Vermilion Sands by J. G. Ballard Page B

ringing like a gong, I climbed out of the sculpture, ready to crown Georg with a nearby maquette. Putting an elegant fingertip to his lips, he gave me that look which between artist and dealer signals one thing:
Rich client
.
    The sculptures in the gallery entrance had begun to hum as someone came in, but the sunlight reflected off the bonnet of a white Rolls-Royce outside obscured the doorway.
    Then I saw her, hovering over the stand of art journals, followed by her secretary, a tall purse-mouthed Frenchwoman almost as famous from the newsmagazines as her mistress.
    Lunora Goalen, I thought, can
all
our dreams come true? She wore an ice-cool sliver of blue silk that shimmered as she moved towards the first statue, a toque hat of black violets and bulky dark glasses that hid her face and were a nightmare to cameramen. While she paused by the statue, one of Arch Penko’s frenetic tangles that looked like a rimless bicycle wheel, listening to its arms vibrate and howl, Nevers and I involuntarily steadied ourselves against the wing-piece of my sculpture.
     
    In general it’s probably true that the most maligned species on Earth is the wealthy patron of modern art. Laughed at by the public, exploited by dealers, even the artists regard them simply as meal tickets. Lunora Goalen’s superb collection of sonic sculpture on the roof of her Venice palazzo, and the million dollars’ worth of generous purchases spread around her apartments in Paris, London and New York, represented freedom and life to a score of sculptors, but few felt any gratitude towards Miss Goalen.
    Nevers was hesitating, apparently suffering from a sudden intention tremor, so I nudged his elbow.
    ‘Come on,’ I murmured. ‘This is the apocalypse. Let’s go.’
    Nevers turned on me icily, noticing, apparently for the first time, my rust-stained slacks and three-day stubble.
    ‘Milton !’ he snapped. ‘For God’s sake, vanish ! Sneak out through the freight exit.’ He jerked his head at my sculpture. ‘And switch that insane thing off! How did I ever let it in here?’
     
    Lunora’s secretary, Mme Charcot, spotted us at the rear of the gallery. Georg shot out four inches of immaculate cuff and swayed forward, the smile on his face as wide as a bulldozer. I backed away behind my sculpture, with no intention of leaving and letting Nevers cut my price just for the cachet of making a sale to Lunora Goalen.
    Georg was bowing all over the gallery, oblivious of Mme Charcot’s contemptuous sneer. He led Lunora over to one of the exhibits and fumbled with the control panel, selecting the alto lift which would resonate most flatteringly with her own body tones. Unfortunately the statue was Sigismund Lubitsch’s
Big End,
a squat bull-necked drum like an enormous toad that at its sweetest emitted a rasping grunt. An old-style railroad tycoon might have elicited a sympathetic chord from it, but its response to Lunora was like a bull’s to a butterfly.
    They moved on to another sculpture, and Mme Charcot gestured to the white-gloved chauffeur standing by the Rolls. He climbed in and moved the car down the street, taking with it the beach crowds beginning to gather outside the gallery. Able now to see Lunora clearly against the hard white walls, I stepped into
Orbit
and watched her closely through the helixes.
    Of course I already knew everything about Lunora Goalen. A thousand magazine exposés had catalogued
ad nauseam
her strange flawed beauty, her fits of melancholy and compulsive roving around the world’s capitals. Her brief career as a film actress had faltered at first, less as a consequence of her modest, though always interesting, talents than of her simple failure to register photogenically. By a macabre twist of fate, after a major car accident had severely injured her face she had become an extraordinary success. That strangely marred profile and nervous gaze had filled cinemas from Paris to Pernambuco. Unable to bear this tribute to her plastic