‘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 one dealing with 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 allowing 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. How utterly desolate, yet all the same wonderfully comforting, 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 satisfaction I felt at hearing that monotonal and somewhat distorted voice speaking so intimately of scenes and sensations that perfectly echoed certain aspects of my own deepest nature – 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 who made 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 audiotapes 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. No return address is provided on these 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 audiotape. 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 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 was Dalha’s.
‘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 audiotape.
‘Yes, he called me on the telephone.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, I could tell you if you would stop asking so many questions.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was only a few minutes ago that he called. He said that he would meet you tomorrow at the library where you work.’
‘You told him about me?’ I asked, and then there was a long silence. ‘Dalha?’ I prompted.
‘I told him that you wanted to buy his tape recordings. That’s all.’
‘Then how did he know that I worked at the library?’
‘Ask him yourself. I have no idea. I’ve done my part.’
Then Dahla said good-bye and hung up before I could say good-bye back to her.
After talking to Dalha I found it impossible to sleep anymore that night, even if it was only a state of half-sleeping and half-waking. All I could think about was meeting the artist of the dream monologues. So I got myself ready to go to work, rushing as if I were late, and walked up to the corner of my street to wait for the bus.
It was very cold as I sat waiting in the bus shelter. There was a sliver of moon high in the blackness above, with several hours remaining before sunrise. Somehow I felt that I was waiting for the bus on the first day of a new school year, since after all the month was September, and I was so filled with both fear and excitement. When the bus finally arrived I saw that there were only a few other early risers headed for downtown. I took one of the back seats and stared out the window, my own face staring back at me in black reflection.
At the next shelter we approached I noticed that another lone bus rider was seated on the bench waiting to be picked up. His clothes were dark-colored (including a long, loose overcoat and hat), and he sat up very straight, his arms held close to his body and his hands resting on his lap. His head was slightly bowed, and I could not see the face beneath his hat. His physical attitude, I thought to myself as we approached the lighted bus shelter, was one of disciplined repose. I was surprised that he did not stand up as the bus came nearer to the shelter, and ultimately we passed him by. I wanted to say something to the driver of the bus but a strong feeling of both fear and excitement made me keep my silence.
The bus finally dropped me off in front of the library, and I ran up the tiered stairway that led to the main entrance. Through the thick glass doors I could see that only a few lights illuminated the spacious interior of the library. After rapping on the glass for a few moments I saw a figure dressed in a maintenance man’s uniform appear in the shadowy distance inside the building. I rapped some more and the man slowly proceeded down the library’s vaulted central hallway.
‘Good morning, Henry,’ I said as the door opened.
‘Hello, sir,’ he replied without standing aside to allow my entrance to the library. ‘You know I’m not supposed to open these doors before it’s time for them to be open.’
‘I’m a little early, I realize, but I’m sure it will be all right to let me inside. I work here, after all.’
‘I know you do, sir. But a few days ago I got talked to about these doors being open when they shouldn’t be. It’s because of the stolen property.’
‘What property is that, Henry? Books?’
‘No, sir. I think it was something from the media department. Maybe a video camera or a tape recorder. I don’t know exactly.’
‘Well, you have my word – just let me through the door and I’ll go right upstairs to my desk. I’ve got a lot of work to do today.’
Henry eventually obliged my request, and I did as I told him I would do.
The library was a great building as a whole, but the Language and Literature department (second floor) was located in a relatively small area – narrow and long with a high ceiling and a row of tall, paned windows along one wall. The other walls were lined with books, and most of the floor space was devoted to long study tables. For the most part, though, the room in which I worked was fairly open from end to end. Two large archways led to other parts of the library, and a normal-sized doorway led to the stacks where most of the bibliographic holdings were stored, millions of volumes standing silent and out of sight along endless rows of shelves. In the pre-dawn darkness the true dimensions of the Language and Literature department were now obscure. Only the moon shining high in the blackness through those tall windows revealed to me the location of my desk, which was in the middle of the long narrow room.