S E V E N H O U R S S L E E P

lay 17
a L.A.Y.L.A.H anti-record

7 H O U R S

>From bottom to top.
Diagonally down to bottom right.
>From bottom to top, again.
Space.
Anticlockwise circle.

   A refusal often offends, he repeated to himself. Putting the letter down, he re- positioned himself at the typewriter.
"3. The nature...the desire to satisfy oneself as to the nature, especially the appearance..."
   The wall clock's tick seems louder than before. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,

"3. The desire to satisfy..."
>From just outside the window comes the screech of truck brakes.

"...oneself to the nature, especially..."
It's cold. He goes to fetch a sweater from the next room. He sits down at the typewriter, picks up the book by the side of it, and starts from the top of the page again.

"3. The desire..."
Bang, bang, bang, bang, BANG, BANG, BANG.
He scratches his thigh again, then his shoulderblade. He puts the book down, pages open, cracking the spine's glue a little more. He twists his mouth for a moment at his own forgetfulness.
   Somewhere in the bottom part of the house, probably the bottom flat, a door's draught excluder screams against the lino of the corridor.
The middle aged couple returning from work.
Slam.
Bang, bang, bang, BANG, BANG.

6 H O U R S

   As she threw the road atlas under the television, the thought of travelling over a hundred miles down the M6 seemed -- well, exciting.
   For the first time Birmingham would not be the final destination, and they would have the pleasure of going beyond the football grounds and those leering faces. Also -- sunshine! Her train of thought was interrupted by the squeak of a small wrought iron gate.
Four people passed the living room window.
It was getting dark.
Dust clearly visible in the shaft of sunlight through the window, into which another distant squeal of brakes enters. He lights a cigarette as his mind returns to the letter. Something about the part with the gates was slowly connecting with all sorts of shadowed memories.
   The range of thought became too diffuse, and he found his attention focused on the pattern of the carpet.
   He remembered that when he used to stay at his Grand-parent's house, when small, a street light shone just outside the window of the room he always slept in. He would make himself terrified by staring at the carpet until it came alive with grotesque faces, contorted insects and maggots.
   The rumbling traffic occasionally left a resonance on the piano, in the corner next to the window. He bites an irritating piece of skin on his thumb, then breathes out in a high, constant whistle. His fingers, at last, move towards the keys of the typewriter.
"The population, that is to say, THE PEOPLE..."
He decided to let his mind relax its grip on the work in hand. He sighed, pushing his papers and typewriter away, lying back on the carpet.
Rain on the window: Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

   Tomorrow was Friday -- they must get ready and pack tonight. She could almost hear their conversation coming back off the walls of the alley.
   The phone made a loud CRASH as the receiver was dropped onto the cradle, she hated her sister, why did the radio sound so loud in the kitchen? What was that they were shouting,
"In the pool..." ?
We shall have to eat out, either of them could call back again when they came back.    His mind tired very quickly when concentrating on English, still a foreign language to him. He found, however, that when he came to technical or precise actions, he found it easier and easier to think in that tongue.
   He mused through verbs as he traced the swirling pattern of the textured paper on the ceiling with his eyes.

"...was sleeping, is sleeping, er... ah... ARE SLEEPING."
A slow smile of satisfaction, and he was ready to tackle the small screen of the television set.
   He jerked the small knob, the light in the centre of the screen jerked in sympathy. Paused, and then expanded into a picture. It lit up the room, which had started to fade in the late afternoon light. Skillfully Helen followed the pattern of the staircarpet to the landing. Martin was in the bathroom -- they must pack tonight and leave before dawn tomorrow.
   Seven library books -- was that too many?

5 H O U R S

   When he slowly surfaced from sleep, he clutched aimlessly at a few fragments of a dream involving his Sister.
   The test tone from the television blew away the last shreds. After switching it off, and stretching, feeling a few twinges of overstretched muscles in his ribs, he prepared some tea. He picked up the book while waiting for the kettle to boil, and put it back in its place on the shelf.
   The shriek of the kettle jerks him out of his reverie. He sinks back on the floor where he is. Voices from outside. People coming home from a night out;
   "...if only, ha, ha, ha, AND ONLY..."
   The videotape crackles over the leader tape, changing to a test card. Cigarette smoke rises in the viewing room.
Titles:
   "The Director Speaks": an address to the Viewer.
   He looks across to his immediate right; a very fat man with an ill-fitting dark suit slouched uncomfortably in his seat. One leg crossed over the other, his ankles playing peek-a-boo as he shifts his nervous bulk from time to time. As he yawns, threads of spittle hang down in strands, forming a cage for his mouth.
   In the subdued light, it is just possible to see that he is the colour of a bled animal.
Puffy, in bad health.
   As the director comes onto the screen, a man pops his head round the door, squinting through the gloom. The fat man jumps to attention, smoothes his trousers and follows the man out, closing the door softly behind him.
   Back on the screen, the director clears his throat and shuffles some papers just out of camera.
   "This I want to see", he thought.
   "I have spent a long time talking to anyone who would listen before I started this film, about everything except the actual design of the film."
(murmurs of appreciation from the audience).
   "This is because there was no design." (General laughter).
   I knew the tone of the project, I had that at least, the colours, and just a few of the actions.
   "Our leading man, throughout the making of this piece, even though it remains unfinished as yet, has been elevated to a high price in the market-place. His appearance may only be demonstrating wishful thinking, however. That he has the morals you have invented for him after the fact; that he is prepared to be a representative of all the qualities currently in vogue in the print of the pages of the newspapers. He may well be that way inclined, but I am afraid that his character remains exactly that which is portrayed within the confines of the film. There was no story when we filmed it, and what you see in that direction is your own invented coating, sweet and sticky though this may be."

