Anna Kavan - Sleep Has His House

There is even the possibility that the regime of the retreats, although it appears (superficially at least) totally different, is nothing but a disguised version of the regulations in force outside. This theory, improbable as it sounds, is supported by the fact that in certain contingencies the two spheres of authority indubitably converge, and perhaps even merge into one another if the critical nature of the emergency warrants it. But these eventualities are so rare and so little understood, the whole subject is so complicated by ambiguity and obscurity, that speculation is necessarily vague.

Actually, one is tempted to believe that the authorities are so perspicacious, so ingenious, that they have devised this method of tricking into conformity with the law people who might otherwise prove recalcitrant and badly adjusted. It is easy to see how a person of this type, thinking only of his own idiosyncrasies, would fall into the trap. He imagines that by going into retreat he will change his allegiance. And, indeed, once he is inside he becomes docile and content, believing that the old authorities control him no longer.

Meanwhile they, in a stronger position than ever, merely congratulate themselves on the success of their stratagem. The fact that their victory has been won in secret is immaterial; why should they, being all-powerful, wish to make an open display of their powers? All that they wanted has now been skilfully and pacifically achieved.

I hid my face in the lap of darkness like a lost child brought at last to his mother. Never again would I stray into the light: never again would I trust myself to a place where even those who sold their birthright for safety were not secure.

THE DREAMSCAPE languidly opens up. Conspectus of university town; early morning mist slowly clearing. The mist dispersal not mere evaporation but a sort of gradual unswathing, very gentle protracted tearing, rolling up and discarding, as of webs or excessively fragile tissue paper, disclosing buildings in careful succession. This process, though necessarily long-drawn out, progresses methodically with a certain businesslike efficiency. Enough should be seen of it to suggest the practised unpacking and setting out of, say, a stock of valuable china.

View narrows to disclosure, from the ground upwards, of one particular tower. As mist wrappings are removed, there appears, on a carved ledge, a row of plump pigeons fast asleep with heads under their wings. Then, sighted up the shaft of the tower as if from its foot, the remote rococo summit, which in a second starts to revolve, discharges a musical-box carillon of tinkling notes which dance off, frisky white minims and semibreves, into the now blue sky. Back for a moment to the pigeons, untucking themselves, yawning, blinking, sleepily stretching their wings.

Now a switchover to an outlying residential street of the same town. Ahead, set back from the road in small flowerless lawn garden, a new white flat-roofed modem house, determinedly unembellished, simple rectangles superimposed like a construction of nursery building blocks. A path of concrete slabs leads to the front door which has a chromium ring, O-shaped, instead of a handle.

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.