Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘He was a boxer. Like his father.’

  ‘He wanted to be, but something went wrong. He started to tell me about it – a fight after a rowing-club party with a nightclub bouncer, an old pro with early signs of brain damage that Wilder spotted. The man couldn’t see anything coming from his left side …’

  ‘So Wilder gave him a beating. Did he injure the man?’

  ‘Badly, but that wasn’t it. He saw all the repressed violence inside himself, the kind of violence his father wouldn’t have liked. So Wilder decided other people would be violent for him, and he looked around for a system that could make it happen. Psychiatry was tailor-made for him. Once he’d dreamed up his ideology he could sit back and watch his patients getting their faces bloodied, all these repressed executives like Alain Delage that he’s turned into playgroup Nazis. Now Wilder sees himself as a new kind of messiah, and our role is to act out his fantasies for him. Zander was right about Wilder Penrose.’

  ‘And that’s why he was killed.’ I took her arms and held her to me, feeling her heart as it beat against her breastbone. We left the observation platform and walked back to the BMW. ‘Let’s leave before anyone notices your licence number – these accident widows must have sharp eyes. Listen to me. David died for something I believe in. I want to put Eden-Olympia on trial. I want Wilder Penrose to take the stand and be our chief witness.’

  PART III

  38

  The High Air

  APPLAUSE EDDIED ACROSS the rows of guests, an approving murmur barely audible above the flapping of the canvas marquee. Sitting beside Penrose in the second row of gilt chairs, I watched Olivier Destivelle, chairman of the Eden-Olympia holding company, bowing his thanks. With a theatrical flourish he accepted a silver trowel, presented on a velvet-lined tray by an attractive aide in a sky-blue uniform.

  In front of the platform was a short section of newly laid brick wall, the pointing between the courses still damp and creamy. Set into the wall was a marble plaque, celebrating the foundation of Eden-Olympia Ouest, better known in the international business community as Eden II.

  Dressed in his morning suit, and as plumply convivial as a retired matinée idol, Destivelle held the silver trowel in his manicured hands. He beamed at the audience of notables as he plucked a scoop of fresh mortar from a trestle table. Distracted by the photographers’ flashbulbs, the television lights and the distant drone of advertising aircraft, he raised the mortar in a proud gesture, his nostrils flicking at the scent of quicklime.

  Penrose leaned back in his chair, treating me to a stage whisper. ‘Is he recommending a new truffle pâté? He’s poncing about like the maître d’ at Maxim’s. Lay it, Olivier, don’t taste it.’

  Already bored, Penrose loosened his tie. He took off the jacket of his dark suit, exposing his heavy shoulders and crumpled sleeves. Nibbling at a thumbnail, he ignored the glares of the sleekly dressed women around us, wives of the Riviera elite in their ribboned hats and couture gowns. Humming loudly to himself, he gazed over the greenfield site towards the Alpes-Maritimes.

  Buoyed by the prospect of the new business park that would be his next ideas laboratory, Penrose had been in good humour during our drive to the ground-breaking ceremony. Collecting me from the house, he was handsomely at ease in his black silk suit, and adjusted the rear-view mirror so that he could watch himself turn the ignition key. He made no attempt to reset the mirror, and waved my worries aside.

  ‘Paul, do we need a rear-view mirror?’ he asked as we left the enclave. ‘Nothing can overtake us, so why look back into the past?’

  The future was a second Eden-Olympia, almost twice the size of the original, the same mix of multinational companies, research laboratories and financial consultancies. Hyundai, BP Amoco, Motorola and Unilever had secured their plots, investing in long-term leases that virtually financed the whole project. The site-contractors were already at work, clearing the holm oaks and umbrella pines that had endured since Roman times, surviving forest fires and military invasions. Nature, as the new millennium dictated, was giving way for the last time to the tax shelter and the corporate car park.

  A line of tractors and graders waited by the forest edge, drivers sitting at their controls, like a squadron of tanks at a military display. The grass cover had been pared away, exposing the pale granitic marl to a few moments of sunlight before it was sealed away for ever under a million tons of cement.

