Free The atrocity exhibition by J. G. Ballard

the space and time of the apartment he would obtain a valid unit of existence.
    Suite Mentale . Conversely, Karen Novotny found in Tallis a visible expression of her own mood of abstraction, that growing entropy which had begun to occupy her life in the deserted beach resort since the season’s end. She had been conscious for some days of an increasing sense of disembodiment, as if her limbs and musculature merely established the residential context of her body. She cooked for Tallis, and washed his suit. Over the ironing board she watched his tall figure interlocking with the dimensions and angles of the apartment. Later, the sexual act between them was a dual communion between themselves and the continuum of time and space which they occupied.
    The Dead Planetarium . Under a bland, equinoctial sky, the morning light lay evenly over the white concrete outside the entrance to the planetarium. Near by, the hollow basins of cracked mud were inversions of the damaged dome of the planetarium, and of the eroded breasts of Marilyn Monroe. Almost hidden by the dunes, the distant apartment blocks showed no signs of activity. Tallis waited in the deserted café terrace beside the entrance, scraping with a burnt-out match at the gull droppings that had fallen through the tattered awning onto the green metal tables. He stood up when the helicopter appeared in the sky.
    A Silent Tableau . Soundlessly the Sikorsky circled the dunes, its fans driving the fine sand down the slopes. It landed in a shallow basin fifty yards from the planetarium. Dr Nathan stepped from the aircraft, finding his feet uncertainly in the sand. The two men shook hands. After a pause, during which he scrutinized Tallis closely, the psychiatrist began to speak. His mouth worked silently, eyes fixed on Tallis. He stopped and then began again with an effort, lips and jaw moving in exaggerated spasms as if he were trying to extricate some gum-like residue from his teeth. After several intervals, when he had failed to make a single audible sound, he turned and went back to the helicopter. Without any noise it took off into the sky.
    Appearance of Coma . She was waiting for him at the café terrace. As he took his seat she remarked, ‘Do you lip-read? I won’t ask what he was saying.’ Tallis leaned back, hands in the pockets of his freshly pressed suit. ‘He accepts now that I’m quite sane - at least, as far as the term goes; these days its limits seem to be narrowing. The problem is one of geometry, what these slopes and planes mean.’ He glanced at Coma’s broad-cheeked face. More and more she resembled the dead film star. What code would fit both this face and body and Karen Novotny’s apartment?
    Dune Arabesque . Later, walking across the dunes, he saw the figure of the dancer. Her muscular body, clad in white tights and sweater that made her almost invisible against the sloping sand, moved like a wraith up and down the crests. She lived in the apartment facing Karen Novotny’s, and would come out each day to practise among the dunes. Tallis sat down on the roof of a car buried in the sand. He watched her dance, a random cipher drawing its signature across the time-slopes of this dissolving yantra, a symbol in a transcendental geometry.
    Impressions of Africa . A low shoreline; air glazed like amber; derricks and jetties above brown water; the silver geometry of a petrochemical complex, a Vorticist assemblage of cylinders and cubes superimposed upon the distant plateau of mountains; a single Horton sphere   -enigmatic balloon tethered to the fused sand by its steel cradles; the unique clarity of the African light: fluted tablelands and jigsaw bastions; the limitless neural geometry of the landscape.
    The Persistence of the Beach . The white flanks of the dunes reminded him of the endless promenades of Karen Novotny’s body - diorama of flesh and hillock; the broad avenues of the thighs, piazzas of pelvis and abdomen, the closed arcades of the womb. This