In the morning two men came from the garage in Ecuatan to reclaim the car which Vandervell had hired. He offered to pay a month’s rent in advance, but they rejected this and pointed at the clinkers that had fallen on to the car from the sky. None of them was hot enough to burn the paintwork. Vandervell gave them each fifty dollars and promised to cover the car with a tarpaulin. Satisfied, the men drove away.
After breakfast Vandervell walked out across the lava seams to the road. The stick-dancer stood by his hole above the bank, resting his hands on the two spears. The cone of the volcano, partly hidden by the dust, trembled behind his back. He watched Vandervell when he shouted across the road. Vandervell took a dollar bill from his wallet and placed it under a stone. The stick-man began to hum and rock on the balls of his feet.
As Vandervell walked back along the road two of the villagers approached.
‘Guide,’ he said to them. ‘Ten dollars. One hour.’ He pointed to the lip of the crater but the men ignored him and continued along the road.
The surface of the house had once been white, but was now covered with grey dust. Two hours later, when the manager of the estate below the house rode up on a grey horse Vandervell asked: ‘Is your horse white or black?’
‘That’s a good question, señor.’
‘I want to hire a guide,’ Vandervell said. ‘To take me into the volcano.’
‘There’s nothing there, señor.’
‘I want to look around the crater. I need someone who knows the pathways.’
‘It’s full of smoke, Señor Vandervell. Hot sulphur. Burns the eyes. You wouldn’t like it.’
‘Do you remember seeing someone called Springman?’ Vandervell said. ‘About three months ago.’
‘You asked me that before. I remember two Americans with a scientific truck. Then a Dutchman with white hair.’
‘That could be him.’
‘Or maybe black, eh? As you say.’
A rattle of sticks sounded from the road. After warming up, the stick-dancer had begun his performance in earnest.
‘You’d better get out of here, Señor Vandervell,’ the manager said. ‘The mountain could split one day.’
Vandervell pointed to the stick-dancer. ‘He’ll hold it off for a while.’
The manager rode away. ‘My respects to Mrs Vandervell.’
‘Miss Winston.’
Vandervell went into the lounge and stood by the window. During the day the activity of the volcano increased. The column of smoke rose half a mile into the sky, threaded by gleams of flame.
The rumbling woke the woman. In the kitchen she spoke to the house-boy.
‘He wants to leave,’ she said to Vandervell afterwards.
‘Offer him more money,’ he said without turning.
‘He says everyone has left now. It’s too dangerous to stay. The men in the village are leaving for good this afternoon.’
Vandervell watched the stick-dancer twirling his devil-sticks like a drum-major. ‘Let him go if he wants to. I think the estate manager saw Springman.’
‘That’s good. Then he was here.’
‘The manager sent his respects to you.’
‘I’m charmed.’
Five minutes later, when the house-boy had gone, she returned to her bedroom. During the afternoon she came out to collect the film magazines in the bookcase.
Vandervell watched the smoke being pumped from the volcano. Now and then the devil-sticks man climbed out of his hole and danced on a mound of lava by the road. The men came down from the village for the last time. They looked at the stick-dancer as they walked on down the road.
At eight o’clock in the morning a police truck drove up to the village, reversed and came down again. Its roof and driving cabin were covered with ash. The policemen did not see the stick-dancer, but they saw Vandervell in the window of the house and stopped outside.
‘Get out!’ one of the policemen shouted. ‘You must go now! Take your car! What’s the matter?’
Vandervell opened the window. ‘The car is all right. We’re staying for a few days. Gracias, Sergeant.’
‘No! Get out!’ The policeman climbed down from the cabin. ‘The mountain – pfft! Dust, burning!’ He took off his cap and waved it. ‘You go now.’
As he remonstrated Vandervell closed the window and took his jacket off the chair. Inside he felt for his wallet.
After he had paid the policemen they saluted and drove away. The woman came out of the bedroom.
‘You’re lucky your father is rich,’ she said. ‘What would you do if he was poor?’
‘Springman was poor,’ Vandervell said. He took his handkerchief from his jacket. The dust was starting to seep into the house. ‘Money only postpones one’s problems.’
