Lying on the stone floor below this eerie spectacle was Matthew Young. He rested on his back in a scuffle of dust and cracked flagstones, his scarred mouth drawn back in a bloodless grimace to reveal the broken teeth whose caps he had crushed. He had fallen to the floor during his grand mal attack, and his outstretched fingers had torn a section of a Star Wars poster, which lay across him like a shroud. Blood pooled in a massive haematoma below his cheekbone, as if during the focal seizure of his right hand he had been trying to put out the eye with the telescopic sight of the marksman’s rifle that he clasped in his fist.
I freed his tongue and windpipe, massaged his diaphragm until his breath was even, and placed a choir cushion below his shoulders. On the floor beside him were the barrel, receiver, breech and magazine of a stockless rifle whose parts he had been oiling in the moments before his attack, and which I knew he would reassemble the instant he awoke.
Easter Day, 1988. This evening Col. Stamford’s rally will be held at Earls Court. Since his arrival in London, as a guest of Buckingham Palace, the former astronaut has been intensely busy, preparing that springboard which will propel him across the Atlantic. Three days ago he addressed the joint Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. In his televised speech he called for a crusade against the evil empire of the non-Christian world, for the construction of orbital nuclear bomb platforms, for the launching of geosynchronous laser weapons trained upon Teheran, Moscow and Peking. He seems to be demanding the destruction not merely of the Soviet Union but of the non-Christian world, the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the conversion of Islam.
It is clear that Col. Stamford is as demented as Hitler, but fortunately his last splashdown is at hand. I assume that Matthew Young will be attending the Earls Court rally this evening. I did not report him to the police, confident that he would recover in time to reassemble his rifle and make his way to one of the empty projection booths beneath the roof of the arena. Seeing Col. Stamford’s arrival from ‘outer space’, The Boy will watch him from the camera window, and listen to him urge his nuclear jihad against the forces of the anti-Christ. From that narrow but never more vital perspective, the sights of his rifle, Matthew Young will be ready once again to dismantle an illusionist space and celebrate the enduring mysteries of the Ames Room.
1984
ANSWERS TO A QUESTIONNAIRE
1) Yes.
2) Male (?)
3) c/o Terminal 3, London Airport, Heathrow.
4) Twenty-seven.
5) Unknown.
6) Dr Barnardo’s Primary, Kingston-upon-Thames; HM Borstal, Send, Surrey; Brunel University Computer Sciences Department.
7) Floor cleaner, Mecca Amusement Arcades, Leicester Square.
8) If I can avoid it.
9) Systems Analyst, Sperry-Univac, 1979–83.
10) Manchester Crown Court, 1984.
11) Credit card and computer fraud.
12) Guilty.
13) Two years, HM Prison, Parkhurst.
14) Stockhausen, de Kooning, Jack Kerouac.
15) Whenever possible.
16) Twice a day.
17) NSU, Herpes, gonorrhoea.
18) Husbands.
19) My greatest ambition is to turn into a TV programme.
20) I first saw the deceased on 17 February 1986, in the chapel at London Airport. He was praying in the front pew.
21) At the time I was living in an out-of-order cubicle in the air traffic controllers’ washroom in Terminal 3.
22) Approx. 5 ft 7 in, aged thirty-three, slim build, albino skin and thin black beard, some kind of crash injuries to both hands. At first I thought he was a Palestinian terrorist.
23) He was wearing the stolen uniform trousers of an El Al flight engineer.
24) With my last money I bought him a prawnburger in the mezzanine cafeteria. He thanked me and, although not carrying a bank-card, extracted £100 from a service till on the main concourse.
25) Already I was convinced that I was in the presence of a messianic figure who would help me to penetrate the Nat West deposit account computer codes.
26) No sexual activity occurred.
27) I took him to Richmond Ice Rink where he immediately performed six triple salchows. I urged him to take up ice-dancing with an eye to the European Championships and eventual gold at Seoul, but he began to trace out huge double spirals on the ice. I tried to convince him that these did not feature in the compulsory figures, but he told me that the spirals represented a model of synthetic DNA.
