I care. Last night it worked. And I haven’t laid a finger on it since. Doesn’t make sense.
I try the remote control one more time. I press slowly with my finger. But the result is the same. No response whatsoever. The screen is dead. Cold.
Dead cold.
I pull another beer out of the fridge and eat some potato salad from a plastic tub. It’s past six o’clock. I read the whole evening paper. If anything, it’s more boring than usual. Almost no article worth reading, nothing but inconsequential news items. But I keep reading, for lack of anything better to do. Until I finish the paper. What next? To avoid pursuing that thought any further, I dally over the newspaper. Hmm, how about answering letters? A cousin of mine has sent us a wedding invitation, which I have to turn down. The day of the wedding, the wife and I are going to be off on a trip. To Okinawa. We’ve been planning it for ages; we’re both taking time off from work. We can’t very well go changing our plans now. God only knows when we’ll get the next chance to spend a long holiday together. And to clinch it all, I’m not even that close to my cousin; haven’t seen her in almost ten years. Still, I can’t leave replying to the last minute. She has to know how many people are coming, how many settings to plan for the banquet. Oh, forget it. I can’t bring myself to write, not now. My heart isn’t in it.
I pick up the newspaper again and read the same articles over again. Maybe I ought to start preparing dinner. But the wife might be working late and could come home having eaten. Which would mean wasting one portion. And if I am going to eat alone, I can make do with leftovers; no reason to make something up special. If she hasn’t eaten, we can go out and eat together.
Odd, though. Whenever either of us knows he or she is going to be later than six, we always call in. That’s the rule. Leave a message on the answering machine if necessary. That way, the other can coordinate: go ahead and eat alone, or set something out for the late arriver, or hit the sack. The nature of my work sometimes keeps me out late, and she often has meetings, or proofs to dispatch, before coming home. Neither of us has a regular nine-to-five job. When both of us are busy, we can go three days without a word to each other. Those are the breaks—just one of those things that nobody planned. Hence we always keep certain rules, so as not to place unrealistic burdens on each other. If it looks as though we’re going to be late, we call in and let the other one know. I sometimes forget, but she, never once.
Still, there’s no message on the answering machine.
I toss the newspaper, stretch out on the sofa, and shut my eyes.
* * *
—
I dream about a meeting. I’m standing up, delivering a statement I myself don’t understand. I open my mouth and talk. If I don’t, I’m a dead man. I have to keep talking. Have to keep coming out with endless blah-blah-blah. Everyone around me is dead. Dead and turned to stone. A roomful of stone statues. A wind is blowing. The windows are all broken; gusts of air are coming in. And the TV People are here. Three of them. Like the first time. They’re carrying a Sony color TV. And on the screen are the TV People. I’m running out of words; little by little I can feel my fingertips growing stiffer. Gradually turning to stone.
I open my eyes to find the room aglow. The color of corridors at the Aquarium. The television is on. Outside, everything is dark. The TV screen is flickering in the gloom, static crackling. I sit up on the sofa, and press my temples with my fingertips. The flesh of my fingers is still soft; my mouth tastes like beer. I swallow. I’m dried out; the saliva catches in my throat. As always, the waking world pales after an all-too-real dream. But no, this is real. Nobody’s turned to stone. What time is it getting to be? I look for the clock on the floor. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. A little before eight.
Yet, just as in the dream, one of the TV People is on the television screen. The same guy I passed on the stairs to the office. No mistake. The one who first opened the door to the apartment. I’m 100 percent sure. He stands there—against a bright, fluorescent white background, the tail end of a dream infiltrating my conscious reality—staring at me. I shut, then reopen my eyes, hoping he’ll have slipped back to never-never land. But he doesn’t disappear. Far from it. He gets bigger. His face fills the whole screen, getting closer and closer.
The next thing I know, he’s stepping through the screen. Hands gripping the frame, lifting himself up and over, one foot after the other, like climbing out of a window, leaving a white TV screen glowing behind him.
He rubs his left hand in the palm of his right, slowly acclimating himself to the world outside the television. On and on, reduced right-hand fingers rubbing reduced left-hand fingers, no hurry. He has that all-the-time-in-the-world nonchalance. Like a veteran TV-show host. Then he looks me in the face.
“We’re making an airplane,” says my TV People visitant. His voice has no perspective to it. A curious, paper-thin voice.
He speaks, and the screen is all machinery. Very professional fade-in. Just like on the news. First, there’s an opening shot of a large factory interior, then it cuts to a close-up of the work space, camera center. Two TV People are hard at work on some machine, tightening bolts with wrenches, adjusting gauges. The picture of concentration. The machine, however, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen: an upright cylinder except that it narrows toward the top, with streamlined protrusions along its surface. Looks more like some kind of gigantic orange juicer than an airplane. No wings, no seats.
“Doesn’t look like an airplane,” I say. Doesn’t sound like my voice, either. Strangely brittle, as if the nutrients had been strained out through a thick filter. Have I grown so old all of a sudden?
“That’s probably because we haven’t painted it yet,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll have it the right color. Then you’ll see it’s an airplane.”
