The Drought. J. G. Ballard

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and determined to inflict the maximum of benefit upon them. His long twisted jaw gave all his actions an air of unpredictability, but during the previous months he had become almost the last pillar of the lakeside community. Ransom found his bellicose manner hard to take – something about the suspicious eyes and lack of charity made him doubtful of the minister's motives – but none the less he was glad to see him. At Johnstone's initiative a number of artesian wells had been drilled and a local militia recruited, ostensibly to guard the church and property of his parishioners, but in fact to keep out the transients moving along the highway to the south.

      Recently a curious streak had emerged in Johnstone's character. He had developed a fierce moral contempt for those who had given up the fight against the drought and retreated to the coast. In a series of fighting sermons preached during the last three or four Sundays he had warned his listeners of the offence they would be committing by opting out of the struggle against the elements. By a strange logic he seemed to believe that the battle against the drought, like that against evil itself, was the local responsibility of every community and private individual throughout the land, and that a strong element of rivalry was to be encouraged between the contestants, brother set against brother, in order to keep the battle joined.

      Notwithstanding all this, most of his flock had deserted him, but Johnstone stayed on in his embattled church, preaching his sermons to a congregation of barely half a dozen people.

      ‘Have you been in hiding for the last week?’ he asked Ransom. ‘I thought you'd gone.’

      ‘Not at all, Howard,’ Ransom assured him. ‘I went off on a fishing trip. I had to get back for your sermon this Sunday.’

      ‘Don't mock me, Charles. Not yet. A last-minute repentance may be better than nothing, but I expect rather more from you.’ He held Ransom's arm in a powerful grip. ‘It's good to see you. We need everyone we can muster.’

      Ransom looked out at the deserted avenue. Most of the houses were empty, windows boarded and nailed up, swimming pools emptied of their last reserves of water. Lines of abandoned cars were parked under the withering plane trees and the road was littered with discarded cans and cartons. The bright flint-like dust lay in drifts against the fences. Refuse fires smouldered unattended on the burnt-out lawns, their smoke wandering over the roofs.

      ‘I'm glad I stayed out of the way,’ Ransom said. ‘Has everything been quiet?’

      ‘Yes and no. We've had a few spots of trouble. I'm on my way to something now, as a matter of fact.’

      ‘What about the police rearguard? Has it gone yet?’

      Despite the careful offhandedness of Ransom's question, Johnstone smiled knowingly. ‘It leaves today, Charles. You'll have time to say goodbye to Judith. However, you ought to make her stay.’

      ‘I couldn't if I wanted to.’ Ransom sat forward and pointed through the windscreen. ‘What's this?’

      They turned into Amherst Avenue and stopped by the church at the corner. A group of five or six men, members of Johnstone's parish militia, stood around a dusty green saloon car, shouting at the driver. Tempers flared in the brittle light, and the men rocked the car from side to side, drumming on the roof with their rifles. Fists began to fly, and a sturdy square-shouldered man wearing a dirty panama hat hurled himself at the men like a berserk terrier. As he disappeared from sight in the melee a woman's voice cried out.

      Seizing his shot-gun, Johnstone set off towards them, Ransom behind him. The owner of the saloon was struggling with three men who held him down on his knees. As someone shouted ‘Here's the Reverend!’ he looked up from the ground with fierce determination, like a heretic forced to unwilling prayer. Watching helplessly from the front seat of the car was a small moon-faced woman. Behind her, the white faces of three children, one a boy of eight, peered through the side window among the bundles and suitcases.

      Johnstone pulled the men apart, the shot-gun raised in the air. His burly figure was a good head taller than the others.

      ‘That's enough! I'll deal with him now!’ He lifted the driver to his feet with one hand. ‘Who is he? What's he been up to?’

      Edward Gunn, owner of the local hardware store, stepped forward, an accusing finger raised in front of his beaked grey face. ‘I caught him in the church, Reverend, with a bucket. He was taking water from the font.’

      ‘The font?’ Johnstone gazed down magisterially at the little driver. With heavy sarcasm he bellowed: ‘Did you want to be baptized? Is that what you wanted, before all the water in the world was gone?’

      The stocky man pushed Gunn aside. ‘No, I wanted water to drink! We've come three hundred miles today – look at my kids, they're so dry they can't even weep!’ He opened his leather wallet and spread out a fan of greasy bills. ‘I'm not asking for charity, I'll pay good money.’

      Johnstone brushed aside the money with the barrel of the shot-gun. ‘We take no cash for water here, son. You can't buy off the droughts of this world, you have to fight them. You should have stayed where you were, in your own home.’

      ‘That's right!’ Edward Gunn cut in. ‘Get back to your own neighbourhood!’

      The stocky man spat in disgust. ‘My own neighbourhood is six hundred miles away, it's nothing but dust and dead cattle!’

      Ransom stepped over to him. Johnstone's bullying presence seemed merely to aggravate their difficulties. To the owner of the saloon he said: ‘Quieten down. I'll give you some water.’ He tore a sheet from an old prescription pad in his pocket and pointed to the address. ‘Drive around the block and park by the river, then walk down to my house. All right?’

      ‘Well …’ The man eyed Ransom suspiciously, then relaxed. ‘Thanks a lot, I'm glad to see there's one here, at least.’ He picked his panama hat off the groud, straightened the brim and dusted it off. Nodding pugnaciously to Johnstone, he climbed into the car and drove away.

      Gunn and his fellow vigilantes dispersed among the dead trees, sauntering down the lines of cars.

      As he settled his large frame behind the wheel Johnstone said: ‘Kind of you, Charles, but begging the question. There are few places in this country where there aren't small supplies of local water, if you work hard enough for them.’

      ‘I know,’ Ransom said. ‘But see it from his point of view. Thousands of cattle dead in the fields – to these poor farming people it must seem like the end of the world.’

      Johnstone drummed a fist on the wheel. ‘That's not for us to decide! There are too many people now living out their own failures, that's the secret appeal of this drought. I was going to give the fellow some water, Charles, but I wanted him to show more courage first.’

      ‘Of course,’ Ransom said noncommittally. Five minutes earlier he had been glad to see Johnstone, but he realized that the clergyman was imposing his own fantasies on the changing landscape, as he himself had done. He was relieved when Johnstone let him out at the end of the avenue.

      On the right, overlooking the mouth of the river as it entered the lake, was the glass-and-concrete mansion owned by Richard Foster Lomax. At one end of the outdoor swimming pool a fountain threw rainbows of light through the air. Taking his ease at the edge of the pool was the strutting figure of Lomax, hands in the pockets of his white silk suit, his ironic voice calling to someone in the water.

      Johnstone pointed at Lomax. ‘Much as I detest Lomax, he does prove my point.’ As a parting shot, he leaned СКАЧАТЬ