28) No.
29) He gave me to understand that he had important connections at the highest levels of government.
30) Suite 17B, London Penta Hotel. I slept on the floor in the bathroom.
31) Service tills in Oxford Street, Knightsbridge and Earls Court.
32) Approx. £275,000 in three weeks.
33) Porno videos. He took a particular interest in Kamera Klimax and Electric Blue.
34) Almost every day.
35) When he was drunk. He claimed that he brought the gift of eternal life.
36) At the Penta Hotel I tried to introduce him to Torvill and Dean. He was interested in meeting only members of the Stock Exchange and Fellows of the Royal Society.
37) Females of all ages.
38) Group sex.
39) Marie Drummond, twenty-two, sales assistant, HMV Records; Denise Attwell, thirty-seven, research supervisor, Geigy Pharmaceuticals; Florence Burgess, fifty-five, deaconess, Bible Society Bookshop; Angelina Gomez, twenty-three, air hostess, Iberian Airways; Phoebe Adams, forty-three, cruise protestor, Camp Orange, Greenham Common.
40) Sometimes, at his suggestion.
41) Unsatisfactory.
42) Premature ejaculation; impotence.
43) He urged me to have a sex-change operation.
44) National Gallery, Wallace Collection, British Museum. He was much intrigued by representations of Jesus, Zoroaster and the Gautama Buddha, and commented on the likenesses.
45) With the permission of the manager, NE District, British Telecom.
46) We erected the antenna on the roof of the Post Office Tower.
47) 2500 KHz.
48) Towards the constellation Orion.
49) I heard his voice, apparently transmitted from the star Betelgeuse 2000 years ago.
50) Interference to TV reception all over London and the South-East.
51) No. 1 in the BARB Ratings, exceeding the combined audiences for Coronation Street, Dallas and Dynasty.
52) Regular visitors included Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Dr Billy Graham.
53) He hired the Wembley Conference Centre.
54) ‘Immortality in the Service of Mankind’.
55) Guests were drawn from the worlds of science and politics, the church, armed forces and the Inland Revenue.
56) Generous fees.
57) Service tills in Mayfair and Regent Street.
58) He had a keen appreciation of money, but was not impressed when I told him of Torvill and Dean’s earnings.
59) He was obsessed by the nature of the chemical bond.
60) Sitting beside him at the top table were: (1) The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, (2) The President of the Royal Society, (3) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (4) The Chief Rabbi, (5) The Chairman of the Diners Club, (6) The Chairman of the Bank of England, (7) The General Secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, (8) The President of Hertz Rent-a-Car, (9) The President of IBM, (10) The Chief of the General Staff, (11) Dr Henry Kissinger, (12) Myself.
61) He stated that synthetic DNA introduced into the human germ plasm would arrest the process of ageing and extend human life almost indefinitely.
62) Perhaps 1 million years.
63) He announced that Princess Diana was immortal.
64) Astonishment/disbelief.
65) He advised the audience to invest heavily in leisure industries.
66) The value of the pound sterling rose to $8.75.
67) American TV networks, Time
Magazine, Newsweek.
68) The Second Coming.
69) He expressed strong disappointment at the negative attitude of the Third World.
70) The Kremlin.
71) He wanted me to become the warhead of a cruise missile.
72) My growing disenchantment.
73) Sexual malaise.
74) He complained that I was spending too much time at Richmond Ice Rink.
75) The Royal Proclamation.
76) The pound sterling rose to $75.50.
77) Prince Andrew. Repeatedly.
78) Injection into the testicles.
79) The side-effects were permanent impotence and sterility. However, as immortality was ensured, no further offspring would be needed and the procreative urge would atrophy.
80) I seriously considered a sex-change operation.
81) Government White Paper on Immortality.
82) Compulsory injection into the testicles of the entire male population over eleven years.
