by Anna Kavan
The book opens with a thud of the front door. Contemporaneous with this sound, the hurried suggestion of a man dressed in dark business suit and carrying a dispatch case, leaving the house, getting into his car, driving away. The empty rooms of the house filled with rain noises, dullness, nullity, the morse-tap of the blind; closed in the kitchen, the two prim-faced servants, apart in their closed world of picture papers and tea.
B turns the pages. Each one is exactly the same as the one before. She turns them faster and faster, running them over between her thumb and first finger, speeding them up into a bioscope blur, the door thuds spraying out quick like gunshot pellets. When she comes to the end she closes the book
and puts it down on the seat of the railway carriage. The train is just roaring into a tunnel. B looks back, through the transparent coaches and baggage car of the train. Far behind, very small, framed in black circular tunnel mouth, diminishing at great speed as the train rushes the opposite way, the suburban house wet in its trees, rain still greyly slanting.
At the terminus all is noise and confusion. It’s a great cold dingy place full of bewildering hustle and shouting, escaping steam-hiss, whistles and clanging bells. Everyone is in a terrific hurry: gangs of people dash wildly in different directions, loaded with all sorts of impedimenta, piles of books, bags, overcoats, boots and shoes, food, mascots, pictures, pets, awkwardly shaped wooden objects, bats and rackets, boards and unwieldy globes, which they hurriedly deposit in various places. But no sooner does one of the groups succeed in getting all these things arranged in some semblance of order than, in obedience to whistles, bells, shouts, the whole collection of articles is snatched up again to be bundled off to some other position where the process has to be gone through afresh. To add to the general confusion, loudspeakers are continually bawling out orders or directions of some kind, while, only slightly less loud, other unamplified voices seem to be reciting or chanting, and still others are carrying on shouted conversations with friends. And as if the jumbled parties helter-skeltering this way and that didn’t create sufficient disorder, isolated individuals keep scurrying among them, forcing their way in the opposite direction to their neighbours, leaping down from the tops of piles of boxes or scrambling to precarious perches on high window-ledges, perhaps in search of a missing companion or a piece of lost property, the subject of their incomprehensible shrill inquiries.
In the midst of all this turmoil B is quite at a loss. Someone who seems to be in authority has called out to her to join a certain group, which group she doesn’t hear, and before she can ask for more information the person who gave the order has disappeared. B looks round hopelessly. How in the world is she ever going to find her right place in this bear-garden? Nobody seems in the least interested in her. Nobody seems to care what she does, where she goes, what becomes of her. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone whether she moves or stays where she is all day long. People are constantly bumping into her and pushing against her with their clumsy paraphernalia, but not one of them can spare a moment to stop and answer her questions. Occasionally an individual, better-natured than the rest, will call back before vanishing some muddled instructions, of which B cannot make head or tail—particularly since only a word or two is audible in the tumult.
She really begins to feel desperate. The people here are all so rowdy, so scatterbrained, so intent on their own higgledy-piggledy affairs, that it’s useless to try to catch their attention. And then the place is so huge and dreary, and every part of it is so much like every other part, that to find one’s way about in it seems an impossibility; to move in any direction is almost certainly to get lost among the hurrying crowds, the stacks of indiscriminate objects which are for ever collapsing as something is dragged out from the bottom, and then being chaotically heaped up anew.
Still, she can’t stand in one place indefinitely, to be jostled and pushed from one side to another. Without any aim in view, simply because there’s less of an uproar this way, B moves in a certain direction. For some reason or other there are far fewer people here, the main throng suddenly seems to be concentrated elsewhere.
Soon she’s in a quiet space, by herself, in front of a door which is evidently not meant to be opened, or even to be seen, because it is painted exactly as if it were part of the wall. However, it does open quite easily when B turns the handle, and she goes through it on to a narrow platform above a stage
where a ballet of the Graduation Ball type is in progress. The platform is flimsy and small, balanced on scaffolding up there in the wings as if perched on enormous stilts. B advances timidly to the edge of it and looks down.
