Crash (5 page)
Authors: J.G. Ballard
‘YOU’RE going to drive? But your legs – James, you can barely walk!’
As we sped along the Western Avenue clearway at over seventy miles an hour Catherine’s voice sounded a reassuring note of wifely despair. I sat back in the leaping bucket seat of her sports car, watching happily while she fought her blonde hair out of her eyes, slim hands swerving to and from the leopard-skin glove of the miniature steering wheel. Since my accident Catherine’s driving had become worse, not better, as if she were confident now that the unseen powers of the universe would guarantee her erratic passage down these high-speed concrete avenues.
I pointed at the last moment to a truck looming in front of us, its refrigerated trailer bounding from side to side on over-inflated tyres. Catherine drove her small foot on to the brake pedal, pulling us around the truck into the slow lane. I put away the rental-car company brochure and gazed through the perimeter fence at the deserted standby runways of the airport. An immense peace seemed to preside over the shabby concrete and untended grass. The glass curtain-walling of the terminal buildings and the multi-storey car-parks behind them belonged to an enchanted domain.
‘You’re renting a car – how long for?’
‘A week. I’ll be near the airport. You’ll be able to keep an eye on me from your office.’
‘I will.’
‘Catherine, I’ve got to get out more.’ I drummed at the windshield with both fists. ‘I can’t sit on the veranda for ever – I’m beginning to feel like a potted plant.’
‘I understand.’
‘You don’t.’
For the past week, after being brought home in a taxi from the hospital, I had been sitting in the same reclining chair on the veranda of our apartment, looking down through the anodized balcony rails at the unfamiliar neighbourhood ten storeys below. On the first afternoon I had barely recognized the endless landscape of concrete and structural steel that extended from the motorways to the south of the airport, across its vast runways to the new apartment systems along Western Avenue. Our own apartment house at Drayton Park stood a mile to the north of the airport in a pleasant island of modern housing units, landscaped filling stations and supermarkets, shielded from the distant bulk of London by an access spur of the northern circular motorway which flowed past us on its elegant concrete pillars. I gazed down at this immense motion sculpture, whose traffic deck seemed almost higher than the balcony rail against which I leaned. I began to orientate myself again round its reassuring bulk, its familiar perspectives of speed, purpose and direction. The houses of our friends, the wine store where I bought our liquor, the small art-cinema where Catherine and I saw American avant-garde films and German sex-instruction movies, together realigned themselves around the palisades of the motorway. I realized that the human inhabitants of this technological landscape no longer provided its sharpest pointers, its keys to
the borderzones of identity. The amiable saunter of Frances Waring, bored wife of my partner, through the turnstiles of the local supermarket, the domestic wrangles of our well-to-do neighbours in our apartment house, all the hopes and fancies of this placid suburban enclave, drenched in a thousand infidelities, faltered before the solid reality of the motorway embankments, with their constant and unswerving geometry, and before the finite areas of the car-park aprons.
the borderzones of identity. The amiable saunter of Frances Waring, bored wife of my partner, through the turnstiles of the local supermarket, the domestic wrangles of our well-to-do neighbours in our apartment house, all the hopes and fancies of this placid suburban enclave, drenched in a thousand infidelities, faltered before the solid reality of the motorway embankments, with their constant and unswerving geometry, and before the finite areas of the car-park aprons.
As I drove home with Catherine from the hospital I was surprised by how much, in my eyes, the image of the car had changed, almost as if its true nature had been exposed by my accident. Leaning against the rear window of the taxi, I found myself flinching with excitement towards the traffic streams on the Western Avenue interchanges. The flashing lances of afternoon light deflected from the chromium panel trim tore at my skin. The hard jazz of radiator grilles, the motion of cars moving towards London Airport along the sunlit oncoming lanes, the street furniture and route indicators – all these seemed threatening and super-real, as exciting as the accelerating pintables of a sinister amusement arcade released on to these highways.
