The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  And to the state of California she writes letter after letter after letter to save Elizabeth Duncan. The walls in her student room are plastered with newspaper cuttings and photographs about the death penalty and scientific discoveries, animals tested beyond recognition. Monkeys, mice, rabbits and murdered women.

  *

  Cosmo has decided to enter your life and she is everywhere; at first nowhere, and then everywhere. In the telephone at night, in your dresses, in your coat pockets, in your photographs; you can forget everything, but you cannot forget her. You never forget the first guided tours in the laboratory, those first crystalline nights, unending, simply continuing, the flickering feeling like a fluorescent lamp when she looks at you. And every time you touch her skin, it is a step further from your own plans, from the Future and Science. And still your hand moves on, inch by inch. A rectangle of light shines in her face when you touch her. Her hair looks like a bird’s nest.

  VALERIE: I’m afraid, Cosmo.

  COSMO (holds up a Polaroid photograph): Look at this picture, Valerie.

  VALERIE (sits up): I just want to have a degree. I’m here for the future. I don’t want the future to disappear.

  COSMO: You can do what you want. Someone like you isn’t going to fall apart. Your mind is like steel. What can you see in the picture, Valerie?

  VALERIE: Some skin, some hair, our mouths.

  COSMO: Anything else?

  VALERIE: I suppose you want me to say we’re laughing, we look happy. We look happy and we’re laughing in these photos.

  COSMO: Valerie?

  VALERIE: Yes.

  COSMO: We’re not laughing in the pictures, we’re not happy. We’re invincible. We’re rulers of the universe. We can do what we want. That’s what’s in the pictures.

  VALERIE: I mean to become a professor. I have to hold my horses.

  COSMO: I don’t intend to hold any horses. We’re going to remake history. Artificial intelligence, artificial insemination, artificial historiography. You and me and the future. The first intellectual whores of America.

  VALERIE: Hold my hand forever. Hold me back. Hold on to my plans. Promise me you’ll never go.

  COSMO: Never.

  University of Maryland, February 1959

  The student bed is a place of shadow and lonely swooning. Cosmo in the sheets with her yellow hair, her conviction, her desire. Her body wanting to work its way into yours and disappear inside. Yours is a target that has nothing to do with Valerie. Just the burning, throbbing, tingling sensation in your arms again, do what you will and whatever you do let it be quick, and everything covers its eyes and waits and rigor mortis spreads through the room. At first you are scared of everything in Maryland, of Cosmo, of her kisses, of the professors, the lecture halls, the middle-class girls, the middle-class boys. Then you fly along the corridors with Cosmo’s hand in yours, invincible, your brain ablaze with desire for science and the future.

  *

  Elizabeth Duncan gets a new execution date every month. In telephone calls to Cosmogirl she is incoherent and paranoid. She is crazed with fear, convinced that they will release gas into the death cell without warning. She knits hundreds of identical girls’ dresses and yearns for the desert and little Frankie. Cosmo stands in the dorm in a sea of clemency appeals and weeps into the phone. The sun rises and sets on the horizon behind the hospital grounds, while you create your own after-school experiments and scientific texts. The nights are dark and swollen.

  *

  Elizabeth Duncan loved getting married. She and Cosmo crisscrossed America in search of handsome, dark-haired men to whom she pledged large sums of money in return for marrying her. And later, when they wanted the marriage annulled, she carried on to a new state and wed again. And when the money ran out, as it always did, she sent pregnant girls to the doctor and claimed it was her, and then sued her ex-husbands for child support.

  VALERIE: What’s she sentenced for?

  COSMO GIRL: Murdering two of her new husbands with arsenic.

  VALERIE: Is she guilty?

  COSMO GIRL: Very guilty, I suspect.

  Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, December 24, 1968

  The snow is melting on your head. It is a long time since you stopped waiting for a telephone call. You usually give away your weekly call to one of the drugged-up girls who always hang around in the corridor so they do not miss the calls that never come. Over Christmas all the non-new arrivals have the privilege of three conversations each. It is very generous of the hospital administration, but at present they are not able to propose any kind people the patients can contact.

  *

  The windows in the dining room are covered with frost patterns, the birds stare at the patients through the panes of glass, the snow glistens and sparkles between the hospital curtains. Andy Warhol himself answers, in his hesitant, whispering voice. Talking to Andy is like talking to yourself; his voice has changed since last time, dissolved, distorted, and everything he says sounds like a question. H-h-h-hello?

  VALERIE: Hello, Andy, it’s only me.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: How are you feeling, little Andy?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Merry Christmas, Andy.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Merry Christmas, I said.

  ANDY: Merry Christmas, Valerie?

  VALERIE: Why haven’t you been to see me?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: I read in the paper that you’ve forgiven me.

  ANDY: Yes?

  VALERIE: Have you forgiven Valerie?

  ANDY: Yes?

  VALERIE: If you’ve forgiven Valerie, how come you haven’t been to see her?

  ANDY: I have to hang up now . . .?

  VALERIE: Are you celebrating Christmas in the Factory?

  ANDY: Goodbye, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I don’t understand.

  ANDY: I’m not angry, Valerie. But goodbye, Valerie. I can’t talk anymore, Valerie. We’ve got to work now, Valerie . . .?

  VALERIE: Really. My next suggestion is that you exhibit your body parts in some old museum in London and we call the whole thing Haute Couture.

  (call ends ———)

  Christmas Eve, Conversation Two

  ANDY: Hello? . . . Mom? . . .

  VALERIE (disguises her voice): Yes, it’s only little Mama Warhola . . . I just want to know if you’ve taken off your bandages . . .

  ANDY: M-m-mom? . . .

  VALERIE: If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive you. That awful male-female will never get near my little boy again.

  ANDY: No?

  (Silence.)

  ANDY: Mom?

  (Silence.)

  ANDY: Mom?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Valerie, not Mom. I need twenty thousand dollars for my manuscript. I need money to defend myself in court. I need money now. Withdraw all the charges against me. And then I want you to do a new film about me. I need to be on a T.V. show. I have no White House to work out of. Ring that man again, Mr Carlson, that show where you sat painting your nails and called yourself Warhola, and tell him I need him, tell him I need T.V. I want you to come and see me at Elmhurst. Visiting time is every Sunday at three. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but it wasn’t as bad as all that.

  (call ends ———)

  Christmas Eve, Conversation Three

  VIVA RONALDO: Andy Warhol’s office. To whom am I speaking?

  VALERIE: Ask Andy Warhol to come to the phone. I’m in a great hurry.

  VIVA RONALDO: You have to stop these nuisance calls.

  VALERIE: Whatever . . . Wigs. Paranoia. Fake artists. Plagiarists. Kleptomaniacs. Dracula. Bloodsuckers. Leeches.

  VIVA RONALDO: We’ve reported your calls to the police, Valerie.

  VALERIE: O.K. Exciting. But if he has really forgiven Valerie, how come he hasn’t been to visit her?

  VIVA RONALDO: Goodbye, Valerie.

  VALERIE: I’d also add that I’ve reported your art and your man’s faces to
the police. Tell him to find my play. Tell him I’ll forgive him if I get my play back. Tell him, for as long as the sun shines and the sky is blue, I’ll keep my promise.

  (call ends ———)

  University of Maryland, Autumn 1959

  It is the end of McCarthy’s protracted ’50s and the ’60s are on their way in. You have a part-time job as a night student in the laboratory. Dwight David Eisenhower has become the president of America. You think about Dorothy all the time, daydream about Dorothy in her flowery hat beside your graduation hat, Dorothy with shining eyes and confetti, bowing and scraping in her high heels to everyone who passes. Dolly, that’s only a student. Ah. You don’t need to bow to everyone who’s here. Nah. They’re just ordinary people. Education is just a way of separating people, Dorothy. Ah, but I haven’t been to any school at all, little Valerie, I’m so proud of you, little Valerie. Dorothy should see you now, in your white lab coat, running along the corridors at the university. She would be frightened of everything here, of the books, the buildings, the professors. Sometimes you think you should write and tell her how you are swanning around in the sciences, with unlimited access to literature and long nights in Shiver Laboratory.