Level brilliant light on the stage, warm coloured; from the footlights and in a strong generalized flood (not spotlights) from high up above. The auditorium is merely suggested by a receding tide of shadow beyond the footlights. No orchestra visible. The ballet music is stimulating: it has much gaiety, freshness, without sugariness; it has “a curious perfume and a most melodious twang”.
The dancing master in black satin knee-breeches and buckled shoes leads his class, which consists of about twenty boys and girls in equal numbers. The boys are dressed in fancified cadets’ uniforms; strapped long white trousers, gloves, coloured monkey jackets with silver or gold buttons and touches of lace. The girls’ costumes are more varied. Some wear full muslins, just over knee-length, a cross between ballet skirts and the usual young girl’s white party frock; these have wide sashes made of stiff silk with fringed ends in sharp naive colours tied in large bows behind. One or two are in period dresses, bustles or crinolines with display of lace pantalettes. Others wear fantastic versions of conventional school clothes, lustrous velvet jibbahs, candy-striped guimpes. Accessories, such as gold corkscrew-curled wigs: ropy gretchen plaits held by flat ribbons; demure chenille snoods; fans; openwork elbow-length lace mittens, black, white or coloured; bronze or black dancing sandals, crossed ankle elastics; block-toed ballet shoes in different satins.
Across the stage, to lively four- and eight-bar strains, the pupils dance in double line, girls ahead, following the master who is leading them with brisk yet dignified steps. Then pirouette and back with the boys leading and the master an agile black grasshopper in the rear. He waves his brittle arms like antennae, tattoos his buckled shoes in dry rataplan on the boards.
Now to different rhythm, in spaced mock-formal advancements, uneven numbers, one, pause, two three, pause, and so on, the girls sedately skip into the centre, take places on frail spindle-legged gilt chairs set by powdered and liveried menservants for each one as she approaches.
All sit, feet crossed, hands folded, in identical poses of mimed modesty.
Then the boys, all together in tin-soldier military formation, march up, left right, crisp rap-tapping metre, halt, click heels, stiff toy-soldier salute, each in front of a chair.
Girls rise.
Footmen swiftly and silently remove all chairs except one, which is left standing in the exact middle of the stage.
After prim exchange of bows, curtsies, partners dance off together, steps and deportment very hypocritically comme il faut, under the stem supervision of the master who mounts the chair and from this eminence critically watches the class, scrutinizing each couple in turn, occasionally giving a defaulter’s shoulder a smart rap with the baton which he uses to beat time to the music.
The dance, which starts off with so much decorum, gradually begins to lose its formality as the tempo quickens. Covert smiles and whispers, arch looks, spread from one pair to the next, relax into more and more open mischievousness, frivolousness, flirtatiousness. The dancing master scolds, reprimands, works himself into a frenzy, hitting out left and right with his baton, all to no purpose. He rapidly loses his dignity, loses control over the class which will not pay attention to him any longer. He becomes a figure of fun. The pupils, girls and boys, laugh and mimic him, dodging his baton as they pass by. Finally a boy snatches the baton away, dances off brandishing it mockingly. Another boy tilts the chair, tips the master on
to the ground. Now more than ever like an irate grasshopper he hops among the revolving couples, chattering with rage, ineffectually trying to recover his precious baton, his symbol of authority, impotently striking promiscuous fist blows which are warded off with derision.
Feet fly faster and faster. Skirts spin faster and faster. The dance develops into a kind of age-of-innocence orgy in the midst of which dervishes the black insect-like maestro, frantically flinging in all directions his stick-dry limbs that appear to be on the point of snapping off from his body.
Down into the midst of this comes B, her green slippers seeking in time to the music the rungs of the ladder leading down to the stage. The music has gone to her head as well as her feet. Without any reserve she darts in among all those twirling dresses, those flying curls, those slapping braids, on eager toe-tips shuttling between them, soliciting every couple in turn. But no one surrenders a partner to her: and she is obliged to perform with the dancing master a feverish pas de deux, the pair of them oscillating vertiginously, caracoling, glissading: she in search of a partner, he pursuing his puissant baton which is passed by the dancers from hand to hand, tantalizingly flourished before his face, tauntingly tossed away.