83) Smith & Wesson short-barrel thirty-eight.
84) Entirely my own idea.
85) Many hours at Richmond Ice Rink trying unsuccessfully to erase the patterns of DNA.
86) Westminster Hall.
87) Premeditated. I questioned his real motives.
88) Assassination.
89) I was neither paid nor incited by agents of a foreign power.
90) Despair. I wish to go back to my cubicle at London Airport.
91) Between Princess Diana and the Governor of Nevada.
92) At the climax of Thus Spake Zarathustra.
93) Seven feet.
94) Three shots.
95) Blood Group O.
96) I did not wish to spend the rest of eternity in my own company.
97) I was visited in the death cell by the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
98) That I had killed the Son of God.
99) He walked with a slight limp. He told me that, as a condemned prisoner, I alone had been spared the sterilising injections, and that the restoration of the national birthrate was now my sole duty.
100) Yes.
1985
THE MAN WHO WALKED ON THE MOON
I, too, was once an astronaut. As you see me sitting here, in this modest café with its distant glimpse of Copacabana Beach, you probably assume that I am a man of few achievements. The shabby briefcase between my worn heels, the stained suit with its frayed cuffs, the unsavoury hands ready to seize the first offer of a free drink, the whole air of failure . . . no doubt you think that I am a minor clerk who has missed promotion once too often, and that I amount to nothing, a person of no past and less future.
For many years I believed this myself. I had been abandoned by the authorities, who were glad to see me exiled to another continent, reduced to begging from the American tourists. I suffered from acute amnesia, and certain domestic problems with my wife and my mother. They now share my small apartment at Ipanema, while I am forced to live in a room above the projection booth of the Luxor Cinema, my thoughts drowned by the sound-tracks of science-fiction films.
So many tragic events leave me unsure of myself. Nonetheless, my confidence is returning, and a sense of my true history and worth. Chapters of my life are still hidden from me, and seem as jumbled as the film extracts which the projectionists screen each morning as they focus their cameras. I have still forgotten my years of training, and my mind bars from me any memory of the actual space-flights. But I am certain that I was once an astronaut.
Years ago, before I went into space, I followed many professions – freelance journalist, translator, on one occasion even a war correspondent sent to a small war, which unfortunately was never declared. I was in and out of newspaper offices all day, hoping for that one assignment that would match my talents.
Sadly, all this effort failed to get me to the top, and after ten years I found myself displaced by a younger generation. A certain reticence in my character, a sharpness of manner, set me off from my fellow journalists. Even the editors would laugh at me behind my back. I was given trivial assignments – film reviewing, or writing reports on office-equipment fairs. When the circulation wars began, in a doomed response to the onward sweep of television, the editors openly took exception to my waspish style. I became a part-time translator, and taught for an hour each day at a language school, but my income plummeted. My mother, whom I had supported for many years, was forced to leave her home and join my wife and myself in our apartment at Ipanema.
At first my wife resented this, but soon she and my mother teamed up against me. They became impatient with the hours I spent delaying my unhappy visits to the single newspaper office that still held out hope – my journey to work was a transit between one door slammed on my heels and another slammed in my face.
My last friend at the newspaper commiserated with me, as I stood forlornly in the lobby. ‘For heaven’s sake, find a human-interest story! Something tender and affecting, that’s what they want upstairs – life isn’t an avant-garde movie!’
Pondering this sensible advice, I wandered into the crowded streets. I dreaded the thought of returning home without an assignment. The two women had taken to opening the apartment door together. They would stare at me accusingly, almost barring me from my own home.
Around me were the million faces of the city. People strode past, so occupied with their own lives that they almost pushed me from the pavement. A million human interest stories, of a banal and pointless kind, an encyclopaedia of mediocrity . . . Giving up, I left Copacabana Avenue and took refuge among the tables of a small café in a side-street.
It was there that I met the American astronaut, and began my own career in space.
