The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  Do you remember, Dorothy?

  Do you remember how we would go to the river together?

  The top down and a new guy at the wheel. Your scarf flapping in the wind. Your fair hair, newly washed. The song. You, singing and chattering in the front seat.

  You and I beneath the crazy sky.

  Bristol Hotel, April 7, 1988, a Few Weeks Before the End

  The manifesto has disappeared among the sheets streaked with dirt and brown fluid oozing from your vagina and rectum, a burning, vile-smelling outpouring of loneliness, a seeping humiliation. If there are more ways to humiliate me, bring them on. It’s not like you to lie in a hotel room raving to yourself when you know you are alone, about to die; it is the fever, making you delirious. All you want is to stay in this room, not fall into the darkness and through the smell of forest and lemonade and stagnant river water and sunlight spilling on the picnic blanket, the strong synthetic light of the 1940s.

  Valerie, sugar

  Time for food now, Valerie

  Dorothy shouts from a blanket by the river where the sun’s intensity has turned the grass into withered brown tufts. Behind her, columns of sunlight stand between the trees, and she waves away midges and dragonflies trying to nosedive into the picnic. America has just dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki and still it is that time, a forgotten age of car rides with the top down and fried chicken sandwiches on the back seat and Louis in shorts with his shirt undone, stretched out on a blanket. An age when nights are deepest blue and crystal clear and little desert holes like Ventor have no electricity for months on end, and it is still alright to drink from the river and Louis drives back and forth to the textile mills to lay cables and you stopped calling him Daddy a lifetime ago.

  *

  You run under the silver-leaf maples, in your white dress again, the one that is really too thin and too childish and has lucky threads of gold and silver sewn into the petticoat and you only wear it because Dorothy likes it so much. Your feet sweating in your gym shoes and in your mouth the taste of metal and blood and something strange, choking. It is so quiet when you run, all sounds around you muted and only the blinding light cascading from the trees and the fateful dress swirling, far too tight across your chest and shoulders.

  *

  The forest invaded by dead animals and the soft smoky light motionless, lingering between the trees. And, when you think of it now, Dorothy’s face is above the treetops and her dress smells of sex and sugar, her arms perspire as she reaches out to you, and she swears at the sun-bleached umbrella blowing over all the time, and her hands and arms are covered in liver spots. The sun burns so fiercely through the treetops and her eyes are black lakes you want to drown in and she strokes the fabric of your dress, stars and smiles and snow, and she swats the bluebottles away from your face.

  Dorothy?

  Dorothy?

  Are you there, Dorothy?

  DOROTHY (over by the hotel room window): I’ll do whatever you want, my sunflower.

  VALERIE: As long as you don’t wear those vile pearls.

  DOROTHY: My white pearls. They’re my favorite pearls.

  VALERIE: Not at the funeral, not at my funeral.

  DOROTHY: Whatever you want. No artificial pearls, no plunging necklines, no fur, no make-up. Tell me what to put on and I will.

  VALERIE: Dorothy?

  DOROTHY: Yes, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I’m so scared of dying. I’m so scared of dying on my own.

  DOROTHY: It’s only heaven, my darling . . . only heaven can love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair.

  VALERIE: I don’t have yellow hair.

  DOROTHY: I know, but never mind. It’s just a metaphor.

  VALERIE: I don’t have yellow hair.

  DOROTHY: It doesn’t matter anymore, Valerie. It’s not important what you call it. You’re my little yellow-haired girl.

  VALERIE: But I think I’m gray-haired now. And it’s getting thin. It’s falling out, horrible piles of it lying on the sheet when I wake up.

  DOROTHY: Don’t be afraid, baby.

  VALERIE: I’m so light now, just a cloud. I have no hands. I miss my hands so badly.

  Valerie

  The sun burns through the umbrella. The brown, ferrous-smelling river water unmoving, stagnant. Dorothy and Louis still down by the riverside on their day out, drinking beer and lying outstretched on a blanket in the heat. Transistor radio, sweaty cheese, beery kisses, picnic.

  You go down to the river’s edge alone. Your feet in dark mud, in river slime, birch trees reaching for water, specks of rotting surface pollen. You will remember forever the magical light, the sludgy water creatures, distant bird calls, rolls of ponderous clouds above. The shade of the trees, a shimmering green yearning and for what, you do not know, just a beast in your stomach wanting out and shafts of light descending through the green darkness. Just a song somewhere that sounds like a legend, but not here; a garden full of kindling, a wasteland, a leap of snow leopards hunting across the plain. You want only to hold that song, to possess that foreign language and the legend living and breathing in the river.

  Your feet slide in the brown, vile-smelling muck and you do not know how you are going to catch up with all the longing and how you will cope with it if you do. You just know there is a song, like a legend, but not here, not now, only green darkness. The swaying crowns of the trees, dapples of light all around, making you tired and dizzy, and when you fall asleep by the river you dream you are flying high above snow-capped mountains and people applaud you far below.

