Machines in the Head

by Anna Kavan

  A nurse opened the door and called him, and he got up and stepped forward, and looking past her along the wall of the corridor thought, How many stones there are in this place; so many faces and stones, and lost the thought before it meant anything and went into the room.

  ‘I want you to lie on the couch,’ Dr Pope told him. ‘We’re going to give you a shot of something that will make you feel a bit sleepy. Quite a pleasant feeling. It won’t hurt at all.’

  Obedient, null, with that unnatural stiffness, Kling laid himself down.

  Lying on the high couch he looked at the exuberant ceiling without surprise. The flowers and the crowding cherubic faces did not seem any more strange to him than anything else. The ceiling did not concern him any more than the doctor concerned him. Nothing concerned him except the heaviness in his breast. He waited, looking at the doctor as if he had never seen him before, the nurse busy with swab and spirit and tourniquet, and he felt far off on his arm the tourniquet tightening, the bursting pressure of flesh against tightening fabric and then the small sharp sting as the needle entered the vein.

  ‘Just try to relax,’ the doctor said, watching, while the fluid in the hypodermic went down, the blank waiting face with wide-open extremely dilated eyes.

  He smiled his professional smile of encouragement and looked from the face to the chest and the massive shoulders bulked rigid under the white shirt that they stretched tight, at the clenched strong hands, the rough blue cloth strained on the tensed thighs, the stiffly upthrust boots not neatly laced, and back to the blank face again. He noticed on the face how the deep tan of the outdoor years was starting to turn yellowish as it slowly faded inside hospital walls.

  ‘Well, how do you feel now?’ he asked, smiling, the man who stared up at him without answering.

  ‘I want you to talk, Kling,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me what’s worrying you.’

  Kling, his patient, looked away from him and up at the ceiling.

  ‘What is it you’ve got on your mind?’ asked the doctor.

  Kling stared upwards without speaking, and now his limbs started twitching a little.

  ‘You’ll feel better after you’ve talked,’ Dr Pope said.

  The nurse finished the long injection and withdrew the syringe adroitly. A single drop of blood oozed from the pierced vein and she dabbed a shred of cotton wool on to it and silently carried her paraphernalia into the background and stood watching.

  ‘You’ve got to tell me what’s making you miserable,’ the doctor said, speaking loud. He bent down and put his hand on Kling’s shoulder and said loudly and very distinctly, close to his ear, ‘You are very miserable, aren’t you?’

  Kling looked at him with his wide, black, lost animal’s eyes and felt the hand on his shoulder. His shoulder twitched, and something inside him seemed to be loosening, he felt sick in his stomach, and a sleepy strangeness was coming up at him out of nowhere, turning him tired or sick.

  ‘Why are you miserable?’ he heard the question. ‘Something happened to you, didn’t it? Something you can’t forget. What was that thing?’

  Kling saw the doctor standing far too close, bending down almost on top of him. The hand that had hold of his shoulder gripped hard like a trap, the distorted face looked monstrous, foreshortened and suspended beneath painted faces, the eyes glaring, the threat of the mouth opening and shutting. Kling groaned, turning his head from one side to the other to escape from the eyes, but the eyes would not let him go. He felt the strangeness of sleep or sickness or death moving up on him, and then something gave way in his chest, the stone shifted and sleep came forward to the foot of the couch, and he groaned again, louder, clutching his chest, crumpling the shirt and the red tie over his breastbone.

  ‘Was it something bad that was done to you?’ he heard the doctor’s voice shout in his ear.

  He felt himself turning and twisting on the hard bed, twisting away from the eyes and the voice and the gripping hand that was shaking him now. He shut his eyes to escape, but a salt prick of tears or sweat forced them open, he did not know where he was or what was happening to him, and he was afraid. He was very frightened with the strange sleep so near him, he wanted to call for help, it was hard for him to keep silent. But somewhere in the midst of fear existed the thought, They’ve taken everything; let them not take my silence. And the queer thing was that Williams was somehow a part of this, his smile, the cigarette and what he had spoken.

