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Authors: J. G. Ballard
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sunlight brought from my skin. As I embraced her, placing my bruised mouth on her lips, I was proud of this harsh odour. She tried to push me back, gagging on the stench, her eyes fixed on my bruised skin. Kneeling across her, and placing her legs around my waist, I remembered the huge wings that had carried me above the night sky. I imagined myself and Mrs St Cloud copulating on the air. I knew that there were four of us present, locked in a sexual act that transcended our species – she and I, the great condor, and the man or woman who had revived me and whose mouth and hands I could still feel in my skin.
‘Blake … you’re not dead!’
Mrs St Cloud seized my hips. Her gasping mouth was smeared with blood milked from my lips. I wrestled with this middle-aged woman, pressing her broad shoulders into the pillow, my bloody mouth around her lips and nostrils, and sucked the air from her throat. No longer concerned with her sex, I was trying to fuse our bodies, merge our hearts and lungs, our spleens and kidneys into a single creature. I knew then that I would stay in this small town until I had mated with everyone there – the women, men and children, their dogs and cats, the cage-birds in their front parlours, the cattle in the water-meadow, the deer in the park, the flies in this bedroom – and fused us together into a new being.
Mrs St Cloud struggled, knees kicking at my thighs. With my arms around her chest I crushed her lungs. Unable tobreathe, she fell back. Feebly, her heels struck at my calves. As we sank together my mind cleared into a dream of birds, the four of us fusing on the wing …
Beside me Mrs St Cloud lay exhausted, lungs pumping the sunlit air through her bloodied mouth. She lay on her back, a shaking hand searching for mine, her freckled legs stretched out as if they were dead. Dark bruises were coming through the raw skin of her breasts and stomach.
I waited beside her, aware that I had nearly killed this woman, who had been saved only by my self-suffocation. Sitting up, she touched my chest, feeling for my diaphragm as if to make sure that I had begun to breathe again. As she dressed she stood beside the bed with her bloodied mouth and chest. She looked down at me without hostility, well aware of what she had done.
I realized that she took for granted that I had tried to kill her, this mother who had given birth to a violent and barbarous infant, wrestling me from her body.
Before she left she paused by the window. Almost absent-mindedly, she said: ‘There’s a vulture on the lawn. Two of them. Look, Blake – white vultures.’
CHAPTER 12
‘Did You Dream Last Night?’
Vultures—! As I ran down the staircase, buttoning the priest’s jacket around my chest, I guessed that the carrion birds had escaped from Stark’s zoo, attracted by the odours released from the corpse still trapped in the Cessna. I stood on the terrace by the conservatory, expecting to see the white vultures dismembering the passenger’s body. The lawn glistened like chopped glass. A fierce storm had disturbed the night. Pools of water lay in the sunlight among the gravel paths. Along the Shepperton shoreline the leaves of the plane trees and silver birch had been washed of all dust. By contrast, the water-meadow on the opposite bank seemed yellow and faded.
‘Pelicans …’ Relieved, I watched the two ungainly birds waddle across the lawn. Presumably the storm had brought them inland, though the open sea was fifty miles away. They dipped their heavy bills among the gladioli, uncertain what they were doing in the grounds of this Tudor mansion, among these ornamental trees and flowerbeds.
On the beach below me was a more sinister arrival. A large fulmar was gutting a pike, its talons tearing apart the bloodied flesh. With its beaked bill and strong body, this arctic predator resembled nothing that flew over the placid valley of the Thames.
I picked a stone from the pathway and hurled it at the beach. The fulmar
‘Blake … you’re not dead!’
Mrs St Cloud seized my hips. Her gasping mouth was smeared with blood milked from my lips. I wrestled with this middle-aged woman, pressing her broad shoulders into the pillow, my bloody mouth around her lips and nostrils, and sucked the air from her throat. No longer concerned with her sex, I was trying to fuse our bodies, merge our hearts and lungs, our spleens and kidneys into a single creature. I knew then that I would stay in this small town until I had mated with everyone there – the women, men and children, their dogs and cats, the cage-birds in their front parlours, the cattle in the water-meadow, the deer in the park, the flies in this bedroom – and fused us together into a new being.
Mrs St Cloud struggled, knees kicking at my thighs. With my arms around her chest I crushed her lungs. Unable tobreathe, she fell back. Feebly, her heels struck at my calves. As we sank together my mind cleared into a dream of birds, the four of us fusing on the wing …
Beside me Mrs St Cloud lay exhausted, lungs pumping the sunlit air through her bloodied mouth. She lay on her back, a shaking hand searching for mine, her freckled legs stretched out as if they were dead. Dark bruises were coming through the raw skin of her breasts and stomach.
I waited beside her, aware that I had nearly killed this woman, who had been saved only by my self-suffocation. Sitting up, she touched my chest, feeling for my diaphragm as if to make sure that I had begun to breathe again. As she dressed she stood beside the bed with her bloodied mouth and chest. She looked down at me without hostility, well aware of what she had done.
I realized that she took for granted that I had tried to kill her, this mother who had given birth to a violent and barbarous infant, wrestling me from her body.
Before she left she paused by the window. Almost absent-mindedly, she said: ‘There’s a vulture on the lawn. Two of them. Look, Blake – white vultures.’
CHAPTER 12
‘Did You Dream Last Night?’
Vultures—! As I ran down the staircase, buttoning the priest’s jacket around my chest, I guessed that the carrion birds had escaped from Stark’s zoo, attracted by the odours released from the corpse still trapped in the Cessna. I stood on the terrace by the conservatory, expecting to see the white vultures dismembering the passenger’s body. The lawn glistened like chopped glass. A fierce storm had disturbed the night. Pools of water lay in the sunlight among the gravel paths. Along the Shepperton shoreline the leaves of the plane trees and silver birch had been washed of all dust. By contrast, the water-meadow on the opposite bank seemed yellow and faded.
‘Pelicans …’ Relieved, I watched the two ungainly birds waddle across the lawn. Presumably the storm had brought them inland, though the open sea was fifty miles away. They dipped their heavy bills among the gladioli, uncertain what they were doing in the grounds of this Tudor mansion, among these ornamental trees and flowerbeds.
On the beach below me was a more sinister arrival. A large fulmar was gutting a pike, its talons tearing apart the bloodied flesh. With its beaked bill and strong body, this arctic predator resembled nothing that flew over the placid valley of the Thames.
I picked a stone from the pathway and hurled it at the beach. The fulmar
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