Anna Kavan - Sleep Has His House

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 simple 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.

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.