Sleep Has His House

by Anna Kavan

  And now a curious and disheartening phenomenon makes its appearance; a phenomenon of which there appears to be no explanation. It seems to him that each separate sentence is comprehensible. He is convinced that he understands everything. And, in fact, the various themes, taken one by one, do give an effect of being quite lucid and reasonable, and he hurries home to get the whole thing down on paper while it is fresh in his mind.

  Yet no sooner does he begin to concentrate on the subject as a whole than he is overcome by a paralysing mental confusion. The explanations, the allusions, the arguments which individually seemed clear enough, inexplicably lose their significance when viewed as component parts of a pattern, and dissolve into empty verbosity. Hour after hour the unfortunate inquirer sits motionless with his brain in a turmoil, his pen in his hand, unable to write down a single word. Disregarding the voices of his family or his friends, not noticing when it is time to eat or to go to bed, he ponders endlessly over what he has heard, forcing concentration to its nth power in a desperate endeavour to track and pin down the meaning which he once thought was within his grasp, but which has now tantalizingly and mysteriously concealed itself in an intricate maze of incomprehensible phraseology. So it goes on, his thoughts racing fruitlessly and interminably, until sheer mental exhaustion compels him to give in.

  Ah, how well one knows the whole horrid cycle, from confidence to uncertainty, to bewilderment, and finally to utter chaos and despair. What is the key to it all? What attitude should one take up? The fact is, and I suppose we must accept it, that for the great majority it is impossible to find out anything about the authorities. But to resign oneself to ignorance is indeed hard. Everyone knows that the authorities exercise supreme control over each one of us, even down to the most trivial details of our lives: and this is even specifically stated in the writings of our ancient teachers. Human beings can hardly be expected to refrain from trying to throw a little light on such vital mysteries: particularly as some unconscious impulse deep in our natures seems to be continually turning our thoughts in that direction.

  Who has not, when walking in an unfamiliar part of the town, felt one of those sudden queer psychological shocks which dart like arrows, like premonitions, out of the blue? One may be hurrying along thinking about some personal matter or about an important appointment ahead. All at once, quite without rhyme or reason, the thread of thought snaps, one looks up and sees a big dingy building on the other side of the street, a warehouse possibly, or an old-fashioned office block, which seems to be empty because the shutters are all closed and scraps of paper and leaves have blown on to the dusty doorstep. It’s the sort of unattractive unremarkable place you might pass a hundred times without noticing; but today it catches your eye just as an importunate beggar might catch hold of your sleeve. After all it isn’t deserted, because between the slats of the shutters dim lights are gleaming. And suddenly the idea comes into your head that perhaps now, at this very moment while you are passing by, in one of the rooms behind those drab shutters, at a worm-eaten desk, among bundles of papers tied up with red or green tape, with scratchy old-fashioned pen-strokes, your fate is being inscribed.

  Or something like this may happen while you are out for a walk in the country: you feel yourself quite alone, for an hour you haven’t seen one living creature, not even a dog or a horse in a field, you seem to be miles from anywhere. And then in this solitude, out of the bushes at the side of the road, a sly face looks out at you, the face of an old man with a beard and a big hat such as is seldom worn these days. Just for a second he looks out at you. It’s really surprising to meet anyone in such a lonely place; but instead of saying Good day, he draws back, disappears into the wood, and you don’t see him again. What is it makes you feel that this old man has been watching you, perhaps following you for some time, hidden among the trees: that he has perhaps been sent to that out-of-the-way spot on purpose to see and report afterwards which track you are following, whether you turn to the right or the left at the crossroads at the foot of the hill?

  Nobody knows the exact significance of these feelings which all of us have experienced: but that they bear some relation to our close surveillance by the authorities appears certain. If only it were possible to find out something definite. One feels under constant observation. One has the conviction that every trifling act is noted and set down either against one or in one’s favour. And at the same time one hasn’t the faintest clue to the standards by which one is being judged. How is it possible to avoid anxiety and indecision when a move of any kind involves the whole of one’s future status?

