Read Online The Day of Creation (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by J. G. Ballard - Free Book Online
Authors: J. G. Ballard
Ads: Link
drain, it leaked a trickle of clear water into a shallow gutter that crossed the road and flowed down to the lake.
I stepped into the pool and washed the dust from my boots, then knelt down and bathed my face and hair, aware that this might be the last useful task to be performed by the small reservoir before it evaporated. Days had passed since I had taken my last shower, and the white dust shed itself from my arms and chest, revealing a second, darker skin. Looking down at the surface, I was surprised to see that it teemed with life – water-spiders flickered to and fro, fishing for the swarms of hydra and infusoria. Microscopic creatures glimmered in the turbid water, as if generated from the sweat and dust of my skin. I seemed to have sloughed away the older, desert version of the up-country physician I had become for a younger, riverine self. Seeing my slim face and shoulders – the product of a poor diet and intermittent dysentery – I remembered the boy of eighteen who had taken a last eccentric sail trip to the mouth of the Canton River, before reluctantly agreeing to my father’s wish that I study medicine, and had spent three days marooned on a rocky headland with several hundred screaming gulls for company.
Refreshed by this cool bath, I climbed the beach and stood on the forest road. Then, almost without thinking, I began to kick the sand into the mouth of the stream. The water backed up behind the dam, forming a small pond which soon disappeared into the dust.
Pleased with myself, in an absurd way, I strode forward through the trees. It was childish of me to have blocked the stream but I had created the spring the previous afternoon. Before I left I would warn Kagwa to replace the root-bole of the old oak, or the seeping water would undermine the airstrip.
My feet slipped in the damp undergrowth between the trees. Confused by the darker air below the canopy, I had strayed from the forest road. I blundered among the ferns and palmettos and fell to my knees in a pool of black water. I assumed that this was a stagnant channel, but even as I crouched there, shaking the mud from my hands, I could feel the pressure of a current against my legs.
I was standing in a jungle stream more than ten feet wide. It flowed through the trees, hidden by the dead lianas and debris of the forest floor. For some fifty yards it followed the road, and then swerved into the brush, seeking out the darker gradients that ran down to the lake.
As my eyes sharpened, I saw that the original stream had divided into several channels, only one of which had so far reached the lake. The others pooled in the hollows, seeping between the fallen trunks and turning the forest into a sombre bayou.
I returned to the forest road and set off towards the airstrip. I felt elated but vaguely guilty, and remembered a childhood visit to Kowloon with my parents, when I had broken the earth dyke that held the water within a small paddy field in the hills of the New Territories. By the time I returned to my mother and father, setting our picnic beside the parked car, the escaping water had run down the hillside and was washing the car’s wheels. Puzzled by the shouts of the farmers from the rice terraces above, my parents set off through the valley for another picnic site. It had taken hours for the moisture on the tyres to dry, hours of nervous excitement and small-boy guilt …
However, I already realized that this stream running through the forest would be a boon to Port-la-Nouvelle. Calming myself, I stepped from the trees at the eastern end of the airstrip. One of Kagwa’s sentries stood by the runway, rifle slung over his shoulder, throwing pebbles into the shallow brook that ran among the tree stumps and hillocks of the waste ground. He stared at my drenched clothes and muddy arms, as if I were a plumber who had just released some infernal stop-cock in the earth’s cistern.
I climbed the shoulder of the runway, following the stream’s
I stepped into the pool and washed the dust from my boots, then knelt down and bathed my face and hair, aware that this might be the last useful task to be performed by the small reservoir before it evaporated. Days had passed since I had taken my last shower, and the white dust shed itself from my arms and chest, revealing a second, darker skin. Looking down at the surface, I was surprised to see that it teemed with life – water-spiders flickered to and fro, fishing for the swarms of hydra and infusoria. Microscopic creatures glimmered in the turbid water, as if generated from the sweat and dust of my skin. I seemed to have sloughed away the older, desert version of the up-country physician I had become for a younger, riverine self. Seeing my slim face and shoulders – the product of a poor diet and intermittent dysentery – I remembered the boy of eighteen who had taken a last eccentric sail trip to the mouth of the Canton River, before reluctantly agreeing to my father’s wish that I study medicine, and had spent three days marooned on a rocky headland with several hundred screaming gulls for company.
Refreshed by this cool bath, I climbed the beach and stood on the forest road. Then, almost without thinking, I began to kick the sand into the mouth of the stream. The water backed up behind the dam, forming a small pond which soon disappeared into the dust.
Pleased with myself, in an absurd way, I strode forward through the trees. It was childish of me to have blocked the stream but I had created the spring the previous afternoon. Before I left I would warn Kagwa to replace the root-bole of the old oak, or the seeping water would undermine the airstrip.
My feet slipped in the damp undergrowth between the trees. Confused by the darker air below the canopy, I had strayed from the forest road. I blundered among the ferns and palmettos and fell to my knees in a pool of black water. I assumed that this was a stagnant channel, but even as I crouched there, shaking the mud from my hands, I could feel the pressure of a current against my legs.
I was standing in a jungle stream more than ten feet wide. It flowed through the trees, hidden by the dead lianas and debris of the forest floor. For some fifty yards it followed the road, and then swerved into the brush, seeking out the darker gradients that ran down to the lake.
As my eyes sharpened, I saw that the original stream had divided into several channels, only one of which had so far reached the lake. The others pooled in the hollows, seeping between the fallen trunks and turning the forest into a sombre bayou.
I returned to the forest road and set off towards the airstrip. I felt elated but vaguely guilty, and remembered a childhood visit to Kowloon with my parents, when I had broken the earth dyke that held the water within a small paddy field in the hills of the New Territories. By the time I returned to my mother and father, setting our picnic beside the parked car, the escaping water had run down the hillside and was washing the car’s wheels. Puzzled by the shouts of the farmers from the rice terraces above, my parents set off through the valley for another picnic site. It had taken hours for the moisture on the tyres to dry, hours of nervous excitement and small-boy guilt …
However, I already realized that this stream running through the forest would be a boon to Port-la-Nouvelle. Calming myself, I stepped from the trees at the eastern end of the airstrip. One of Kagwa’s sentries stood by the runway, rifle slung over his shoulder, throwing pebbles into the shallow brook that ran among the tree stumps and hillocks of the waste ground. He stared at my drenched clothes and muddy arms, as if I were a plumber who had just released some infernal stop-cock in the earth’s cistern.
I climbed the shoulder of the runway, following the stream’s
Similar Books