‘How long are you going to stay? Your father told me to keep an eye on you.’
‘Relax. I won’t come to any mischief here.’
‘Is that a joke? With this volcano over our heads?’
Vandervell pointed to the stick-dancer. ‘It doesn’t worry him. This mountain has been active for fifty years.’
‘Then why do we have to come here now?’
‘I’m looking for Springman. I think he came here three months ago.’
‘Where is he? Up in the village?’
‘I doubt it. He’s probably five thousand miles under our feet, sucked down by the back-pressure. A century from now he’ll come up through Vesuvius.’
‘I hope not.’
‘Have you thought of that, though? It’s a wonderful idea.’
‘No. Is that what you’re planning for me?’
Cinders hissed in the roof tank, spitting faintly like boiling rain.
‘Think of them, Gloria – Pompeiian matrons, Aztec virgins, bits of old Prometheus himself, they’re raining down on the just and the unjust.’
‘What about your friend Springman?’
‘Now that you remind me . . .’ Vandervell raised a finger to the ceiling. ‘Let’s listen. What’s the matter?’
‘Is that why you came here? To think of Springman being burnt to ashes?’
‘Don’t be a fool.’ Vandervell turned to the window.
‘What are you worrying about, anyway?’
‘Nothing,’ Vandervell said. ‘For once in a long time I’m not worrying about anything at all.’ He rubbed the pane with his sleeve. ‘Where’s the old devil-boy? Don’t tell me he’s gone.’ He peered through the falling dust. ‘There he is.’
The figure stood on the ridge above the road, illuminated by the flares from the crater. A pall of ash hung in the air around him.
‘What’s he waiting for?’ the woman asked. ‘Another dollar?’
‘A lot more than a dollar,’ Vandervell said. ‘He’s waiting for me.’
‘Don’t burn your fingers,’ she said, closing the door.
That afternoon, when she came into the lounge after waking up, she found that Vandervell had left. She went to the window and looked up towards the crater. The falls of ash and cinders obscured the village, and hundreds of embers glowed on the lava flows. Through the dust she could see the explosions inside the crater lighting up the rim.
Vandervell’s jacket lay over a chair. She waited for three hours for him to return. By this time the noise from the crater was continuous. The lava flows dragged and heaved like chains, shaking the walls of the house.
At five o’clock Vandervell had not come back. A second crater had opened in the summit of the volcano, into which part of the village had fallen. When she was sure that the devil-sticks man had gone, the woman took the money from Vandervell’s jacket and drove down the mountain.
1964
THE BEACH MURDERS
Introduction
Readers hoping to solve the mystery of the Beach Murders – involving a Romanoff Princess, a CIA agent, two of his Russian counterparts and an American limbo dancer – may care to approach it in the form of the card game with which Quimby, the absconding State Department cipher chief, amused himse
lf in his hideaway on the Costa Blanca. The principal clues have therefore been alphabetized. The correct key might well be a familiar phrase, e.g. PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH, or meaningless, e.g. qwertyuiop . . . etc. Obviously any number of solutions is possible, and a final answer to the mystery, like the motives and character of Quimby himself, lies forever hidden
Auto-erotic
As always after her bath, the reflection of her naked body filled the Princess with a profound sense of repose. In the triptych of mirrors above the dressing table she gazed at the endless replicas of herself, the scent of the Guerlain heliotrope soothing her slight migraine. She lowered her arms as the bedroom door opened. Through the faint mist of talcum she recognized the handsome, calculating face of the Russian agent whose photograph she had seen in Statler’s briefcase that afternoon.
Brassière
Statler waded through the breaking surf. The left cup of the brassière in his hand was stained with blood. He bent down and washed it in the warm water. The pulsing headlamps of the Mercedes parked below the corniche road lit up the cove. Where the hell was Lydia? Somewhere along the beach a woman with a bloody breast would frighten the wits out of the Russian landing party.
Cordobés
The self-contained face of the bullfighter, part gamin, part Beatle, lay below Quimby as he set out the cards on the balcony table. Whatever else they said about the boy, he never moved his feet. By contrast Raissa was pacing around the bedroom like a tigress in rut. Quimby could hear her wide Slavic hips brushing against his Paisley dressing gown behind the escritoire. What these obsessives in Moscow and Washington failed to realize was that for once he might have no motive at all.
