Vermilion Sands

by James Graham Ballard

  ‘You may be right. Perhaps the girl’s pulling my leg.’

  ‘Girl. She’s probably sixty and tipples her eau de cologne. Sad. In some insane way they may mean something.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I told him. I was pasting down one of the Xero’s satirical pastiches of Rupert Brooke and was six lines short. I handed Tony the master tape and he played it into the IBM, set the metre, rhyme scheme, verbal pairs, and then switched on, waited for the tape to chunter out of the delivery head, tore off six lines and passed them back to me. I didn’t even need to read them.

  For the next two hours we worked hard. At dusk we had completed over one thousand lines and broke off for a well-earned drink. We moved on to the terrace and sat in the cool evening light, watching the colours melting across the desert, listening to the sand-rays cry in the darkness by Aurora’s villa.

  ‘What are all these streamers lying around under here?’ Tony asked. He pulled one towards him, caught the strands as they broke in his hand and steered them on to the glass-topped table.

  ‘“– nor canticles, nor hollow register –” ’ He read the line out, then released the tissue and let it blow away on the wind.

  He peered across the shadow-covered dunes at Studio 5. As usual a single light was burning in one of the upper rooms, illuminating the threads unravelling in the sand as they moved towards us.

  Tony nodded. ‘So that’s where she lives.’ He picked up another of the streamers that had coiled itself through the railing and was fluttering instantly at his elbow.

  ‘You know, old sport, you’re quite literally under siege.’

  I was. During the next days a ceaseless bombardment of ever more obscure and bizarre poems reached me, always in two instalments, the first brought by the chauffeur promptly at nine o’clock each morning, the second that evening when the streamers began to blow across the dusk to me. The fragments of Shakespeare and Pound had gone now, and the streamers carried fragmented versions of the poems delivered earlier in the day, almost as if they represented her working drafts. Examining the tapes carefully I realized that, as Aurora Day had said, they were not produced by a VT set. The strands were too delicate to have passed through the spools and highspeed cams of a computer mechanism, and the lettering along them had not been printed but embossed by some process I was unable to identify.

  Each day I read the latest offerings, carefully filed them away in the centre drawer of my desk. Finally, when I had a week’s production stacked together, I placed them in a return envelope, addressed it ‘Aurora Day, Studio 5, The Stars, Vermilion Sands,’ and penned a tactful rejection note, suggesting that she would feel ultimately more satisfied if her work appeared in another of the wide range of poetry reviews.

  That night I had the first of what was to be a series of highly unpleasant dreams.

  Making myself some strong coffee the next morning, I waited blearily for my mind to clear. I went on to the terrace, wondering what had prompted the savage nightmare that had plagued me through the night. The dream had been the first of any kind I had had for several years – one of the pleasant features of beach fatigue is a heavy dreamless sleep, and the sudden irruption of a dream-filled night made me wonder whether Aurora Day, and more particularly her insane poems, were beginning to prey on my mind more than I realized.

  My headache took a long time to dissipate. I lay back, watching the Day villa, its windows closed and shuttered, awnings retracted, like a sealed crown. Who was she anyway, I asked myself, and what did she really want?

  Five minutes later, I saw the Cadillac swing out of the drive and coast down the Stars towards me.

  Not another delivery! The woman was tireless. I waited by the front door, met the driver half way down the steps and took from him a wax-sealed envelope.

  ‘Look,’ I said to him confidentially. ‘I’d hate to discourage an emerging talent, but I think you might well use any influence you have on your mistress and, you know, generally …’ I let the idea hang in front of him, and added: ‘By the way, all these streamers that keep blowing across here are getting to be a damn nuisance.’

  The chauffeur regarded me out of his red-rimmed foxy eyes, his beaked face contorted in a monstrous grin. Shaking his head sadly, he hobbled back to the car.

  As he drove off I opened the letter. Inside was a single sheet of paper.

  Mr Ransom,

  Your rejection of my poems astounds me. I seriously advise you to reconsider your decision. This is no trifling matter. I expect to see the poems printed in your next issue.

