A Quiet Week in the House 1969

A man, Václav Borovička, slips into an old, decaying, abandoned house that sits alone in a lonely countryside, beginning an unspecified mission to infiltrate its quiet interiors without drawing attention. Over six days he remains hidden inside, watching from the shadows as the house’s living, antiquated objects come to life in unsettling, almost ritualistic ways.

• Monday: A box full of candies reveals themselves to be rusty nails and screws, which slither and settle onto the keys of a typewriter, tapping out a metallic rhythm that echoes through the room.

• Tuesday: A cow tongue licks a drawer full of dishes clean, then crawls into a meat grinder, where it is transformed into tiny scrolls that vanish into the machinery.

• Wednesday: A clockwork toy chicken breaks free from its tether and advances toward a plate of corn kernels, only to be buried beneath a mound of brown clay that swallows the scene.

• Thursday: A desk releases pigeons trapped in its drawer, but they are swiftly plucked away by an unseen force; a chair then uses the pigeons’ feathers to attempt flight, only to crash and shatter on the floor.

• Friday: A hose emerges from the buttonhole of a suit jacket and drinks all the water from a flower vase, causing the flowers to combust, and then urinates the remaining water onto the floor.

• Saturday: A pair of dentures binds a cabinet full of pigs’ feet with tough wire, tightening the hold as the room grows tenser and more autonomous.

On the seventh day, the man, having absorbed every room’s strange language, moves to finalize his mission. He drills holes to peer into the rooms, then inserts sticks of dynamite and links the explosives to his alarm clock with a long fuse, transforming it into a time bomb. Just as the plan seems ready to unfold, he recalls one final detail: he forgot to check off “Sunday” on his calendar. He hurries back inside to correct the oversight, and, with the sequence in place, he runs away from the doomed house, the fuse ticking as the structure awaits its fate.