Cocaine Nights

by J. G. Ballard

  'Of course not. The inertial forces here are colossal. But one elephant fly can start a stampede if it bites a sensitive spot. You sound sceptical.'

  'A little.'

  'You don't think it will work?' Crawford pressed my hand to the steering wheel, steeling my resolve. 'I need you, Charles – it's difficult to do this on my own. Betty Shand and Hennessy are only interested in their cash flow. But you can see beyond that to the larger horizon. What happened in Estrella de Mar will happen here, and then move on down the coast. Think of all those pueblos coming to life again. We're freeing people, Charles, returning them to their true selves.'

  Did he believe his own rhetoric? Half an hour later, as he burgled a small apartment block near the central plaza, I unzipped the hold-all and glanced through its contents. There were jemmies and wirecutters, a selection of lockpicks and perforated entry cards, jump leads and electronic immobilizers. A smaller valise contained several aerosol paint cans, two camcorders and a clutch of fresh video-cassettes. A segmented plastic snake of cocaine sachets wrapped itself around a wallet filled with drug capsules and pills in foil dispensers, packs of syrettes and ribbed condoms.

  The aerosols Crawford put to immediate use. Barely bothering to step from the car, he held a can in each hand and sprayed a series of lurid patterns on the garage doors that we passed. After only two hours a lengthy trail of theft and vandalism lay behind us-damaged satellite dishes, graffiti-daubed cars, dog turds left floating in swimming pools, surveillance cameras blinded by jets of paint.

  Within earshot of the owners he broke into a silver Aston Martin and freewheeled the car down the gravelled drive. I followed as he drove to a disused builder's yard on the northern perimeter road, and watched him scrape the sides of the car with a jemmy, scratching the paintwork with the care of a chef scoring a side of pork. When he stood back and lit a cigarette I waited for the fire to come. He smiled at the mutilated vehicle, the lighter still flaming in his hand, and I expected him to stuff a rag into the fuel tank.

  But Crawford treated the car to a rueful salute, and calmly smoked his cigarette when we drove off, savouring the Turkish fumes.

  'I hate doing that, Charles – but sacrifices have to be made.'

  'At least it's not your Aston Martin.'

  'I was thinking of our sacrifices – it's painful medicine for both of us, but we have to swallow it…'

  We set off along the perimeter road, where the cheaper villas and apartment houses looked out over the Malaga highway. Home-made 'For Sale' signs hung from balconies, and I assumed that the Dutch-German developers had sold the properties at a discount.

  'Take that house on the right – the one with the empty pool.' Crawford pointed to a small villa with a faded awning over its patio. A drying frame exposed a selection of gaudy tops and flimsy underwear to the sun. 'I'll be back in ten minutes. They need a little arts counselling He reached into the hold-all and removed the valise that contained the camcorders and pharmaceuticals. Waiting for him by the front door were two women in swimsuits who shared the villa. Despite the heat they wore a full maquillage of lipstick, rouge and mascara, as if ready for a session under the film lights, and greeted Crawford with the easy smiles of hostesses at a dubious bar welcoming a regular patron.

  The younger of the women was in her twenties, with a pale, English complexion, bony shoulders and eyes that for ever watched the street. I recognized the older woman beside her, the platinum blonde with the over-large breasts and florid face who had played one of the bridesmaids in the porno-film. Glass in hand, she pressed a Slavic cheekbone to Crawford's lips and beckoned him into the house.

  I stepped from the car and strolled towards the house, watching them through the patio windows. Together they made their way into the lounge, where a television set played to itself, blinking as the frame-hold lost its grip on an afternoon serial. Crawford opened the valise and took out one of the camcorders and a brace of cassettes. He tore a dozen sachets of cocaine from the plastic snake, which the women tucked into the cups of their swimsuits, and began to demonstrate the camcorder to them. The older woman raised the viewfinder to her eye, snapping at herself as her long fingernails scratched at the tiny push-buttons. She practised the pan and zoom, while Crawford sat on the sofa with the young Englishwoman. No one exchanged the slightest banter, as if Crawford were a salesman demonstrating a new household appliance.