  AURORA DAY

  That night I had another insane dream.

  The next selection of poems arrived when I was still in bed, trying to massage a little sanity back into my mind. I climbed out of bed and made myself a large Martini, ignoring the envelope jutting through the door like the blade of a paper spear.

  When I had steadied myself I slit it open, and scanned the three short poems included.

  They were dreadful. Dimly I wondered how to persuade Aurora that the requisite talent was missing. Holding the Martini in one hand and peering at the poems in the other, I ambled on to the terrace and slumped down in one of the chairs.

  With a shout I sprang into the air, knocking the glass out of my hand. I had sat down on something large and spongy, the size of a cushion but with uneven bony contours.

  Looking down, I saw an enormous dead sand-ray lying in the centre of the seat, its white-tipped sting, still viable, projecting a full inch from its sheath above the cranial crest.

  Jaw clamped angrily, I went straight into my study, slapped the three poems into an envelope with a rejection slip and scrawled across it: ‘Sorry, entirely unsuitable. Please try other publications.’

  Half an hour later I drove down to Vermilion Sands and mailed it myself. As I came back I felt quietly pleased with myself.

  That afternoon a colossal boil developed on my right cheek.

  Tony Sapphire and Raymond Mayo came round the next morning to commiserate. Both thought I was being pigheaded and pedantic.

  ‘Print one,’ Tony told me, sitting down on the foot of the bed.

  ‘I’m damned if I will,’ I said. I stared out across the desert at Studio 5. Occasionally a window moved and caught the sunlight but otherwise I had seen nothing of my neighbour.

  Tony shrugged. ‘All you’ve got to do is accept one and she’ll be satisfied.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked cynically. ‘This may be only the beginning. For all we know she may have a dozen epics in the bottom of her suitcase.’

  Raymond Mayo wandered over to the window beside me, slipped on his dark glasses and scrutinized the villa. I noticed that he looked even more dapper than usual, dark hair smoothed back, profile adjusted for maximum impact.

  ‘I saw her at the “psycho i” last night,’ he mused. ‘She had a private balcony upon the mezzanine. Quite extroardinary. They had to stop the floor show twice.’ He nodded to himself. ‘There’s something formless and unstated there, reminded me of Dali’s “Cosmogonic Venus”. Made me realize how absolutely terrifying all women really are. If I were you I’d do whatever I was told.’

  I set my jaw, as far as I could, and shook my head dogmatically. ‘Go away. You writers are always pouring scorn on editors, but when things get tough who’s the first to break? This is the sort of situation I’m prepared to handle, my whole training and discipline tell me instinctively what to do. That crazy neurotic over there is trying to bewitch me. She thinks she can call down a plague of dead rays, boils and nightmares and I’ll surrender my conscience.’

  Shaking their heads sadly over my obduracy, Tony and Raymond left me to myself.

  Two hours later the boil had subsided as mysteriously as it had appeared. I was beginning to wonder why when a pick-up from The Graphis Press in Vermilion Sands delivered the advance five-hundred of the next issue of Wave IX.

  I carried the cartons into the lounge, then slit off the wrapping, thinking pleasurably of Aurora Day’s promise that sh
e would have her poems published in the next issue. She had failed to realize that I had passed the final pages two days beforehand, and that I could hardly have printed her poems even if I had wanted to.

  Opening the pages, I turned to the editorial, another in my series of examinations of the present malaise affecting poetry.

  However, in place of the usual half-dozen paragraphs of 10-point type I was astounded to see a single line of 24-point, announcing in italic caps:

  A CALL TO GREATNESS!

  I broke off, hurriedly peered at the cover to make sure Graphis had sent me advance copies of the right journal, then raced rapidly through the pages.

  The first poem I recognized immediately. I had rejected it only two days earlier. The next three I had also seen and rejected, then came a series that were new to me, all signed ‘Aurora Day’ and taking the place of the poems I had passed in page proof.

  The entire issue had been pirated! Not a single one of the original poems remained, and a completely new make-up had been substituted. I ran back into the lounge and opened a dozen copies. They were all the same.