  Well, it’s no good trying to take matters into our own hands; nor is it much good consulting anyone else. All we can do is walk circumspectly and hope for the best; always remembering that whole trains of unimaginable events may follow some incident which seems quite trivial to us, such as, for example, the act of telephoning instead of writing a letter to someone we know.

  When everything’s said and done, unfortunately, we find ourselves in the position of children whose parents have gone to the theatre, leaving them alone in the dark house. Yes, we are forced, if we are honest, to make the saddest of all admissions when it comes to the last resort: Alas, we do not understand these things.

  What ages it took us to get to the end of our journey. At times it seemed as if we never should arrive anywhere, but spend our whole lives travelling. The natives of the countries we passed through must have thought us a funny lot, all of us wearing the same face (though our sizes were different, and our clothes too, of course). Some of us would have liked to settle down in one of these countries, some in another. And I think we all occasionally wished in our secret hearts that we’d never embarked on the expedition. But we couldn’t go back once we had started. There was nothing for it but to keep moving on, even if we didn’t know where we were going. It wasn’t a pleasure trip at any stage; but sometimes the going was terribly hard and slow and exhausting; those were the times when we tried to keep up our spirits by singing. We don’t know where we’re going, we sang then, but we’re on our way. We got discouraged though, all the same, however loudly we sang.

  Besides the hardships of the journey itself, there was the isolation and the uncertainty about what we should find at the end of it, supposing we ever did get to our destination. It was impossible not to feel anxious from time to time, and homesick, as well. How could we help remembering the place where we’d lived long ago, where people were kind and smiling? How could we help reflecting that the smiles and the kindness would have been still there for us to enjoy if we hadn’t been so independent? We used to think of that place always flooded with summer sunshine, while we were travelling far away in stony forgotten regions under a winter sky.

  It was winter when we arrived at a place which we thought at first was the right one. The inhabitants came out to meet us and took us in: they took our arms and took us inside walls, and then we saw that the windows were barred and that the doors could not be opened. We became frightened, smelling the caged smell that was in the place, and seeing the locked garden where men with dead eyes swept the unfallen leaves. We saw sleepers laid out in a mass-grave, and officials going amongst them with sleep in their hands. We were more frightened then, we looked at one another and whispered, What kind of sleep is this? knowing now that certainly we had not reached the right destination.

  From there we escaped finally, and travelled farther, and in the end we arrived, in spite of all the obstacles. How glad we were to think we had got to our own place! How glad we were to be able to rest at last! Yes, it seems wonderful that the dangers are all behind us. But even now we sometimes wonder about things, and think of the lost sun and the smiles that we knew in the beginning. We suffered much in avoiding those treacherous smiles: we passed through many trials to escape that traitorous sun.

  Now we are safe at last. We are secure. We are at peace. But even in the midst of the security and the peace ... Still, at certain moments ... we wonder, secretly, if it w
as worth it ... if peace and security are really worth the splendour they cost to buy.

  It is night; and there is nothing false here. Night is reliable. Night does not dazzle us with treacherous fires. Night keeps a dark enduring silence for us ... like sleep, deep sleep. By our own will we came here and tasted sleep before there was any need, because we loved to gaze at the face of night. But not quite at home ... even among loved shadows ... we can’t forget altogether the splendid sun ... we sometimes have to dream of the place we came from.

  The blissful eye, conscientiously keeping an eye on everything in its turn, takes a turn at eyeing microbic matters, applies itself to the eyepiece (microscope by Negretti and Zambra), and makes a leisurely tour of the slide-wide situation.

  A peaceful pastoral scene is here displayed on the fluorescent field, quite in order and as it should be, unexciting, of course, but who is not prepared to sacrifice whatsit to whatsit these days? There is, we think, general agreement that we all have to face a period of whatsit and lessened whatsit for some time to come.

  In addition to those of us who are actively engaged in one of the whatsits, very many other people are turning towards whatsit as an outlet for their thoughts and energies, and either as a means of increasing whatsit for whatsit motives, or as a whatsit to take the place of other whatsits not now within their reach.