  When he returned to the car the women filmed him from the door, laughing over each other's shoulders.

  'Film school?' I asked. 'They look like quick learners.'

  'Yes… they've always been film buffs.' Crawford waved to them as we pulled away, grinning to himself as if genuinely fond of the women. 'They came here from Estepona to open a beauty parlour, but decided the prospects weren't good enough.'

  'So now they'll go into the film business? I imagine they'll find that profitable.'

  'I think so. They have an idea for a film.'

  'Documentary?'

  'More of a nature film, you might call it.'

  'The wildlife of the Residencia Costasol.' I savoured the notion. 'Courtship rituals and mating patterns. I think they'll be a success. Who was the platinum blonde? She looks slightly Russian.'

  'Raissa Livingston – widow of a Lambeth bookie. She's a tank-trap full of vodka. A great sport. She's done a little acting before, so she'll get things off to a good start.'

  Crawford spoke without irony, staring at the roof of the car as if already screening the first day's rushes. He seemed content with his afternoon's work, like a neighbourhood evangelist who had unloaded his stock of biblical tracts. The burglaries and break-ins had left him calm and relaxed, his day's duty done for the benighted people of the Residencia.

  When we returned to the sports club he directed me to the service entrance behind the kitchen and boiler room. Here he had parked his Porsche, safely out of sight from any police who might call at the club.

  'We'll move the gear to my car.' He threw back the blanket, exposing the booty. 'I don't want Cabrera to catch you redhanded, Charles. You've got that guilty look again.'

  'There's a lot of stuff here. Can you remember who owns what?'

  'I don't need to. I'll stash it in the builder's yard where we left the Aston Martin and tip off the security people in the gatehouse. They'll put everything on show there and make sure the entire Residencia gets the message.'

  'But what is the message? That's something I haven't quite grasped.'

  'The message…?' Crawford was lifting a cassette-recorder from the seat, but turned to stare at me. 'I thought you understood everything, Charles.'

  'Not exactly. These break-ins, wrecking a few TV sets and painting "Fuck" on a garage door – is that going to change people's lives? If you burgled my house I'd just call the police. I wouldn't join a chess club or take up carol-singing.'

  'Absolutely. You'd call the police. So would I. But suppose the police do nothing and I break in again, this time stealing something you really value. You'd start thinking about stronger locks and a security camera.'

  'So?' I opened the Porsche's boot and waited as Crawford lowered the cassette-recorder into it. 'We've returned to square one. I go back to my satellite television and my long sleep of the dead.'

  'No, Charles.' Crawford spoke patiently. 'You're not asleep. By now you're wide awake, more alert than you've ever been before. The break-ins are like the devout Catholic's wristlet that chafes the skin and sharpens the moral sensibility. The next burglary fills you with anger, even a self-righteous rage. The police are useless, fobbing you off with vague promises, and that generates a sense of injustice, a feeling that you're surrounded by a world without shame. Everything around you, the paintings and silverware you've taken for granted, fit into this new moral framework. You're more aware of yourself. Dormant areas of your mind that you haven't visited for years become important again. You begin to reassess yourself, as you did, Charles, when that Renault caught fire.'

  'Perhaps… but I didn't take u
p t'ai chi or start a new book.'

  'Wait – you may do.' Crawford pressed on, keen to convince me. 'The process takes time. The crime wave continues-someone shits in your pool, ransacks your bedroom and plays around with your wife's underwear. Now rage and anger are not enough. You're forced to rethink yourself on every level, like primitive man confronting a hostile universe behind every tree and rock. You're aware of time, chance, the resources of your own imagination. Then someone mugs the woman next door, so you team up with the outraged husband. Crime and vandalism are everywhere. You have to rise above these mindless thugs and the oafish world they inhabit. Insecurity forces you to cherish whatever moral strengths you have, just as political prisoners memorize Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, the dying play Bach and rediscover their faith, parents mourning a dead child do voluntary work at a hospice.'

  'We realize time is finite and take nothing for granted any more?'