  *

  The other girls have white pearl necklaces, they have their old-lady perms, which is all wrong but alright. You have dungarees under your lab coat and you are happy and wide awake all night in Shiver Laboratory. The nights with the animals are long and humid. The pygmy monkeys are comatose in their cages, and the mice, hamsters and rabbits never sleep, running in their wheels all night, as you walk along the corridors in your white clogs, waiting for the alarm to go off in one of the cages. Flight responses in laboratory animals are heartrending; a little colony of white mice works in unison for days on an underground escape system. Cosmogirl and you keep a log of their breakout plans.

  *

  And while you wait for morning to come, you drink coffee with the night watchman and spend a long time in the toilets washing your hands and under your arms. You love walking through the glacial light emitted by the fluorescent lamps in the animal rooms. The red-eyed mice have cancerous tumors on their backs. A human ear has been grafted onto one of them. Cosmogirl has christened her Samantha. You like her best of all. She moves slowly with the full-grown ear, waiting for death. Before she dies, you will cut the ear off her. Cosmogirl and you yearn for an underwater world of female mice where Samantha rules.

  *

  Nights in the animal laboratory among the luminous cages and animal experiments are endless. The animals run around in the epileptic flicker of the lights and the strong odor of disinfectant. Their animal eyes become infected, the albino mice get cancer, the alcohol mice and drug mice degenerate in the experiments. The white mice become addicted first. After just a few weeks they stop eating and working, they stop looking after their young, and the youngsters stop playing and running in the wheel. Life in the cages turns into a desperate wait by the water bottle. Dead animals are collected in huge steel containers and burned collectively every week.

  The Psychoanalysts

  A. Dr So-and-so. All doctors eat Mogadon and turds for breakfast. I feel like a goddamn whore. When can a woman spend time outdoors? Never. Language is merely a structure, says Dr Fuck, and breathes a wind of rape into my face.

  B. The decision was taken to remove her brain. There had been years of international conferences. The speakers shook their heads. Reports and diagnoses eddied around the conference halls. Outside it was completely calm. Deserted buildings, hotel complexes, beta blockers. They drove their cars along the promenades. Hotels abandoned, hearts bombarded, utopias mutilated. Death’s field. They drove their cars across death’s field. They shared a bed with the enemy.

  C. The child’s paranoid universe. Childhood as a long line of terrifying fields to scurry through. Light coming down from the trees onto his hands.

  D. Paranoid associations. Unseemly comparisons. How should I describe it? How should the story be told? There is nothing to tell.

  E. We walk through the hospital grounds. Everyone is wearing white patient’s apparel and everyone’s hands are shaking. The tablets do not help. Nothing helps. I do not want to go to the mental hospital. I do not like that hospital park. The signs, the alarm bells, the visiting times. All the white light on his hands.

  F. All my friends are whores. They burn every bridge as soon as they have a chance. Let me know if you need a character witness. How would you like to describe that night?

  G. I do not want to describe it.

  H. How about giving it a try?

  I. I do not want to.

  J. How would you describe that night?

  K. Black birds hurtling down. Mammalian fetuses, bleeding, blazing. End of story.

  L. The conferences continued. Erica Jong sucks cock a mile above the Atlantic. The repulsive mile-high club. The cock in the cunt. It was so goddamn disgusting.

