Cosmo stands in the corridor with a bunch of enormous flowers in her hands. She smells of trees and water and she still remembers that you used to love lilies. Around her is a pall of smoke, or maybe frost, and little white clouds escape from her mouth when she breathes. The ceiling above you changes into sky and in the distance is the sound of the night watchmen disappearing in their clogs with their bunches of keys. She stands in the doorway to the laboratory in her newly washed white coat, and she and her towering boots take a few rapid strides toward you. And she kisses your mouth and your neck and her hands are all over your face. The color of the lining in her coat is gentle and comforting.
VALERIE: Who are the flowers for?
COSMO: We got the money.
VALERIE: What money?
COSMO: The research money. All the money we applied for. We got it in the end.
VALERIE: I don’t believe it.
COSMO: It’s true. We can do everything we want now. No restrictions, no limitations. We can make just mouse girls.
VALERIE: Just mouse girls?
COSMO: Just mouse girls.
VALERIE: No Y genes?
COSMO: No Y genes.
VALERIE: No walking abortions?
COSMO: No abortions.
VALERIE: You remembered the lilies this time.
COSMO: I bought lilies, I bought champagne. I forgot to buy cigars.
VALERIE: How much did we get?
COSMO: As much as we wanted. And more if we need it.
She takes your cool hand and pulls you up onto the workbench and she lies behind your back and holds you. Outside the window, hundreds of white albino rabbits are playing between the trees.
VALERIE: What are the rabbits doing?
COSMO: I let them out into the park.
VALERIE: Shall we go out with them?
COSMO: We’ll sleep for a bit first.
VALERIE: You’re not leaving now?
COSMO: I’m going nowhere.
VALERIE: You bought night flowers filled with sunshine. Do you remember when the night watchman chased us across the park? Your hair always smelled of rain and grass. Your hair still smells of rain … I remember you held my hands above my head, you kissed me so hard I thought I would break.
COSMO: Sleep now, Ruler of the Universe.
VALERIE: Where’s the money?
COSMO: Shh … We’re going to go to sleep now and dream that there isn’t a question about death in any sentence. Death didn’t happen and we weren’t there. We’re going to dream that we’re not in a San Francisco welfare hotel for dying drug addicts and whores. We’re going to dream that I’ve been here all the time. Death isn’t in the same place as us.
VALERIE: Read me something while I fall asleep.
COSMO: Do you promise to sleep then?
VALERIE (faint smile): I swear on my breasts.
COSMO (opens the manifesto): You’ve never had any breasts to speak of.
VALERIE: Read it now.
COSMO: Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so.
VALERIE (begins to fall asleep): Keep going. I want to know how it ends.
COSMO: The female function is to explore and discover the world, solve problems, invent, crack jokes, make music; it is to create a magic world. Every woman knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others and the meaning of life is love … Valerie?
VALERIE: —
Cosmogirl holds you in her arms and her embrace is a black expanse of velvet in which to plunge and be enfolded. Desert animals screech in the darkness, waves pound against the shores, nurses turn on the lights in the dormitories at Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, Dorothy sleeps her wine-induced slumber surrounded by rose wallpaper in Georgia. When Cosmogirl sees you are no longer awake, she stops reading, takes off her white coat, and drapes it over your shoulders. Then she carefully closes the book.
AFTERWORD
AUGUST 2005
After the novel is finished, I visit the Tenderloin in San Francisco, that small area of affliction in the middle of the city beside the Pacific Ocean. The Bristol Hotel is still a welfare hotel under the auspices of the city and the Tenderloin is still a form of hell. The hotel is said to have improved greatly since the eighties, when Valerie lived there.
I have never been in a place that puts me so much in mind of death. The smells and the dirt, the vomit marks on the carpets and the wizened figures moving hurriedly up and down the corridors. The mangy cats and dogs, the scraps of food, the wheelchairs. Lost women, lost men.
They are all near death, they are all sorrowful, all smiling, many with the characteristic red patches on their faces; it is an incurable disease they share. Out on the street are men whispering, “Kill me, just kill me,” and women go in and out in their blood-stained furs.
The view from most of the rooms is dominated by a gigantic billboard covering the wall of the building opposite. In the entrance there is a soft drink machine and a pay phone. I visit the hotel only a few times, fearful of being contaminated by their ruin. The smells scare me and all the time I long to be sitting in a bar in another part of town, long to be by the ocean. And I never understand what that billboard is trying to sell, but the text is a simple appeal in orange capitals: S T A Y.
This novel is dedicated to the residents of the Bristol Hotel.