At last, to crashing tumultuous chords, the fantasia terminates. But music immediately takes up again on a delicate dawn motif, very limpid, young, pure; an aubade.
With dainty tripping rustle of petticoats, brisk scissor-crisscrossing of white trouser legs, the dancers retire to the back of the stage where chairs are now arranged in a wide crescent; girls settling themselves with bird-like preening, flirt and flutter of hair, skirts, fans; boys sitting on the floor or leaning on the backs of the chairs.
Out in the centre the master, B and one danseuse who did not withdraw with the rest of the class, are dancing the tentative opening phrase of a new movement which develops the rapprochement of the two girls under the maestro’s aegis.
The dancing master has unobtrusively regained his baton and with it his dominance. Depended from his thin fingers, the baton swerves delicately in time to the music as he dances, inspiring the dance of the girls. Their four green shoes move complementarily about three feet apart. Up to now the quality of the music has been predominantly ethereal, and this feeling the dancing girls, in their spacing apart and traditional formalized posturing of head and body, also convey. It is still aloof and airy as possible, but now superimposed on the initial morning simplicity of the theme are certain elusive suggestions of provocativeness, ambiguity, as the girls approach one another more closely, touch hands, finally become linked together in their gossamer intrication.
They glide hand-in-hand in front of the master. While he grows steadily taller they both lift their identical pairs of eyes slowly and seriously towards his face, into which they look questioningly for a moment, heads tilting back to focus him as he towers upwards: then their eyes lower, sliding without dubiousness sidelong to meet each other; they look into each other’s eyes for a moment; simultaneously and very slightly and briefly they smile, and circle dreamily in exact imponderous harmony, and, with a lacing of buoyant arms, embrace one another’s waists.
The master’s head has reached up to the roof. His hair is the roof, the illumination of the stage pours out of his eyes, his thighs are gigantic buttresses shoring the building. From his fingers dangle the puppet strings. For a few seconds longer he manipulates them, jerking the green feet back and forth, propelling and twitching the rigid arms. On gilt chairs the abandoned puppets (they are like bright scraps hoarded for a patchwork quilt that have been carelessly turned out of a workbag and left in disorder) have fallen this way and that; backwards with legs in air, sideways across one another, forward with heads on knees, heads on to floor. The puppet master drops the remaining strings; the last two dolls, collapsing, droop over each other’s shoulders with stiff arms outstretched; a monstrous, dry, homy hand descends on them, pinches one negligently between thumb and first finger, lifts it up out of sight. The lights go out. And though “There’s nothing more” remains unsaid, grey draughts of emptiness drift from the stage.
THINGS at school began going wrong. I broke rules and was often in the detention-room. People started saying how difficult I’d become. Generally they were angry with me, but occasionally one of them spoke kindly and asked questions which I wouldn’t answer because I distrusted kindness. Once a doctor wanted me to tell him what went on inside my head, but I didn’t trust him either. I wouldn’t talk to him in case he was on the enemy side. How could I know that he wasn’t one of the tigers?
How could I explain that school was a machine running by clockwork, and that it was because I didn’t fit the machine that I was always in trouble? At the start I had tried to fit in. Now I’d stopped trying because I knew it was hopeless. I knew there was no place for me in the day unless I gave in altogether, and this I was determined I wouldn’t do. The daylight world was my enemy, and to the authorities of that world who had rejected me I would not submit. They had insulted and damaged me and I would never surrender to them.
A MUCH enlarged presentation of a pile of forms on a flat surface under a window. The pile is seen from the side, very monumental in the strong light, as if made of stone. The effect is somewhat that of a model cenotaph squarely set on the dark featureless plane. The top of the pile is in full blank-white, flat-white daylight. Cold white light edges the edges of certain projecting forms, striating the black-shadowed perpendicularity in a way suggestive of steps or of sharply jutting relief.
