The Drought

by J. G. Ballard

  Ransom shook his head. ‘I don’t agree, Richard,’ he said. ‘I think she’s beautiful.’

  Lomax gazed after him, apparently stunned by this remark. Ransom set off across the sand. Watching him in the distance from a dune above the swimming pool, the last smoke of the signal fire rising beside him, was the stilted figure of Quilter, the swan’s head wavering against the evening sky.

  39

  THE ANDROGYNE

  FOR THE NEXT WEEK Ransom remained with Quilter and Miranda, watching the disintegration of Richard Lomax. Ransom decided that as soon as possible he would continue his journey across the drained lake, but at night he could hear the sounds of the lions baying among the dunes. The tall figure of Jonas would move along the lakeside road through the darkness, calling in his deep voice to the lions, which grumbled back at him. Their survival, confirming the fisher-captain’s obsession with a lost river or lake, convinced Ransom that as soon as he had recovered he should carry on his search.

  During the day he sat in the shade of the ruined loggia beside the swimming pool. In the morning he went off towards the city with Whitman and Quilter to forage for food. At intervals among the dunes deep shafts had been sunk into the basements of the sometime supermarkets. They would slide down them and crawl among the old freezer plant, mining out a few cans from the annealed sand. Most of them had perished, and the rancid contents were flung to the dogs or left among the rubble, where the few birds picked at them. Ransom was not surprised to find that Quilter’s food stores consisted of barely a day’s supplies, nor that he was becoming progressively less interested in replenishing them. He seemed to accept that the coming end of the water in the reservoir would commit him finally to the desert, and that the drained river would now take him on its own terms.

  Quilter built a small hutch for his mother in the entrance hall of the house. She retired here in the evenings after spending the day with Miranda and the children.

  Ransom slept in one of the wrecked cars near the pool. Whitman lived in the next vehicle, but after Ransom’s arrival he moved off with his dogs and took up residence inside a drained fountain fifty yards from Lomax’s pavilion. Keeping to himself, he would snarl and grumble whenever Ransom approached.

  Quilter, however, spent much of his time wandering around the edge of the pool, almost as if he were trying to form some sort of relationship with Ransom, though unable to find a point of contact. Sometimes he would sit down in the dust a few feet from Ransom, letting the children climb over his shoulders and pull at his furs and swan’s cap.

  At intervals this placid domestic scene would be interrupted by the appearance of Richard Lomax. His performances, as Ransom regarded them, usually took the same form.

  Shortly before noon there was a sudden commotion from the pavilion, and sound of gongs ringing from the gilded spires. Quilter listened to this impassively, drawing obscure patterns in the dust with a finger for his children to puzzle over. There was a shout and crackle as Lomax let off a firework. It fizzed away across the dunes, the bright trail dissolving crisply in the warm air. At last Lomax himself emerged, fully accoutred and pomaded, mincing out in his preposterous grey silk suit. Frowning angrily, he waved his arms, shouting insults at Quilter, and pointing repeatedly towards the reservoir. As Quilter leaned back on one elbow, Whitman crept up on Lomax with his dogs.

  Lomax’s tirade then mounted to a frenzied babble, his face working itself into a grotesque mask. Watching this tottering desert androgyne, Ransom could see that Lomax was reverting to a primitive level where the differentiation into male and female no longer occurred.

  At last, when the children seemed frightened, Quilter signalled to Whitman and a dog was let off at Lomax. In a flash of white fur the beast hurled itself at the architect, who turned and fled, slamming the jewelled door into the dog’s face.

  For the rest of the day there was silence, until the performance the following morning. Although the fire-crackers and grimacing had presumably been effective during the previous years in dispersing other desert nomads who stumbled upon the oasis, Quilter seemed immune.

  Brooding most of the time, and aware of the coming crisis in their lives, he sat among the dunes by the pool, playing with his children, and with the birds who ventured up to his hands to collect the pieces of rancid meat. He fondled them all with a strange pity, as if he knew that this temporary calm would soon give way and was trying to free them from the need for water and food. Once or twice, as Quilter played with the birds, Ransom heard a strangled croak, and saw the crushed plumage twisting slowly in Quilter’s hands. Ransom watched the children as they waddled about under their swollen heads and played with the dead birds, half-expecting Quilter to snap their necks in a sudden access of violence.