Aware that I was over-exhilarated, Catherine helped me quickly into the elevator. The visual perspectives of our apartment had been transformed. Pushing her away, I stepped out on to the veranda. Cars filled the suburban streets below, choking the parking lots of the supermarkets, ramped on to the pavements. Two minor accidents had taken place on Western Avenue, causing a massive tail-back along the flyover which crossed the entrance tunnel to the airport. Sitting nervously on the veranda as Catherine watched me from the sitting-room, one hand on the telephone behind her back, I looked out for
the first time at this immense corona of polished cellulose that extended from the southern horizon to the northern motorways. I felt an undefined sense of extreme danger, almost as if an accident was about to take place involving all these cars. The passengers in the airliners lifting away from the airport were fleeing the disaster area, escaping from this coming autogeddon.
the first time at this immense corona of polished cellulose that extended from the southern horizon to the northern motorways. I felt an undefined sense of extreme danger, almost as if an accident was about to take place involving all these cars. The passengers in the airliners lifting away from the airport were fleeing the disaster area, escaping from this coming autogeddon.
These premonitions of disaster remained with me. During my first days at home I spent all my time on the veranda, watching the traffic move along the motorway, determined to spot the first signs of this end of the world by automobile, for which the accident had been my own private rehearsal.
I called Catherine to the veranda and pointed to a minor collision on the southern access road of the motorway. A white laundry van had bumped into the back of a saloon car filled with wedding guests.
‘They
are
rather like rehearsals. When we’ve all rehearsed our separate parts the real thing will begin.’ An airliner was coming in over central London, wheels lowered above the noise-driven rooftops. ‘Another cargo of eager victims – one almost expects to see Breughel and Hieronymus Bosch cruising the freeways in their rental-company cars.’
are
rather like rehearsals. When we’ve all rehearsed our separate parts the real thing will begin.’ An airliner was coming in over central London, wheels lowered above the noise-driven rooftops. ‘Another cargo of eager victims – one almost expects to see Breughel and Hieronymus Bosch cruising the freeways in their rental-company cars.’
Catherine knelt beside me, her elbow on the chromium arm of my chair. I had seen the same flashing light on the instrument binnacle of my car as I sat behind the broken steering wheel waiting for the police to cut me free. She explored with some interest the changed contours of the knee-cap. Catherine had a natural and healthy curiosity for the perverse in all its forms.
‘James, I’ve got to leave for the office – are you going to be all right?’ She knew full well that I was capable of any deceit where she was involved.
‘Of course. Is the traffic heavier now? There seem to be three times as many cars as there were before the accident.’
‘I’ve never really noticed. You won’t try to borrow the janitor’s car?’
Her care was touching. Since the accident she seemed completely at ease with me for the first time in many years. My crash was a wayward experience of a type her own life and sexuality had taught her to understand. My body, which she had placed in a particular sexual perspective within a year or so of our marriage, now aroused her again. She was fascinated by the scars on my chest, touching them with her spittle-wet lips. These happy changes I felt myself. At one time Catherine’s body lying beside me in bed had seemed as inert and emotionless as a sexual exercise doll fitted with a neoprene vagina. Humiliating herself for her own perverse reasons, she would leave late for her office and hang about the apartment, exposing parts of her body to me, well aware that the last service I wanted from her was that blonde orifice between her legs.
I took her arm. ‘I’ll come down with you – don’t look so defensive.’
From the forecourt I watched her leave for the airport in her sports car, her white crotch flashing a gay semaphore between her sliding thighs. The varying geometry of her pubis was the delight of bored drivers watching the rotating dials of filling station pumps.
When she had gone I left the apartment and wandered down to the basement. A dozen cars, mostly owned by the wives of the lawyers and film executives who lived in the apartment house, stood in the garage. The bay reserved for my own car was still empty, the familiar pattern of oil-stains marking the cement. I peered through
the dull light at the expensive instrument panels. A silk scarf lay on a rear window sill. I remembered Catherine describing our own personal possessions scattered on the floor and seats of my car after the crash – a holiday route map, an empty bottle of nail varnish, a trade magazine. The isolation of these pieces of our lives, as if intact memories and intimacies had been taken out of doors and arranged by a demolition squad, was part of the same remaking of the commonplace which in a tragic way I had brought about in the death of Remington. The grey herringbone of his coat sleeve, the whiteness of his shirt collar, were held for ever within that accident.
the dull light at the expensive instrument panels. A silk scarf lay on a rear window sill. I remembered Catherine describing our own personal possessions scattered on the floor and seats of my car after the crash – a holiday route map, an empty bottle of nail varnish, a trade magazine. The isolation of these pieces of our lives, as if intact memories and intimacies had been taken out of doors and arranged by a demolition squad, was part of the same remaking of the commonplace which in a tragic way I had brought about in the death of Remington. The grey herringbone of his coat sleeve, the whiteness of his shirt collar, were held for ever within that accident.