  Ten minutes later I had carried the three cartons out to the incinerator, tipped them in and soaked the copies with petrol, then tossed a match into the centre of the pyre. Simultaneously, a few miles away Graphis Press were doing the same to the remainder of the 5,000 imprint. How the misprinting had occurred they could not explain. They searched out the copy, all on Aurora’s typed notepaper, but with editorial markings in my handwriting! My own copy had disappeared, and they soon denied they had ever received it.

  As the heavy flames beat into the hot sunlight I thought that through the thick brown smoke I could see a sudden burst of activity coming from my neighbour’s house. Windows were opening under the awnings, and the hunchbacked figure of the chauffeur was scurrying along the terrace.

  Standing on the roof, her white gown billowing around her like an enormous silver fleece, Aurora Day looked down at me. Whether it was the large quantity of Martini I had drunk that morning, the recent boil on my cheek or the fumes from the burning petrol, I’m not sure, but as I walked back into the house I felt unsteady, and sat down hazily on the top step, closing my eyes as my brain swam.

  After a few seconds my head cleared again. Leaning on my knees, I focused my eyes on the blue glass step between my feet. Cut into the surface in neat letters was:

  Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

  Prithee, why so pale?

  Still too weak to more than register an automatic protest against this act of vandalism, I pulled myself to my feet, taking the door key out of my dressing-gown pocket. As I inserted it into the lock I noticed, inscribed into the brass seat of the lock:

  Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards.

  There were other inscriptions all over the black leather panelling of the door, cut in the same neat script, the lines crossing each other at random, like filigree decoration around a baroque salver.

  Closing the door behind me, I walked into the lounge. The walls seemed darker than usual, and I realized that their entire surface was covered with row upon row of finely cut lettering, endless fragments of verse stretching from ceiling to floor.

  I picked my glass off the table and raised it to my lips. The blue crystal bowl had been embossed with the same copper-plate lines, spiralling down the stem to the base.

  Drink to me only with thine eyes.

  Everything in the lounge was covered with the same fragments – the desk, lampstands and shades, the bookshelves, the keys of the baby grand, even the lip of the record on the stereogram turntable.

  Dazed, I raised my hand to my face, in horror saw that the surface of my skin was interlaced by a thousand tattoos, writhing and coiling across my hands and arms like insane serpents.

  Dropping my glass, I ran to the mirror over the fireplace, saw my face covered with the same tattooing, a living manuscript in which the ink still ran, the letters running and changing as if the pen still cast them.

  You spotted snakes with double tongue…

  Weaving spiders, come not here.

  I flung myself away from the mirror, ran out on to the terrace, my feet slipping in the piles of coloured streamers which the evening wind was carrying over the balcony, then vaulted down over the railing on to the ground below.

  I covered the distance between our villas in a few moments, raced up the darkening drive to the black front door. It opened as my hand reached for the bell, and I plunged through into the crystal hallway.

  Aurora Day was waiting for me on the chaise longue by the fountain pool, feeding the ancient white fish that clustered around her. As I stepped across to her she smiled quietly to the fish and whispered to them.

  ‘Aurora!’ I cried. For heaven’s sake, I give in! Take anything you want, anything, but leave me alone!’

  For a moment she ignored me and went on quietly feeding the fish. Suddenly a thought of terror plunged through my mind. Were the huge white carp now nestling at her fingers once her lovers?

  We sat together in the luminescent dusk, the long shadows playing across the purple landscape of Dali’s ‘Persistence of Memory’ on the wall behind Aurora, the fish circling slowly in the fountain beside us.

  She had stated her terms: nothing less than absolute control of the magazine, freedom to impose her own policy, to make her own selection of material. Nothing would be printed without her first approval.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she had said lightly. ‘Our agreement will apply to one issue only.’ Amazingly she showed no wish to publish her own poems – the pirated issue had merely been a device to bring me finally to surrender.

  ‘Do you think one issue will be enough?’ I asked, wondering what really she would do with it now.