“The color’s not the problem. It’s the shape. That’s not an airplane.”
“Well, if it’s not an airplane, what is it?” he asks me. If he doesn’t know, and I don’t know, then what is it? “So, that’s why it’s got to be the color.” The TV People rep puts it to me gently. “Paint it the right color, and it’ll be an airplane.”
I don’t feel like arguing. What difference does it make? Orange juicer or airplane—flying orange juicer?—what do I care? Still, where’s the wife while all this is happening? Why doesn’t she come home? I massage my temples again. The clock ticks on. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. The remote control lies on the table, and next to it the stack of women’s magazines. The telephone is silent, the room illuminated by the dim glow of the television.
The two TV People on the screen keep working away. The image is much clearer than before. You can read the numbers on the dials, hear the faint rumble of machinery. TAABZHRAYBGG TAABZHRAYBGG ARP ARRP TAABZHRAYBGG. This bass line is punctuated periodically by a sharp, metallic grating. AREEEENBT AREEEENBT. And various other noises are interspersed through the remaining aural space; I can’t hear anything clearly over them. Still, the two TV People labor on for all they’re worth. That, apparently, is the subject of this program. I go on watching the two of them as they work on and on. Their colleague outside the TV set also looks on in silence. At them. At that thing—for the life of me, it does not look like an airplane—that insane machine all black and grimy, floating in a field of white light.
The TV People rep speaks up. “Shame about your wife.”
I look him in the face. Maybe I didn’t hear him right. Staring at him is like peering into the glowing tube itself.
“Shame about your wife,” the TV People rep repeats in exactly the same absent tone.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“How’s that? It’s gone too far,” says the TV People rep in a voice like a plastic-card hotel key. Flat, uninflected, it slices into me as if it were sliding through a thin slit. “It’s gone too far: She’s out there.”
“It’s gone too far: She’s out there,” I repeat i
n my head. Very plain, and without reality. I can’t grasp the context. Cause has effect by the tail and is about to swallow it whole. I get up and go to the kitchen. I open the refrigerator, take a deep breath, reach for a can of beer, and go back to the sofa. The TV People rep stands in place in front of the television, right elbow resting on the set, and watches me extract the pull-tab. I don’t really want to drink beer at this moment; I just need to do something. I drink one sip, but the beer doesn’t taste good. I hold the can in my hand dumbly until it becomes so heavy I have to set it down on the table.
Then I think about the TV People rep’s revelation, about the wife’s failure to materialize. He’s saying she’s gone. That she isn’t coming home. I can’t bring myself to believe it’s over. Sure, we’re not the perfect couple. In four years, we’ve had our spats; we have our little problems. But we always talk them out. There are things we’ve resolved and things we haven’t. Most of what we couldn’t resolve we let ride. Okay, so we have our ups and downs as a couple. I admit it. But is this cause for despair? C’mon, show me a couple who don’t have problems. Besides, it’s only a little past eight. There must be some reason she can’t get to a phone. Any number of possible reasons. For instance…I can’t think of a single one. I’m hopelessly confused.
I fall back deep into the sofa.
How on earth is that airplane—if it is an airplane—supposed to fly? What propels it? Where are the windows? Which is the front, which is the back?
I’m dead tired. Exhausted. I still have to write that letter, though, to beg off from my cousin’s invitation. My work schedule does not afford me the pleasure of attending. Regrettable. Congratulations, all the same.
The two TV People in the television continue building their airplane, oblivious of me. They toil away; they don’t stop for anything. They have an infinite amount of work to get through before the machine is complete. No sooner have they finished one operation than they’re busy with another. They have no assembly instructions, no plans, but they know precisely what to do and what comes next. The camera ably follows their deft motions. Clear-cut, easy-to-follow camera work. Highly credible, convincing images. No doubt other TV People (Nos. 4 and 5?) are manning the camera and control panel.
Strange as it may sound, the more I watch the flawless form of the TV People as they go about their work, the more the thing starts to look like an airplane. At least, it’d no longer surprise me if it actually flew. What does it matter which is front or back? With all the exacting detail work they’re putting in, it has to be an airplane. Even if it doesn’t appear so—to them, it’s an airplane. Just as the little guy said, “If it’s not an airplane, then what is it?”
The TV People rep hasn’t so much as twitched in all this time. Right elbow still propped up on the TV set, he’s watching me. I’m being watched. The TV People factory crew keeps working. Busy, busy, busy. The clock ticks on. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. The room has grown dark, stifling. Someone’s footsteps echo down the hall.
Well, it suddenly occurs to me, maybe so. Maybe the wife is out there. She’s gone somewhere far away. By whatever means of transport, she’s gone somewhere far out of my reach. Maybe our relationship has suffered irreversible damage. Maybe it’s a total loss. Only I haven’t noticed. All sorts of thoughts unravel inside me, then the frayed ends come together, again. “Maybe so,” I say out loud. My voice echoes, hollow.
“Tomorrow, when we paint it, you’ll see better,” he resumes. “All it needs is a touch of color to make it an airplane.”