   They woke simultaneously after only seven hours sleep. Tomorrow was Friday. It was easy to lie there and imagine the scene from a hotel window.
   The sea was actually grey -- what a terrifying sound. Helen found her eyes wandering from the window frame to the library books, what a waste of time --
   "Bloody Novels", she whispered, and wished the bar was open. Those people giggling down the hall obviously had their own supply.
   What else could the children do on a long car journey? The scene evoked a general feeling of excited nausea, the cassette didn't help, the bass seemed to resonate throughout the car --
-- Hump! Hump! Hump! --
-- fourteen beats to the bar it cried out for two metal legs
-- superb chrome finish.

4 H O U R S

   The lead clown stands limply by an open door. Although there is no sound, it is clear that he is laughing, head tilted back, mouth open towards the ceiling.
   Tears stream down over the white foundation and the tiny diamonds drawn carefully on the cheeks, suggesting possible routes for their progress.
   Behind him, a window. It's snowing.
   There are no chairs, carpets, cupboards, ornaments, no sign of human habitation except for a radiator a few feet from the same window. Plus half a dozen men dressed similarly to himself, squatting on the floor.
One is eating an apple.

   The van screams down the motorway, signs flashing past like flies. The back double doors are open, and the clowns throw rotten fruits onto windscreen of the cars they pass.
   Eventually they come to the town, drawing up to a large building with some twenty or thirty impressive stone steps at its entrance.
   These lead up to two large doors.
   The tyres squash the snow with a soft cracking sound. The clowns stream out from the back of the van, their clothes spotless, their walk graceful and composed.
   Each of them wears a large hat with an immense plume which only just gets under the tall doorway.
Dinner-suited men with impassive, blank expressions hold the heavy doors open for them.
   The floor of the reception corridor is made up of black and white marble squares, obviously polished with the utmost care.
   On either side of this long corridor stand a line of statues, in the same attitudes as the doormen.
   Sentient, upright.
   Mirrors on either wall, also, reflecting one by one the passage of the clowns. They march in double file, stopping just as the corridors widens out in the main hall.
   Silent, immovable.
   Life detectable only with medical apparatus.
All with the same stupid grin pulled to snapping point across their faces. The slight draught from the hall ruffles their plumes. Otherwise, not a twitch.
To leave the building, they must be passed...
...seen from above, small children and nervous adults squeezing past.
Prods, stares, embarrassed giggles.
No response.
As the crowd reaches its height, the clowns fling hand-fuls of tiny multicoloured marbles onto the floor........
.......in a cold sweat he reached clumsily for the alarm with its insistent, electronic call, to his left.
He realised that he had recognised the motorway in the dream. But where?
   He fumbled in the back of his mind, but the images misted over as he tried to call them up.
   The radio came on. He had forgotten to turn that switch off. The radio managed to squeeze out the words,
   "...THE SIGHT OF DEATH...",
spoken in a harsh American twang, before his fingers probed the correct button.
   It was well worth the train journey, wet and yellow lights, gravel on the road -- what a bargain.
   Birmingham to Leicester #500 -- of course all this was before the car -- now the sound of the gate snapped Martin back to reality, back to full reality.
Now it would be the M6.
Now he got up from the table -- then the film dropped out.
   Navigation was systematically tackled by both of them -- maps held a spacial fascination, and cartography was a subject Helen had studied at nightschool.
   The car started on the second try, as she threw the road atlas under the space where the radio was. The thought of travelling 200 miles down the M6 seemed depressing.
>From the top diagonally down to the left, but only halfway down. Then straight down. Then -- up, straight up again to halfway, then diagonally up to the top to the right.
Straight down.
Straight across, down to the middle, straight across, down to the bottom, straight across.
>From the top, in a curve to the left, to the middle, then in a curve to the right to the bottom, and to the centre again.