  ‘Was it something bad that you did?’ Kling heard.

  He did not feel the hand that was shaking his shoulder. He only felt his face wet, and on the other side of sleep a voice kept on moaning while another voice shouted. But he could not listen because, just then, the stone moved quite away from his breast and sleep came up and laid its languid head on his breast in place of the stone.

  He tried to look at the strange sleep, to know it, but it had no form, it simply rested sluggishly on him like gas, and all he could see above was a cloud of faces; the entire earth was no graveyard great enough for so many, nor was there room to remember a smile or a cigarette or a voice any more.

  The old man was there and had been for some time, not sprawled in leaves now but standing, bent forward, listening; and Kling knew that this time something must pass between them, there was something which must be said by him, in extenuation, or in entreaty, to which the old man must reply, although what it was that had to be said, or what words would be found to express it, did not appear yet.

  The old man bent over him and blood dripped on to his face and he could not move because of what lay on his breast, and when the old man saw he could not move he bent lower still, and Kling could see the tufts of bristly hairs in his father’s nostrils. He knew he would have to speak soon, and, staring wildly, with the old man’s face almost on his, he could see the side of the face that was only a bloodied hole, and he heard a sudden frantic gasp and gush of words in his own language, and that was all he heard because at that moment sleep reached up and covered over his face.

  Dr Pope and the nurse had both seen that Kling was going to start talking. The doctor had seen it coming for about half a minute and waited intently. The nurse looked expectant. When the first sounds came both of them had moved forward at once, and the doctor had bent lower over his patient, but now they stepped back from the couch.

  ‘I was afraid that might happen,’ Dr Pope said in his impatient voice. ‘Damned annoying. I suppose there’s no one in the place who could translate?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Exasperating,’ the doctor said. ‘So we shan’t get anything out of him after all.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the nurse said again.

  ‘Most frustrating and disappointing,’ said Dr Pope. ‘Oh well, it’s no good trying to work on him now.’

  THE GANNETS

  IT WAS SPRINGTIME, a windy day. I had walked a long way on the cliffs by a path that I did not know. Gannets were diving like snow falling into the sea, pursuing a shoal of fish that kept parallel with the shore. I’m not certain now whether I walked so far in order to watch the gannets or to explore the coast or simply because it was a bright afternoon.

  After winding for a long time between low bushes and rocks, the path suddenly began to climb steeply over a headland. Seeing the difficult track ahead made me realize that I was tired and that I had already come much further than I had intended. From the position of the sun I knew that it must be getting late. The sensible thing would have been to turn back then, especially as the gannets, which I had perhaps been following unconsciously, were vanishing around the rocky point shaped like the snout of a huge saurian. But instead of starting the long walk home I kept on, telling myself that I might as well see what lay beyond the head since I had come so far. It was quite a stiff climb; the path was slippery with pine needles and loose stones, and I was breathless by the time I got to the top. There was nothing about the view from the crest, either, to justify the effort of getting there. However f
ar I looked I could see only a vista of the same yellowish rocky cliffs topped with pine trees and scrub which had been in front of my eyes the whole afternoon.

  A few yards away, in a hollow of the downward slope, was a dilapidated wooden shack. At first I thought it must be some old boat-shed or deserted fisherman’s hut. The half-ruined place, apparently only held together by roughly nailed boards and wire and patched with beaten-out tins, seemed much too ramshackle to be inhabited. But then I saw signs of occupancy: a heap of fresh potato peelings thrown outside the door, a few indescribably sordid rags hanging from the crazy posts of what had once been a fence.

