The Nightmare Factory (87 page)

The tape-recorded dream monologue, as I recalled it that day while riding home on the bus and staring out the window, described several features of the infested bungalow house—the dusty window blinds through which the moonlight shone, the lamps with all their lightbulb sockets empty, the threadbare carpet, and the dead or barely living vermin that littered the carpet. The voice on the tape only presented an interior view of the bungalow house, never a view from the exterior. Conversely, the houses I gazed upon with such intensity as I rode the bus to and from the library were only seen by me from an exterior perspective, their interiors being visible solely in my imagination as I projected it into these houses. And my memory of these interiors, once I had emerged from one of my imaginative projections, was always spotty and vague, lacking the precise physical layout provided by the bungalow house audio tape. Even my recollection of the dreams I often had of these houses was spotty and vague, highly imperfect. Yet the sensations and the mental state created by my imaginative projections
into
and my dreams
of
these houses perfectly corresponded to those I experienced at Dalha’s art gallery when I listened to the tape entitled
The Bungalow House
. That feeling of being in a trance among the most vile and pathetic surroundings was communicated to me in the most powerful way by the voice on the tape, which described a silent and secluded world where one existed in a state of abject hypnosis. While sitting on the floor of the art gallery listening to the voice as it spoke through those enormous headphones, I had the sense not that I was simply
hearing
the words of that dream monologue but also that I was
reading
them. What I mean is that whenever I have the occasion to read words on a page, any words on any page, the voice that I hear saying these words in my head is always recognizable in some way as my own, even though the words are those of another. Perhaps it is even more accurate to say that whenever I read words on a page, the voice in my head is my own voice
as it becomes merged
(or lost) within the words that I am reading. Conversely, when I have the occasion to write words on a page, even a simple note or memo at the library, the voice that I hear dictating these words does
not
sound like my own—until, of course, I read the words back to myself, at which time everything is all right again. The bungalow house tape was the most dramatic example of this phenomenon I had ever known. Despite the poor overall quality of the recording, the distorted voice reading this dream monologue became merged (or lost) within my own perfectly clear voice in my head, even though I was listening to its words over a pair of enormous headphones and not reading the words on a page. As I rode the bus home from the library, observing street after street of houses so reminiscent of the one described on the tape-recorded dream monologue, I regretted not having acquired this artwork on the spot or at least discovered more about it from Dalha, who had been occupied with what seemed an unusual number of telephone calls that afternoon.

The following day at the library I was anxious for lunchtime to arrive so that I could get over to the art gallery and find out everything I possibly could about the bungalow house tape, as well as discuss terms for its acquisition. Entering the art gallery, I immediately looked toward the corner where the tape recorder had been set on the small plastic table the day before. For some reason I was relieved to find the exhibit still in place, as if any artwork in that gallery could possibly have come and gone in a single day.

I walked over to the exhibit with the purpose of verifying that everything I had seen (and heard) the previous day was exactly as I remembered it. I checked that the audio cassette was still inside the recording machine and picked up the little business card on which the title of the exhibit was given, along with instructions for properly operating the tape-recorded artwork. It was then that I realized that this was a different card from the first one. Printed on this card was the title of a new artwork, which was called
The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices
.

While I was very excited to find a new work by this artist, I also felt intense apprehension at the absence of the bungalow house dream monologue, which I had planned to purchase with some extra money I brought with me to the art gallery that day. Just at that moment in which I experienced the dual sensations of excitement and apprehension, Dalha emerged from behind the curtain separating the back and front sections of the art gallery. I had intended to be thoroughly blasé in negotiating the purchase of the bungalow house artwork, but Dalha caught me off-guard in a state of disorienting conflict.

“What happened to the bungalow house tape that was here yesterday?” I asked, the tension in my voice betraying desires that were all to her advantage.

“That’s gone now,” she replied in a frigid tone as she walked slowly and pointlessly about the gallery, her emerald skirt and scarves dragging along the floor.

“I don’t understand. It was an artwork exhibited on that small plastic table.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Now, after only a single day on exhibit, it’s gone?”

“Yes, it’s gone.”

“Somebody bought it,” I said, assuming the worst.

“No,” she said, “that one was not for sale. It was a performance piece. There was a charge, but
you
didn’t pay.”

A sickly confusion now became added to the excitement and disappointment already mingling inside me. “There was no notice of a charge for listening to the dream monologue,” I insisted. “As far as I knew, as far as anyone could know, it was an item for sale like everything else in this place.”

“The dream monologue, as you call it, was an exclusive piece. The charge was on the back of the card on which the title was written, just as the charge is on the back of that card you are holding in your hand.”

I turned the card to the reverse side, where the words “twenty-five dollars” were written in the same hand that appeared on all the price tags around the gallery. Speaking in the tones of an outraged customer, I said to Dalha, “You wrote the price only on this card. There was nothing written on the bungalow house card.” But even as I said these words I lacked the conviction that they were true. In any case, I knew that if I wanted to hear the tape recording about the derelict factory I would have to pay what I owed, or what Dalha claimed I owed, for listening to the bungalow house tape.

“Here,” I said, removing my wallet from my back pocket, “ten, twenty, twenty-five dollars for the bungalow house, and another twenty-five for listening to the tape now in the machine.”

Dalha stepped forward, took the fifty dollars I held out to her, and in her coldest voice said, “This only covers yesterday’s tape about the bungalow house, which was clearly priced at fifty dollars. You must still pay twenty-five dollars if you wish to listen to the tape today.”

