A Dreamless Sleep
It was that time of day when the heat starts to unwind its taut grip on the world and everything can breathe again. This was more of a time to reawaken than a time to fall asleep, but David sank into a deep and dreamless sleep. If he hadn’t journeyed so deep into unconsciousness, if he’d settled a little closer to reality, some of the dreams David might have dreamt are as follows.
He stands in a well that is so deep that when he looks up he can see the stars even though it is the middle of the afternoon. The water reaches his waist, and though he wears no trousers or underwear his feet are clad in a pair of heavy, waterlogged boots. Down in the well with him is a crowd that includes his mother, sister and younger brother, his old Latin teacher and several workmates. They are arguing about the colour of the apple tree that grew in their garden as children, and David is trying to make himself heard, to draw to their attention that the important question isn’t what colour it was, but whether it felt more like velvet or pineapples.
In another the air is full of paper planes, flying in every direction, but somehow, almost as if space itself were bending around him, not hitting him. In this dream there’s nobody David would be able to identify in his real life, but he is vaguely familiar with each and every one of them. They seem oblivious to the paper planes. Light flashes off of some of the planes as if they were made of polished glass. Others, though a pure white, seem to absorb the light around them. Some appear to be two dimensional, as if they were drawn on flat brittle sheets and not folded. The paper planes, although pervasive and present throughout the greater part of the dream, are secondary features in it, but if David had indeed dreamt this dream, he would have woken remembering little else about it.
In a third the whole thing starts with a pencil being dropped. It ends with the same pencil being dropped in almost exactly the same circumstances, the only difference being that this time it happens after a long and complicated set of events which would make little sense in reality but in the dream seems a logical progression of cause and effect.
There are other dreams that David might have dreamt*, but these are the ones I have chosen to show you. Perhaps they aren’t the most valuable, they don’t necessarily give as clear a picture of his mental state as others might have, and certainly give us no factual information as to why he is in this state.
At the point in time that he did not dream these dreams, David felt swept away by the events in his life. He was not discontented. He had merely had an experience, or, rather, an encounter, that had sent him spinning off centre and made him feel unfamiliar with his every day life.
David was not one for sudden revelations, but something had taken hold of him that he was not prepared for. My experience of David, although relatively limited, has been largely of a person that is steady and reliable, yet even the most dependable characters have the potential to fall prey to an indescribable, elusive weakness that can consume both mind and body. The weakness is this: Love.
David was not in love; he had merely been teased with the potential of it. The object of his desire was the sister of one of his workmates, and the occasion that marked its start was her appearance one morning, on the morning of the day that he did not dream, at the worksite.
What brought her there that morning was to bring her brother Marco his lunch, which he had left on the kitchen table when he left the house early before dawn. This was, of course, not the first time David had met Marco’s sister. Having formed a bond with Marco based on their being the only two “educated”* labourers on the site and planning on this being a temporary situation, David had had dinner at Marco’s family home several times.
At a later date, on one of the occasions that Marco brought him out drinking with us, David, drunk and loose tongued, confessed to me that he had not paid much attention to her at these meals. She had not been particularly welcoming. She had been quiet and cool, watching them from behind calm eyes.
At the worksite, David was surprised to witness, her manner became more relaxed and open. She seemed less defensive, and she teased her brother and herself and even made quick, clever replies to some of the labourers’ lewd remarks. He noticed the curve of her calves and the line of her neck. She wore a light summer dress and her dark hair was up. She had a mole on her left cheek, a dark, soft brown.
Before she left, Marco’s sister turned her attention to David and they exchanged a few words. David couldn’t recall what they spoke of, perhaps the recent heat wave, or what they would be eating that night, but nonetheless he was left with a deep impression. He felt singled out from his colleagues, acknowledged as different, as more sophisticated and complex. During their conversation he felt, for the first time, his heartbeat strengthen at the thought of her, but it was not until she left and he allowed himself a glance at her retreating body that the full impact of their encounter hit him, and did it not leave him until he fell into bed that afternoon.
The reaction was so violent that it almost bypassed his mind and went straight to his body. It was as if it was working through his spine rather than his brain. Because of this, what he felt of the emotion in his mind was eclipsed by the awareness he had of the physical reaction that he was being subjected to. The experience was not unlike drinking too much coffee. He was hot and unpleasantly sweaty. His heart pounded uncontrollably.
This racing pulse was the main cause of his exhaustion at the end of the day. The heat wave meant the physical work was particularly gruelling, but with his pulse the way it was every movement took tenfold the energy it would have done otherwise. He could feel the rhythmic pulsating in his neck and face, and at several points he was seized by the fear that something vital would rupture, sending a cataclysmic blush raging over his skin.
All too awake to the unwelcome effect she was inflicting upon his body, David tried to suppress the thought of Marco’s sister, but even when he succeeded the thrill and the growing dread caused by the idea of being able to experience such forceful emotions intensified his symptoms.
David excused himself when work finished as they reached the hottest part of the day, feeling unable to share a meal with his co-workers without behaving noticeably odd. He roamed the streets aimlessly, having forgotten that he meant to find a café to eat in until the hunger pains cut through the churning of his stomach. He ate enough for two men, and then went home.
When he woke up the room was cooler. It took a few moments for Marco’s sister to return to him, and with her came the fear and anticipation of seeing her that evening at Marco’s family home. He washed and dressed and left the house.
The evening was beautiful. When he left it was twilight and the light gave the streets a blue tinge. The trees rustled in the cooling air. By the time he reached Marco’s street night had fallen. The houses on this road were bigger than his own, the gardens well tended and fragrant.
David entered the wrought iron gate and lingered for a moment, before he took the last few steps towards the door to knock, so that he could gather his composure. Before he had the chance to approach the door he saw a figure wander out from the doorway. It was Marco’s sister. She wore the same light, summer dress, but her hair was down. The waves fell past her shoulders and in the garden she seemed younger and freer still than she had that afternoon. She paused at a bush and reached her hand out to touch the foliage.
“Hello,” he said.
She started slightly, her eyes not yet accustomed to the dark.
“Oh. Hello, David,” she said, a smile forming on her lips. She inclined her head slightly towards him.
In that moment, as his heart continued to pound in his chest, David felt the inevitability that, whatever this was, it would not last. It would begin, exist, and then end. He saw no point in resistance, as the end result would be the same. Now this had started he could lose it now, or lose it later.
* Some would argue that the possibilities are endless. In a conversation during my student days, a fellow scholar vehemently defended the notion that it is possible for a baby to imagine anything (and, in theory, everything) that has happened, will happen or could happen extrapolated from the first few seconds of his or her existence. Personally, I am not a fan of these theories. I would be more then happy to accept that the dreams David did not dream that day would easily fill the vacuous space that the library of the British Museum once occupied, but maintain that the possibilities are finite. I am in no way denying an infinite universe, and feel compelled to quote from Borges’ analogy: “The library is limitless and periodic.”
* David was not in fact educated, but was a low-level pen pusher between jobs.
0 comments:
Post a Comment