   He turned from the letter he was writing to stare into space. He desperately tried to bring his mind back to the task in front of him, but he was staring to realise the powerful attraction of this daydream.
   She sat, glassy-eyed, looking right through him. His spine fluttered at the recollection.
"I...think I see the future quite brightly", she said. He knew now that all the private predictions he had made at this time had come true. They have been wild fantasies, elaborations. But they had all happened.
"But I CAN see what you are capable of, I know you better than anyone else. You know, that's a lot in that saying about flesh and blood".
   One of his ears started ringing. He pushed the small flap next to his ear several times. The sound faded away without changing pitch.
   He wondered what was happening to him. He was piecing together the utterances of someone who had been diagnosed as being unhinged, and a few curious correspondances, into a horrifying but riveting picture.
   He was being sucked in by his own thoughts.
   The panic rose in his chest and stomach, as it always did when he didn't know the English word for something he wanted or needed.
   He repeated the word he used for this situation:
"AWAKEN, awaken, awaken, awaken, awaken.."; he tensed all his muscles all over his body to try to counteract the mantra-like qualities of what he was doing to himself.
   Eventually his breathing became more regular, and he slowly opened his eyes.
Filled with tears.
   It felt as if someone was doing this to him. His mind was like liquid in a balloon, and someone was just about to stick a pin in it. He felt totally out of control of himself.
   He looked across blankly to the letter with his pen lying on the top of it.
   Somewhere in the bottom part of the house, probably in the bottom flat, a door's draught excluder screams across the lino of the corridor.
   However, this was one of the few times a year that the Family was together, the vehicle accelerated down the A38, after fourteen miles the children's game ran out, everyone started dreaming, wet roads, yellow lights.
   The children conversation sank through the engine noise --
-- "We're all being poisoned!" --
-- "What?" --
-- "I'll tell you, only, put that piece down..." --

He had been asked;
"Do you use an eraser much?".
After the question had been translated, he had replied,
"No -- fire..."

3 H O U R S

   All the people wandering in the Gardens seemed to be wearing period costume. They paid and drove through the wrought iron gates, turned West, and moved towards the house.
   Helen suddenly recalled a similar red-bricked building in Saint-Etienne without being able to give a clear account why.

   At one stretch of the motorway, small fluorescent discs mounted on tall poles had been fixed at unequal intervals along an adjacent field.
   They were too far over to one side, and motorists were forced to endure them in their periferal vision.
   She turned to him, desperately fighting off sleep, and asked him what they were for...
"What things do you mean?"
She briefly described them.
"Oh, them. I didn't really know what you meant. I can't really make them out. Perhaps they're birds scarers or something."
   A car overtook them at great speed, a sickening screech of metal against metal coming from somewhere at one of the back wheels. It showed no signs of slowing down, and passed a red van with its back doors wide open, off into the distance.
   Voices were coming through the floorboards below.
Drifting on the borders of sleep, he allowed the sounds to enter his attention. His warm breath against the cover of the bed.
   Strange sentences were forming but he knew that they must not, could not be what he was making them. Real sounding phrases would not be picked out, try as he might. "Wash your brains, think again, double check".
"You didn't bow low enough".
"Ha, ha, ha. No, all things are like this".
"With pleasure, in the midst of ten thousand".
"I'm an old man, unhappy is useless, brushing my hair".
"There's simply no-one today who sees through to the nature of things, that's all".
"Yes".
He faded off into sleep.
   Many things are a contamination of this kind.
Inside the house they were shown a collection of early American glass, what else could she do:

"I am lying down...
I see a small woman walking...
she is coming towards me...
she is not getting taller as she approaches me, but the pink of her stockings gets brighter".
"Oh my God..." --
-- "I've been here many times -- many times before".

   The fat envelope landed with a slap on the bare floorboards. She ran hurriedly to pick it up, half a slice of toast in her hand. She studied the handwriting, and opened the envelope as she walked slowly back to the kitchen.
   Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping, quite obviously not a recent one.
She sat down, placed the article on the table and continued eating her toast whilst she read it.

   "A director of the United States Programme said in an interview for Chicago Tribune,
   "According to the Western Press, the Soviet Union has offered a reasonable alternative to the efforts of peace loving nations in the past 25 years. Thanks to the 1963 treaty of ever more sophisticated and powerful co-operation in a number of Military fields, within the next ten years the Pentagon intends to set up orbital stations governing the activities of states, including the Moon and other celestial bodies".
   In limiting the use of Nuclear Weapons, one of the major programmes envisages the creation of a permanent crew of ten to fifteen men potentially dangerous to The United States.
   A notable achievement making space an area for a laser weapon in the next ten years, potentially dangerous to mankind, is working on plans with the aid of shuttle ships to carry out destruction of peaceful co-operation in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. Manning nuclear weapon tests as soon as they are launched, raised the question in a number of military fields with Nuclear weapons on board.
   As the New York Times observed, likewise being considered are the plans to use an important document in outer space, to carry out the tracking of communication by radar of mankind, and if need be, the destruction of information.
   A permanent possibility of this type will control the new era. International co- operation envisages a potential enemy and his purposes to collect and process espionage information to be used for the banning of peaceful purposes, including the peace creation station, set up nearly 25 years ago".