  M. I know you like it. My heart beats red, beats blue, beats rage.

  N. The Future of an Illusion. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Interpretation of Dreams, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Ego and the Id. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy. “Wild” Psychoanalysis. The Dynamics of Transference. Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. Denial. Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. Denial. Analysis Terminable and Interminable. The Theory of Sexuality. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Heredity and the Aetiology of Neuroses. Wolf Man. Seduction Theory. Screen Memories. Jokes and Their Relation to the Subconscious. Infantile Genital Organization. Amendment to the Theory of Sexuality. The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis. Dostoevsky and Parricide.

  O. She stayed in bed all day long. She had no points of reference, she lacked persuasion. Her heart clamored, venting its wrath. Men chased all over her face.

  P. I drive through town in my silver car. I drive across the sky. I arrive in my silver car. I have fluffy white hair; you can call me what you like. You will never know my real name.

  Q. It was a passion. Why did I have such high heels? Why did I have such short dresses? I only wanted to get closer to the sky. I was looking for my sisters. I could not find a sister. I sat in front of the television and submitted to enforced treatment. I seldom saw a doctor.

  R. But thanks very much for your comments. I am very interested in your views on the red-light district. I am very interested in the way you call yourselves educated and then call other people white trash. You are very welcome to earn a living as prostitutes for a year in the Tenderloin and then come back and tell me what you think. In general, please deliver all your opinions concerning the red-light district, regardless of how little time you have had to consider the matter.

  S. My theory is that there is no theory. I went there quite voluntarily. I visited that doctor of my own free will. I had my own training, but they said it was irrelevant in the context. They said I had no sense of time. Do you know what day it is? Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Do you know where you are? Fuck me harder.

  T. There is a psychology for everything. Red-light psychology. Red-light theory. My theory is that there is no theory. Dough. Dames. Dicks. That is the right way to describe it.

  U. How do you want to describe the phenomenon?

  V. I do not want to describe the phenomenon.

  W. How would you describe the phenomenon?

  X. Sharks in all my thoughts. The taste of death. Grainy white fluid in all my dreams. Abjection.

  Y. I would like to point out that I am here voluntarily. You are not here voluntarily. I would like to point out that I am attending these psycho appointments of my own free will. The appointments, yes. Yes, I know you are forcing me to be here. Tell me something about your childhood. I can tell you something about my ass, if you like.

  Z. Why do you have to tell the truth when it is so easy to lie? I was raped by a bird in the desert.

  Bristol Hotel, April 18, 1988

  NARRAT
OR: Do you have a few minutes?

  VALERIE: Sorry, I’m working. Ten for a fuck. Five for a blow job. Two for a hand job. The whole repertoire. No kissing. No bullshit. No fingers. No licking. Sex is just a hang-up.

  NARRATOR: I’d like to know what you think about prostitution.

  VALERIE: Currently I have more practical experience than knowledge.

  NARRATOR: Then tell me about it.

  VALERIE: It’s like that boat accident in the Pacific where hundreds of people died. The ones who survived were utterly unable to speak when they were questioned by the police and later interviewed by the newspapers. One of them said long afterwards that what happened the night of the disaster was not something the living should know about. People stamping on other people’s hands when they tried to get into the overcrowded lifeboats. Men kicking young children out of the way to get to the front. A man spoke about a girl who was trapped, her head pinned under a cupboard. Their eyes met, and he went out to the lifeboats. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

  NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

  VALERIE: It’s like being dead. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

  NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

  VALERIE: Everything is interchangeable. Thought systems work like that, organization of flesh and mind. The logic of transportation hinges on a certain predetermined quota being filled. If someone is missing, someone else is taken out in her place. There’s no point in running away.

  NARRATOR: Your way of thinking is distorted by so much senseless, destructive defeatism.

  VALERIE: Not defeatism. Not submission. Not masochism. There are no good victims. I just find it unworthy to save my own ass when my people are being annihilated. When pussy-souls are sent to the slaughter. Otherwise another pussy-soul will have to do the work. I might just as well do it. There will always be men who like to fuck drowning people.