  More and more Quilter treated Whitman and Ransom in the same way, switching them out of his path with a fur-topped staff. For the time being Ransom accepted these blows, as a bond between himself and the further possibilities of his life into which Quilter was leading him. Only with Miranda did Quilter retain his equable temper. The two of them would sit together in the concrete pool, as the water evaporated in the reservoir and the dunes outside drew nearer, a last Eve and Adam waiting for time’s end.

  Ransom saw nothing of Philip Jordan or Catherine. One morning when they climbed the dunes by the reservoir, a familiar dark-faced figure was filling a canteen by the water. Quilter barely noticed him as he strode stiffly across the wet sand on his stilts, and by the time Whitman had released the dogs Philip had vanished.

  Catherine Austen never appeared, but at night they heard the lions coming nearer, crying from the dunes by the lakeside.

  40

  THE DEAD BIRD

  ‘QUILTER, YOU obscene beast! Come here, my Caliban, show yourself to your master!’

  Sitting among the metal litter by the pool, Ransom ignored the shouts from Lomax’s pavilion and continued to play with the eldest of Quilter’s children. The five-year-old boy was his favourite companion. A large birth-scar disfigured his right cheek and illuminated his face like a star. His eyes hovered below his swollen forehead like shy dragonflies. Each time Ransom held out his hands he touched the hand containing the stone with unerring insight. Occasionally, he would reverse his choice, picking the empty hand as if out of sympathy.

  ‘Caliban! For the last time . . . !’

  Ransom looked up. Lomax had advanced twenty yards from his pavilion, the sunlight shimmering off his silk suit. He postured among the low dunes, his small powdered face puckered like a shrivelled fig. In one hand he waved a silver-topped cane like a wand.

  ‘Quilter . . . !’ Lomax’s voice rose to a shriek. Quilter had gone off somewhere, and he could see Ransom sitting among the fallen columns of the loggia, like a mendicant attached to the fringes of a tribal court.

  Ransom nodded to the child. ‘Go on. Which one?’ The child watched him with its vivid smile, eyes wide as if about to divulge some delightful secret. It shook its head, arms held behind its back. Reluctantly Ransom opened his empty hands.

  ‘Pretty good.’ Ransom pointed at the shouting figure of Lomax. ‘It looks as if your father is using the same trick. I’m afraid Mr Lomax isn’t as clever as you.’ He pulled a tin from his pocket and took off the lid. Inside were two pieces of dried meat. First wiping his fingers, he gave one to the child. Holding it tightly, it toddled away among the ruins.

  Ransom leaned back against the column. He was debating when to leave the oasis and take his chances with the lions when a stinging blow struck his left arm above the elbow.

  He looked up to find Lomax grimacing over him, silver-topped cane in one hand.

  ‘Ransom . . . !’ he hissed. ‘Get out . . . !’ His suit was puffed up, the lapels flaring like the gills of an angry fish. ‘You’re stealing my water! Get out!’

  ‘Richard, for God’s sake—’ Ransom stood up. There was a soft clatter among t
he stones, and the child reappeared. In its hands it carried a small white gull, apparently dead, its wings neatly furled.

  Lomax gazed down at the child, a demented Prospero examining the offspring of his violated daughter. He looked around at the dusty garbage-strewn oasis, stunned by the horror of this island infested by nightmares. Exasperated beyond all restraint, he raised his cane to strike the child. It stepped back, eyes suddenly still, and opened its hands. With a squawk the bird rose into the air and fluttered past Lomax’s face.

  There was a shout across the dunes. The stilted figure of Quilter came striding over the rubble a hundred yards away, furs lifting in the sunlight. Beside him Whitman was pushing along the broken figure of Jonas, the dogs tearing at the rags of his trousers.

  Ignoring Ransom, Lomax spun on his white shoes and raced off across the sand. The dogs broke leash and ran after him, Quilter at their heels, the stilts carrying him in six-foot strides. Whitman fumbled with the leash, and Jonas straightened up and swung a fist at the back of his neck, felling him to the ground. Whitman scrambled to his feet, and Jonas unfurled the net from his waist and with a twist of his hands rolled Whitman into the dust.