Drinamyl
Those bloody little capsules, Raissa thought. No wonder the West was dying. Every time she was ready to lure Quimby over to Sir Giles’s villa he took one of the tranquillizers, then went down to the sea and talked to the beachniks. At Benidorm he even had the nerve to bring one of the Swedish girls back to the apartment. Hair down to her knees, breasts like thimbles, the immense buttocks of a horse. Ugh.
Embonpoint
The Princess slid the remains of the eclair into her mouth. As she swallowed the pastry she pouted her cream-filled lips at Statler. He lowered his rolled-up copy of Time Atlantic, with its photo of Quimby before the House Committee. The dancers moved around the tea-terrace to the soft rhythm of the fox-trot. There was something sensuous, almost sexual, about Manon’s compulsive eating of eclairs. This magnificent Serbo-Croat cow, had she any idea what was going to happen to her?
Fata Morgana
Lydia felt his hand move along the plastic zipper of her dress. She lay on the candlewick bedspread, gazing at the sea and the white sand. Apart from the dotty English milord who had rented the villa to them the place was empty. As Kovarski hesitated the silence seemed to amplify all the uncertainties she had noticed since their arrival at San Juan. The meeting at the nudist colony on the Isle du Levant had not been entirely fortuitous. She reached up and loosened the zip. As her breasts came out she turned to face him. Kovarski was sitting up on one elbow, staring through his Zeiss binoculars at the apartment block three hundred yards along the beach.
Guardia Civil
Quimby watched the olive-uniformed policemen ambling along the shore, their quaint Napoleonic hats shielding their eyes as they scanned the girls on the beach. When it came to the crunch, on whose side would they see themselves – Stat’s, the Russians’, or his own? Quimby shuffled the Cordobés-backed cards. The platinum-haired call-girl who lived in the next apartment was setting off for Alicante in her pink Fiat. Quimby sipped his whisky. Five minutes earlier he had discovered the concealed aerial of Raissa’s transmitter.
Heterodyne
Kovarski was worried. The sight of Raissa’s body on the pony skin reminded him that Statler was still to be reckoned with. The piercing whistle from the portable radio confirmed that Raissa had been lying there since dusk. He knelt down, eyes lingering for a last moment on the silver clasps of her Gossard suspenders. He put his finger in her mouth and ran it around her gums, searching for the capsule. A cherry popped into his palm. With a grimace he dropped it into the vodkatini by the radio. He opened Raissa’s right hand and from the frozen clasp of her thumb and forefinger removed the capsule. As he read the message his brow furrowed. What the devil had the Princess to do with Quimby? Was this some insane CIA plot to restore the Romanoffs?
Iguana
The jade reptile shattered on the tiled floor at Sir Giles’s feet. With an effort he regained his balance. Pretending to straighten his Old Etonian tie, he touched the painful bruise under his breast-bone. He looked up at the tough, square-jawed face of the American girl. Would she hit him again? She glared at him contemptuously, bare feet planted wide on the pony skin. Ah well, he thought, there had been worse moments. At Dunkirk the bombs falling from the Stukas had made the beach drum like a dancing floor.
Jasmine
Statler gazed at the white salver-shaped flowers in the lobby. Their nacreous petals, bled of all colour, reminded him of Manon’s skin, and then of Quimby’s large pallid face, with its too-intelligent eyes watching over the sunken cheeks like a snide Buddha’s. Was the exchange a fair one, the Princess for the complex, moody cipher chief? He walked out through the revolving doors of the hotel into the bright Alicante sunlight, realizing with a pang that he would never see Manon again.
Kleenex
Raissa bent forwards over the bed. With the ring finger of her right hand she lifted her eyelid. For a moment the elegant mask of her face was contorted like an obscene paroquet’s. She tapped the lower lid and the micro-lens jumped on to the tissue. The minute R on its rim shone in the beam of the Anglepoise. She wiped the lenses and placed them in the polarimeter. As the door of the safe opened, revealing the dials of the transmitter, she listened to Quimby singing Arrivederci Roma in the bathroom. All that drinamyl and whisky would keep the pig drowsy for at least an hour.