   They left, the vehicle accelerated effortlessly East down the path -- incipient movement -- it seemed to resonate throughout the car.
   She could hear their conversation coming back off the walls.
   She glanced at the original, before the translation, and sighed. It was nearly unreadable, even if they had got away with printing it before now.
   She dressed quickly, scooped the papers up into her bag, and drove off in the car. She could tell that she needed new plugs.
   A few minutes after turning onto the motorway, she heard a car behind her, accelerating to overtake her.
She bit an irritating piece of skin on her thumb and sighed in a high, constant whistle.
   It was of increasing complexity, it was only their collective calls which were reaching fever pitch that Martin was snapped back to reality, too late.
   The garage in Birmingham quoted #500 for repairs.

"I think thats what I'll have to do, I think thats what will happen. Because thats where we leave from always, for our meetings.
No, I've been there a lot of times, I think I should go back there. because I haven't been there long enough. Whenever I got into trouble, my Mother always turned up, now nobody comes to see me".
   The only funds they had were the Drama department's funds for the costume hire. They were required to fill in forms, the solicitor smiled --
-- they stopped singing, without reverberation.

2 H O U R S

"Yes, I see how good she is now. I've gotten over that now beacause I realise now that well, when you die, you die, dont't your? Lifre passes on, and I know that now. All my friends seem to have got one of her, everywhere now. She has become many people, because we do this, and at Christmas, they all come home, all my Mothers do, and my sisters with their sisters, and they're all just middle aged ladies.
   I know that she died because I was there, I know that she's gone on to somewhere else since then, oh yes, and I mean, I will see her again.
   I don't think it's that bad, but my sisters took it very badly. They don't want to accent that we're going to have a party. They think more of the, erm, tradgedy of it, they don't want to accept that we're going to come back, that we're going to get on with it, therefore, if they don't want to know that sort of thing, I -- I -- I think I'm going to go somewhere else on my own and leave them if they don't want to have me.
   I don't feel that bad......"

What else could the children do -- selfish:
"An act of unforvigeable political dogma..." snapped Martin,
"Get the full facts man!"

   He looked at the tape recorder. the numb feeling giving way to mild hysteria. He switched it off. He pushed down the wave of uncontrolled thought and got up to look out of the window.
   The voice had been slurred, and high pitched, but it was his own. He had played it three times. Each time the words made more sense. And every think else just didn't.
   He re-positioned himself half cross legged on the floor, back to the typewriter. Reaching up, he turned the tape recorder back on and wound the tape back to the beginning. The burst of calibration tone, and then he started to transcribe his own, alien words, typing twofingered.

>From the middle at the top, two thirds of the way down diagonally to the right.
Straight along horizontally to the left.
Diagonally up to the middle at the top.
On the right side, about a sixth of the way round, obliquely nearly up to the middle of the bottom.
Up obliquely to just above "East" position.
Repeating for the other side.
And again.
And again.
And again.

1 H O U R S

He threw the road atlas under the set, of course, he understood much of what had gone before.

Helen stood before him now, motionless.
"Well, I hope it was worth the train journey, that bloody train journey".
   The receiver dropped onto the cradle. Reincarnation, what could they all say? Did she feel excited, sick, or what? Only one thing of it, they must pack tonight.

   He pressed a sequence of numbers into the small pocket calculator. As the result flickered onto the microscreen (the batteries needed changing), his eyebrows came a little closer to his eyes with concern.
   He noted the result on a nearby scrap of paper, and punched in another, different set of numbers. He checked this result with the previous one, then frantically looked for the letter he had received that morning, second post.
   He punched in another set of figures, noted this result under the previous two, then another, until he had completed the sequence this sequence of actions seven times. He scratched his head, turned away from the desk, and got up and fetched his coat.
   He checked that he had his front door keys, then left the flat, locking it behind him.
   He went down three flight of stairs, out of the front door, right, around the corner to the call box.
He dialled carefully the digits contained at the end of the letter.
   One, four, two.
A red van shot past at great speed.
   Eight, five.
The pedestrian crossing just over the road bleeped the all clear.
   Seven.
He listened to the sound of his own breathing superimposed over a constant tone.
   He put down the receiver, and tried again.