El Sueño
Socrates: … Then, answer me this: if we
didn’t have
voices, or language, and we wished to indicate objects to each
other, wouldn’t we try, as the deaf and mute do, to indicate them
with our hands, heads, or other body parts?
Hermogenus: And how else, Socrates?
(Plato: Cratylus)
Gloomy Paris
autumn dampness, with rain drops, which, even when it doesn’t drizzle,
remain splattered on the window glass; on the cornice – always several wet,
dirty pigeons, shivering, trembling with cold, and the great mother is
above them, the icy bird from the Seine, carrying a piece of fog in its
beak, rusty river boats, bustling chansons, out-of-fashion thugs…
I don’t feel like returning
through the stuffy speed of the underground, so I walk through the twisting
alleys of Odeon, and, soaking wet, I enter the gallery "Mirroir du
Merveilleux". An old man in an almost abnormally dry ironed suit greets me
with a smile. "Voulez-vous voir les albums?" "Avec plaisir, merci." Other
than his suit and dark tie, the old man has the benevolent face of an aged
uncle and almost familiarly hands me the velvet albums, which would appear
homemade if it wasn’t for the gold letters and the embroidery on the
corners, which give them something unnatural, fixed. But the old man is
quite alive nowadays also, five years later, and I see him quite clearly,
bent, standing next to me, unlike those, so present then, who asked me all
the time, "Quand viens – tu à Paris?" and whose words and names are now so
mixed together. Maybe, as friend Horatius the Coward says, I have
K-syndrome: the eagle who pecks me is closed within, in my stomach, and
it desperately tries to get out – therefore, I’m ruled by apparitions and I
settle for the reality in fairy tales. But, in this case, everything is
obvious: despite the striking portraits of the Masters-priests, which have
almost swallowed the small gallery, the little pictures from the albums
reveal the nonchalance of chess pieces after a game, around the table or on
the multicolored carpet in the middle of the field. And among them, from
the sunny air they appear – the surrealistic girls? Their faces – white and
porous as chalk, their lips – pink litmus soaked with the acid of air
particles, their hair – black, shiny helmets, still transparent, with dark,
almost phosphorescent reflection, through which one feels the squeaky
chirping of the invisible, atomic hummingbirds. They surround the Masters
with some rudimental wonder, like sick fairies!
* * *
"Some of these
notorious gluttons and drunkards have the guts to be called epicures…,"
Horatius the Coward says mockingly about the distinguished participants of
the numerous symposiums about the future of national cultures. "And they
don’t know at all that Epicure was sick and moderate!"
I remember these words of my
friend, still with enjoyment champing his rich sandwich of ham and ketchup,
while the participants of the event "Literature and Society" around me
joyfully cheer the next meeting. "Colleague, do you see this piece of ass,"
a professor from Novi Sad addresses me, an expert in cultural dilemmas, but
I, quite absent-mindedly stare in another direction, at a girl in a black
dress who floats among the sweaty guests like a sparrow in the whitish mist
of the summer evening.
It wasn’t too difficult for her,
transparent as she was, to separate from the photograph and by way of
secret magnetism appear in front of me. But, the suddenness of her
appearing is so complete, that words sound somehow like mutters, even rude.
Strangely, her eyes seem to smile, not surprised at all, as she listens to
my unrelated story, and, encouraged, I tell her impudently that her shot,
developed in the wonderful laboratory of Man Ray, is but a momentary
imprint of the mystery that always exists, beyond spring and winter.
"It’s impossible," she says in a
soft alto, almost a baritone. "But the photographs were made in the
thirties. And even the name does not fit the Paris surrealistic context."
"Name?"
"Theodora. Besides, I’m in love
with fairy tales and poems about knights. I see myself in the world of
unicorns, fairies, and castles."
We are quiet for a while. "Let’s
go to the city, for a cup of coffee," I suggest. "On the other side," I
tell her, parking in front of the church. "In Ibn Park. The house was
exactly on the site where the theater is now. That’s where my love for
acting comes from."
