Sleep Has His House

by Anna Kavan

  Inside, in one of the bedrooms upstairs, a child’s cot. It is white, with bars at the sides; a brightly painted cock decorates the headboard, an owl the foot; the occupant lies motionless under puffed pale-blue eiderdown. Across the floor, which is covered in some hygienic greyish composition of cork or rubber, comes a tall brass-like woman of forty, her face somewhat like a photo of one of the hostesses seen in society papers; looking like and dressed like a hybrid nurse and socialite; her plucked eyebrows very arched, her lips painted bright red; costumed as if for a cocktail party; wearing a mackintosh apron tied round her waist.

  In a series of brisk efficient motions she approaches the cot; lets down the side (with harsh buzz-saw rasp); bends stiff from the waist, her tightly sheathed hind parts glossy in taut satin; turns back the eiderdown. With her hard hands she reaches inside the woolly-white, lamb’s-wool coverings (peeling them off as if they were part of a parcel or a cocoon) and grasps firmly, and after a moment lifts out a manikin, adeptly supported by her large hands under buttocks and shoulder-blades, dressed in grey-mottled and baggy tweeds: she sits on a chair; the manikin held on her knee and balancing there, limp dangling feet turned in like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The woman zips open her diamanté-trimmed corsage; pulls out a long rubbery phallus-shaped nipple from the glans of which a few flakes of sawdust scale off; inserts this in the dummy’s mouth in the style of a petrol feed.

  Shot of the little pursed rosebud mouth under shaved upper lip busily sucking away (with lip-smacking and belching accompaniment). The pose held in gruesome travesty of madonna and child tableau. While this goes on the manikin visibly swelling, swelling, swelling; till at the end of the meal he is almost a full-sized man. The woman stands him on the floor while she tucks away the flaccid phallus-teat, zips up her dress, stands up.

  Slight transitional pause. Next view is downwards from landing to hall (looking down steep-diving staircase), on the two foreshortened figures, the man’s egg-head with incipient bald tonsure spot. The woman hustles him into professorial gown, jerks, tugs, pats, brushes him off; takes his hand, leads him out of the front door. Through this open door is seen a sliver of venomous green-raffia stage grass.

  Chug-chug sound of a child playing at cars; high-pitched tooting horn; the woman reappears in the doorway, watching departure; her watchfulness holds for a few seconds. The woman turning, comes back inside; closing the door, the lock snicks shut; ripping loose apron-strings. The apron falls on the floor. Denting it with her high heels she walks over it to the wall-mirror, extracts a lipstick from gold-mesh bag, starts to repaint her mouth. In the mirror, close-up of her enormously enlarged brilliant moist raw red mouth, suggestive of fancified genital organ.

  Now a complete change of scene. The professor has reached the college and is lecturing to his class. He stands on a dais behind a desk on which is a carafe of water and a tin trumpet. He is not quite tall enough for the height of the desk and so he stands on an old-fashioned church hassock with flaps at the ends. To his left, on the wall behind him, a large blackboard scrawled over with undecipherable words and symbols in coloured chalks. (Conceivably some of these might be semi-intelligible words related to escapism; and one or two of the scribbles could be kindergarten obscenities, faces, figures.) On the right a phenomenally tall blank frosted-glass window reaches clear from floor to high domed ceiling. It holds its pair of stiff white fluted curtains rigidly to its sides in arms-downward-stretch position. Semicircular tiers of benches rising in front. The back of each bench forms a continuous curved shelf for the books of the row above. Only two tiers towards the centre are occupied. (There could be a suggestion of upper and lower dentures in this.) The students are masks: upper row masculine, feminine lower. Except for the sex differentiation, which appears mainly in the arrangement and length of the painted hair, all are identical, characterless, with wide round eyes of respectful admiration, adulation, attention. The masks supported on spinal columns of spiral wire: similar wires representing arms terminated by limp chamois glove-hands half-stuffed with cotton. The hands are laid flat on the bookrests with books between; all are motionless.

