Machines in the Head

by Anna Kavan

  He stood fingering the ends of the bow delicately for a moment, smiling at me in a way that was both absent-minded and polite, before he invited me to sit down. I took the chair that he indicated and began to explain my case. The room was quite small and square, with green walls. Outside the window, almost touching the glass, was a large tree still covered, in spite of the lateness of the season, with trembling green leaves. As the leaves stirred, watery shadows wavered over the ceiling and walls, so that one had the impression of being enclosed in a tank.

  I felt singularly uncomfortable. My case was difficult to describe. I did not know where to start or which particulars to relate, which to omit, since it was clearly impossible to mention every detail of the enormously protracted and complex business.

  The young foreigner sat listening to me without making a single note. His manner was perfectly correct, but I somehow had the impression that he was not fully attentive. I wondered how much he understood of what I was saying: it was clear to me from the few words he had spoken that his grasp of the language was far from perfect. And why did he not write down at least some of the salient points of my statement? He surely didn’t propose to rely purely on memory in such a complicated affair? Now and then he fingered the wings of his tie and smiled absently, but whether at me or at his own thoughts there was no way of knowing.

  The situation suddenly appeared heartbreaking, futile, and I felt on the verge of tears. What was I doing here in this tank-like room, relating my private and piercing griefs to a smiling stranger who spoke in a different tongue? I thought I should stand up and go away, but I heard myself talking in agitation, begging him to realize the extreme gravity of my predicament and to give it more serious consideration, seeing that he was my last available source of assistance.

  The young adviser smiled at me politely and made some vague fluttering movements with his small hands, at the same time saying a few words to the effect that my case was not really so exceptional as I thought; that it was, in fact, quite a common one. I protested that he must be mistaken, perhaps had not understood me completely. He smiled again and repeated those indeterminate motions which possibly were intended to be reassuring but which only conveyed to me a distrustful sense of misapprehension. Then he glanced at his watch in a way that was meant to signify the end of the interview and instructed me to come back again in two or three days.

  I don’t remember how I got out of the building. I’ve no recollection of passing between the coils of barbed wire in the alley. The sun was setting, and I was in a residential part of the city that was strange to me. I walked up long, hilly, deserted streets between large houses, most of which seemed to be uninhabited. Dry autumnal weeds grew tall in the gardens, and the black window holes gaped with jagged fringes like mirror fragments in which the last rays of the sun stared at themselves bitterly. Then I passed a stranger who glanced coldly at me, and other strangers passed by with cold faces, and still other strangers. Armoured vehicles, eccentrically coloured, stood in an endless chain at the roadside, painted with cabbalistic signs. But what these symbols meant I had no idea. I had no idea if there were a place anywhere to which I could go to escape from the strangeness, or what I could do to bear being a stranger in our strange city, or whether I should ever visit that stranger who was my adviser again.

  A BRIGHT GREEN FIELD

  IN MY TRAVELS I am always being confronted by a particular field. It seems that I simply can’t escape it. Any journey, no matter where it begins, is apt to end towards evening in sight of this meadow, which is quite small, sloping and in the vicinity of tall dark trees.

  The meadow is always beautifully green; in the dusk it looks almost incandescent, almost a source of light, as though the blades of grass themselves radiated brightness. The vividness of the grass is always what strikes people first; it takes them a moment longer to notice that, as a matter of fact, the green is rather too intense to be pleasant and to wonder why they did not see this before. The observation once made, it becomes obvious that for grass to be luminiferous is somewhat improper. It has no business to advertise itself so ostentatiously. Such effulgent lustre is unsuited to its humble place in the natural order and shows that in this meadow the grass has risen above itself – grown arrogant, aggressive, too full of strength.

  Its almost sensational, inappropriate brightness is always the same. Instead of changing with the seasons, as if to underline the insolence of the grass, the field’s brilliance remains constant, although in other ways its aspect varies with the time and place. It is true that, besides being always bright green, the field is always small, always sloping, always near big dark trees. But size and colour are relative; different people mean different things when they speak of a small bright meadow or a big dark tree. The idea of a slope is flexible, too, and, although a persistent divergence from the horizontal is characteristic of the field, the degree of steepness fluctuates widely.

  The slant may be imperceptible, so that one would swear the surface was as flat as a billiard table. There have been times when I couldn’t believe – until it was proved to me by measurements taken with a clinometer – that the ground was not perfectly level. On other occasions, in contrast with what may be called an invisible incline, the meadow appears to rise almost vertically.