  Halfway to the pavilion Lomax turned to face the dogs. From his pockets he pulled out handfuls of fire-crackers, and hurled them down at their feet. The thunderflashes burst and flared, and the dogs broke off as Quilter charged through them.

  He reached one hand towards Lomax. There was a gleam of silver in the air and a long blade appeared from the shaft of Lomax’s cane. He darted forward on one foot and pierced Quilter’s shoulder. Before Quilter could recover, he danced off behind the safety of the doors.

  Gazing at the blood on his hand, Quilter walked back to the swimming pool, the gongs beating from the pavilion behind him. Glancing at Ransom, who was holding his child, he shouted to Whitman. The two men called the dogs together and set off along the river in pursuit of Jonas.

  41

  A DROWNING

  AN HOUR LATER, when they had not returned, Ransom carried the child down into the pool.

  ‘Doctor, do come in,’ Miranda greeted him, as he pushed back the flaps of the inner courtyard. ‘Have I missed another of Richard’s firework displays?’

  ‘Probably the last,’ Ransom said. ‘It wasn’t meant to amuse.’

  Miranda gestured him into a chair. In a cubicle beyond the curtain the old woman was crooning herself to sleep. Miranda sat up on one elbow. Her sleek face and giant body covered by its black negligé made her look like a large seal reclining on the floor of its pool. Each day her features seemed to be smaller, the minute mouth with its cupid’s lips subsiding into the overlaying flesh, just as the objects in the river had become submerged by the enveloping sand.

  ‘Your brother’s obsessed by the water in the reservoir,’ Ransom said. ‘If Richard goes on provoking Quilter there may be a blood-bath.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Miranda fanned herself with a plump hand. ‘Quilter is still a child. He wouldn’t hurt Richard.’

  ‘Miranda, I’ve seen him crush a sea-gull to death in one hand.’

  Miranda waved this aside. ‘That’s to show he understands it. It’s a sign he loves the bird.’

  Ransom shook his head. ‘Perhaps, but it’s a fierce love.’

  ‘What love isn’t?’

  Ransom looked up, noticing the barely concealed question in her voice. Miranda lay on the divan, watching him with her bland eyes. She seemed unaware of the dunes and dust around her. Ransom went over to her. Taking her hands, he sat down on the divan. ‘Miranda . . . ’ he began.

  Looking at her great seal-like waist, he thought of the dead fishermen whose bodies had helped to swell its girth, drowned here in its warm seas, unnamed Jonahs reborn in the idiot-children. He remembered Quilter and the long knives in the crossed shoulder-­straps under his furs, but the danger seemed to recede. The resolution of everything during his journey from the coast carried with it the equation of all emotions and relationships. Simultaneously he would become the children’s father and Quilter’s brother, Mrs Quilter’s son and Miranda’s husband. Only Lomax, the androgyne, remained isolated, mentally as he was sexually.

  He watched Miranda’s smile form itself, and the image of a river flowed through his mind, a clear stream that illuminated the sunlight.

  ‘Doctor!’ Mrs Quilter’s frightened face poked through the tenting. ‘There’s water everywhere, doctor!’

  Ransom pulled back the canopy. Running across the floor of the pool was a steady stream of water, pouring off the concrete verge above. The water swilled along, soaking the piles of bedding, and then ran to the fireplace in the centre where the tiles had been removed. The embers began to hiss and steam, sending up a shower of damp soot.

  ‘Miranda, take the children!’ Ransom pulled Miranda to her feet. ‘The water’s running out of the reservoir! I’ll try to head Lomax off.’

  As he climbed the stairway out of the pool Quilter and Whitman raced past, the dogs at their heels. Winding between the dunes were a dozen arms of silver water, pouring across the bleached sand from the direction of the reservoir. Ransom splashed through them, feeling the pressure of the water as it broke and spurted. Beyond the next line of dunes there was a deeper channel. Three feet wide, the water slid away among the ruined walls, sucked down by the porous earth.