  The professor’s voice continuous wordless booming punctuated by an occasional NOW or YOU SEE. Sudden short tinny interjection of sound as he picks up toy trumpet and blows. Followed by immediate lifting and reaching out of curtain arms from the window, one arm to each row of students, arms gliding smoothly over the rows of limp glove-hands, touching off each hand in turn, retiring swiftly to the original attention posture at window. There is a faint twanging noise of quivering wires while the gloves are left gangling in palsied mimicry of jittery handwriting and the professor takes a long drink of water.

  A resumption of the professorial booming (for a very short period this time), with attention gradually concentrating on the curtains, which appear holding themselves with watchdog vigilance at their window post. Climax comes with the curtains coiling, the curtain tentacles extending, delicately glissading along the mask rows, turning the masks to the blackboard (the professor chalks up O); masks spectrally twitching and trilling in twisted unison; the curtain arms coil high to the ceiling, weave there; then return to the window, to stiff and full arm’s-length attention at each side of window, resume the same tense rigidity as before. As the wire vibration dies down, one after another, the masks topple, tumble, tip out of sight behind the benches. As the last one disappears the professor comes down from the hassock, from the dais, walks to the door of the lecture room.

  Four seconds after he has gone out of the door the left curtain slowly draws itself across half the window. The right curtain slowly crosses to meet it.

  A series of transient views tracks the professor’s progress from lecture room to outer door of college. His black-moth-gown seen fluttering down long perspective of shadowed, tunnel-like stone corridor; emerging into high-groined and vaulted entrance hall, the grey stones of the floor with faint localized stippling of amethyst, topaz, ruby light spillings from stained-glass windows.

  Numerous indistinct indications of other figures, gowned professors, student masks topping garments on coat-hangers, wires, hockey-sticks; all flickering spasmodically in different directions; all very indefinite, ephemeral.

  Finally, a static black-and-white punctuation mark, a heavy dark ancient door under gothic arch. An old man’s gnarled, unsteady, veined hand with border of frayed shirt-cuff, wear-shined and threadbare porter’s sleeve, draws back bolts, turns key, loosens chain, with rusty rasping, jarring complaint of unoiled metal.

  The door slowly opens.

  First the pepper-and-salt trousers, then the whole of the professor, stepping out of the door, crossing empty and sunlit pavement in the cracks of which wild flowers, daisies, harebells, cowslips, primroses, are in bloom. A toy motor-car, painted red, stands at the kerb. The professor packs and stuffs and forces himself into it; settles his feet on the pedals; squeezes a captious toot out of the rubber horn-bulb; vigorously pedals off. There is a squeaky noise from the chain driving the wire-spoked wheels. Short distance up street he signals with left arm stiffly extended; turns left, disappears. The chain squeak briefly outlasts him.

  Now the professor pedalling home through the quiet streets of the town; not a real-life town, of course. The sunshine is filtered through pink gauze. Colleges, churches, museums, etc., like birthday cakes in the gauzy light. Cuckoos fly out of belfries and cupolas as the clocks strike.

  The professor keeps on pedalling, passes the entrance to a street which is in shadow. Glimpse down this street, emphasizing its shadowed contrast to the rest of the town. About two hundred yards along it, facing another way, a mass of full-sized people crowds silently outside a municipal building, a town hall or a police station, very dark-looking, very ominous, introducing an abrupt note of alarm. The professor does not look. He keeps on pedalling.

  The sunlit street ribbons on unbroken down a gentle slope with the white play-block house at the end of it. The car, without free-wheel, running faster and faster do
wnhill; the professor’s knees pistoning faster and faster, almost grazing his chin.

  Inside the house the woman who appeared earlier on is playing mah-jong with three visitors. These people are seen only in profile and are feminine, bloodless; with long proboscis noses, like Javanese silhouettes stamped out of metal, very frigidly and ophidianly malignant. The mah-jong tiles forming the walls behind which they are sitting are covered with money symbols, deeds, bonds, coins of various currencies; power symbols, sceptres, whips, bribes, $$$$ins; diapers, feeding bottles; phallic signs.

