There Is No Year Read online

  Author of Scarch Atlas

  Blake Butler

  There Is No Year

  a novel

  For no one

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Part One

  Controller

  Estate

  Copy Family

  What Else Could They Have Done?

  Pretend to not be There

  The Copy Mother, In Particular

  Smothering, The Mother’s Knowledge of

  Closer

  The Copy Son, In Particular

  No

  A Good Day

  Room of Hair

  Disease Relics

  How the Son Got Sick

  Keys

  Heads

  Another Room on the Same Evening

  The Skin of God

  After Dinner

  An Investigation

  Late List

  Passage

  Decision

  His

  The Son’s Book

  Book

  Lawnwork

  A Very Long Hallway

  The Son’s Fingernail

  Power Exit

  Relax

  Part Two

  What Took the Father so Long at Work

  Q&A Re: the Father’s Car & House, etc.

  What the Father did Then

  Other Fathers

  The Son’s Phone

  What the Mower Found

  The Copy Egg

  What the Son did with his Information

  The Most Frequently Played Song on the Son’s Computer Before the Son Erased the Contents of the Hard Drive and Burned it and Buried the Computer in the Woods

  Incoming

  Encombing

  What Was Beneath The Father

  13-Dream Dream Sequence

  Sequel

  Special Friend

  Body Double

  Version

  Active Listing

  Welcome

  Hey

  3 Doors 1 Room

  Beep Probe

  Other Mothers

  Vow

  Offer

  Copy Speech

  Bell Chords

  Copy Sleep

  Somnambulist

  Invocation—Invitation

  Inverse Color

  The Son

  Mirryramid

  Job

  Hole

  Enter

  What the Son Learned the Ants had Done

  X

  Inverse Sound

  Skinning

  In a Daze the Son Remembers The Black Package He’d up Till now Ignored or Forgotten or Somehow just not Seen

  ???Egakcap Eht Edisni Saw Tahw

  Part Three

  Renege

  Redress

  Game

  Surround

  Infinite Reflection

  Look Again

  Indications of the Manner by which you will Arrive

  Exit Method

  In the Sand Around a Hallway

  Nothing You Ever, Nothing Nothing

  Another Fucking Box

  Soft!

  Air

  Sleepover

  Path

  Home

  Tunnel in a Tunnel in a Tunnel (in an Eye)

  What

  Help Yourself

  Pop!

  Film

  Room

  Photoperiod

  Night

  Consume

  Database

  Entrance, Passage, Gallery

  The Father, Reconsidered

  Antechamber, Second Antechamber, Shafts

  Film of A Film

  Map of Ascent

  Apex

  Lawn

  Hi Hey There Hello

  A Very Specific Wall

  Portal

  Queen

  The House was Getting Wavy

  Copy House

  Rememberemberer

  Drink

  That is Some Thick Stuff

  Rorrim

  Not a Word or Shape or Name

  Interview

  The Wanting Box

  Inside

  Answer

  Box Of Boxes

  Where am I Where have I been Where are you

  There There

  Part Four

  Removal

  Deep Focus

  Body

  Oh

  Please Respond

  Ungift

  Massive Fabric

  Initiate

  O

  0

  Days

  The Repeating Night

  DoppelgÄNger Mantra

  Hive

  Population

  Cocoon Gazebo

  Bag

  Blank

  Either

  Copy of a Copy of a Copy

  Or

  Hallway

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Blake Butler

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  For years the air above the earth had begun sagging, suffused by a nameless, ageless eye of light. This light had swelled above the buildings. It caked on any object underneath.

  This light, unlike most other light, outside itself could not be seen, could not be felt impressed upon each inch of air and body. It had no length, no temperature, no speed.

  Each day the light grew gently thicker, purer. Each day still felt the same. Its presence rode in ridges on the faces of the hours and in silent hair all down all arms.

  At night the light would be called dark. Among the dark the people staggered, aligned upon the air with hidden halls. In hidden halls they bumped and built their homes.

  Each of these homes, no matter how small, held at least several outlets, doors, and bulbs. In each home, as well, several people, each fit with further holes inside them too.

  Through these holes the light could enter, thereby: naming, thereby: age. Inside the light and homes the people made more people. The light, unlike the people, went on and on.

  PART ONE

  Those who live, live off the dead.

  ANTONIN ARTAUD

  CONTROLLER

  The father and the mother sat close together without touching. They weren’t sure which way to aim their heads. They remembered recent rooms from other buildings. The house still felt so new.

  They’d been sitting on the sofa for a long time. Neither felt sure just how long. They’d come downstairs to watch a movie—both with a certain one in mind—something they’d each seen once, somewhere, though not together. Now they could not remember.