  *

  And when you wake, Louis is under the treetops and the heat has gone and the sun is embedded in flashes of light shooting into your eyes as you open them and the backs of your thighs are stuck to the shiny surface of the backseat and covered in pondweed and mud and the unreal intensity of the light serves as darkness when you later recount it to Cosmogirl:

  the darkness descended when I was nearly seven. We were on a picnic by the river. Dorothy was there. Louis was there. The light was so strong I didn’t know which way to turn. When I woke, Louis was next to me. I didn’t see Dorothy. The leaves cast shadows on his hands. I was lying on my back and Louis was there. My dress was pure white. I never had a white dress after that. He put his hands underneath my white dress. I let him. I let him. Then darkness. The light through the trees on his hands.

  Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, June 3, 1968

  Arraignment Hearing, Night-time

  Apparently it is raining outside, which concerns you not in the slightest, because inside the courthouse there is no weather at all, just stone and wood and dark suits and the sweet little traffic officer, William Schmalix, in his white gloves. All the questions are the wrong ones and outside in Madison Square Park you have kneeled and reached into the pants of untold strangers. You are wearing Cosmo’s yellow top and underneath it nothing moves.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Judge David Getzoff summons Valerie Solanas in the case of New York State versus Valerie Solanas.

  VALERIE: Thank you so much. It’s not often I shoot someone and have the honor of coming here.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Everything you say here can later be used against you.

  VALERIE: I don’t doubt it.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Personal circumstances of the accused. Valerie Solanas. Age: thirty-two. Address: none. Marital status: single. Profession: unknown, the accused states she is a writer. No previous criminal record. Born in Ventor, Georgia, April 9, 1936.

  VALERIE: Hey, hey, hey you. Mister. What do you know about love?

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You are accused of homicide or attempted homicide. The charge is not yet established.

  VALERIE: Aha.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know what day it is?

  VALERIE: I know I should have done a bit more target practice, Mister.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know where you are?

  VALERIE: As far as I can see, I’m not anywhere I want
to be.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you have a lawyer?

  VALERIE: No, but I have no objection to appearing outside history.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you need a lawyer?

  VALERIE: I need a kiss.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: I’m asking if you need a lawyer.

  VALERIE: I regret that I missed. If a lawyer can help me undo that, I’ll gladly have a lawyer.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you remember why you shot Andy Warhol?

  VALERIE: Unfortunately, I tend to remember slightly more than I need to. And in this case, there was someone who had too much control over my life and I found it rather hard, to cut a long story short, to adjust to it.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Why did you shoot Andy Warhol?

  VALERIE: You should read my manifesto if you’re interested in joining S.C.U.M.’s supporters. It will tell you who I am.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You handed yourself in to a traffic officer yesterday on Fifth Avenue. Why did you do that?

  VALERIE: Because I wanted some company. Because I was fed up. And he seems really nice, William Schmalix. And clever. I’ve never seen such a tiny policeman before and he still managed to arrest me.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: This is the final time I will ask about a lawyer. You will need defense counsel. Can you afford a lawyer?

  VALERIE: I want to defend myself. This, unlike so much else, will remain in my own competent hands.

  Ventor, Georgia, Summer 1945

  Men Back in the Factories After the War

  The tarot cards are lying fanned out in strategic places around the house. Dorothy predicts that everything will be fine and there will be new children in the house and new desert flowers and the house will stop being a shithole and Louis will stop staring into the distance and the grapes and wild animals will survive out there where there is only sand and stones and merciless sun. As long as Louis is there, she is happy and busy and convinced she will succeed in growing sunflowers and sweet peas. As long as Louis is there, she drenches the house in soap and washes the sheets and nightshirts overnight and serves cornflakes with milk and syrup for breakfast and forever has new projects: a bath in the kitchen, a saucy hat, piles of dead butterflies in glass jars, solar panels on the roof, a new flavoring for the winemaking machine, and myriad underwater dreams of a future for Valerie somewhere else. A shift in the breeze inside you when she gazes at you with her dark eyes, convinced you are a changeling in need of special sustenance and special books and games, a stranger to her, unexpected but secretly wished for, like winning on the horses without having placed a bet.

  DOROTHY: Nine years old and the prettiest in all America.

  VALERIE: You are the pretty one, Dorothy.

  DOROTHY: Louis thinks I’m beautiful. I intend to carry on being beautiful until I die. I have no intention of accepting the march of time, of my face looking like a war zone. Louis will stay with me as long as I’m radiant. Don’t forget to be radiant, Valerie. Don’t ever forget.

  VALERIE: You’re radiant.

  DOROTHY: But I’ve had to work at it. Beauty doesn’t come free, pretty eyes aren’t free. What would you like for your birthday?

  VALERIE: I’d like you.

  DOROTHY (spreads her arms wide): Happy Birthday.

  VALERIE: And I’d like it if we didn’t live with Louis.

  DOROTHY (crestfallen, lets her arms drop to her sides): He’s your father, Valerie.

  VALERIE: He might be. But I don’t like him.

  DOROTHY: Without him, I’m nobody.

  VALERIE: O.K.

  DOROTHY: Without you, America is nothing.