  Rapid survey of this somewhat provincial pretentious drawing-room of a would-be-modern intellectual. Smooth, pale, faintly glazed planes of walls, built-in furniture, unstained woods: squarish, low, upholstered couch; easy chairs covered in zebra-stripe fabric: the emasculate fireplace, without mantelpiece, without fire, meekly impounded by chaste light wood bands: wall alcoves, interiorly tinted, and displaying such objects as negro carvings and/or very consciously quaint period pieces, china dogs, red and blue glinting lustres, wax flowers under fragile cloches. Bookshelves with volumes of philosophy, psychology by the more superficial writers, books issued by “advanced” publishers, a few up-to-the-moment novels, poems, pamphlets, “advanced” publications generally, a few literary quarterlies and art papers. There would be not more than two or three not-very-original paintings in pale frames on the walls: still life of the slick Slade student apple-and-wine-glass variety, or etiolated impressionist water-colour, or possibly pastel-smudged portrait or overloaded oil landscape in crude colour discords. There would probably be an absence of flowers in the room; or perhaps a single white pottery jar of tall grasses or shell flowers.

  This room the professor enters in his black gown; with light short tripping steps advances across the neutral carpet; pirouettes; simpers and postures. He stands holding the pose, feet in the fifth position, skirts of his gown extended to fullest width and held between thumbs and forefingers, both little fingers curled and archly pointing.

  In their alcoves the dangling glass lobes of the lustres begin to swing and oscillate gently, set up a faint tinkling applause.

  Now a quick circling view of the whole rather phony prosperous enclosed room dithering faintly appreciative: into this circle, very complacent, the professor relaxes coyly from his pose: acknowledging the slight rustle of handclapping from the mahjong players he sits down in the exact centre of the couch.

  The players rise from the table, group themselves round him. The visitors (always in profile) take positions on each side of him on the couch, the third sits on the floor at his feet. From attitudes of admiration their flat snake eyes are upon him in bitter malice, contempt or envy. His own woman is standing behind him, her face tiger-possessive, triumphant; she sets her fingers proprietorially on his head, absently twists his thin hair into kewpie tuft.

  This tableau abruptly shattered by sudden rude surge of clamouring, knocking, at outer door of the house. With utmost possible effect of shock, enormous figures, in dark uniforms, bursting into the room, crowding in one after the other, surrounding the couch, brandishing, with threatening gestures, some document (Demand? Indictment?) under the professor’s nose.

  He jumps up, astounded and outraged, thrusting the three visitors aside in rising (they collapse stiffly with metallic jingle and disappear); the woman behind the sofa gestures imperiously; calls out an unidentifiable order: she is at once submerged by the uniforms; seen struggling for a moment; disappears.

  The professor is ringed, pressed on all sides by the massed uniforms, fear now coming out on his face like sweat. He glances round quickly, his face more and more afraid. He clutches his gown, pulls it higher and higher up round his shoulders, hunches his neck in it, muffles his head in its folds; and out of this hiding-place yells shrilly some protest or appeal, indignation in the start of the sounds, panic towards the end.

  Two huge uniformed arms are extended from each side simultaneously.

  They take hold of the gown, twitch at it derisively, contemptuously snatch it away.

  The manikin cowers on the floor, grovels between them, his head with bald spot lolling limp on dummy stalk-neck to the floor.

  As the arms grapple him every ornament in the room sets up a thin mad screeching.

  A china dog leaps frantically from its shelf and dives under the couch with reversed curlicue tail between its legs.

  A glass goblet falls; heavy boots tramp it to dust.

  The boots and the forest of dark legs close in, amalgamate into black blob-blot. The blob bulges, spreads steadfastly up to and over everything; blots out the room with a bulging and bursting of black bubble, inky cuttlefish ejaculation; and the brittle death trills still bleating. Blotchout.

  LONG ago I had embraced the night and given myself to darkness. The gentle whispers of rain had consoled me; kind quiet shadows had been my friends.

  Why was I led astray by a tiger brightness? Why did a false sun lure me so far from home?