  I shall never forget seeing it so that thundery summer day, when, since early morning, I had been travelling across a great dusty plain. The train was oppressively hot, the landscape monotonous and without colour, and, during the afternoon, I fell into an uneasy doze from which I woke to the pleasant surprise of seeing mountain slopes covered with pines and boulders. But, after the first moment, I found that, with the mountains shutting out the sky, the enclosed atmosphere of the deep ravine was just as oppressive as that of the flat country. Everything looked drab and dingy, the rocks a nondescript mottled tint, the pines the shiny blackish-green of some immensely old shabby black garment – their dense foliage, at its brightest the colour of verdigris, suggesting rot and decay, had the unmoving rigidity of a metal with the property of absorbing light and seemed to extinguish any occasional sunbeam that penetrated the heavy clouds. Although the line kept twisting and turning, the scenery never changed, always composed of the same eternal pine forest and masses of rock, pervaded, as the plain had been, by an air of dull, sterile monotony and vegetative indifference.

  The train suddenly wound around another sharp bend and came out into a more open place where the gorge widened, and I saw, straight ahead, between two cataracts of black trees, the sheer emerald wall that was the meadow, rising perpendicular, blazing with jewel-brightness, all the more resplendent for its dismal setting.

  After the dim monochrome vistas at which I had been looking all day, this sudden unexpected flare of brilliance was so dazzling that I could not immediately identify the curious dark shapes dotted about the field, still further irradiated, as it was now, by the glow of the setting sun, which broke through the clouds just as I reached the end of my journey, making each blade of grass scintillate like a green flame.

  The field was still in full view when I emerged from the station, a spectacular vivid background to the little town, of which it appeared to be an important feature, the various buildings having been kept low and grouped as if to avoid hiding it. Now that I was able to look more carefully, and without the distorting and distracting effect of the train’s motion, I recognized the peculiar scattered shapes I had already noticed as prone half-naked human bodies, spreadeagled on the glistening bright green wall of grass. They were bound to it by an arrangement of ropes and pulleys that slowly drew them across its surface and had semi-circular implements of some sort fastened to their hands, which they continually jerked in a spasmodic fashion, reminding me of struggling flies caught in a spider’s web. This tormented jerking, and the fact that the grotesque sprawling figures were chained to the tackle pulling them along, made me think they must be those of malefactors undergoing some strange archaic form of punishment conducted in public up there
on the burning green field. In this, however, I was mistaken.

  A passer-by presently noticed my interest in the mysterious movements outlined so dramatically on the brilliant green and, seeing that I was a stranger, very civilly started a conversation, informing me that I was not watching criminals, as I had supposed, but labourers engaged in cutting the grass, which grew excessively fast and strongly in that particular field.

  I was surprised that such a barbarous mowing process should be employed merely to keep down the grass in a small field, even though, in a way, it formed part of the town, and I inquired whether their obviously painful exertions did not jeopardize the health and efficiency of the workers.

  Yes, I was told, unfortunately the limbs, and even the lives, of the men up there were in danger, both from the effects of overstrain and because the securing apparatus was not infrequently broken by the violence of their muscular contractions. It was regrettable, but no alternative method of mowing had so far been discovered, since the acute angle of the ground prohibited standing upon it or even crawling across on all fours, as had at times been attempted. Of course, every reasonable precaution was taken; but, in any case, these labourers were expendable, coming from the lowest ranks of the unskilled population. I should not pay too much attention to the spasms and convulsions I was observing, as these were mainly just mimicry, a traditional miming of the sufferings endured by earlier generations of workers before the introduction of the present system. The work was now much less arduous than it looked and performed under the most humane conditions that had as yet been devised. It might interest me to know that it was not at all unpopular; on the contrary, there was considerable competition for this form of employment, which entailed special privileges and prestige. In the event of a fatality, a generous grant was made to the dependants of the victim, who, in accordance with tradition, was always interred in situ – a custom dating from antiquity and conferring additional prestige, which extended to the whole family of the deceased.

  All this information was given in a brisk, matter-of-fact way that was reassuring. But I could not help feeling a trifle uneasy as I gazed at the meadow, compelled by a kind of grisly fascination to watch those twitching marionettes, dehumanized by the intervening distance and by their own extraordinary contortions. It seemed to me that these became more tortured as the sun went down, as though a frantic haste inspired the wild uncoordinated swinging of the sickles, while the green of the grass brightened almost to phosphorescence against the dusk.

  I wanted to ask why the field had to be mown at all – what would it matter if the grass grew long? How had the decision to cut it been made in the first place all those years ago? But I hesitated to ask questions about a tradition so ancient and well established; evidently taken for granted by everyone, it surely must have some sound rational basis I had overlooked – I was afraid of appearing dense or imperceptive or lacking in understanding – or so I thought. Anyhow, I hesitated until it was too late, and my informant, suddenly seeming to notice the fading light, excusing himself, hurried on his way, barely giving me time to thank him for his politeness.

  Left alone, I continued to stand in the empty street, staring up, not quite at ease in my mind. The stranger’s receding steps had just ceased to be audible when I realized that I had refrained from asking my questions, not for fear of appearing stupid but because, in some part of me, I already seemed to know the answers. This discovery distracted me for the moment; and when, a few seconds later, my attention returned to the field, the row of jerking puppets had vanished.