Horns sounded from the trapped vehicles on the motorway, a despairing chorus. Staring at the oil stains in my parking bay, I thought about the dead man. The entire accident seemed to be preserved by these indelible markers, the police, spectators and ambulance attendants frozen in their postures as I sat in my crashed car.
A transistor radio played behind me. The janitor, a young man with almost waist-length hair, had returned to his office beside the basement elevator entrance. He sat on his metal desk, an arm around his child-like girlfriend. Ignoring their respectful stares, I walked back to the forecourt. The tree-lined avenue which led to the neighbourhood shopping centre was deserted, cars parked nose to tail under the plane trees. Glad to be able to walk without being knocked off my feet by some aggressive housewife, I strolled along the avenue, now and then resting against a polished fender. It was a minute before two o’clock, and the shopping centre was empty. Cars filled the main thoroughfare, double-parked in the side-streets while their drivers rested indoors out of the hot sunlight. I crossed the tiled piazza in the middle of
the shopping mall, and climbed the staircase to the car-park on the roof of the supermarket. Each of the hundred parking spaces was filled, the lines of windshields reflecting the sunlight like a glass testudo.
the shopping mall, and climbed the staircase to the car-park on the roof of the supermarket. Each of the hundred parking spaces was filled, the lines of windshields reflecting the sunlight like a glass testudo.
As I leaned against the concrete balcony I became aware that an immense silence hung over the landscape around me. By a rare freak of flight control no aircraft were landing or taking off from the airport runways. The traffic along the motorway was stationary in a southward queue. Along Western Avenue the stalled cars and airline coaches sat in their lanes, waiting for the lights to change. A tailback carried three lines of vehicles up the ramp of the flyover, and beyond this on to the new southward extension of the motorway.
During my weeks in hospital the highway engineers had pushed its huge decks more than half a mile further south. Looking closely at this silent terrain, I realized that the entire zone which defined the landscape of my life was now bounded by a continuous artificial horizon, formed by the raised parapets and embankments of the motorways and their access roads and interchanges. These encircled the vehicles below like the walls of a crater several miles in diameter.
The silence continued. Here and there a driver shifted behind his steering wheel, trapped uncomfortably in the hot sunlight, and I had the sudden impression that the world had stopped. The wounds on my knees and chest were beacons tuned to a series of beckoning transmitters, carrying the signals, unknown to myself, which would unlock this immense stasis and free these drivers for the real destinations set for their vehicles, the paradises of the electric highway.
The memory of this extraordinary silence remained vivid in my mind as Catherine drove me to my office at Shepperton. Along Western Avenue the traffic sped and swerved from one jam to the next. Overhead, the engines of the airliners taking off from London Airport wearied the sky. My glimpse of an unmoving world, of the thousands of drivers sitting passively in their cars on the motorway embankments along the horizon, seemed to be a unique vision of this machine landscape, an invitation to explore the viaducts of our minds.
My first need was to end my convalescence and rent a car. When we reached the television-commercial studios Catherine drove aimlessly around the car-park, reluctant to let me out. Waiting by his car, the young rental-company driver watched us circle him.
‘Is Renata going with you?’ Catherine asked.
The shrewdness of this off-hand guess surprised me.
‘I thought she might come along – handling a car again may be more tiring than I imagine.’
‘I’m amazed that she’ll let you drive her.’
‘You’re not envious?’
‘Maybe I am a little.’
Sidestepping any local alliance that might be formed between the two women, I said goodbye to Catherine. I spent the next hour in the production offices, discussing with Paul Waring the contractual difficulties blocking the car commercial, in which we hoped to use the film actress Elizabeth Taylor. All this time, however, my real attention was fixed on the rental-company vehicle waiting for me in the car-park. Everything else – Waring’s irritation with me, the cramped perspectives of the offices, the noisiness of the staff – formed a vague penumbra, unsatisfactory footage that would later be edited out.
I was barely aware of Renata when she joined me in the car.
‘Are you all right? Where are we going?’
I stared at the steering wheel between my hands, at the padded instrument panel with its dials and control tabs.
‘Where else?’
The aggressive stylization of this mass-produced cockpit, the exaggerated mouldings of the instrument binnacles emphasized my growing sense of a new junction between my own body and the automobile, closer than my feelings for Renata’s broad hips and strong legs stowed out of sight beneath her red plastic raincoat. I leaned forward, feeling the rim of the steering wheel against the scars on my chest, pressing my knees against the ignition switch and handbrake.
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