Broken cups on the spotted
tablecloth match the surviving atmosphere of the Pirin coffee bar and I’m
almost pleased at how Theodora sharply interrupts my memories of the old
neighborhood. "I have a younger sister. Born after the earthquake. We are
quite different. She studies computers. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Like
the smart, tough goddess Athens, born sexlessly from the head of the great
Father. I had a dream about her: with dark glasses, holding in her hands a
wonderful, gold statue of Buddha, which she intends to sell cheaply. I told
her that I would be awfully angry if she did that. She reshaped the statue
spitefully – it was but a cardboard ball, covered in yellow. You see, I’m
sure that she does not suffer from nostalgia. You are still similar in
something. You forget details, names. You invent fairy tales… We are
different, my sister and I. She doesn’t realize that real secrecy is that
which is just whispered about."
She smiles insecurely, with the
tense nerves of an escapee. She has the fear you see in the open eye of a
freshly caught trout lying on heated sand.
I feel that warm priestly
compassion again: "I’ll take this child under my protection." And though it
gets on my nerves, I can’t escape it. "Are you free tonight?"
"Maybe…"
"I’m having a costume party at
the Law Faculty. Would you like to be my partner?"
Through the red yard, we
continued along the trail, the former street, which, after the small old
bridge was knocked down, led to the entrance of the park, and down the hill
we ran to the groove, straight into the cozy shade of the low boughs, next
to several moss-covered stumps with and the sound of the river nearby – a
place made for high-school lovers.
"I have two raven masks."
"Ominous birds."
"No, these are harmless. With
dreamy eyes and yellow beaks with red spots."
We arrange it: seven o’clock
sharp, not a minute earlier, I’ll call her at "this telephone number." Her
handwriting is slanted, but to the left, which gives her name a note of
cute defiance.
* * *
Horatius has a
habit of scolding me: "Brother, when you get up, tell the chair good-bye."
I’ve lost the paper with the
telephone number. Still there is something strange there – I was thinking
intensively of Theodora all afternoon, of the photograph from "Mirroir du
Merveilleux." I even remembered the two guys I spoke to excitedly about the
surrealistic girls in a bistro, hiding from the rain, a day after the visit
to the gallery. I don’t remember the name of a handsome Armenian from
Lebanon. As a matter of fact, I saw him just once. After a match of table
tennis he told me that he had enlisted in the Foreign Legion. His father
was killed by a stray bullet, his mother was a refugee to Cyprus, his
brother played deadly hide and seek on Beirut ruins, and he was penniless,
with some unfriendly relatives who openly told him he was parasite – what
could he do but leave? Another, Javier, from Nicaragua. He recited Lorca,
Neruda, Jiménez, in a language of dark passion, which he drank like a heavy
wine. He wrote a play – part of Sandinista life – in which an American
fellow shoots the Americans with his great-grandfather’s gun (once a famous
buffalo hunter), the mother loses one of her children, a twin, and the
other, turned into an owl, pecks the eyes of the occupying soldiers at
night, a beauty who makes love not only to the whole village, but also to
the ghosts, vampires, and apparitions of ancestors – all of this in but
fifty pages.
"I am a realist," Javier said, as
we licked warm jam from the pancakes from between our fingers in front of
Halam. "All of our literature is realistic." Javier’s family, just like the
Armenian’s, was scattered around the world: some stayed, some were in
America, some in Europe. Before I left Paris, Javier called me for sangria.
"Too bad you’re leaving. I expect a friend from Peru soon. An Incan. He
speaks Kechua like Spanish. He would tell you legends. He is a treasure."
I lost Theodora’s telephone
number, but later I always avoided the chance of running into her again. I
fantasized, sealed in my room like an embryo in a womb – misty images
through which came her silhouette, then returned from some remote, closed
dream. In that restless bliss some kind of logic existed that didn’t allow
me to look for Theodora. Did I accept that role of a voluntary prisoner
because I could be unpredictably bold only in my fantasies, or because of
the veil in which I was captured by the magic of three old ladies? Now I
see that it doesn’t matter so much – the loom, with or without me, weaves
the story anyway…
* * *
"Hell on
Heaven Islands: although the successors of the first colonizer, the
one-eyed sea bandit Captain Jones Jones, called Jones the Bloodsucker, were
paid 23 dollars as compensation for the ownership of the property, a
referendum is still necessary – will the 35 coral islands be united with
their big neighbor, whose banks are 1,500 km away? Or they will keep their
current independent status? There is a division among the inhabitants of
Heaven Islands – federalists and separatists are united for now. A Miss
competition has been organized as kind of a rest from the tense atmosphere
of political agitation. Chiquita Bonita triumphed without any great
competition. But, just when the winner was being crowned, Chiquita’s former
fiancé got up on stage. Before being arrested for disorderly disturbance
(because he tried to forcefully undress the upset Chiquita) he said that
the Miss competition was nothing but a provocation. That is, Chiquita’s
father was the leader of the federalists, and her bikini was in the colors
of the national flag of the great neighbor."