  ‘Progress, Paul, it’s palpable …’ When we left the car Penrose strolled to the refreshment tent, and gazed at the architect’s model surrounded by a sea of canapés. Munching an anchovy, he smiled with pride at the landscaped office blocks, like a renaissance pope inspecting a model of his chapel and dreaming of the frescos he would never see. ‘Look at it, Paul – the new Europe …’

  ‘I hope not,’ I commented. ‘Eden II? It’s another business park. You make it sound like Winthrop’s City on a Hill.’

  ‘It is, Paul, it is.’ He seemed almost light-headed. ‘A hundred cities on a hundred hills …’

  A second round of applause rose from the guests as Olivier Destivelle patted the wet mortar into place. Within a year the ten-storey bulk of Eden II’s administrative headquarters would tower above the plaque. As if signalling their approval, the massed engines of bulldozers and graders roared into life. Gearboxes rasped, metal tracks dug their cleats into the hard soil and a parade of yellow vehicles began.

  Destivelle beamed at the lumbering parade, urging the spectators to applaud. But his eyes began to scan the sky. Half a mile to the north, a single-engined aircraft was heading towards us, towing a long green pennant like an agitated snake. It cleared a pine-covered hill, its fixed undercarriage almost scraping the canopy. The pilot flew on, scattered a flock of martins and set course for the phalanx of bulldozers, apparently intending to strafe them. Drivers watched over their shoulders, and already two of the huge vehicles had locked their scoops together.

  But the pilot had a second target in his sights. When he was four hundred yards away he raised an arm over his windscreen and fired a signal flare from the open cockpit. The flare rose into the air, hovered above the refreshment tent and exploded in a globe of emerald light. It hung in the sky like a melting chandelier, and then fell into the car park, its green embers setting fire to the grass.

  Already the first guests were rising from their seats, suspecting that this aerial display was not part of the official programme. Men buttoned their jackets as wives held their hats, coughing when fumes from the flare drifted through the marquee. A grim-faced Alain Delage, once again the harassed accountant, was calling to his aides, who sprang to life and began shouting into their mobile phones.

  The pilot changed course, banked his wings and began a circuit of the site. Caught by the crosswind, his green banner had wrapped itself into a knot, turning the lettered slogan into an unreadable Möbius strip.

  ‘Is that it?’ Penrose made a two-fingered salute to the pilot. ‘Not much of a show.’

  ‘He hasn’t got your resources. Wait, though…’ I pointed to the fir-topped hills. The drone of competing engines made its Doppler run towards us. Three more publicity planes sped down the valley, towing their pennants and followed by a straggler who had joined the fly-past at late notice. I guessed that the pilots had joined the protest in a show of solidarity, leaving their allotted circuits of the Côte d’Azur to rendezvous above Sophia-Antipolis.

  They flew towards us, shadows crossing the canvas roof above our heads, engines drumming against the hulls of the graders and bulldozers. The metal scoops amplified the mushy drone, a muffled anthem played by an involuntary steel band. Banners fluttered across the air, advertising a supermarket in Le Cannet, a kitchenware store and a sale of demonstration Renaults in Cagnes-sur-Mer. They crossed the D103 and set off for their beach patrols, rolling their wings in farewell.

  The pilot with the green pennant circled the site, waiting until his companions had gone. A passenger sat in the open cockpit behind him, and as the su
n struck the windscreen I caught a glimpse of blonde hair under an antique helmet and goggles. Satisfied, the pilot banked steeply and climbed into the sun, his wings shedding light into the air.

  Groups of guests walked to their cars, while others sat among the overturned chairs. Olivier Destivelle stood by the plaque, pointing to the empty sky with his silver trowel. Alain Delage spoke to a senior police officer, but his men were distracted by the limousines jamming the car-park exits, horns blaring at each other.

  ‘A slight cock-up …’ Penrose swung his gilt chair in his hand, as if debating whether to climb into the sky. ‘So much for security. Did you catch the slogan?’

  ‘Used Renaults, a supermarket somewhere. Quite a threat.’

  ‘Paul, be serious for once.’ Penrose tried to wave away the pall of burnt aviation fuel. ‘The pilot with the flare pistol. He was the organizer.’

  ‘“Eden II – Extinction is For Ever.” Mean anything?’