  'Exactly.' Crawford patted my arm, happy to welcome me to his flock. 'We form watch committees, elect a local council, take pride in our neighbourhoods, join sports clubs and local history societies, rediscover the everyday world we once took for granted. We know that it's more important to be a third-rate painter than to watch a CD-ROM on the Renaissance. Together we begin to thrive, and at last find our full potential as individuals and as a community.'

  'And all this is set off by crime?' I lifted the silver cigarette case from the rear seat of the Citroen. 'Why that particular trigger? Why not… religion or some kind of political will? They've ruled the world in the past.'

  'Not any longer. Politics is over, Charles, it doesn't touch the public imagination any longer. Religions emerged too early in human evolution-they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end. Sadly, crime is the only spur that rouses us. We're fascinated by that "other world" where everything is possible.'

  'Most people would say there's more than enough crime already.'

  'But not here!' Crawford gestured with the jade horse at the distant balconies beyond the alley. 'Not in the Residencia Costasol, or the retirement complexes along the coast. The future has landed, Charles, the nightmare is already being dreamed. I believe in people, and know they deserve better.'

  'You'll bring them back to Ufe – with amateur porn-films, burglary and cocaine?'

  'They're just the means. People are so hung up about sex and property and self-control. I'm not talking about crime in the sense that Cabrera thinks of it. I mean anything that breaks the rules, sidesteps the social taboos.'

  'You can't play tennis without observing the rules.'

  'But, Charles…' Crawford seemed almost lightheaded as he searched for a retort. 'When your opponent cheats, think how you raise your game.'

  We carried the last of the stolen property to the Porsche. I walked back to my car, ready to leave Crawford, but he opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat. The sun shone through the side windows of the Citroen, flushing his face with an almost fevered glow. He had been eager for me to hear him out, but I sensed that he no longer cared if anyone believed him. Despite myself, I felt drawn to him, this small-time healer moving like a mendicant preacher down the coasts of the dead. I knew that his ministry would almost certainly fail and lead to a cell in Zarzuella jail.

  'I hope it works,' I told him. 'How did Frank feel about all this? Was it his idea?'

  'No, Frank's far too moralistic. I'd thought about it for years, in fact ever since I was a child. My father was a deacon at Ely Cathedral. Unhappy man, never knew how to show affection to me or my mother. What he did like was knocking me around.'

  'Nasty-did no one report him?'

  'They didn't know, not even my mother. I was hyperactive and always banging into things. But I noticed it made him feel better. After a session with the strap he'd hold me tight and even love me. So I started getting up to all kinds of naughty pranks just to provoke him.'

  'Painful medicine. And that gave you the idea?'

  'In a way. I found that thieving and little criminal schemes could stir things up. Father knew what was going on and never tried to stop me. At the choir school he'd see me gingering up the boys before an away match, stealing from their lockers and messing up their kit. We always won by six tries to nil. The last time Father used the strap he suggested I take holy orders.'

  'Did you?'

  'No, but I was tempted. I wasted a couple of years at Cambridge reading anthropology, played a lot of tennis and then joined the army on a short-service commission. The regiment went out to Hong Kong, working with the Kowloon police. A totally demoralized bunch – morale was flat on the floor. They were waiting for the mainland Chinese to take over and send them all to Sinkiang. The villagers in the New Territories were just as bad, already paying cumshaw to the Chinese border guards. They'd lost all heart, letting the paddy fields drain and making a pittance out of smuggling.'

  'But you put a stop to that? How, exactly?'

  'I livened things up. A spot of thieving here and there, a few gallons of diesel oil in the congs where they stored their rice. Suddenly everyone was sitting up, started rebuilding the dykes and cleaning the canals.'

  'And the Kowloon police?'

  'Same thing. We had problems with cross-border migrants looking for the good life in Hong Kong. Instead of handing them back we roughed them up a little first. That did the trick with the local police. Believe me, there's nothing like a "war crime" to perk up the soldiery. It's a terrible thing to say, but war crimes do have their positive side. It's a pity I couldn't have stayed on longer, I might have put some backbone into the colony.'