A very clean large ringless hand approaches the pile. It could be either a male or a female hand. The practical fingers have squarish shortish neatly trimmed nails. The flesh of the hand shows tallow-white against ice-white paper.
The hand hovers momentarily; sinks; the thumb moving glissando along the edge of the topmost form, fingers curving above, till it reaches the comer; first finger smoothly descends and in co-operation with thumb raises the paper slowly upwards: holds it vertical for a moment (the words EXAMINATION RESULTS, and CASE NOTES, come alternatively and fugitively into focus heading the form): lowers it to horizontal position on smooth dark surface.
The paper now seen laid out flat on the surface, of which only a narrow border appears framing it, with the mass of piled forms rising steeply behind, top of the pile is out of sight. A huge highly polished black fountain-pen like a gun-barrel is trained on the paper; the glittering nib over the black ink-feed carries a dazzlingly brilliant bolus of light on its rounded tip.
Discharging brisk light-volleys, the nib travels judicially down the left side of the paper where a sequence of printed categories is set out with appropriate sections for comments: halts opposite CONDUCT near the top of the form; after hesitation proceeds at reduced pace downwards to SYMPTOMS; pauses again.
The fountain-pen poised like a gun taking aim. This position is held while, very distantly, a bell begins ringing. On the last stroke of the bell, nib, jabbing brilliance, is sharply directed to paper which it contacts with a short crackling explosion.
Immediately, light and sound condensing, concentrating into, respectively, the voice and nimbus of the Liaison Officer (restored now to his original smart dress and assurance), who reads from the original spine-tided black volume, in his original dry, precise, expressionless, military tone
The Terminus Clock
Choosing a clock for an important terminus is a serious matter. It’s not a question that can be settled offhand, like buying an alarm-clock or a wrist-watch, in the course of a brief visit to the horlogerie round the comer. No indeed: this is a totally different affair, and one which may easily require years of research and consideration. Just glance for a moment at the various aspects of the problem. Let’s start off by asking ourselves what are the essential qualities that such a clock must possess. First and foremost I imagine everyone will agree that it must be an accurate timekeeper. When it is remembered how many urgent matters—matters literally of life and death, to say nothing of vast business transactions and
state operations—depend on it, there can be no doubt that everything else must be secondary. As long as there is any integrity left in the human race there will be also the desire for an impartial standard of accuracy. That being decided, however, we are only at the start of our difficulties. The concept of accuracy is not static; it is, on the contrary, constantly fluctuating; a clock which keeps perfectly good time for us may be quite unreliable for our neighbour, and indeed for us too on another occasion. So in whose hands are we to place the decision? It might be best (if we could establish a majority) to trust to a majority judgment. But that is not feasible. The probability is that the very people who are most unanimous today in their opinion will tomorrow be all at loggerheads, and each come hurrying with some new recommendation of his own to supersede the previous common agreement.
Such obstacles paralyse one from the beginning, and so it may be advisable to pass on and to think less about the mechanism of the clock than of its design. Here again every section of the community will want something different: practical people being most likely in favour of functional plainness, while the æsthetes will demand an artistic presentation. And these conflicts will be further subdivided among themselves into minor clashes; as, for instance, in the case of the artists, between the so-called modems and the academicians, and then into still finer distinctions, impressionists versus pointillistes, symbolists versus surrealists, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Even supposing that by some arbitrary move the clock has actually been installed in the terminus, this, unfortunately, will only lead to fresh strife and fresh complications. Factions are sure to complain that the wrong site has been chosen, the clock-face, besides being of an unsatisfactory shape and size, is either too high or too low, or else is improperly illuminated; that it can only be seen with difficulty from the waiting-room, and not at all from behind the bookstall, and so on. On top of this there comes the technical problem of servicing the clock and maintaining it in first-class running order without in any way interrupting or interfering with the general routine functioning of the terminus as a whole.