  I stood there in the wind for a minute, resting and getting my breath after the climb. And as I was wondering how any human being could be so unfortunate or so degraded as to live in such squalor, five or six children appeared and clustered together staring out to sea. They were, like the hovel, indescribably squalid, almost naked, hideous with neglect. They pointed towards the sea where the gannets on this side of the point were diving much closer in, with folded wings hurtling like bolts through the air, to strike the water one after the other in jets of spray. I could not hear much of what the children were saying, but it seemed from certain words and from their gestures that they expected the birds to come near. I waited to see what would happen. We all gazed at the gannets, which were now no longer diving or searching the waves but planing portentously towards us with infrequent wing strokes. And sure enough I was presently half deafened by a storm of harsh cries immediately overhead. Long black-tipped wings hid the sun, shadowing everything; only the cold round eyes and the fierce beaks glittered. And hardly had the flock sighted the children than they seemed to be menacing them, screaming headlong towards them in horrid haste. I shouted some sort of warning, urging the children to run into the house. They took no notice. I saw their looks full of excitement and anticipation but without any amazement. They seemed to be taking part in a procedure well known to them. Already the gannets were swooping upon one of them, the smallest of the group, whom two of the others dragged along by her stick-like arms. And it was beyond all possibility of doubt that this miserable little creature was the victim among them, already dedicated to the birds. Not terror alone gave such a shocking blankness to her lifted face, darkened by two great holes, bloodied pits from which the eyes had already been torn. I shouted again and began running with an idea of beating the gannets off with my hands, but then I must have stumbled and fallen heavily. I must have been stunned by the fall on the jagged rock, for when I got up the cliff was silent and lonely, the wind had died down and the sun was sinking behind sullen bars of cloud edged with fire.

  How did all this atrocious cruelty ever get into the world, that’s what I often wonder. No one created it, no one invoked it, and no saint, no genius, no dictator, no millionaire, no, not God’s son himself, is able to drive it out.

  OUR CITY

  ‘I did believe, and do still, that the end of our city will be with Fire and Brimstone from above.’

  I

  HOW OFTEN ONE HEARS our city spoken of as ‘cruel’. In fact, this adjective is used so frequently that in many people’s minds cruelty has become accepted as the city’s most typical and outstanding attribute, whereas there are in existence a great variety of other qualities, probably equally characteristic and certainly just as remark able.

  To my mind, one of the most astonishing things about the city is its plurality. In my own personal experience, for example, it has, during a comparatively short space of time, displayed three distinct manifestations of its complex being. And if it is possible for one individual in one brief period to witness three such changes, just imagine the astronomical number of different forms in which our city is bound to appear through the centuries to the millions of its inhabitants.

  In my case, the first metamorphosis was, I think, the most unexpected; for who, even among the unprejudiced, would expect the city to show itself as an octopus? Yet that is exactly what happened. Slowly, with deliberation, and at the same time as it seemed almost languidly, a blackish tentacle was unfurled which travelled undeviatingly across the globe to the remote antipodean island where I imagined myself secure. I shall not forget the tentacle’s deceptive semi-transparency, something like that dark Swedish glass which contains tints both purple and black while still keeping translucence. The tentacle had the same insubstantial, ethereal look, but it had also a strength many times greater than that of the strongest steel.

  The second metamorphosis was, by comparison with the first, almost predictable. It was, in a sense, logical, and, although I won’t go so far as to say that I actually anticipated it, I certainly recognized its inevitability when it appeared. As a matter of fact, I believe I really did, if not consciously or completely, at least in some obscure, inchoate way, foresee it; although it’s difficult to be quite sure of this after the event. We all of us know from films or pictures or the posters of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, those hideous toothed traps, sadistic jaws which snap upon the delicate leg or paw of some soft-furred wild creature, mangling the flesh and splintering the fragile bones and clamping the victim to a slow, agonizing death. There is even a sort of resemblance between the serrated blade as it must appear shearing down on its prey and the ferocious skyline of a city partially laid waste.

