J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

"Who is she?" Dr. Sanders asked as Thorenson prised the lid off a can. "You've got to get her away from here. She needs careful treatment, this is no place for-"

"Doctor!" Thorensen raised a hand to silence Sanders. He seemed always to be concealing something, his eyes fractionally lowered below Sanders's. "She's my-wife, now," he said with curious emphasis, as if still trying to establish the fact in his mind. "Serena. She's safer here, as long as I watch out for Ventress."

"But he's only trying to save her! For God's sake, man-"

"He's insane!" Thorensen shouted with sudden force. The two Negroes at the other end of the kitchen turned to look at him. "He spent six months in a strait jacket! He isn't trying to help Serena, he just wants to take her back to his crazy house in the middle of the swamp."

As they ate, forking the cold meat straight from the can, he told Sanders something of Ventress, this strange and melancholy architect, who had designed many of the new government buildings in Lagos and Accra, and then two years earlier abruptly abandoned his work in disgust. He had married Serena when she was seventeen, after bribing her parents, a poor French colonial couple in Libreville, within a few hours of seeing her in the Street outside his office as he left it for the last time. He had then carried her away to a grotesque folly he had built on a water-logged island among the crocodiles in the swamps ten miles to the north of Mont Royal, where the Matarre River expanded into a series of shallow lakes. According to Thorensen, Ventress had rarely spoken to Serena after the marriage, and prevented her from leaving the house or seeing anyone except a blind Negro servant. Apparently he saw his young bride in a sort of pre-Raphaelite dream, caged within his house like the lost spirit of his imagination. Thorensen had found her there, already tubercular, on one of his hunting trips, when his power-cruiser had broken its propeller shaft and was beached on the island. He visited her several times during Ventress's long absences, and she finally escaped with him after the house had caught fire. Thorensen sent her off to a sanatorium in Rhodesia, and his own great mansion at Mont Royal, filled with its imitation antiques, had been prepared for her homecoming. After her disappearance and the first moves toward the annulment of the marriage, Ventress had gone berserk and spent some time as a voluntary patient at an asylum. Now he had returned with the single-minded ambition of abducting Serena and taking her off once more to his ruined house in the swamps. Thorensen seemed convinced that Ventress's morbid and lunatic presence was responsible for Serena's lingering malaise.

However, when Sanders asked to see her again, in the hope that he would be able to persuade Thorensen to remove her from the frozen forest, the mine-owner demurred.

"She's all right here," he told Sanders doggedly. "Don't worry."

"But, Thorensen, how much longer do you think she'll last here? The whole forest is crystallizing, don't you realize-?"

"She's all right!" Thorensen insisted. He stood up and looked down at the table, his stooped figure with its blond hair like a gallows in the dusk. "Doctor, I've been in this forest a long time. The only chance she has is here."

Puzzled by this cryptic remark, and whatever private meaning it had for Thorensen, Sanders sat down at a chair by the table. A siren sounded in the dusk from the direction of the river, its echoes reflected off the brittle foliage around the summer house.

Thorensen spoke to the mulatto and came back to Sanders.

"I'll leave you in their hands, Doctor. I'll be back in a short while." He took a roll of surgical tape from the shelf beside the cooker, and then beckoned to the injured African. "Kagwa, let the Doctor look at you."

After Thorensen had gone Sanders examined the shotwounds in the African's leg and chest, and cleaned the rough lint pads. A dozen pellets had penetrated the man's skin, but the wounds already seemed half healed, inert punctures that showed no tendency to bleed or fester.

"You're lucky," he told the African when he had finished. "I'm surprised you can walk at all." He added: "I saw you this afternoon-in the mirrors at Thorensen's house." The youth smiled amicably. "It was Monsieur Ventress we were looking for, Doctor. There's much hunting in this forest, eh?"

"You're right-though I doubt if any of you really know what you're after." Sanders noticed the mulatto was watching him with more than usual interest. "Tell me," he asked Kagwa, deciding to make the most of the young man's easy-going manner, "do you work for Thorensen? At his mine?"

"The mine is closed, Doctor, but I was number one in charge of technical stores." He nodded with some pride. "For the whole mine."

"An important job." Sanders pointed toward the bedroom door, beyond which the young woman lay. "Mrs. Ventress-Serena, I think Thorensen called her. She's got to be moved from here. You're an intelligent man, Mr. Kagwa, you realize that. A few more days here and she'll be as good as dead."

Kagwa turned away from the doctor and smiled to himself. He looked down at the bandages on his leg and chest and touched them wistfully. "'Good as dead'-a fascinating phrase, Doctor. I understand what you say, but it's best now for Madame Ventress to stay here."

Barely controlling his voice, Sanders said: "For God's sake, Kagwa, she'll _die!_ Haven't you grasped that? What on earth is Thorensen playing at?" Kagwa raised his hands to restrain Sanders. Turning on his strong leg, he leaned the other against the table. "_You_ are speaking, Doctor, in medical terms. Listen!" he insisted when Sanders tried to remonstrate. "I am not giving you any ju-ju magic, I am an educated African. But many strange things happen in this forest, Doctor, you will-"

He broke off as the mulatto barked something at him and went out onto the veranda. They could hear Thorensen approaching with two or three men, their boots crushing the brittle foliage along the bank.

As Sanders moved toward the door Kagwa touched his arm. A warning smile held the doctor's attention. "Remember, Doctor, walk one way through the forest, but look two ways-" Then, rifle in hand, he limped off on his white leg.

Thorensen greeted Sanders on the veranda. He clumped up the steps, zipping up his leather jacket in the tomb-like coldness of the summer house.

"Still here, Doctor? I've got a couple of guides for you." He pointed to the two Africans who stood at the bottom of the steps. Members of the crew of his motorcruiser, they wore jeans and blue denim shirts. One had a white peaked cap pulled down across his forehead. Both carried carbines and were scanning the forest with marked interest. "My boat is moored near here," Thorensen explained, "I'd send you back by river if the engine hadn't seized up. Anyway, they'll get you to Mont Royal in no time."

With this he strode off into the kitchen, and a moment later Sanders heard him enter the bedroom.

Surrounded by the glistening figures of the four Africans, etched in hoar frost against the darkness, Sanders waited for Thorensen to reappear. Then he turned and followed his guides, leaving Thorensen and Serena Ventress barricaded together in the sepulchre of the summer house. As they entered the forest he looked back at the veranda, where the young African, Kagwa, was still watching him. His dark body, almost exactly bisected by the white bandages, reminded Sanders of Louise Peret and her references to the day of the equinox. Thinking over his brief conversation with Kagwa, he began to realize Thorensen's motives for trying to keep Serena Venrress within the affected zone. Fearing that she might die, he preferred this half-animate immolation within the crystal vaults to her physical death in the world outside. Perhaps he had seen insects and birds pinioned alive inside their prisms, and misguidedly decided that this offered the one means of escape for his dying bride.