  The father felt too warm in this small room. He put his left arm around the mother, felt uncomfortable, took it back. He tried resting the arm on his knee or on his belly—still not right.

  What if he could remove the arm, the father wondered? If he could remove the arm, he’d do it. This was the arm the father used most often to take his son or wife at certain soft times by his or her own arm, or other times to masturbate himself or eat.

  The mother wrung her hands and flexed her neck and saw the ceiling. There was something about the ceiling. She hummed a song—a certain song—she thought she was making it up but she wasn’t.

  The father stood up.

  The father sat down.

  The father picked up the controller for the TV. He held it parallel to the floor. He turned to a channel that came in slanted. He turned to a channel that was not there. He mashed many other buttons, angry. The buttons’ digits formed a certain sequence. The father turned the remote toward his head.

  He pressed OFF. He pressed OFF. He pressed ON. He pressed OFF. He pressed MUTE. He pressed OFF. He pressed OFF.

  ESTATE

  The fath
er had bought the house with paper money. He’d worked for years and years. If asked he could not say for certain what the work was. Mostly all he did all day any day was look into a blank screen flush with light. Sometimes the father looked at porn or ads or sports scores, but mostly just the light.

  In the nights before the new house, the father walked up streets peeping through glass. He’d seen the light in other houses. He’d seen people in their beds—sometimes moving in the darkness to the bathroom or the stairs. He’d seen so many bodies fuck. In one house he’d seen someone reading about a father at the window in a book. All the houses touched by wire. The grain in the glass in the windows in the frames in the walls in the rooms in the houses on the yards along the streets aligned for miles.

  The father wanted a certain kind of life to give his family. He wanted a house described by all of who he’d been—though who he’d been, to him, would not stop changing.

  The father washed and washed his hair. He tried. He concentrated.

  He had not asked the mother or son what she or he thought before he signed the family name on legal lines. He could not remember where he’d found the listing. He could not remember what he did not remember—nor would he want to, would he ever.

  There were many things the father did without his wife’s permission—things like seeing, walking, aging—things he could not name.

  From outside the new house looked like many other houses.

  COPY FAMILY

  When the family came to live inside the new house, they’d found another family already there. An exact copy of their family—a copy father, mother, and son. The copy family members stood each in a room alone unblinking. The copy family would not speak when spoken into—though they had heartbeats, they were breathing. Their copy eyes were wet and stretched with strain. Their copy skin felt like our skin. Their copy hearts beat at their chests.

  The father flicked the copy father on the arm there by the window in the kitchen—the window where on so many coming days the father would look out onto the yard—the yard where once the copy family had surely moved and laughed and dug and thought and fought and seen the sky change color. The father watched the copy father flinch. The copy father’s big ring finger had thirteen copy rings on. In the copy father’s copy eyes the father could read his other’s current scrolling copy thoughts:

  This is my house.

  This is our house.

  This is where I am.

  WHAT ELSE COULD THEY HAVE DONE?

  The family took the copy family and they set them on the back porch. The father carried the copy father and the mother the copy mother and the son his. The skins of the two families smushed together grunting. Their sweat became commingled. The copy family members did not wink or speak or cause commotion. They did not jostle in their stance.

  The only thing that made the family different from the copy family was instead of teeth the copy family’s mouths were lined with mold. As well, the copy son appeared exhausted, sticky. He had dark meat around his eyes. The copy family’s breath came out cold and made no sound.

  The son wanted to play dress up with his copy body but the father smacked the son across the head. The father hated when his son played girl games. The father bought the son a new neon football for Christmas and his birthday every year. The father also bought the son a football on the father’s birthday, a form of begging. Sometimes he found he could convince the son to come out into the yard, though no matter how soft the father threw the ball or how close they stood together, the son could never catch. Even right there. Even touching.

  The son’s hands and fingers always itched. Sometimes the itching spread into his knee. Sometimes the only thing about the son at all was all the itching. The son was older than he looked.

  PRETEND TO NOT BE THERE

  In the new house wrung with coarse light, the father locked the doors and sealed the eaves. He had the family play Pretend To Not Be There. They waited to see if the copy family would simply disappear or go away. They waited several hours, peeping. Later, they hooted and shook their arms, made fire. The copy family would not retort.

  The mother found the copy family’s TV dinners in the freezer and off the floor the family ate: defrosted veggie medley, veal cordon bleu. There was even a little cheesecake wrapped in black plastic. The family felt run through. They felt their bodies rumble, squealing. The copy family outside in the night. The father, mother, and son each with one wall between them and their copies, eating.