The café terrace was almost deserted, as the office workers returned to their desks after lunch. Behind me, in the shade of the canvas awning, a fair-haired man in a threadbare tropical suit sat beside an empty glass. Guarding my coffee from the flies, I gazed at the small segment of sea visible beyond Copacabana Beach. Slowed by their mid-day meals, groups of American and European tourists strolled down from the hotels, waving away the jewellery salesmen and lottery touts. Perhaps I would visit Paris or New York, make a new life for myself as a literary critic . . .
A tartan shirt blocked my view of the sea and its narrow dream of escape. An elderly American, camera slung from his heavy neck, leaned across the table, his grey-haired wife in a loose floral dress beside him.
‘Are you the astronaut?’ the woman asked in a friendly but sly way, as if about to broach an indiscretion. ‘The hotel said you would be at this café...’
‘An astronaut?’
‘Yes, the astronaut Commander Scranton . . . ?’
‘No, I regret that I’m not an astronaut.’ Then it occurred to me that this provincial couple, probably a dentist and his wife from the corn-belt, might benefit from a well-informed courier. Perhaps they imagined that their cruise ship had berthed at Miami? I stood up, managing a gallant smile. ‘Of course, I’m a qualified translator. If you –’
‘No, no . . .’ Dismissing me with a wave, they moved through the empty tables. ‘We came to see Mr Scranton.’
Baffled by this bizarre exchange, I watched them approach the man in the tropical suit. A nondescript fellow in his late forties, he had thinning blond hair and a strong-jawed American face from which all confidence had long been drained. He stared in a resigned way at his hands, which waited beside his empty glass, as if unable to explain to them that little refreshment would reach them that day. He was clearly undernourished, perhaps an ex-seaman who had jumped ship, one of thousands of down-and-outs trying to live by their wits on some of the hardest pavements in the world.
However, he looked up sharply enough as the elderly couple approached him. When they repeated their question about the astronaut he beckoned them to a seat. To my surprise, the waiter was summoned, and drinks were brought to the table. The husband unpacked his camera, while a relaxed conversation took place between his wife an
d this seedy figure.
‘Dear, don’t forget Mr Scranton . . .’
‘Oh, please forgive me.’
The husband removed several bank-notes from his wallet. His wife passed them across the table to Scranton, who then stood up. Photographs were taken, first of Scranton standing next to the smiling wife, then of the husband grinning broadly beside the gaunt American. The source of all this good humour eluded me, as it did Scranton, whose eyes stared gravely at the street with a degree of respect due to the surface of the moon. But already a second group of tourists had walked down from Copacabana Beach, and I heard more laughter when one called out: ‘There’s the astronaut . . . !’
Quite mystified, I watched a further round of photographs being taken. The couples stood on either side of the American, grinning away as if he were a camel driver posing for pennies against a backdrop of the pyramids.
I ordered a small brandy from the waiter. He had ignored all this, pocketing his tips with a straight face.
‘This fellow . . . ?’ I asked. ‘Who is he? An astronaut?’
‘Of course . . .’ The waiter flicked a bottle-top into the air and treated the sky to a knowing sneer. ‘Who else but the man in the moon?’
The tourists had gone, strolling past the leatherware and jewellery stores. Alone now after his brief fame, the American sat among the empty glasses, counting the money he had collected.
The man in the moon?
Then I remembered the newspaper headline, and the exposé I had read two years earlier of this impoverished American who claimed to have been an astronaut, and told his story to the tourists for the price of a drink. At first almost everyone believed him, and he had become a popular figure in the hotel lobbies along Copacabana Beach. Apparently he had flown on one of the Apollo missions from Cape Kennedy in the 1970s, and his long-jawed face and stoical pilot’s eyes seemed vaguely familiar from the magazine photographs. He was properly reticent, but if pressed with a tourist dollar could talk convincingly about the early lunar flights. In its way it was deeply moving to sit at a café table with a man who had walked on the moon . . .
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 161