Sara Stridsberg
A Note About the Author
Sara Stridsberg is an internationally acclaimed writer and playwright. She has published seven books of both fiction and nonfiction, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. A former member of the Swedish Academy, she is a leading feminist and artist in her native Sweden and around the world. You can sign up for email updates here.
A Note About the Translator
Deborah Bragan-Turner has a degree in Scandinavian languages from University College London. She translates Swedish literature, particularly literary fiction and biographies.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
EPIGRAPH
BAMBILAND
NEW YORK MAGAZINE, APRIL 25, 1991
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 25, 1988, THE DAY OF YOUR DEATH
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 7, 1988, A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THE END
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT, JUNE 3, 1968
VENTOR, SUMMER 1945
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT, JUNE 3, 1968
VENTOR, SUMMER 1945
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 9, 1988, YOUR BIRTHDAY
VENTOR, JUNE 1946
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 10, 1988
THE NARRATORS
VENTOR, SUMMER 1948
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 11, 1988
THE OCEANS
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 12, 1988
VENTOR, FEBRUARY 1951
ALLIGATOR REEF, MARCH 1951
STATE SUPREME COURT, JUNE 13, 1968
ALLIGATOR REEF, APRIL 1951
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JULY 2, 1968
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JULY 13, 1968
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 13, 1988
VENTOR, JUNE 1951
AMERICA, ROAD MOVIE, MAY 1951–OCTOBER 1952
THE ARCHITECTS
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JULY 29, 1968
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 14, 1988
ALLIGATOR REEF, DECEMBER 1953
ALLIGATOR REEF, 1953–1954
ALLIGATOR REEF, WINTER 1955
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 15, 1988
ALLIGATOR REEF, SUMMER 1955
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, AUGUST 10, 1968
LABORATORY PARK
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 16, 1988
ALLIGATOR REEF, AUTUMN 1956
> JACKSONVILLE COLLEGE, EARLY SUMMER 1958
JACKSONVILLE COLLEGE, LATE SUMMER 1958
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, SEPTEMBER 8, 1968
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AUGUST 1958
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 17, 1988
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, OCTOBER 1958
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, FEBRUARY 1959
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, DECEMBER 24, 1968
CHRISTMAS EVE, CONVERSATION TWO
CHRISTMAS EVE, CONVERSATION THREE
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AUTUMN 1959
THE PSYCHOANALYSTS
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 18, 1988
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AUGUST 1962
THE TENDERLOIN, WINTER 1987, ONE YEAR BEFORE YOUR DEATH
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, 1963
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, APRIL 1969
SWANNING AROUND IN THE SCIENCES I
SWANNING AROUND IN THE SCIENCES II
NEW YORK, SUMMER 1966
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 19, 1988
THE FACTORY
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, MAY 14, 1969
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1967
“GREAT ART”
ELIZABETH DUNCAN AND DEATH, SEPTEMBER 1967
NOTICE TO UNKNOWN WRITERS
CHELSEA HOTEL, NOVEMBER 1967
YOUR LONG SILENCES WITH COSMO
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 20, 1988
THE FACTORY, DECEMBER 1967
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JUNE 1969
CHELSEA HOTEL, FEBRUARY 1968
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JUNE 1969
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 21, 1988
NEW YORK–COLLEGE PARK, MARCH 1968
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JULY 1969
COSMOGIRL MY LOVE
ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, JULY 15, 1969
THE FACTORY, LATER IN MARCH 1968
MOVIE STAR 1968
THE PARASITES
LOVE VALERIE
NEW YORK, MAY 1968
CHELSEA HOTEL, MAY 1968
MISSION DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO, MAY 1968
NEW YORK, MAY 1968
CHELSEA HOTEL, STILL MAY 1968
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 23, 1988
MAX’S KANSAS CITY, MAY 1968
THE PRESIDENTS
33 UNION SQUARE, JUNE 3, 1968
FILM SEQUENCE, THE LAST ONE FROM THE FACTORY
ANDY AND DEATH
ARITHMETIC AND SURFING I
ARITHMETIC AND SURFING II
ARITHMETIC AND SURFING III
NEW YORK STATE PRISON FOR WOMEN, 1969–1971
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 25, 1988, THE LAST DAY
AMERICA, LIFE IS A COURT CASE
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ALPHABET
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 25, 1988, DURING THE NIGHT
ONE LAST ROOM LIT UP, ONE EXPLODING LILY IN THE DARKNESS
AFTERWORD
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR
COPYRIGHT
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2006 by Sara Stridsberg
Translation copyright © 2019 by Deborah Bragan-Turner
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2006 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as Drömfakulteten—tillägg till sexualteorin
English translation originally published in 2019 by MacLehose Press, Great Britain, as The Faculty of Dreams
English translation published in the United States by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2019
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72061-2
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