Ilaria Novelli (aka Ila Pop): Jane Ciracylides (2020)
Mixed media painting on cotton paper (23 x 31 cm)
I.
'Prima Belladonna' (1956) was J. G. Ballard's first published short story [a].
It can be found in the 1971 collection Vermilion Sands, which, according to the author, celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality.
The three male characters - Harry Miles, Tony Devine, and Steve Parker (the tale's narrator) - don't particularly interest; certainly not in the way that Jane Ciracylides - a singer who performs in a casino lounge at the Vermilion Sands resort - fascinates with her alien good looks:
"Whatever else they said about her, everyone had to agree she was a beautiful girl, even if her genetic background was a little mixed. The gossips at Vermilion Sands soon decided there was a good deal of mutant in her, because she had a rich patina-golden skin and what looked like insects for eyes [...]" [b]
As Harry says, whilst he and his two friends voyeuristically perv on Jane as she parades around the apartment opposite "wearing almost nothing except a large metallic hat" [2] and revealing the "sinuous lines of her thighs and shoulders" [2], here is a goddess "'straight out of the primal apocalyptic sea'" [2].
Harry knows that in order to seduce such a woman, you need to approach her in a shy somewhat hesitating manner: "'Nothing urgent or grabbing.'" [2] This shows a lover's wisdom: for hesitation is the courage to go slowly; to resist the urge to violently seize hold of that which one desires.
Not that Harry gets to put his hands on Jane. Rather, it's Parker to whom she seems attracted (even though, by his own confession, he is out of her league), after visiting his little shop of singing plants (choro-flora) the next morning and admiring his blooms:
"She walked over to a bank of mixed ferns and stood looking at them. The ferns reached out towards her and trebled eagerly in their liquid fluted voices.
'Aren't they sweet?' she said, stroking the fronds gently. 'They need so much affection.'" [5]
Reminiscing on their first meeting, Parker recalls:
"Under the black beach robe her skin was a softer, more mellow gold, and it was her eyes that held me. I could see them under the wide-brimmed hat. Insect legs wavered delicately round two points of purple light." [5]
That's a rather disturbing description of Jane's eyes; not so much the two points of purple light at their centre, but the wavering insect legs that surround them. It reminds one of stories that appeared in the English press two or three years ago about a girl in India and a woman in Taiwan who had insects living in their eyes [c].
Uninterested in the plants Parker initially tries to sell her - a Sumatra Samphire and a Louisian Lute Lily - to make her new apartment feel less lonely, Jane slowly raised her hands in front of her breasts as if in prayer and moved towards the display counter on which stood a rare Khan-Arachnid orchid; "a difficult bloom, with a normal full range of twenty-four octaves" [3], which Parker regards as a fleur du mal.
"'How beautiful it is,' she said, gazing at the rich yellow and purple leaves hanging from the scarlet-ribbed vibrocalyx." [6]
It's clear that Jane is something of a choro-floraphile - i.e., that her desire is more for the plants than the man. And equally clear is the effect this girl with the insect eyes has on the plants; as she admires the orchid its leaves stiffen and fill with colour:
"She stepped closer to the orchid and looked down into its malevolent head. The Arachnid quivered and the spines on its stem arched and flexed menacingly." [6]
And then to Parker's surprise - it sings to her:
"I had never heard the Arachnid sing before. I was lisening to it open-eared when I felt a glow of heat burn against my arm. I turned and saw the woman staring intently at the plant, her skin aflame, the insects in her eyes writhing insanely. The Arachnid stretched out towards her, calyx erect, leaves like blood-red sabres." [5]
At the end of the performance, Jane gripped the edge of the vivarium in which the orchid grew and gathered herself: "Her skin dimmed and the insects in her eyes slowed to a delicate wavering." [6]
She offers Parker a $1000 for the plant, which he declines. So she takes a lesser specimen of plant and, before leaving, invites him to come see her perform as a speciality singer at the Casino: "'You may find it interesting.'" [7]
Which, along with the entire audience, he does: "The next morning Vermilion Sands hummed. Jane created a sensation." [7] Harry and Tony are as smitten with her as the Arachnid, which Jane comes to visit every morning at the shop; "and her presence was more than the flower could bear [...] instead of running through its harmonic scales the orchid only screeched and whined" [9].
