Authors: J.G. Ballard
Royal looked up from the polished table as one of the women walked into the room, a silver tray in her strong arms. Watching her, he remembered that she was Mrs Wilder. She wore one of Anne’s well-cut trouser-suits, and not for the first time Royal thought how easily this intelligent woman had fitted into the upper levels of the high-rise. Two weeks earlier, when she was found cowering with her sons in an empty apartment on the 19
th
floor after Wilder abandoned her, she was totally exhausted, numbed by hunger and indignation. Whether in quest of her husband, or responding to some dim instinct, she had begun to climb the building. The raiding party brought her to the top floor. Pangbourne had wanted to throw out this anaemic and rambling woman, but Royal overruled him. Somewhere below, Wilder was still making his ascent of the high-rise, and his wife might one day be a valuable hostage. Led away, she joined the group of outcast wives who lived with their children in the next apartment, earning their keep by working as house servants.
Within days Mrs Wilder had regained her strength and self-confidence. No longer stunned and stoop-shouldered, she reminded Royal of the serious and attractive wife of an up-and-coming television journalist who had arrived at the high-rise a year earlier.
He noticed that she was clearing away Pangbourne’s place setting, returning the immaculate silverware to her tray.
“They seem clean enough,” Royal told her. “I don’t think Dr Pangbourne will notice.” When she ignored him and continued to remove the cutlery, Royal asked, “Have you heard from him? I take it he won’t be joining me this evening?”
“Or any evening. He’s decided to decline in future.” Mrs Wilder glanced across the table at Royal, almost as if she had felt a flicker of concern for him. She added matter-of-factly, “I should be wary of Dr Pangbourne.”
“I always have been.”
“When a man like Dr Pangbourne loses his appetite for food it’s reasonable to assume that he has something much more interesting between his teeth—and much more dangerous.”
Royal listened to her cool advice without comment. He was not surprised that the dinners had come to an end. Both he and Pangbourne, anticipating the inevitable break-up of the last clan within the apartment building, had now retired to their quarters at opposite ends of the roof, each taking his women with him. Pangbourne had moved into the penthouse once owned by the dead jeweller. Strangely enough, Royal reflected, they would soon be back where they had begun, each tenant isolated within his own apartment.
Something warned him to dispense with this meal but he waited for Mrs Wilder to serve him. Having survived so far, nothing that the gynaecologist could do would put him off his stride. During the past months almost all traces of his accident had vanished, and Royal felt stronger and more confident than ever before. He had won his attempt to dominate the high-rise, and amply proved his right to rule this huge building, even though at the cost of his marriage. As for the new social order that he had hoped to see emerge, he knew now that his original vision of a high-rise aviary had been closer to the truth than he guessed. Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realized that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors.
Royal sat back as Mrs Wilder served him. Since his own kitchen lacked any equipment, all his meals were prepared in the apartment next door. Mrs Wilder reappeared with her tray, stepping over the garbage-sacks that lined the hallway—for all their descent into barbarism, the residents of the high-rise remained faithful to their origins and continued to generate a vast amount of refuse.
As usual, the main course consisted of a piece of roast meat. Royal never asked about the source of the meat—dog, presumably. The women had the supply situation well in hand. Mrs Wilder stood beside him, gazing into the night air as Royal tasted the heavily spiced dish. Like a well-trained housekeeper, she was waiting for Royal to give some indication of approval, though she never seemed concerned by either praise or criticism. She spoke in a flat voice unlike the animated tone she used with Anne and the other women. In fact, Mrs Wilder spent more time with his wife than Royal did himself. Six women lived together in the adjacent apartment, ostensibly so that they could be more easily protected from a surprise attack. Sometimes Royal would visit Anne, but there was something daunting about the closely knit group of women, sitting on their beds surrounded by the garbage-sacks, together looking after the Wilder children. Their eyes would watch him as he hesitated in the door, waiting for him to go away. Even Anne had withdrawn from him, partly out of fear of Royal, but also because she realized that he no longer needed her. At last, after all the months of trying to maintain her superior status, Anne had decided to join her fellow residents.