  She looked up at me idly, tracing patterns across the surface of the pool with a green-tipped finger. ‘It all depends on you and your companions. When will you come to your senses and become poets again?’

  I watched the patterns in the pool. In some miraculous way they remained etched across the surface.

  In the hours, like millennia, we had sat together I seemed to have told her everything about myself, yet learned almost nothing about Aurora. One thing alone was clear – her obsession with the art of poetry. In some curious way she regarded herself as personally responsible for the present ebb at which it found itself, but her only remedy seemed completely retrogressive.

  ‘You must come and meet my friends at the colony,’ I suggested.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I hope I can help them. They all have so much to learn.’

  I smiled at this. ‘I’m afraid you won’t find them very sympathetic to that view. Most of them regard themselves as virtuosos. For them the quest for the perfect sonnet ended years ago. The computer produces nothing else.’

  Aurora scoffed. ‘They’re not poets but mere mechanics. Look at these collections of so-called verse. Three poems and sixty pages of operating instructions. Nothing but volts and amps. When I say they have everything to learn, I mean about their own hearts, not about technique; about the soul of music, not its form.’

  She paused to stretch herself, her beautiful body uncoiling like a python. She leaned forward and began to speak earnestly. ‘Poetry is dead today, not because of these machines, but because poets no longer search for their true inspiration.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Aurora shook her head sadly. ‘You call yourself a poet and yet you ask me that?’

  She stared down at the pool, her eyes listless. For a moment an expression of profound sadness passed across her face, and I realized that she felt some deep sense of guilt or inadequacy, that some failing of her own was responsible for the present malaise. Perhaps it was this sense of inadequacy that made me unafraid of her.

  ‘Have you ever heard the legend of Melander and Corydon?’ she asked.

  ‘Vaguely,’ I said, casting my mind back. ‘Melander was the Muse of Poetry, if I remember. Wasn’t Corydon a court poet who killed himself for he
r?’

  ‘Good,’ Aurora told me. ‘You’re not completely illiterate, after all. Yes, the court poets found that they had lost their inspiration and that their ladies were spurning them for the company of the knights, so they sought out Melander, the Muse, who told them that she had brought this spell upon them because they had taken their art for granted, forgetting the source from whom it really came. They protested that of course they thought of her always – a blatant lie – but she refused to believe them and told them that they would not recover their power until one of them sacrificed his life for her. Naturally none of them would do so, with the exception of a young poet of great talent called Corydon, who loved the goddess and was the only one to retain his power. For the other poets’ sake he killed himself …’

  ‘… to Melander’s undying sorrow,’ I concluded. ‘She was not expecting him to give his life for his art. A beautiful myth,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll find no Corydons here.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Aurora said softly. She stirred the water in the pool, the broken surface throwing a ripple of light across the walls and ceiling. Then I saw that a long series of friezes ran around the lounge depicting the very legend Aurora had been describing. The first panel, on my extreme left, showed the poets and troubadours gathered around the goddess, a tall white-gowned figure whose face bore a remarkable resemblance to Aurora’s. As I traced the story through the successive panels the likeness became even more marked, and I assumed that she had sat as Melander for the artist. Had she, in some way, identified herself with the goddess in the myth? In which case, who was her Corydon? – perhaps the artist himself. I searched the panels for the suicidal poet, a slim blond-maned youth whose face, although slightly familiar, I could not identify. However, behind the principal figures in all the scenes I certainly recognized another, her faun-faced chauffeur, here with ass’s legs and wild woodwind, representing none other than the attendant Pan.

  I had almost detected another likeness among the figures in the friezes when Aurora noticed me searching the panels. She stopped stirring the pool. As the ripples subsided the panels sank again into darkness. For a few seconds Aurora stared at me as if she had forgotten who I was. She appeared to have become tired and withdrawn, as if recapitulating the myth had evoked private memories of pain and fatigue. Simultaneously the hallway and glass-enclosed portico seemed to grow dark and sombre, reflecting her own darkening mood, so dominant was her presence that the air itself paled as she did. Again I felt that her world, into which I had stepped, was completely compounded of illusion.