  There is no more gratifying sight for the enthusiast than a contented culture of healthy whatsits placidly browsing upon the pabulum scientifically prepared by those who have studied whatsits and understand the many problems which may cause anxiety.

  What is it that emerges from this droplet of broth, or is it bouillon, deposited with professional precision upon the slide? What menacing creatures are these, battened on the nourishing fluid, which now encircle and stalk down their unconscious victims?

  The successful preservation of whatsit often depends on the ability of the whatsit to combat and destroy the various whatsit and whatsit whatsits, which manoeuvre so much more rapidly, and which, if not speedily checked, will often ruin the whole of a whatsit in a whatsit. The great secret is to be continually on the watch, and to attack the whatsit at the outset before it has had time to gain a whatsit.

  On this occasion the experimenter (though doubtless familiar with every branch of the technique), perhaps in the pursuit of further knowledge, makes no attempt to interfere with the fate of these hapless humble martyrs to science, but dispassionately observes the onslaught of the voracious attackers who tear into their prey like tigers and devour them wholly till no single trace remains.

  But Nemesis is not far away.

  No whatsit need remain in any uncertainty about the kind of whatsit to use in a whatsit, for information is freely available to all and it is the duty of every whatsit one of us to make himself familiar with a few simple whatsits for whatsit. Remember that a whatsit’s whatsit may depend on your whatsit. Whatsit now

  Swift indeed is the retribution which overtakes the aggressors; and for a display of poetic justice it would be hard to rival the terrible scene which now ensues. A third infinitesimal drop is planted deftly on the slide, an agent so powerful that, extending rapidly in a thin film around and over the fierce corpuscular conquerors, it instantaneously absorbs them into itself, eliminating them in a second by a horrid process of ingurgitation.

  Tiring, one imagines, of this close concentration upon bacillic dramatics, a simple adjustment on the part of the eye (Pinto et Issaverdens precision instruments) scales the operational field up to major proportions. A truly astounding scene is forthwith presented, one guaranteed to strike the stoutest heart with terror and amazement. The very seat of reason itself quakes under the visual impact of this awful spectacle, hardly to be expressed in ordinary words. How can one describe even the background, that dark and whirling storm of fiery particles, blinding and burning and asphyxiating at die same time? It’s a fog and yet it’s a fire, intolerable heat combined with suffocating obscurity. Through this murky inferno, huge armour-plated monsters, blind and mad, are charging in all directions, demented, hideous, driven by their Gadarene frenzy to charge each other in indiscriminate fury, stampeded and possessed by maniacal fiends.

  Even the perennially untroubled eye of the Heaven-Born prefers not to linger on this unspeakable shambles

  and passes on through the world wilderness of death to a large remote semi-demolished, sham-antique building. Under powerful moonshine lamp-flood black forms are busily hauling and hoisting and heaving apart various beams, arches, windows, etc., of this fake medieval edifice. View of the partially dismantled whole narrows down to a doorway; moves over trampled ground to a mock mulberry tree which two sweaty workmen in singlets are preparing to remove. They unhook several large boughs hinged to the main trunk, drop them carelessly on the ground (the torn faded fabric leaves flutter dusty in dust); wrench remainder of tree from its socket; struggle off, lugging it between them.

  The general view again, very briefly, indefinitely, outlines blurred and figures eliminated; retreating almost immediately to distant glimpse of roughly similarly-shaped sand-castle on a deserted beach in moonlight. The tide comes in quickly. Views of successive small summer waves breaking (with soft soooooon sound), opening white-lipped mouths on the sand, each sucking a few inches nearer the castle.

  The first wave reaches the castle wall. The white wavelips suck at the sand with their sibilance, insidiously: soooon soooooon sooooon (each wave sucking a little harder, higher, undermining the castle).

  The sand walls spread, subside, sink, settle, submerge—their soft almost soundless sigh sunk in the sea sound.

  In a house where furnished seaside lodgings are rented a girl, asleep in her bed, green slippers under the bed as she kicked them off toe-to-heel, dreams, stirs and hears the subsidence (it is only a dressing-gown slipping off the end of the bed); she does not wake; although she changes position.