I look at the palms of my hands. They have shrunk slightly. Ever so slightly. Power of suggestion? Maybe the light’s playing tricks on me. Maybe my sense of perspective has been thrown off. Yet, my palms really do look shriveled. Hey now, wait just a minute! Let me speak. There’s something I should say. I must say. I’ll dry up and turn to stone if I don’t. Like the others.
“The phone will ring soon,” the TV People rep says. Then, after a measured pause, he adds, “In another five minutes.”
I look at the telephone; I think about the telephone cord. Endless lengths of phone cable linking one telephone to another. Maybe somewhere, at some terminal of that awesome megacircuit, is my wife. Far, far away, out of my reach. I can feel her pulse. Another five minutes, I tell myself. Which way is front, which way is back? I stand up and try to say something, but no sooner have I got to my feet than the words slip away.
Angela Carter (1940–1992) was an English writer of stories, novels, essays, and journalism. “Alice in Prague or The Curious Room” appeared posthumously in the collection American Ghosts & Old World Wonders (1993). This story derives its inspiration more from the film by Jan Švankmajer (to whom the story is dedicated) than to Lewis Carroll’s books, making a connection between alchemy and literature. Although this story was published after her untimely death, the term curious room is often used in relation to her work. Carter’s collected short stories were published in 1995 as Burning Your Boats. Please see her other story, “The Erl-King,” earlier in this anthology for more on her biography.
ALICE IN PRAGUE OR THE CURIOUS ROOM
Angela Carter
This piece was written in praise of Jan Švankmajer, the animator of Prague, and his film of Alice.
IN THE CITY OF PRAGUE, once, it was winter.
* * *
—
Outside the curious room, there is a sign on the door which says “Forbidden.” Inside, inside, oh, come and see! The celebrated DR DEE.
The celebrated Dr Dee, looking for all the world like Santa Claus on account of his long, white beard and apple cheeks, is contemplating his crystal, the fearful sphere that contains everything that is, or was, or ever shall be.
It is a round ball of solid glass and gives a deceptive impression of weightlessness, because you can see right through it and we falsely assume an equation between lightness and transparency, that what the light shines through cannot be there and so must weigh nothing. In fact, the Doctor’s crystal ball is heavy enough to inflict a substantial injury and the Doctor’s assistant, Ned Kelly, the Man in the Iron Mask, often weighs the ball in one hand or tosses it back and forth from one to the other hand as he ponders the fragility of the hollow bone, his master’s skull, as it pores heedless over some tome.
Ned Kelly would blame the murder on the angels. He would say the angels came out of the sphere. Everybody knows the angels live there.
The crystal resembles: an aqueous humour, frozen;
a glass eye, although without any
iris or pupil—just the sort of
transparent eye, in fact, which the
adept might construe as apt to
see the invisible;
a tear, round, as it forms within
the eye, for a tear acquires its
characteristic shape of a pear,
what we think of as a “tear”
shape, only in the act of falling;
the shining drop that trembles,
sometimes, on the tip of the
Doctor’s well-nigh senescent,
tending towards the flaccid, yet
nevertheless sustainable and
discernible morning erection, and
always reminds him of
a drop of dew,
a drop of dew endlessly,
tremulously about to fall from
the unfolded petals of a rose and,
therefore, like the tear, retaining
the perfection of its
circumference only by refusing
to sustain free fall, remaining
what it is, because it refuses to
become what it might be, the
antithesis of metamorphosis;
and yet, in old England, far away,
the sign of the Do Drop Inn will
always, that jovial pun, show a
n
oblate spheroid, heavily
tinselled, because the sign-
painter, in order to demonstrate
the idea of “drop,” needs must
represent the dew in the act of
falling and therefore, for the
purposes of this comparison,
not resembling the numinous ball
weighing down the angelic
Doctor’s outstretched palm.
For Dr Dee, the invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.
* * *
—
The hinge of the sixteenth century, where it joins with the seventeenth century, is as creaky and judders open as reluctantly as the door in a haunted house. Through that door, in the distance, we may glimpse the distant light of the Age of Reason, but precious little of that is about to fall on Prague, the capital of paranoia, where the fortune-tellers live on Golden Alley in cottages so small, a good-sized doll would find itself cramped, and there is one certain house on Alchemist’s Street that only becomes visible during a thick fog. (On sunny days, you see a stone.) But, even in the fog, only those born on the Sabbath can see the house anyway.
Like a lamp guttering out in a recently vacated room, the Renaissance flared, faded and extinguished itself. The world had suddenly revealed itself as bewilderingly infinite, but since the imagination remained, for after all it is only human, finite, our imaginations took some time to catch up. If Francis Bacon will die in 1626 a martyr to experimental science, having contracted a chill whilst stuffing a dead hen with snow on Highgate Hill to see if that would keep it fresh, in Prague, where Dr Faustus once lodged in Charles Square, Dr Dee, the English expatriate alchemist, awaits the manifestation of the angel in the Archduke Rudolph’s curious room, and we are still fumbling our way towards the end of the previous century.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 101