“Good—it’s excellent again. Wait…before you go.” Royal put down his fork. Casually, he asked, “Have you heard anything of him? Perhaps someone has seen him?”
Mrs Wilder shook her head, bored by this roundabout questioning. “Who…?”
“Your husband—Richard, I think he was called. _Wilder_.”
Mrs Wilder stared down at Royal, shaking her head as if not recognizing him. Royal was certain that she had not only forgotten the identity of her husband, but of all men, including himself. To test this, he placed his hand on her thigh, feeling the strong muscle. Mrs Wilder stood passively with her tray, unaware of Royal fondling her, partly because she had been molested by so many men during the past months, but also because the sexual assault itself had ceased to have any meaning. When Royal slipped two of his fingers into her natal cleft she reacted, not by pushing his hand away, but by moving it to her waist and lightly holding it there as she would the straying hands of her children.
When she had gone, taking the portion of meat which Royal always left for her, he sat back at the long table. He was glad to see her go. Without asking him, Mrs Wilder had laundered his white jacket, washing out the bloodstains which Royal at one time had worn so proudly and which had given him, not merely his sense of authority, but his whole unstated role within the high-rise.
Had she done this deliberately, knowing that it would emasculate him? Royal could still remember the period of endless parties, when the apartment building had been lit up like a drunken liner. Royal had played the role of feudal chief to the hilt, presiding each evening over the council meetings held in his drawing-room. As they sat together in the candlelight, these neurosurgeons, senior academics and stockbrokers displayed all the talents for intrigue and survival exercised by years of service in industry, commerce and university life. For all the formal vocabulary of agendas and minutes, proposed and seconded motions, the verbal paraphernalia bequeathed by a hundred committee meetings, these were in effect tribal conferences. Here they discussed the latest ruses for obtaining food and women, for defending the upper floors against marauders, their plans for alliance and betrayal. Now the new order had emerged, in which all life within the high-rise revolved around three obsessions—security, food and sex.
Leaving the table, Royal picked up a silver candlestick and carried it to the window. All the lights in the high-rise were out. Two floors, the 40
th
and the 37
th
, were left with electric current, but they remained unlit. The darkness was more comforting, a place where real illusions might flourish.
Forty floors below, a car turned into the parking-lot and threaded its way through the maze of access lanes to its place two hundred yards from the building. The driver, wearing a flying-jacket and heavy boots, stepped out and hurried head-down towards the entrance. Royal guessed that this unknown man was probably the last resident to leave the building and set off for his office. Whoever he was, he had found a route to and from his apartment.
§
Somewhere on the roof, a dog whimpered. Far below, from the mouth of an apartment twenty storeys down the cliff face, there was a brief isolated scream—whether of pain, lust or rage no longer mattered. Royal waited, his heart starting to race. A moment later there was a second scream, a meaningless wail. These cries were the expressions of totally abstracted emotions, detached from the context of events around them.
Royal waited, expecting one of his retinue to enter and inform him of the probable reasons for these disturbances. Apart from the women in the next apartment, several of the younger male residents—a gallery owner from the 39
th
floor, and a successful hairdresser from the 38
th
—usually lounged about in the corridor among the garbage-sacks, leaning on their spears and keeping an eye on the staircase barricades.
Picking up his chromium cane, Royal left the dining-room, a single candle in its silver stick lighting his way. As he stumbled over the black plastic bags he wondered why they had never heaved them over the side. Presumably they held this rubbish to themselves less from fear of attracting the attention of the outside world than from a need to cling to their own, surround themselves with the mucilage of unfinished meals, bloody bandage scraps, broken bottles that once held the wine that made them drunk, all faintly visible through the semi-opaque plastic.