  The empty beach with the sand now covered by water, smooth and full. The moon gravely passes with quiet deliberation behind a cloud, drawing after her all detail; leaving only the tranquilly breathing breast of dark and murmurous water; which the eye observes, as it seems, pensively, and one is anthropomorphically inclined to believe, with relief in respite, until

  goddess no longer of the moony crested tire, quick-change artist and record-holder, out steps the twenty-one-year-old lieutenant-colonel—the youngest in the whatsit army—wearing steel helmet, rakishly askew, eccentric battledress copiously stippled with pig’s blood, bedroom slippers with soft woollen pompons (I intend to invade whatsit in comfort); his face is blacked like a nigger minstrel’s with white eye-circles, one emitting searchlight illumination: through the second orifice a whizzing stream of machine-gun bullets, exploding bombs, rockets, clods of earth, power-diving planes, bombers, fighters, vampires, anopheles-size and vicious, in inexhaustible swarms.

  The searchlight beam points erratically hither and thither, in the manner of a retriever questing for game, over the vast slow-seething seabulk which is now apperceptible as a sort of time symbol holding locked in its dark plasma the innumerable bubbles of all past and future eventualities.

  At irregular intervals the beam oscillates violently in the agitation of finding, then slowly fixes, freezing in its terminal circle small distant sharp scenes of topical interest. As,

  an idealized country house in sunny summery landscape, roses round the door, elm-muffled peaceable strokes of church clock striking the tea hour, strawberries and cream and deck-chairs on the lawn, unseen pigeons cooing, every exile’s sentimental picture of home.

  Twilight gathers quickly; a bleak wind rising overturns the deserted chairs: the roses droop, wither, fall, their petals are blown away; the pigeon-coos hoarsen to ominous hooting as a huge spectral white owl with lambent eyes sweeps stealthily past, concentrating to pounce as it disappears; immediately afterwards a thin mouse death-shriek is heard.

  In deepening darkness dimly seen conspiratorial forms, wearing some kind of horrific disguise
-uniform (Inquisition or Ku-Klux-Klan suggestion) by unclear and rapid manipulation convert the house to traditional haunted-house aspect.

  The Hanged Man swings from a black tree; he is looking at something unseen in the air; spinning slowly in the wind with desolate bone creaking; muttering, I am too old to be in a tree. A mongrel pup, starved ribcage on four matchsticks, slinks in and out of sight. Mist wraiths coagulate, hover lugubriously, disintegrate, among dark shapes of bushes or tombstones or crouching things. After slight pause, a small white bone falls like a full stop on the black grass.

  Now inside the house: a storm lantern flickers feebly on dusty and empty rooms that the wind whimpers through, and on the uneasy group of neophytes herded together. These are boys of about fourteen, with dumb-bucolic or vicious-urban-degenerate faces sniggering in discomfort, and with restless movements and whispers hiding their half-alarm. They are dressed in badly fitting uniforms of cheap coarse material, some with jackets sagging loose to the knees, some with tight sleeves which fail to cover their wrists. They are armed with weapons contrastingly, expensive, efficient, ultra-modern and deadly looking. Carrying out their orders, they move through the rooms, a few displaying exaggerated toughness, the others alternatively scared and vacuously amused by the various trick manifestations, hidden traps, skulls springing out of cupboards, chains clanking, lights suddenly flashing, doors suddenly opening or slamming, moans, screams, howls, etc.

  Finally the roof lifts up like a lid and the lieutenant-colonel is seen hovering batlike and spraying from the poison ducts at the back of his vampire fangs a fine rain of blood with which the upturned faces are thinly spattered. Simultaneously his voice, very much amplified, yells through the loudspeaker, On your toes, boys. Remember whatsit. There’s a whatsit. Kill the swine. Kick his guts out.

  As his image slowly fades it develops a recognizable though incomplete resemblance to the Liaison Officer. At the instant of disappearance the rim of his steel helmet catches the light and hangs in mid-air, a halo-like, phosphorescent ellipse which evaporates as the loudspeaker switches to soundtrack of war horror film