  ‘Green nonsense.’ Penrose shrugged and stared back at the sky, but I could see he was nettled. ‘Still, the pilot made his point. Progress has been held back by a microsecond. A shame, though. It’s an important day.’

  Forgetting me, he set off for the refreshment tent. A few journalists were picking at the buffet tables as they spoke into their cassette recorders, but the television crews were climbing into their vans, ready to relay their footage to the evening news programmes.

  Penrose listened to the last drone of the aircraft echoing through the valleys towards the coast. Barely able to control his irritation, he sucked the meat from a lobster claw. ‘Paul, what sort of aircraft was it? Someone should have jotted down the registration number.’

  ‘A Czech air force basic trainer. Slow, but fun to fly.’

  ‘I bet. You recognized the pilot.’

  ‘Four hundred yards away? Pilots don’t sign their slipstreams.’

  ‘I thought they did. Frances Baring may know him. She’s chummy with the rodeo pilots at Cannes Airport.’ Penrose held a smoked salmon fillet to his nose, smelling the pink flesh. ‘You understand her, Paul. I’d hate to think she was involved in this nonsense.’

  ‘She isn’t. Wilder, she works hard for Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘Everyone works hard – it proves nothing. People are impressionable, they snatch powerful emotions out of the air. The one thing Eden-Olympia doesn’t need is its own Green movement. Why doesn’t anyone want to save the planet’s concrete?’

  ‘I guess it can look after itself.’

  ‘Can it?’ Penrose turned to stare at me, as if I had conveyed a unique insight. He swallowed the canapé, took the glass of wine from my hand and gulped it back. ‘Right, that was lunch. Let’s go for a drive above Grasse. I need the high air to think in …’

  The first signs of revolt had appeared, but not in a way that Wilder Penrose expected. As we set off for Grasse he watched the rear-view mirror, suspicious of any following cars. The pinpricks of the past weeks – the graffiti and vandalized cars in the Eden-Olympia garages – had begun to penetrate even the well-upholstered hide of the corporate elephant.

  It was a pleasure to see Penrose in the role of quarry, for once. As Frances had predicted, the ratissages had grown more violent, but sooner or later the victims would turn on their attackers. One evening, in an immigrant neighbourhood, the residents would at last act together, corner a therapy class of senior executives and hold them until the television cameras arrived. Then the conspiracy would collapse and witnesses would come forward: the chauffeurs’ widows, the girls at the refuge, brutalized whores and assaulted Arab workmen.

  Yet, despite myself, I still admired Penrose, and the core truth of his bold but deranged vision. I hated the violence but remembered the brutal hazings at the RAF flight school, and how they had energized us all. Those fraternal beatings had been the closest we would ever come to tormenting our prisoners, part of the cruel but necessary pleasures of war. At Eden-Olympia, psychopathy was being rehabilitated, returned like a socialized criminal to everyday life.

  For all his success, Penrose had been on edge in the two months since Zander’s death. Often he knocked over his chesspieces as we played beside the pool. In the middle of a move he would leave the table and pace alone around the tennis court, then walk to his car without a word. At times he seemed to doubt that he was equal to the huge test of his talents posed by Eden II, and was searching for an even more radical leap of faith.

  As we climbed the mountains above Grasse he patted my arm, treating me to the conspiratorial smile he turned upon waitresses and filling-station personnel who met his approval. He pointed to the rev counter, trembling in the red zone.

  ‘Feel the power, Paul? When I’m bored you can take over.’

  ‘As long as you’re in control.’

  ‘Who wants to be in control? Haven’t I taught you anything?’ He drummed a hand on the wheel. ‘Those publicity planes – they spoilt the show.’

  ‘No one noticed. They were glad to get back to the office. A kitchenware sale, some clapped-out cars …’

  ‘You’re wrong, Paul.’ Penrose pointed to a billboard advertising a new hair spray. ‘That’s just the point. Reality is always a threat. I’m not worried by any rival ideology – there isn’t one. But all these ads for aquaparks and swimming pools … they’re the real enemy. They subvert everything. Frances probably arranged it deliberately.’

  ‘Why should she?’