  Still I did not move on. An apathetic mood of vague melancholy had descended on me, as it often does at this hour of the changeover from day to night. The town all at once seemed peculiarly deserted and quiet, as though everyone were indoors, attending some meeting I knew nothing about. Above the roofs, the mountain loomed, gloomy, with pines flowing down to the hidden gorge, from several parts of which evening mist had begun to rise, obscuring my view of the slopes but not of the meadow, still vividly green and distinct.

  All at once I found myself listening to the intense stillness, aware of some suspense in the ominous hush of impending thunder. Not a sound came from anywhere. There was no sign of life in the street, where the lights had not yet come on, in spite of the gathering shadows. Already the houses around me had lost their sharp outlines and seemed huddled together, as if nervously watching and waiting and holding their breath. Mist and twilight had blotted out colours, all shapes were blurred and indefinite, so that the clear-cut bright green field stood out startlingly, mysteriously retaining the light of the departed day concentrated in its small rectangle, floating over the roofs like a bright green flag.

  Everywhere else, the invisible armies of night were assembling, massing against the houses, collecting in blacker blackness beneath the black trees. Everything was waiting breathlessly for the night to fall. But the advance of darkness was halted, stopped dead, at the edge of the meadow, arrested by sheer force of that ardent green. I expected the night to attack, to rush the meadow, to overrun it. But nothing happened. Only, I felt the tension of countless grass blades, poised in pure opposition to the invading dark. And now, in a first faint glimmer of understanding, I began to see how enormously powerful the grass up there must be, able to interrupt night’s immemorial progress. Thinking of what I’d heard, I could imagine that grass might grow arrogant and far too strong, nourished as this had been; its horrid life battening on putrescence, bursting out in hundreds, thousands, of strong new blades for every single one cut.

  I had a vision then of those teeming blades – blades innumerable, millions on millions of blades of grass – ceaselessly multiplying, with unnatural strength forcing their silent irresistible upward way through the earth, increasing a thousand-fold with each passing minute. How fiercely they crowded into that one small field, grown unnaturally strong and destructive, destruction-fed. Turgid with life, the countless millions of blades were packed densely together, standing ready, like lances, like thickets, like trees, to resist invasion.

  In the midst of the deep dusk that was almost darkness, the brilliance of that small green space appeared unnatural, uncanny. I had been staring at it so long that it seemed to start vibrating, pulsating, as if, even at this distance, the tremendous life surge quickening it were actually visible. Not only the dark was threatened by all that savage vitality; in my vision I saw the field always alert, continually on the watch for a momentary slackening of the effort to check its growth, only awaiting that opportunity to burst all bounds. I saw the grass rear up like a great green grave, swollen by the corruption it had consumed, sweeping over all boundaries, spreading in all directions, destroying all other life, covering the whole world with a bright green pall beneath which life would perish. That poison-green had to be fought, fought; cut back, cut down; daily, hourly, at any cost. There was no other defence against the mad proliferation of grass blades, no other alternative to grass, blood-bloated, grown viciously strong, poisonous and vindictive, a virulent plague that would smother everything, everywhere, until grass and grass only covered the face of the globe.

  It seems monstrous, a thing that should never have been possible, for grass to possess such power. It is against all the laws of nature that grass should threaten the life of the planet. How could a plant meant to creep, to be crushed underfoot, grow so arrogant, so destructive? At times the whole idea seems preposterous, absolutely crazy, a story for children, not to be taken seriously – I refuse to believe it. And yet . . . and yet . . . one can’t be quite certain . . . Who knows what may have happened in the remote past? Perhaps, in the ancient archives kept secret from us, some incident is recorded . . . Or, still further back, before records even began, something may have deviated from the norm . . . Some variation, of which nothing is known any more, could have let loose on the future this green threat.

  One simply doesn’t know what to believe. If it is all just a fantasy, why should I have seen, as in a vision, that grass, fed on
the lives of bound victims, could become a threat to all life, death-swollen and horribly strong? In the beginning, when the whole thing started, did the threat come before the victim or vice versa? Or did both evolve simultaneously out of a mutual need for one another? And how do I come into it? Why should I be implicated at all? It’s nothing to do with me. There’s nothing whatever that I can do. Yet this thing that should never have happened seems something I cannot escape. If not today or tomorrow, then the day after that, or the next, at the end of some journey one evening, I shall see the bright green field waiting for me again. As I always do.

  ICE STORM

  I WENT TO CONNECTICUT on a Wednesday morning by the eleven-thirty train. It was snowing in New York,

  FREAK STORM ICES AND SOAKS CITY BY TURNS TIES TRAFFIC

  but Grand Central Station was cosy thick amber winter warmth. I always did like Grand Central. It was the first place I got to recognize when I first came to New York, and in those frightening days I used to orientate myself by it in my journeys about the city. Grand Central wasn’t gloomy like a London station, nor awe-inspiring like a cathedral, nor frivolous like a theatre; nor was it purely functional. There was a sort of generalized serviceable brightness about it which bolstered up my belief that a rational existence might still be possible somewhere, despite all evidence to the contrary.