Tanjug’s news looks like a nice
appetizer before the visit to the Humanitarian Eve tomorrow, but Horatius’s
colleague rings the bell ten minutes later, all panting and dark in the
face. "I’m coming from the graveyard. We buried Ana’s sister." "Which Ana?"
"Didn’t I tell you about her? We met at the theater bar. She comes to the
plays regularly. She studies electronics or something. A sweet, special
girl. We have nice discussions about theater, God, harmony…" "Well, you’ve
always been rational." "But Ana predicted her sister’s death!"
She gets in my face, lowering her
voice. "Destiny indicates its traces on the palm as scars…"
* * *
"…she was in
the tub. While protected by water. He, like any man, got scared. He tried
to switch off the gas. He fell on the floor. They found him all blackened,
eaten by gas."
"But why did they kill
themselves?"
"Ana says that her sister dreamt
with her eyes open. She liked that. That’s how she left."
She grabs the newspaper with
Tanjug’s report about the Heaven Islands and turns to the last pages.
"Here, you’ll see yourself that she was as if from another world."
God, it’s Theodora! So alive,
placed among the photographs of unknown dead people. Theodora, the airy
Theodora, the thin princess, who pensively withdraws from the dirty,
indecent specificity to a fairy tale or knight’s poem, dancing on an
invisible wire, absent, confused a bit, untouched. I was granted the joy of
recognizing her in my own life. As if I had been spared the need to return
her from illusion.
Outside, the sun is pale, an
indecisive light behind the clouds. My hunchbacked neighbor, a widower,
with two insecure feet in slippers and a third one, the end of a stick,
crawls to the gate. Mellanies, the barren priest’s daughter, speaking with
a cup of coffee about front and back India.
"They both survived her."
"Hey, the street smells of
turli-tava," Ema says. "When I was coming to you, it reminded me of the old
home."
The glass shows only the wild,
cracked chestnuts, scattered around the sidewalk like separated, slobbery
twins. Still, the supple, wet fog of the liquid meals could be felt,
overflowing through the street like the faint smell of tamed dog.
* * *
Sometimes, she
rises from the rocks, covered with sharp, thorny bushes, like the
underworld demons calcified under Medusa’s look. She has a double meaning:
a slim ballerina with the face of an old lady or a fat woman who speaks
like a fairy godmother. "Mrs. Death in person," Horatius convinces me. "A
product of your decadent erotic fantasy."
We went to "Macbeth" at the Grand
Theater. A Japanese production. "Last time I dreamt of her in a tunnel," I
tell him. "Filled with steam and the gurgling of invisible water. Bathing
women and men hide their sweaty bodies. She, too, covered with
condensation, dedicated to her own hygiene…"
"Brother, a lamb is a lamb until
its sixth kilo. Don’t exaggerate!"
Before entering the theater, Ema
pushes us impatiently. "Hurry up! The show has already begun."
Vowels fly on the stage, fast as
karate blows. A small, mussed geisha with a candle in her transparent hand
mumbles, I assume, "Who’d think there is so much blood in that old man." A
slant-eyed samurai Macduff victoriously takes out the severed slant-eyed
head of the Macbeth doll.
The curtain falls. The lights are
up, slowly, lighting the enthralled children’s faces.
"Theodora!" I scream.
Ema and Horatius follow my stare.
"That’s Ana." Ema tries to smile. "She started wearing the same hairstyle
and clothes as her sister."
From the balcony, still in
semi-darkness, a pale surrealistic girl moves a lock above her eyes with
light hand movement. On the left, the handsome Armenian, with a blossoming
wild rose on his forehead, whispers something to her in confidence. On the
right, I recognize Javier, despite his graying whiskers, in a white suit
and a hat, with a Havana between his teeth. The thick smoke of his cigar
makes five letters--S U E Ñ O--which effortlessly disperse and melt into
the darkest corners of the theater.