Jane seemed oblivious to the effect she was having. Finally, Parker tells her that she is causing the Arachnid great distress: "'Your voice may move men to strange and wonderful visions, but it throws that orchid into acute melancholia'" [10].
Actually, that's not quite the case; the orchid is suffering from a form of erotomania or what the French term amour fou. It both wanted to ravish and annihilate her at the same time. Parkin wonders what would happen were he to leave plant and woman alone together; would they try to sing each other to death?
Eventually, despite all his misgivings about this strange (perhaps dangerous) golden-skinned woman who happily cheats at i-Go [d], Parker makes love to her: "'What's she like?' Tony asked eagerly. 'I mean, does she burn or just tingle?'" [12]
Their relationship seems to progress quite nicely:
"Sometimes in the late afternoons we'd drive out along the beach to the Scented Desert and sit alone by the pools [...] When the wind began to blow cool across the sand we'd slip down into the water [...]
On other evenings we'd go down to one of the quiet bars at Lagoon West, and have supper out on the flats, and Jane would tease the waiters and sing honeybirds and angelcakes to the children who came in across the sands to watch her.
[...] I never questioned myself too closely over my affair with Jane Ciracylides. As I sat on the balcony with her looking out over the cool early evenings or felt her body glowing beside me in the darkness I allowed myself few anxieties." [12-13]
But all good things must come to an end ... And one night, Parker discovers Jane in his flower store:
"The lights had been turned out, but a brilliant glow filled the shop, throwing a golden fire on to the tanks along the counters. Across the ceiling liquid colours danced in reflection.
The Arachnid had grown to three times its size. It towered nine feet high out of the shattered lid of the control tank, leaves tumid and uflamed, its calyx as large as a bucket, raging insanely.
Arched forwards into it, her head thrown back, was Jane." [14]
I'll leave it to readers - as Ballard does - to decide what exactly is going on here. But Parker seems to feel Jane is in danger; he runs over and tries to pull her clear. But she pushes his hand away ...
Harry and Tony arrive on the scene and find their friend Steve sitting on the stairs at the entrance to his little shop of horrors. Although they attempt to enter, Parker holds them back and jams the door shut:
"I never saw Jane again. The three of us waited in my apartment. When the music died away we went down and found the shop in darkness. The Arachnid had shrunk to its normal size.
The next day it died." [14]
II.
Of course, some might argue that the orchid was fortunate to meet its destruction in this manner; that the morbid horror of love always ends tragically in ruinous expenditure and that eroticism is a blissful betrayal of the will to self-preservation.
Perhaps Ballard's story should be read as an example of a symbiotic relationship in which two species and two strains of love collide, both spiraling together "into a helix of strangely suspended
disintegration" and each competing "to exceed
the other in mad vulnerability" [e].
Having said that, the book ends with Steve Parker warning any choro-florist who happens to own a Khan-Arachnid orchid, to watch out for a golden-skinned woman with insect eyes: "Perhaps she'll play i-Go with you, and I'm sorry to have to say it, but she'll always cheat." [15]
Notes
[a] The story first appeared in Science Fantasy, vol. 7, issue 20, (1956).
[b] J. G. Ballard, 'Prima Belladonna', in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), p. 1. Future page references given in the text refer to this edition. I'll say more about this 'insects for eyes' remark shortly.
[c] See the case reported in March 2018 of the Indian schoolgirl who, over a ten day period, had sixty dead ants removed from her eyes by a doctor at the local hospital, after complaining to her parents of pain and inflammation: click here.
And see the case from April 2019 involving a 28-year-old Taiwanese woman found by doctors to have four tiny sweat bees inside her eye; they were successfully removed (alive) by a doctor, who carefully pulled them out by the legs: click here.
[d] i-Go is a fictional game described in 'Prima Belladonna' as "a sort of decelerated chess"; see The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, p. 1.
[e] Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 189.