His apartment was empty, the high-ceilinged rooms deserted. Cautiously, Royal stepped into the corridor. The guard-post by the barricades was unmanned, and no lights gleamed through the doorway of the adjacent apartment where the women lived. Surprised by the absence of light from the usually busy kitchen, Royal walked through the darkened hallway. He kicked aside a child’s toy and raised the candlestick above his head, trying to pick out any sleeping human figures in the surrounding rooms.
Open suitcases lay on the mattresses that covered the floor of the master-bedroom. Royal stood in the doorway, a medley of scents crowding around him in the darkness, brilliant wakes left behind them by these fleeing women. Hesitating for a moment, he reached into the room and switched on the light.
The instant electric glow, so unfamiliar after the wavering candlelight and twitching torch-beams, shone down on the six mattresses in the room. Half-packed suitcases lay on top of each other, as if the women had left at a moment’s notice, or at some prearranged signal. Most of their clothes had been left behind, and he recognized the trouser-suit which Mrs Wilder had worn to serve his dinner. The racks of Anne’s dresses and suits hung in the wardrobes like a store display.
The even light, as dead as a time exposure in a police photograph recording a crime, lay across these torn mattresses and discarded clothes, the wine-stains on the walls and the forgotten cosmetics on the floor at his feet.
As Royal stared down at them, he could hear a faint hooting noise from the darkened corridor, moving away from him as if emitted by these escaping women. This series of whoops and nasal grunts he had been listening to for days, trying without success to repress them from his mind. Switching off the light, he seized his cane firmly in both hands and left the apartment.
Standing outside the door, he listened to the distant sounds, almost an electronic parody of a child’s crying. They moved through the apartments at the far end of the floor, metallic and remote, the sounds of the beasts of his private zoo.
The Evening’s Entertainment
The evening deepened, and the apartment building withdrew into the darkness. As usual at this hour, the high-rise was silent, as if everyone in the huge building was passing through a border zone. On the roof the dogs whimpered to themselves. Royal blew out the candles in the dining-room and made his way up the steps to the penthouse. Reflecting the distant lights of the neighbouring high-rises, the chromium shafts of the callisthenics machine seemed to move up and down like columns of mercury, a complex device recording the shifting psychological levels of the residents below. As Royal stepped on to the roof the darkness was lit by the white forms of hundreds of birds. Their wings flared in the dark air as they struggled to find a perch on the crowded elevator heads and balustrades.
Royal waited until they surrounded him, steering their beaks away from his legs with his stick. He felt himself becoming calm again. If the women and the other members of his dwindling entourage had decided to leave him, so much the better. Here in the darkness among the birds, listening to them swoop and cry, the dogs whimpering in the children’s sculpture-garden, he felt most at home. He was convinced more than ever that the birds were attracted here by his own presence.
Royal scattered the birds out of his way and pushed back the gates of the sculpture-garden. As they recognized him, the dogs began to whine and strain, pulling against their leads. These retrievers, poodles and dachshunds were all that remained of the hundred or so animals who had once lived in the upper floors of the high-rise. They were kept here as a strategic food reserve, but Royal had seen to it that few of them had been eaten. The dogs formed his personal hunting pack, to be kept until the final confrontation when he would lead them down into the building, and throw open the windows of the barricaded apartments to admit the birds.
The dogs pulled at his legs, their leads entangled around the play-sculptures. Even Royal’s favourite, the white alsatian, was restless and on edge. Royal tried to settle it, running his hands over the luminous but still bloodstained coat. The dog butted him nervously, knocking him back across the empty food-pails.
As Royal regained his balance, he heard the sound of voices surging up the central stairway a hundred feet behind him. Lights approached through the darkness, a procession of electric torches held at shoulder height. The beams of light cut through the night air, scattering the birds into the sky. A portable casette player boomed out its music over the clicking of dumb-bells. As Royal paused behind an elevator head, a group of his top-floor neighbours erupted on to the roof. Led by Pangbourne, they spread in a loose circle across the observation deck, ready to celebrate a recent triumph. Without Royal’s approval or foreknowledge, a raid had taken place on the floors below.