  'You had to leave?'

  'After a year. The Colonel asked me to resign my commission. One of the Chinese sergeants got over-enthusiastic.'

  'He didn't appreciate that he was taking part in a… psychological experiment?'

  'I don't think he did. But it all stayed in my mind. I started playing a lot of tennis, worked at Rod Laver's club and then came here. The curious thing is that Estrella de Mar and the Residencia Costasol are rather like Kowloon.' He adjusted the rear-view mirror and stared at his reflection, nodding to himself in confirmation. 'I'll leave you, Charles. Take care.'

  'Good advice.' As he opened the door I said: 'I assume it was you who tried to strangle me?'

  I expected Crawford to be embarrassed, but he turned to stare at me with genuine concern, surprised by the stern note in my voice. 'Charles, that was… a gesture of affection. It sounds strange, but I mean it. I wanted to wake you and make you believe in yourself. It's an old interrogation technique, one of the Kowloon inspectors showed me all the pressure points. It's amazingly effective at giving people a clearer perspective on everything. You needed to be roused, Charles. Look at you now, you're almost ready to play tennis with me…'

  He held my shoulder in a friendly grip, saluted and sprinted back to the Porsche.

  Later that evening, as I stood on the balcony of Frank's apartment at the Club Nautico, I thought of Bobby Crawford and the Kowloon police. In that world of corrupt border officials and thieving villagers a young English lieutenant with a taste for violence would have fitted in like a pickpocket in a Derby Day crowd. For all his strange idealism, the Residencia Costasol would defeat him. A few bored wives might film themselves having sex with their lovers, but the attractions of t'ai chi, madrigals and volunteer committee work would soon pall. The sports club would remain deserted, leaving Elizabeth Shand to tear up her leases.

  I felt the bruises on my neck, and realized that Crawford had been recruiting me when he stepped from the darkness and seized my throat. A laying-on of hands had taken place, as he appointed me to fill Frank's vacant role. By not injuring me he had made the point that the Hollinger murders were irrelevant to the real life of Estrella de Mar and the new social order sustained by his criminal regime.

  Soon after midnight I was woken by a flash of light across the bedroo
m ceiling. I stepped on to the balcony and searched for the beacon of the Marbella lighthouse, assuming that an electrical discharge had destroyed the lantern. But the beam continued its soft circuit of the sky.

  The flames leapt from the centre of the Costasol marina. A yacht was on fire, its mast glowing like a candlewick. Cut loose from its moorings, it drifted across the open water, a fire-ship searching the darkness for a phantom fleet. But after scarcely a minute the flames seemed to snuff themselves out, and I guessed that the yacht had sunk before Bobby Crawford could rouse the Costasol residents from a slumber even deeper than sleep. Already I suspected that the yacht was the Halcyon, and that Crawford had persuaded Andersson to sail the craft from its berth at Estrella de Mar, ready to signal his arrival to the peoples of his ministry.

  The next morning, when I passed the marina on my way to the sports club, a police launch circled the debris-strewn water. A small crowd stood on the quay, watching a frogman dive to the submerged sloop. The usually silent yachts and cruisers had begun to stir with activity. A few owners were testing their rigging and engines, while their wives aired the cabins and buffed the brass. Only Andersson sat quietly in the boatyard, face as bleak as ever, smoking a roll-up cigarette as he stared at the rising sails.

  I left him to his vigil and drove across the plaza to the club. A car turned through the gates ahead of me and parked by the entrance. Two middle-aged couples, dressed in their crispest tennis whites, stepped nimbly from the car, rackets swinging in their hands.

  'Mr Prentice? Good morning to you.' One of the husbands, a retired dentist I had seen in the wine store, strolled up to me. 'We're not members, but we'd like to join. Can you sign us up?'

  'Of course.' I shook his hand and beckoned the party towards the entrance. 'You'll be glad to know that the first year's membership is entirely free.'

  Bobby Crawford's first recruits were signing on for duty.

  22 An End to Amnesia