J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

As she laughed Sanders put his hand firmly on her chin. "Day and night-do they mean much any longer?"

They ate lunch together in the chalet. Afterwards, Sanders described his experiences in the forest.

"I remember, Louise, when I first arrived in Port Matarre you told me it was the day of the spring equinox. Of course, it hadn't occurred to me before, but I realize now just how far everything in the world outside the forest was being divided into light and dark-you could see it perfectly in Port Matarre, that strange light in the arcades and in the jungle around the town, and even in the people there, dark and light twins of each other. Looking back, they all seem to pair off-Ventress with his white suit and the mine-owner Thorensen with his black gang. They're fighting each other now over this dying woman somewhere in the forest. Then there are Suzanne and yourself-you haven't met her but she's your exact opposite, very elusive and shadowy. When _you_ arrived this morning, Louise, it was as if you'd stepped out of the sun. Again, there's Balthus, that priest, with his death-mask face, though God alone knows who his twin is."

"Perhaps you, Edward."

"You may be right-I suppose he's trying to free himself from what's left of his faith, just as I'm trying to escape from Fort Isabelle and the _léproserie_-Radek pointed that out to me, poor fellow."

"But this division, Edward, into black and white- why? They're what you care to make them."

"Are they? I suspect it goes deeper than that. There may well be some fundamental distinction between light and dark that we inherit from the earliest living creatures. After all, the response to light is a response to all the possibilities of life itself. For all we know, this division is the strongest one there is-perhaps even the _only_ one-reinforced everyday for hundreds of millions of years. In its simplest sense time keeps this going, and now that time is withdrawing we're beginning to see the contrasts in everything more clearly. It's not a matter of identifying any moral notions with light and dark-I don't take sides between Ventress and Thorensen. Isolated now they're both grotesques, but perhaps the forest will bring them together. There, in that place of rainbows, nothing is distinguished from anything else."

"And Suzanne-your dark lady-what does she mean for you, Edward?"

"I'm not sure-obviously she stands in some way for the _léproserie_ and whatever _that_ means-the dark side of the equinox. Believe me, I recognize now that my motives for working at the _léproserie_ weren't altogether humanitarian, but merely accepting that doesn't help me. Of course there's a dark side of the psyche, and I suppose all one can do is find the other face and try to reconcile the two-it's happening out there in the forest."

"How long are you staying?" Louise asked. "In Mont Royal?"

"Another few days. I can't leave straightaway. From my point of view coming here has been a complete failure, but I've hardly seen either of them and they may need my help."

"Edward-" Louise walked over to the window. Pulling on the blind, she raised the blades so that they let in the afternoon light. Silhouetted against the sun, her white suit and pale skin became suddenly dark. As she played with the string, opening and closing the blind, her slim figure was lit and then eclipsed like an image in a solar shutter. "Edward, there's an army launch going back to Port Matarre tomorrow. In the afternoon. I've decided to go."

"But, Louise-"

"I must go." She faced him, her chin raised. "There's no hope of finding Anderson-he must be dead by now-and I owe it to the bureau to get my story out."

"Story? My dear, you're thinking in terms of trivialities." Sanders went over to the whisky decanter on the bare sideboard. "Louise, I'd hoped you could stay on with me-" He broke off, aware that Louise was putting him to the test and not wanting to upset her. Whatever his references to Suzanne, he knew that he would have to stay with her and Max for the time being. If anything, Suzanne's leprosy had increased his need to remain with her. Despite her aloofness the previous night, Sanders knew that he was the only person to understand the real nature of her affliction and its meaning for them both.

To Louise, as she picked up her handbag, he said: "I'll ask Max to call the base and send a car for you."

During the rest of the afternoon Sanders remained in the chalet, watching the corona of light that lay over the distant forest. Behind him, beyond the perimeter fence, the lepers had moved forward again through the trees. As the afternoon light faded, the brilliance of the sun was still held within the crystal forest, and the old men and women came to the edge of the trees and waited there like nervous wraiths.

After dusk Suzanne appeared again. Whether she had really been asleep or, like Sanders, sitting in her room behind drawn blinds, he had no means of knowing, but at dinner she seemed even more withdrawn than at their previous meeting, eating with a kind of compulsive nervousness as if forcing down food that lacked all flavor. She had finished each of the courses when Sanders and Max were still talking over their wine. The black velvet curtain behind her-obviously placed against this single window for Sanders's benefit-made her dark robe almost invisible in the dim light, and from the far end of the table, where she had placed Sanders, even the white powdered mask of her face seemed a veiled blur.

"Did Max take you on a tour of our hospital?" she asked. "I hope you were impressed?"

"Very," Sanders said. "It has no patients." He added: "I'm surprised you need to spend any time at all in the dispensary."

"Quite a number of the natives come along during the night," Max explained. "During the daytime they're hanging around near the forest. One of the drivers told me that they're starting to take their sick and dying into the affected area. A kind of instant mummification, I suppose."

"But far more splendid," Suzanne said. "Like a fly in the amber of its own tears or a fossil millions of years old, making a diamond of its body for us. I hope the army let them through."

"They can't stop them," Max rejoined. "If these people want to commit suicide it's their affair. The army is too busy anyway evacuating themselves." He turned to Sanders. "It's almost comical, Edward. As soon as they put the camp down somewhere they have to uproot the whole thing and back off another quarter of a mile."

"How fast is the area spreading?"

"About a hundred feet a day, or more. According to the army radio network things are getting to the panic stage in the focal area in Florida. Half the state has been evacuated, already the zone there extends from the Everglades swamps all the way to Miami."

Suzanne raised her glass at this. "Can you imagine that, Edward? An entire city! All those hundreds of white hotels transformed into stained glass-it must be like Venice in the days of Titian and Veronese, or Rome with dozens of St. Peters."

Max laughed. "Suzanne, you make it sound like the new Jerusalem. Before you could turn around I'm afraid you'd find yourself an angel in a rose window."

After dinner, Sanders waited for Clair to leave and give him a few moments alone with Suzanne, but Max took a chess set from the blackwood cabinet and set up the pieces. As he and Sanders played the opening moves Suzanne excused herself and slipped out.

Sanders waited an hour for her to come back. At ten o'clock he resigned his game and said good night to Max, leaving him mulling over the possibilities of the end game.

Unable to sleep, Sanders wandered around his chalet, drinking what was left of the whisky in the decanter. In one of the empty rooms he found a stack of French illustrated magazines and leafed through the pages, scanning the by-lines of the articles for Louise's name.