  True, I had not actually surrendered to daylight. But I had looked too long into dazzling and sunbright faces and stayed too long within the gates of day. My eyes had looked at something forbidden, and seen what they should never have seen, and now sight itself had gone out of them.

  Now from the dark and solitary place where I belonged I would not stir again. When voices called to me I refused to answer. I stopped my ears with the black robe of night and pulled the folds of darkness about my head. Never again would I see the blinding glare of enemy eyes or hear the thudding of disastrous feet.

  IS IT or is it not the Liaison Officer who sits at a desk in the middle of this dream? The face looks the same and so does the little neat beard—can it be turning grey?—but why is he wearing an elegant dark suit instead of a uniform? Perhaps not his almost too elegant clothes, but his surroundings, including the big glossy desk where he sits writing, suggest the prosperous professional man, without precisely indicating which profession. On the whole, the room looks more like a doctor’s consulting-room than anything else; and yet that doesn’t seem quite the right label. The divan and the massive, costly, dead-looking furniture could belong to any successful practitioner. But there are some rather queer mystical pictures and ornaments which don’t seem to fit in. Is it a crucifix or a primitive negro priapus hanging there on the wall? It’s hard to make anything out in the dim light. A row of books under the desk-lamp can be distinguished as medical textbooks mixed up with books on magic, mythology, philosophy, metaphysics, religion.

  The man sitting behind the books has finished his writing. He screws the cap on to his fountain-pen, looks up, and as he moves the gold lettering gleams on the epaulets which he is now seen to be wearing with the insignia of his rank. He leans back comfortably in his chair, gathering together the written sheets, which he holds in one hand (keeping the other free for an occasional restrained gesture) while he reads aloud from them in the smooth nicely-modulated voice of a trained actor.

  Who are the authorities and where are they to be found? Do they operate from one central focus or from various scattered bureaux with, possibly, a main headquarters in supreme control of the whole organization? These are questions which everyone asks but to which no satisfactory replies are forthcoming. Admittedly, there are so-called initiates who claim to possess information, and one has heard of people whose minds have been set at rest by these individuals. And yet if you or I decide to go into the matter for ourselves our investigations never seem to lead anywhere. Supposing that certain persons have, as they assert, obtained enlightenment from some unknown source, it would seem that they are unable, or perhaps not allowed, to illuminate others, except in rare and selected instances. What happens when you approach such a person with a genuine wish for communication? He will most likely start off by talking to you in a straightforward easy way that at once gives a favourable impression of frankness. Make yourself at home, my friend, he says, by implication if not in so many words. Relax, and listen while I explain everything to you in simpl
e language.

  This ingenious technique is, in fact, so convincing that anyone may well be taken in by it, lulled into an uncritical state of mind merely by the soothing quality of manner and words. Quite probably it is not until one has been ushered out of the warm room and is walking home through the frosty air that one really begins to reflect on the interview in an objective way, and to realize that one is absolutely no wiser than before.

  At this stage I imagine the average inquirer is apt to abandon the whole affair, considering that he has made an effort adequate to preserve his integrity. Besides, he may think, matters so deep and so hard to approach are certainly dangerous and forbidden and I had better not dabble in them or I shall get into trouble.

  On the other hand, someone of greater tenacity and tougher moral fibre may decide to return to the charge. I won’t be fobbed off like this, he says to himself: and before his next visit he carefully thinks out and memorizes a series of leading questions. But no matter how cool-headed he is or how well he has studied and framed his questions, the result is precisely the same as before. This time, to be sure, the technique will be somewhat different. Instead of the misleading simplicity of the previous occasion, the interrogator now encounters a complexity of specious rhetoric which is woven before him like those unbelievably fine Chinese embroideries which seem to be without beginning or end. The visitor doesn’t forget a single question; he puts forward every point in due order. And to every question and point he receives not only an answer but an elaborate homily, a whole lengthy peroration full of learned allusions which a layman would hardly be likely to follow.

  But the questioner is a man of superior intelligence, and determination as well. He sticks to his guns, he forces his brain to keep pace with all that is being said.