“But why should the bungalow house tape cost twenty-five dollars more than the tape about the derelict factory?”

“That is simply because this is a less ambitious work than the bungalow house.”

In fact the tape recording entitled
The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices
was of shorter duration than
The Bungalow House (Plus Silence),
but I found it no less wonderful in picturing the same “infinite terror and dreariness.” For approximately fifteen minutes (on my lunch break) I embraced the degraded beauty of the derelict factory—a narrow ruin that stood isolated upon a vast plain, its broken windows accepting only the most meager haze of moonlight to shine across its floor of hard-packed dirt where dead machinery lay buried in a grave of shadows and languished in the echoes of hollow, senseless voices. Yet how lucid was the voice that communicated its message to me through the medium of a tape recording. To think that another person shared my love for the
icy bleakness of things
. The comfort I felt at hearing that monotonal and somewhat distorted voice singing words that I knew so well—this was an experience that even then, as I sat on the floor of Dalha’s art gallery listening to the tape through enormous headphones, might have been heartbreaking. But I wanted to believe that the artist who created these dream monologues about the bungalow house and the derelict factory had not set out to break my heart or anyone’s heart. I wanted to believe that this artist had escaped the dreams and demons of all
sentiment
in order to explore the foul and crummy delights of a universe where everything had been reduced to three stark principles: first, that there was nowhere for you to go; second, that there was nothing for you to do; and third, that there was no one for you to know. Of course I knew that this view was an illusion like any other, but it was also one that had sustained me so long and so well—as long and as well as any other illusion and perhaps longer, perhaps better.

“Dalha,” I said when I had finished listening to the tape recording, “I want you to tell me what you know about the artist of these dream monologues. He doesn’t even sign his works.”

From across the front section of the art gallery Dalha spoke to me in a strange, somewhat flustered voice. “Well, why should you be surprised that he doesn’t sign his name to his works—that’s how artists are these days. All over the place they are signing their works only with some idiotic symbol or a piece of chewing gum or just leaving them unsigned altogether. Why should you care what his name is? Why should I?”

“Because,” I answered, “perhaps I can persuade him to allow me to buy his works instead of sitting on the floor of your art gallery and renting these performances on my lunch break.”

“So you want to cut me out entirely,” Dalha shouted back in her old voice. “I am his dealer, I tell you, and anything he has to sell you will buy
through me
.”

“I don’t know why you’re getting so upset,” I said, standing up from the floor. “I’m willing to give you a percentage. All I ask is that you arrange something between myself and the artist.”

Dalha sat down in a chair next to the curtained doorway separating the front and back sections of the art gallery. She pulled her emerald shawl around herself and said, “Even if I wished to arrange something I could not do it. I have no idea what his name is myself. A few nights ago he walked up to me on the street while I was waiting for a cab to take me home.”

“What does he look like?” I had to ask at that moment.

“It was late at night and I was drunk,” Dalha replied, somehow evasively it seemed to me.

“Was he a younger man, an older man?”

“An older man, yes. Not very tall, with bushy white hair like a professor of some kind. And he said that he wanted to have an artwork of his delivered to my gallery. I explained to him my usual terms as best I could, since I was so drunk. He agreed and then walked off down the street. And that’s not the best part of town to be walking around all by yourself. Well, the next day a package arrived with the tape-recording machine and so forth. There were also some instructions which explained that I should destroy each of the audio tapes before I leave the art gallery at the end of the day, and that a new tape would arrive the following day and each day thereafter. There was no return address on the packages.”

“And did you destroy the bungalow house tape?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Dalha with some exasperation, but also with insistence. “What do I care about some crazy artist’s work or how he conducts his career. Besides, he guaranteed I would make some money on the deal, and here I am already with seventy-five dollars.”

“So why not sell me this dream monologue about the derelict factory? I won’t say anything.”

Dalha was quiet for a moment, and then said, “He told me that if I didn’t destroy the tapes each day he would know about it and that he would do something. I’ve forgotten exactly what he said, I was so drunk that night.”

“But
how
could he know?” I asked, and in reply Dalha just stared at me in silence. “All right, all right,” I said. “But I still want you to make an arrangement. You have his money for the bungalow house tape and the tape about the derelict factory. If he’s any kind of artist, he’ll want to be paid. When he gets in touch with you, that’s when you make the arrangement for me. I won’t cheat you out of your percentage. I give you my
word
on that.”

“Whatever that’s worth,” Dalha said bitterly.

But she did agree that she would try to arrange something between myself and the tape-recording artist. I left the art gallery immediately after these negotiations, before Dalha could have any second thoughts. That afternoon, while I was working in the Language and Literature department of the library, I could think about nothing but the derelict factory that was so enticingly pictured on the new audio tape. The bus that takes me to and from the library each day of the working week always passes such a structure, which stands isolated in the distance just as the artist described it in his dream monologue.

That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way, since I was half-asleep and half-awake, and thus, for all practical purposes, I was out of my mind.

Around three o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. In the darkness I reached for my eyeglasses, which were on the nightstand next to the telephone, and noted the luminous face of my alarm clock. I cleared my throat and said hello. The voice on the other end said hello back to me. It was Dalha.

“I talked to him,” she said.

“Where did you talk to him?” I asked. “On the street?”

“No, no, not on the street,” she said, giggling a little. I think she must have been drunk. “He called me on the telephone.”

“He called you on the telephone?” I repeated, imagining for a moment what it would be like to have the voice of that artist speak to me over the telephone and not merely on a recorded audio tape.