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and not the invention of a dying man trapped in his submerged aircraft. […] My premonition of disaster
reflected a fear that I had invented everything around me – this town, these trees and houses, even the grassstains
on the heels of Miriam St. Cloud – and that I had invented myself. I was alive now, but at some point
had I died? If I had been trapped in the aircraft for eleven minutes, why had no one come to my rescue? This
group of intelligent people, a doctor among them, had been frozen in their positions on the river-bank, as if I
had switched off their clock-time until I escaped from the Cessna. I remembered lying on the wet grass, my
chest crushed by a pair of unknown hands. Had my heart failed briefly, bequeathing to my exhausted brain a
presumption of death on which the three children had played with such effect? 425
Lo spettro riappare brevemente quando Blake tenta di lasciare Shepperton in barca, remando
sul Tamigi, per rivelarsi infine null’altro che un gioco d’ombre 426 :
I was now in the centre of the Thames. Below me, through the opalescent surface, I saw the white
ghost of the Cessna. […] The reflected light from their [the silver fish] speckled bodies lit up the cockpit, for
a moment revealing the figure of a drowned man at the controls. […] Again I saw the dark figure at the
controls – my own shadow cast through the water! 427
Non sarà l’ultima apparizione. Al termine di una ripetizione con variante del volo notturno
con i cittadini di Shepperton, cui faremo cenno poco oltre, questa volta sotto forma di nuotata nel
Tamigi nelle sembianze delle più svariate specie di animali marini 428 , assistiamo a un altro incontro
in stile horror tra Blake e il suo doppio, che si conclude con la replica dell’evento che ha dato inizio
alla storia:
A few inches from me, through the water-dimmed windshield, a once-human face grimaced at me. A
drowned man wearing an aviator’s helmet, his mouth fixed in a death-gape, lay across the controls, arms
swaying towards me in the current that flowed through the cabin door. Terrified by this wavering embrace, I
turned and swam blindly into the tail of the aircraft. The air rushed from my lungs in the violent water. No
longer a whale, I struck out for the surface through the hundreds of scattering fish. Torn from the aircraft, a
fragment of white fabric sailed upwards through the water. Following it, I fought my way to the surface. In a
last exhausted race for the sun I seized the air 429 .
425 Ivi, pp. 51-52.
426 «Such an identification of the dead body with his own shadow (his own double, the uncanny twin brother) is in
accordance with the Freudian idea of the rejection of a part of one’s own psyche. Repressed and excluded from the
conscious self, it comes back from the outside as a horror-like double.» D. Oramus, op. cit., p. 233.
427 J. G. Ballard, Unlimited, op.cit., p. 52.
428 «Maldoror di Lautréamont desidera ardentemente l’unione con l’oceano, sempre in armonia con se stesso. I libertini
di Sade desiderano ardentemente di essere anfibi, di unirsi con ogni specie.» R. Jackson, op. cit., p. 145.
429 J. G. Ballard, Unlimited, op.cit., p. 88.
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