  With regard to the third metamorphosis, I am in an uncertain position. To me this aspect of the city’s character, although less clearly in sequence than the second, still is quite comprehensible and far from surprising in view of what had gone before. But to an outsider, someone from another part of the world, I can see that it may well seem the most astonishing manifestation of all. ‘How can a city be a judge at one and the same time?’ I can imagine such a man asking. ‘A judge, what’s more, who not only arraigns the criminal, sets up the court, conducts the trial and passes sentence but actually sees that the sentence is carried out.’

  To such a person I can only reply that I have no explanation to give him. These things are not well understood, and doubtless there’s some good reason why we don’t understand them. The most satisfactory attitude is to accept the facts as they are without too much probing, perhaps simultaneously working out some private thesis of one’s own to account for them.

  No, I can’t explain how our city can be at one time a judge, at another a trap, at another an octopus. Nor have I any way of elucidating the sentence passed on me, which is really two sentences, mutually exclusive but running concurrently: the sentence of banishment from the city and of imprisonment in it. You may wonder how I have the heart to keep on at all in such a hopeless position. Indeed, there often are times when I’m practically in despair, when the contradiction seems too bitter and senseless and incomprehensible to be borne. All that keeps me going then, I think, is the hope that some time or other I may by chance come upon the solution, that one half of the contradiction will somehow dissolve into the other, or the sentence as a whole be modified or even remitted. It’s no good approaching these obscure matters systematically. All one can do is to go on living, if possible, and moving a little, tentatively, as occasion offers, first in one direction and then in another. Like that a solution may ultimately be found, as in the case of those puzzles made of wires intertwined, which suddenly and by a purely accidental manipulation fall apart into two halves.

  II

  There’s a street near where I live which is very ugly. It’s not a slum street but part of what is called a respectable cheap neighbourhood. The people who live there are quite poor. The refugee woman who works in the library rents a room in this street. She has taken refuge there. I should have thought myself that it was more a place to escape from.

  It’s not only the small yellowish-grey houses which are ugly: the actual roadway that pitches not steeply uphill, the lamp-posts, the squat air-raid shelter, even the gutters, all seem to have an air of meanness and malevolence which is frightening. The street has a smell, too. It is, as far as I can describe it, a s
our smell, with spite in it. A smell of asphalt, of dustbins not emptied often enough and spite. The people who walk in the street look spiteful, too; they glance at you resentfully as they pass, as if they would like to do you an injury. They look at you as if they wished you were at their mercy. I should hate to be handed over to the mercy of the people in this street. Even the children who dart up and down have faces like spiteful gnomes. A little girl in a plaid dress pushes past me; her limp, uncombed hair brushes my arm, and that moment, from just underneath my elbow, she lets out a shrill screech that pierces the whole afternoon. I feel as if a hobgoblin had jabbed a long pin through my ear.

  The bald, excrescent shelter which I’m now passing has a curious morbid look, like some kind of tumour that has stopped being painful and hardened into a static, permanent lump. It reminds me of one of those chronic swellings you sometimes see on a person’s neck which has been there so long that no one but a stranger notices it any more. The entrance to the shelter is screened with wire netting. I look through. The inside of the place is unclean.

  Now, something quite extraordinary occurs in the street. A small dog comes around the corner, running after his mistress. Yes, actually a dog; what a relief. And, what’s more, it’s a dog of that particular aristocratic, antique breed, half lion, half marmoset, from which, rather than from any other species, I would choose a companion if ever again it became possible for me to know such happiness as companionship with a dog.

  This little dog, coloured like a red squirrel, runs with the gay abandonment peculiar to his race, his plumy tail streaming behind and seeming to beat the pavement to the rhythm of his elastic and bounding movements. How can I explain my emotion at the sight of that small, heraldic-looking beast careering so buoyantly? The appearance of these dogs when they run has always seemed to me quite amazingly intrepid and lively, at the same time both brave and amusing – even faintly absurd – yet somehow exceedingly dashing and debonair, almost heroic, in the style of diminutive Quixotes launching themselves without the least hesitation upon the enormously dangerous world.