Limbo
The bar had been a mere twelve inches from the floor, Kovarski recollected, as he felt the hard curve of Lydia’s iliac crest under the midnight blue stretch pants. For once the nightclub in Benidorm was hushed, everyone watching as this demented American girl with the incredible thighs had edged under the bar, hips jerking to the throb of the juke-box. Kovarski picked his nose, involuntarily thinking about Stat. The CIA man had a face like ice.
Mercedes
The brake servos had gone. Holding the hand-brake, Lydia groped behind Kovarski’s chest for the off-side door handle. The Russian lay against the sill, his handsome face beginning to sag like the first slide of an avalanche. As the door opened he fell backwards on to the gravel. Lydia released the hand-brake and let the car roll forward. When Kovarski had gone she wound up the window, elegantly starred by the bullet which had passed through the door. She flashed the headlamps for the last time and pressed the starter.
Neapolitan
Raissa finished off the remains of Quimby’s ice-cream with the eager lips of a child. In three hours they would be six fathoms under the Mediterranean, due to surface for the first time in the Baltic. She would miss the sunlight, and the small, dark Spaniards with their melancholy eyes following her down the dusty street to the bodega. In the end it would be worth it. Throw away the Man-Tan, as Kovarski often quoted to her in his mock-Yevtushenko, the sky will soon be full of suns.
Oceanid
For a moment Manon realized that Kovarski was undecided whether to rape or kill her. She backed into the bathroom, her left hand covering her powdered breasts. The trapped steam billowed into Kovaraski’s face. He goggled at her like an insane student in a Dostoevski novel. He stepped across the cork bathmat and took her elbow in a surprisingly tender gesture. Then the alabaster soap-dish caught her on the side of the head. A second later she was lying in a hot mess in the bath, Kovarski’s arms moving over her head like pistons.
Poseidon
Quimby handled the bottle of Black Label with a respect
due their long acquaintance. The proto-Atlantic ocean had covered all North America and Europe except for Scotland, leaving intact a percolation system 300 million years old. As he filled his glass he watched Sir Giles’s villa on the bluff above the cove. The swarthy Russian and his American beatnik had moved in yesterday. No doubt Stat was at the Carlton in Alicante. Quimby set out the cards for the last game. The hand would be hard to play, but luckily he was still dealing.
Quietus
Statler was dying in the dark surf. As the Russian bosun let him drift away in the shallow water he was thinking of the Princess and her immense brown nipples. Had she borne a child then, keeping alive the fading memories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? The burning wreck of the Mercedes shone through the water, illuminating the bodies of the two Russians being dragged towards the dinghy. Statler lay back in the cold water as his blood ran out into the sea.
Remington
Lydia knelt by Kovarski’s Travel-Riter. In the courtyard below the bedroom window Sir Giles was setting off for Alicante in his battered Citroe¨n. That twitching old goat, did the English ever think about anything else? She removed the hood from the typewriter, then peered at the new ribbon she had inserted while Kovarski was in San Juan. The imprint of the letters shone in the sunlight. She jotted them on to the bridge pad, then tore off the sheet and slipped it into the left cup of her brassière.
Smith & Wesson
Kovarski blundered through the darkness among the dunes. Below him the surf broke like a lace shawl on the beach. The whole operation was going to pieces. By now Raissa should have been here with Quimby. He climbed the slope up to the Mercedes. As he felt for the pistol in the glove compartment something moved on the gravel behind him. The gun-flash lit up the interior of the car. Kovarski fell sideways across the seat. The second bullet passed through his chest and went on into the off-side door.
Tranquillizer
Statler opened the capsule and drew out the folded tissue. In Raissa’s untouched vodkatini the rice paper flared like a Japanese water-flower. He fished it out with the toothpick and laid it on the salver. So this was how they made contact. He looked down at the body on the pony skin and smiled to himself. With luck Kovarski would literally eat his own words. As he turned the Russian girl over with his foot the cherry popped from her mouth. He pushed it back between her lips and went over to the Travel-Riter.
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 97