  Quilter flung himself along on his stilts. Whitman followed with the dogs, hunting bayonet clasped in his teeth. They splashed through the water, barely pausing to watch its progress, and then reached the embankment. Quilter shouted, and the long-legged figure of Jonas, kneeling by the water with his net, took off like a startled hare around the verges of the reservoir. The dogs bounded after him, kicking the wet sand into a damp spray.

  Ransom leaned against a chimney stump. The reservoir was almost drained, the shallow pool in the centre gliding out in a last quiet wave. At four or five points around the reservoir large breaches had been cut in the bank. The edges of the damp basin were already drying in the sunlight.

  Quilter stopped by the bank and gazed down at the vanishing mirror. His swan’s hat hung over one ear. Absent-mindedly he pulled it off and let it fall on to the wet sand.

  Ransom watched the chase around the opposite bank. Jonas was halfway around the reservoir, arms held out at his sides like wings as he raced up and down the dunes. The dogs gained on him, leaping at his back. Once he stumbled, and a dog tore the shirt from his shoulders.

  Then two more figures appeared, running out of the dunes across the dogs’ path, and Ransom heard the roaring of the white lions.

  ‘Catherine.’ As he shouted she was running beside the lions, driving them on with her whip. Behind her was Philip Jordan, a canteen strapped to his back, spear in one hand. He feinted with the spear at Whitman as the dogs veered and scuttled away from the lions, scrambling frantically across the empty basin of the reservoir. Catherine and the lions ran on, disappearing across the dunes as suddenly as they had come. Still running, Philip Jordan took Jonas’s arm, but the older man broke free and darted off between the dunes.

  A dog crossed the empty pool, tail between its legs, and sped past Ransom. As he and Quilter turned to follow it they saw the tottering figure of Richard Lomax on the bank fifty yards away. The sounds of flight and pursuit faded, and Lomax’s laughter crossed the settling air.

  ‘Quilter, you bloody fool. . . !’ he managed to get out, choking in a paroxysm of mirth. The pleated trousers of his silk suit were soaked to the knees, the ruffs of his jacket spattered with wet sand. A spade lay on the bank behind him.

  Ransom looked back towards the house. Beyond the bank, where only a few minutes earlier deep streams of water had raced along, the wet channels were drained and empty. The water had sunk without trace, and the air seemed blank and without sparkle.

  Quilter strode along the bank, his eyes on Lomax.

 
‘Now, Quilter, don’t get any ideas.’ Lomax flashed a warning smile at Quilter, then backed away up the slope. On his left, Whitman moved along the far side of the bank to cut him off. ‘Quilter!’ Lomax stopped, putting on a show of dignity. ‘This is my water, and I do what I choose with it!’

  They cornered him among the ruins thirty yards from the reservoir. Behind him Miranda appeared with Mrs. Quilter and the children. They sat down on one of the dunes to watch.

  Lomax began to straighten his sleeves, pulling out the ruffs. Quilter waited ten yards from him, while Whitman crept up with the bayonet, his stump raised. Lomax side-stepped awkwardly, and then the sword-stick flashed in Whitman’s face.

  ‘Richard!’

  Lomax turned at his sister’s voice. Before he could recover, Whitman lunged forward and slashed the blade from his hand, then stabbed him in the midriff. With a squeal of pain, like a pig pierced by a drover, Lomax tottered backwards against a low wall. Whitman dropped the bayonet and bent down. With a shout he jerked Lomax’s heels off the ground and tossed him backwards into a mine-shaft. A cloud of white talcum shot up, churned into the air by Lomax’s kicking feet as he lay upside-down in the narrow shaft.

  Ransom listened as the shouts became more and more muffled. For five minutes the dust continued to rise in small spurts, like the gentle boiling of a lava vent in a dormant volcano. Then the movement subsided almost completely, now and then sending up a faint spume.

  Ransom started to walk back to the house. Then he noticed that neither Miranda nor the children had moved from the crest. Miranda’s face wore her usual distant smile, but the children were quiet as they watched with their all-knowing eyes. Ransom looked back along the river, hoping for some sign of Philip Jordan or Catherine, but they had vanished along the bank. The lines of ruin lay quietly in the sunlight. Far away, against the horizon, he could see the rolling waves of the dunes on the lake.