right-hand windshield pillar, buckling it at the central welding point. His legs rotated around the car, shin-bones striking the central door pillar.
of the first collision, the four occupants of the car were themselves moving towards the second collision. Their smooth faces pressed on into the advancing windshield as if eager to see the chest glider soaring up the bonnet of the car. Both the driver and his woman passenger rolled forwards to meet the windshield, touching it with the crowns of their lowered heads at the same moment as the motorcyclist’s profile struck the glass. A fountain of spraying crystal erupted around them, through which, as if in celebration, their figures were taking up ever more eccentric positions. The motorcyclist continued on his horizontal path through the emblazoned windshield, his face torn away by the centrally mounted driving mirror. His left arm detached itself at the elbow as it struck the windshield pillar, and was swept up through the fountain of glass to join the debris chasing the inverted body of the motorcycle three feet above his spine. His right arm moved through the fractured windshield, losing first its hand on the guillotine of the near-side windshield wiper, and then its forearm against the face of the front-seat woman passenger, taking with it her right cheekbone. The motorcyclist’s body slewed gracefully to one side in an elegant slalom, his hips striking the right-hand windshield pillar, buckling it at the central welding point. His legs rotated around the car, shin-bones striking the central door pillar.
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