Хлоя Бенджамин - The Anatomy of Dreams

“Spectacular pants you’ve got there,” said Gabe as Jamie moved slightly into the open. “What’s that scary thing with the big old fangs? A piranha? No—a blowfish?”

“A blowfish,” said the boy solemnly. He was leaning against the side of his grandmother’s leg.

“Ah,” said Gabe. “A blowfish. Just as I suspected. Also known as a puffer. Or a toadfish.”

He filled his cheeks with air and flared his nostrils. The boy tipped his head and released a short, breathy noise, more a wheeze than a laugh. I didn’t know how Gabe knew about blowfish, but I wasn’t surprised. He was always picking up bits of odd knowledge, coming back from the library with books about metallurgy or obscure British prime ministers or the First Transcontinental Railroad, as if building a base of knowledge that would help him if his work with Keller ever ended.

“They’re kind of freaky looking, aren’t they?” Gabe asked, still squatting.

“No,” said the boy, but he was smiling.

“A fair point,” said Gabe. “Freaky looking—that’s not the right way to put it. This fellow here”—he pointed to the blowfish on the ankle of Jamie’s pant leg—“this fellow is downright handsome. A nice monster—that’s what he is.”

“A nice monster,” said the boy.

One year ago, we’d learned, he was riding with his family in a miniature steam train at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago when the train made a sharp turn toward the bachelor monkeys. A sudden leak in the firebox forced a blast of flame out of the door, and though the train was evacuated as soon as it came to a halt, those who sat closest to the engine—a father from southern Illinois, along with Jamie’s parents and half sister, a college student at the University of Chicago—were already dead. It was a freak accident: later, investigators found that a new zoo employee had accidentally packed the firebox with three times the normal amount of liquid fuel.

Bystanders ran to the train to help. One woman, an off-duty firefighter, retrieved Jamie. He had been sitting behind his sister, sheltered from the worst of the blaze, and only his left hand had burned. Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital were able to preserve the use of his fingers, but his skin was waxy and scarred.

Now Jamie lived with Rosemarie in her apartment in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. For ten months, he had been suffering from night terrors that made him scream in his sleep and bolt out of bed. In the morning, he remembered nothing. For the past two months, Keller had tried to improve Jamie’s dream recall—when he woke up each morning, Rosemarie was to gently ask what he remembered, then record his reply on a notepad—but the boy was inconsistent and difficult to read. Still, he seemed to understand the concept of dream signals and knew how to respond to our LEDs, so Keller believed it was worth attempting an overnight study. If we could get him to start dreaming lucidly, his recall ability would likely improve.

The boy yawned, his shoulders quivering.

“It’s past your bedtime, isn’t it?” said Rosemarie, putting a hand on his head. “Usually he’s in bed by eight. But tonight is a special night.”

“How late do you get to stay up tonight, Jamie?” asked Gabe.

“Till nine,” the boy said.

“That’s right,” said Gabe. “Till nine. And it’s already eight fifteen. I think it’s about time we showed you your bed. Bigger than your bed at home, I’d expect.”

“How much bigger?” asked Jamie. He hadn’t moved from beneath his grandmother’s hand, but his eyes were focused on Gabe.

“Well, that depends on the one you’ve got back home,” said Gabe. “I think you’ll have to tell me how much bigger it is. How does that sound?”

He held out his large, worn hand.

“Okay,” said Jamie, though he kept both hands behind his back.

“Just a minute now,” said Rosemarie. She looked from Keller to Gabe, and back to Keller. “Now, this is where I—say good night?”

“It all does seem to happen a bit fast,” said Gabe.

Rosemarie’s wrists were knobby and her ankles soft and tubular, encased in nude pantyhose that stuck out from beneath her pants. But her hand on the boy’s head was firm.

“I’m afraid so,” said Keller.

“He’s in good hands,” I said.

“Sylvia will see you down the hall,” said Keller.

Rosemarie squatted down to take the boy in her arms. Her knees landed on the linoleum floor with the tired grace of aging animals, the brittle memory of old bone.

“Be a good boy,” she said, and he leaned into the soft pillow of her chest. “You remember what we practiced.”

Gabe guided Jamie to Room 76 and gently closed the door. I walked with Rosemarie to the stairs. As we climbed, her shoulders began to quiver.

“It’s been terribly frightening,” she said. She paused on the landing, her back against the wall. “I’ve been so afraid.”

When I returned to the basement, I was annoyed. It had taken almost ten minutes to usher Rosemarie out of the building, and I’d had to console her all the way to the door. When I walked into Room 74 and grabbed hold of the rolling tray, I forgot to unlock its wheels. My sudden push made the hair clips and some of the electrodes fall to the floor.

By the time I had cleaned them, I was late to Room 76 and flustered. I knew Gabe had noticed—it was already eight thirty, and we were supposed to have Jamie fully prepared by nine—but he didn’t show it. When I walked into the room, they were chatting about Calvin and Hobbes , Jamie narrating his favorite strip while Gabe leaned toward the bed. When the story finished, he turned around as if I’d surprised him.

“Ah,” said Gabe. “Here’s Sylvie. She’s come to show you all the machines you get to play with, and then I’ll be back before you go to sleep.”

I could tell that Jamie didn’t want to see Gabe go. But he was sleepy, and he lay obediently while I uncapped a jar of rubbing alcohol. He wrinkled his nose at its acid perfume as I dabbed the places where the electrodes would be placed.

“Tired?” I asked, smiling.

“No,” said Jamie. But his eyes glazed over as I taped each of eight channels to his skin. Every so often, I pinned his hair back with a clip, and this got a laugh out of him, the same short wheeze.

“I’m not a girl,” he said. I noticed a small, dented scar on his forehead—two connected semicircles, like a child’s drawing of a seagull.

“Boys can wear their hair back,” I said, taping an electrode to the left of the scar, at his temple.

“I never saw one,” said Jamie.

“Well, I see you,” I said.

He was still smiling—his two front teeth overlarge and spaced slightly apart; permanent teeth, I thought, while the rest were baby teeth—as he looked at the camera.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A camera,” I said. “It records videos. Movies.”

“I’ll be in a movie?”

“That’s right.” I rolled the camera toward him. “Your own movie. Look.”

I turned the camera toward the wall, its lens pointed at the small window, and showed him the screen. The camera was already running—Gabe had activated the recording in Room 74—so this would be filmed, too. I rolled the camera back to its place and turned it around again.

“Do you remember your mantra?” I asked.

His eyes were still on the camera.

“What’s that?”

“Something to repeat over and over again, to remind you that you’re asleep. You practiced it with your grandma, remember?”

Jamie nodded, but I could tell that he was struggling to bring it up.

“‘When I see my hand . . .’” I said, prompting him.

“When I see my hand in my dream,” Jamie said, “I know I’m dreaming.”