  *

  And you return from the river in Louis’ car, but Louis is not there, only Dorothy and you, and she continues to sing at the top of her voice, roughened by sweet wine and cigarettes, as the roads disappear behind you, poplars and telegraph posts and deep black shadows, and she sings like a gushing waterfall and holds your gaze in the rear-view mirror. On the hard shoulder the remains of dead animals flash past – foxes, dogs and snakes, and on the porch of the desert house Louis waits for you both to return and for Dorothy to go back to her work at the bar. And on the back seat huge blood-stained tears of wretchedness and no way to get around the simple facts of Louis and Dorothy and Valerie Solanas. Dorothy falls to pieces without Louis and Valerie falls to pieces without Dorothy. So Dorothy carries on singing and driving, knowing all about the world, but not wanting to know, and as she whistles and hums and casts fathomless glances in the rear-view mirror, she wishes it were possible to keep everything and lose nothing.

  Dorothy

  Dorothy

  Nightfall takes such a long time, and when you come home someone has taken your collection of snake skins; it must have been a desert dog. After Dorothy has melted away to the bar in her leopard-skin dress with her leopard-skin bag, Louis lies on the porch swing drinking beer and the night is black with insects, total darkness without stars or lamps. For the last time he takes his chicken soup out into the garden. For the last time he shouts to you to come out of the house. With a beer in your hand you walk slowly across the sand still hot from the sun, and the heat has burned all your thoughts away and when it is dark outside you might as well be dead.

  *

  Afterwards he smokes a cigarette and watches the smoke blend into the night. When the dark recedes and the hens wake, he packs his things and disappears into the distance. When Dorothy finally returns, she is tired after the night and smokes a cigarette on the porch and listens to the birds fly by in the first light. Then she walks slowly through the rooms and she already knows, but does not want to know, and she shouts and weeps and goes through his empty drawers and none of his clothes are there and no money in the cake tin under the sink, only the forsaken wedding ring, lying in the sun. In Hiroshima shadows of fleeing people are seared onto buildings forever. You tell Cosmo about it later:

  it was nothing special, it was just that Louis used to rape me on the porch swing after Dorothy had driven into town and the treetops wafted about in the night sky and the seat creaked in resistance because it needed oiling again and we were always waiting for new light bulbs for the garden and Louis should have done a bit more exercise because the flab on his arms wobbled when he strained on top of me and his chest against my face heavy and suffocating and he was a jumbled agony of tears and lust and the seat cover fabric was a mesh of wild pink roses that Dorothy had embroidered at nights and I counted the roses and the stars in the sky and all flesh was sun-scorched grass and the dark took its time and my eyes pricked and burned and the desert dogs in their deepest sleep were chasing the wind and the stars in the sky had long been dead and I rented out my little pussy for no money and afterwards he always wept and tried to untangle the knot of chewing gum in my hair and I don’t know why it always got stuck in my hair while I was counting wild roses that were blood roses and death roses and the gum always fell out of my mouth and afterwards my hair smelled of menthol and his shirt was marked with chewing gum and the stars were still dead in the night sky and remnants of cloud had caught in the trees floating above and Louis cut out the stickiest menthol snarls and chain-smoked long afterwards and I smoked his cigarette ends and we listened to the geckos chirping around us and there was nothing left to cry about except America would keep on fucking me and all fathers want to fuck their daughters and most of them do and only a few don’t and it’s not clear why except the world will always be one long yearning to go back

  Manhattan Criminal Court, June 3, 1968

  The hearing continues after a short break. You refused to answer “adequately” and “properly” to the questions of the court and it withdrew for a while. Silver clouds dart like shadows on the ceiling. It is hard to decide if they are balloons or silver cushions or if they are floating mirrors that have escaped from the ladies’ toilets. A daydream running alongside all the other daydreams, a land of mirrors outside time, and around you only black holes opening in the marble floo
r, and a hundred thousand silver wigs falling from the sky. An echoing courtroom and endless rows of benches in different kinds of dark wood and someone holding your arm all the time. Andy is obsessed with death; he loves making screen prints of electric chairs and suicides and crashed cars. Cosmo would have laughed at his phony art and the hearing, and this proceeding feels as if his silver wig were being rammed down your throat.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Will the accused, Valerie Solanas, please stand.

  VALERIE: Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You have the right to a lawyer. There are people prepared to pay to defend you. Monsieur Maurice Girodias, proprietor of Olympia Press, has offered to pay for your defense.

  VALERIE: I don’t want his lawyers. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up and it wasn’t very pleasant. They were going to do something that would have ruined me.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Redact all the defendant’s statements.

  VALERIE: Redact nothing. All that has to be recorded. I repeat. I will continue to repeat. I can repeat any number of times. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up, a very unpleasant experience. They were going to do something that would have ruined me. I want you to write that down in the record of proceedings.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: No statements by the accused will be recorded. Hearing terminated; court adjourned. The accused is to be taken into psychiatric care for observation.

  VALERIE: I refuse to be redacted and censored in this way.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: The defendant will leave the courtroom.

  VALERIE: I’m going nowhere until I’m included in the record.

  MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Court is adjourned until further notice.