  The father sent the son to bed. He and the mother went with the son into the certain room they’d let the son himself select—he could have had many other rooms. The bed was deep and clean and padded. The parents took turns kissing the son on the brow, the wrists, the thumbs, the mouth, the teeth, the back, the stomach. The son went right to sleep. Just after, in the hallway, the father touched his hand against his lips, feeling for the cells that’d come off in transference—what parts of himself he’d left upon the son.

  THE COPY MOTHER, IN PARTICULAR

  The father and the mother stayed up well into the evening watching the copy family stand. The father and the mother agreed they had to do something—something—what? They could not go on like this, even a little. The copy family had not moved an inch. They could call police but what would happen? Light from the backyard’s sensor-triggered flood lamps clicked on and off without clear provocation.

  The copy family would not go away. The father worked himself into a state, shouting curse words, splaying arms. He went out to the car and got a softball bat he’d used for pickup games in college—he’d not once had a hit, though he’d been beaned more times than he could count on all the hands in all the houses on the street where his house stood—he could often still remember how the ball felt each time, banging fast into his muscle—how his chest would scrunch and then expand—how he sometimes seemed not there at all. The father stood at the window with the weapon. He threatened legal action. He spoke in unintended rhyme. He said his own name to the copy father. The copy father seemed to have more hair than him.

  By the time the morning came on gnawing, the father had collapsed. He lay fetal-curled on the laminated kitchen floor, his back against the fridge door, shook. The mother stood over the father. The mother took the softball bat away. She smoothed a blanket over her husband. She covered up his head. She turned on the radio in the intercom that’d been wired to broadcast through the house. There wasn’t music, but people talking—many people all at once. She turned the volume louder. The speech sound filled the house—filled in on the air around their breathing bodies.

  The mother clasped her hands. She went out on the porch and stood among the copy family, silent.

  There she was.

  SMOTHERING, THE MOTHER’S KNOWLEDGE OF

  In the copy mother’s copy face the mother saw the way the years had run her down—the slow stretched lines of older versions sunk to layers—the cheekbones taut and caked with rouge. The mother hulked her copy body off the ground. She carried her copy body in the weird light strumming downward off the shifting sky in sheets. The mother moved through the crunched grass to the concrete to the swimming pool the house had come with. Her copy body hummed hot and burbled. She held herself the way she’d hold a massive baby. She threw her copy body out into the pocket of caught water, watched her splash down, watched it burp. The copy mother did not struggle. The pool was green with straw and algae and old rain. The mother could not see the bottom. The water stunk. A string of silent glassy bubbles rung up from the copy mother’s copy head. Her body sunk into the muck and did not rise. Along the top the mother watched a scrim of pollen slosh in waves. The windows of the house next door were all cracked open and opaque. The house next door to that house did not have doors or windows, walls at all.

  CLOSER

  The mother found the copy father’s skin felt rather pleasant—softer than her husband’s—responsive to her touch. She spread her fingers in the soft short hair over his forearm. She whispered i
n his ear. She said the things she’d meant to say.

  She closed the copy father’s eyes.

  When the copy father’s body hit the water, his shirt and pants soaked darker several shades. The copy father’s skin became distended. The water boiled. The copy father’s copy body tried a while to stay floating on the pool’s surface in the muck but the mother pushed it down. She held it under with her foot and then the pool net. She ran a tongue across her teeth. The moon hung over the backyard had a sliver missing from its center. All the homes held underneath that light.

  Suddenly the mother felt a voracious thirst for pork.

  THE COPY SON, IN PARTICULAR

  The mother returned from what she’d done then to stand above the copy of her son. There was very little about his copy body that betrayed any major difference from its other—in fact, if the mother hadn’t known for sure already her true son was upstairs curled in the new bed the father and the mother had bought him—no more nits yet in the mattress, nothing eating where he slept—if she wasn’t sure for sure the true version of her boy was up there with his sleep eyes spinning in his head—wasn’t he?—if she hadn’t put him there herself—she wasn’t sure that she could tell him from this child here—this child with the same scar along his forearm like the one the son had gotten fallen fainting from a tree—he was not supposed to have been walking yet—he’d been bedridden for so long—trying to reach the sun, he’d explained later. This child here had the same black pockmarks where disease had come into the son’s body, searching his flesh for what it wanted—when the son had stayed alive the doctors seemed more nervous than relieved—how peculiar, they kept saying, it’s against science. This child here had the same blond bowl-cut hair like the son, hair the mother could barely bring herself to snip, every inch of him her precious—such nights she’d dreamed of his insides, swimming deep inside his cells. This child, this boy—he was made of her, and she was made of him.