  ‘To unsettle me. She’s restless. You know that, Paul. She thinks she’s a rebel, but doesn’t realize that Eden-Olympia is the biggest rebellion of all.’

  Frances would disapprove of my accepting a lift in Penrose’s car. We met rarely now, and she said nothing of her plans to expose Eden-Olympia. Our hour together near the lighthouse at La Garoupe had been a closing of accounts. She had tried to use me again, hoping to trigger an outburst against Eden-Olympia, but I was too uncommitted for her. We met for dinner at the Vieux Port, and I told her that I was working my way into Penrose’s confidence. She nodded, lit a cigarette and stared at the Arab yachts.

  Meanwhile, the first graffiti and damaged surveillance cameras at Eden-Olympia seemed too feeble a protest to be her handiwork. The cryptic signs aerosolled across windscreens resembled teenage graffiti tags, and were soon scrubbed away by teams of maintenance men, but the stains of rebellion remained.

  Curiously, I had become one of the first victims. Three days before the ground-breaking ceremony at Eden II, the Jaguar was brutally savaged. Vandals slashed the tyres and engine hoses, and wrenched the gear lever from its housing. Mr Yasuda was so impressed that he formally congratulated me, his wife bowing three paces behind him, under the impression that the Jaguar had served heroically in a ratissage of Pearl Harbor proportions.

  But I no longer joined the bowling clubs on their outings, and distanced myself from the secret life of the business park. I moved from my Alice bed to a maid’s room overlooking the tennis court. I said nothing to Jane about Greenwood’s tragic end, and how her sometime lover had died in a paroxysm of self-disgust. At night, when I woke, I would step into Jane’s bedroom and watch her as she slept, Simone’s lipstick smudged across her mouth, the young woman I had loved, and one day, perhaps, would love again.

  At the Col du Pilon, a few miles above Grasse, we parked by the observation point with its devil’s view over the Var plain. Penrose filled his huge chest with the cold air, holding his breath as if only an over-oxygenated brain could envisage all the possibilities of his new kingdom.

  ‘Spectacular, Paul? There are times when you feel the wind of history under your wings. You’ve watched the future break out of its egg. The Greenwich line of this millennium runs through Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘All the same, it’s time to go back to London. I have to persuade Jane.’

  ‘But why?’ Penrose turned his back to the sun, and concentrated all his professional sympathy on me, as if I had admitted to bed-wetting or shoplifting. ‘Eden II is the only future we have.’

  �
�Not for me.’

  ‘We’ll find you a job. You can start a publishing house for us, edit a monthly magazine.’

  ‘Thanks, but everything looks less certain now. I couldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘You won’t have to. You and Jane are safe, you’re with us.’

  ‘Along with those hundreds of senior executives arriving soon at Eden II? You’re about to create a major crime wave.’

  ‘Paul… the crime wave is already there. It’s called consumer capitalism. Dear chap, I haven’t asked you to defecate on the tricolour. A small social cost has to be borne, but we compensate the victims.’

  ‘People like Zander?’

  ‘That was an accident.’

  ‘Wilder, I was there. It was an execution.’ I lowered my voice as two elderly Chinese walked from their car and stood beside us at the observation rail. ‘He knew about the paedophile ring and the jewellery raids, the strangled streetwalkers … I should have gone to the police.’

  ‘They came to you. Sensibly, you said nothing.’ Penrose raised his strong chin to the sun, inhaling the cool air. ‘Who told you about the paedophile ring – Halder?’

  ‘Not Halder.’

  ‘I’m glad. He’s too ambitious to be disloyal. We think very highly of Halder.’

  ‘Good. Alain Delage shouldn’t play games with him.’

  ‘Does he? That’s unpleasant. I’ll tell him to pick another deprived group – English tourists, say. If Halder didn’t talk to you, who did? Frances Baring?’

  ‘She’s said nothing.’

  ‘You spend a lot of time with her. She must talk about something. She’s always had friends outside Eden-Olympia – an attractive woman in the property office, who visits a lot of very rich people. Some of them have axes to grind, and carry weight in Paris and Brussels.’

  ‘She’s never talked to me. Besides, she knows nothing.’

  ‘She knows more than you think. I worry about Frances. For her, the clocks stopped on May 28 …’