William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Iread your little book,” Lysander said, stretching himself out on the divan. “Most interesting. I think I understand it. Well, sort of.”

“It’s basically about using your imagination,” Dr Bensimon said. “I’m going to pull the curtains today, if you don’t mind.”

Lysander heard him drawing the curtains on the three windows and the room grew dim and tenebrous, lit only by the lamp on Bensimon’s desk. As he crossed back to his seat his giant shadow flicked across the wall by the fireplace.

As far as Lysander was able to comprehend, Bensimon’s theory of ‘Parallelism’ worked approximately along the following lines. Reality was neutral, as he had explained — ’gaunt’ was a word he used several times to describe it. This world, unperceived by our senses, lay out there like a skeleton, impoverished and passionless. When we opened our eyes, when we smelled, heard, touched and tasted we added the flesh to these bones according to our natures and how well our imagination functioned. Thus the individual transforms ‘the world’ — a person’s mind weaves its own bright covering over neutral reality. This world is created by us as a ‘fiction’, it is ours alone and is unique and unshareable.

“I think I find the idea of the world being ‘fictive’ a bit tricky,” Lysander said, with some hesitation.

“Pure common sense,” Bensimon said. “You know how you feel when you wake up in a good mood. The first cup of coffee tastes extra delicious. You go out for a stroll — you notice colours, sounds, the effect of sunlight on an old brick wall. On the other hand, if you wake up gloomy and depressed, you have no appetite. Your cigarette tastes sour and burns your throat. In the streets the clanging of the trams irritates you, the passers-by are ugly and selfish. And so on. This happens unreflectingly — what I’m trying to do is make this power, that we all have in us, a conscious one, to bring it to the front of your mind.”

“I see what you mean.” This made a sort of sense, Lysander acknowledged. Bensimon continued.

“So — we human beings bring to the world what the French philosopher Bergson calls ‘ La Fonction Fabulatrice ’. The fabulating function. Do you know Bergson’s work?”

“Ah. No.”

“I’ve rather appropriated this idea of his and reworked it. The world, our world, is for each one of us a unique blend — a union, a fusing — of this individual imagination and reality.”

Lysander said nothing, concentrating on the bas-relief over the fireplace, wondering how Parallelism was going to cure his anorgasmia.

Bensimon was speaking again. “You know that old saying: ‘The gods of Africa are always African.’ That is the fiction the African mind has created — its fusing of imagination and reality.”

Perhaps that explains the bas-relief, Lysander thought.

“I can understand that,” he said, cautiously. “I can see how that works. An African god will hardly be Chinese. But how does that apply to my particular problem?”

Lysander heard Bensimon move his chair from behind his desk and set it down close to the end of the divan. Heard the creak of leather as he sat down.

“In precisely this way,” he said. “If the everyday world, everyday reality, is a fiction we create then the same can be said of our past — the past is an aggregate of fictive realities we have already experienced — our memories. What I’m going to try and make you do is change those old fictions you’ve been living with.”

This was all becoming a bit complex, Lysander thought.

“I’m going to use a bit of very mild hypnosis on you. A very gentle and shallow hypnotic state. That’s why the room is dark. Close your eyes, please.”

Lysander did so.

Bensimon’s voice changed register, going deeper and strangely monotone. He spoke very slowly and deliberately.

“Relax. Try to relax totally. You’re inert, lying immobile. You feel that total relaxation begin in your feet. Slowly it begins to travel up your legs. Now you feel it in your calves. Now it’s reached your knees…Your thighs…Breathe as slowly as possible. In — out. In — out. It’s climbing your body, now it’s in your chest, filling your body, total relaxation.”

Lysander felt a kind of swoon flow through him. He was completely conscious but he felt in a form of semi-paralysis, as if he couldn’t lift a finger, floating an inch above the blanket. Bensimon began to count down in his deep, monotone voice.

“Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…You are completely relaxed…Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

Now Lysander felt fatigue envelop him, his eyes locked shut, Bensimon’s voice oddly distant and muffled as he counted down to zero.

“Think back to that day,” Bensimon went on. “You’re a young boy, fourteen years old. You have your book in your hand, ‘The Rape of the Lock’. You walk through the walled garden. You greet the gardeners. You climb the stile into the wood. It’s a glorious sunny day, warm and balmy, the birds are singing. You walk into the wood and you sit down at the foot of an ancient oak. You start to read. The sun warms you. You begin to nod. You fall asleep. Fast asleep. You sleep for two hours, you’re late for tea. You wake up. You pick up your book and you go back to the house where your mother is waiting for you. You apologize for being late and the two of you go into the drawing room to have your tea…”

♦

“Open your eyes.” A dry slap. Slap-slap.

Lysander did so at once, suddenly tense, forgetting where he was for an instant. He’d fallen asleep. Had he missed something crucial? Bensimon opened the curtains and daylight filled the room again.

“Did I fall asleep. I’m terribly sorry if I —”

“For a matter of seconds. Quite natural. You’ll remember everything I said.”

“I remember apologizing for being late for tea.”

“Exactly.” Bensimon crossed the room. “You weren’t in a trance. You were simply imagining being in a parallel world. A world where you went to sleep in a wood on a sunny afternoon, woke up and returned home for tea. Concentrate on that day in your parallel world. Fill it with detail and concentrate on the emotions that day generated. Use your fonction fabulatrice . In this parallel world nothing happened. Reality and imagination fuse to form the fiction that we live by. Now you have an alternative.”

♦

Lysander ordered a brandy in the Café Central. He thought about what had happened in that session, obeying Bensimon’s instructions to concentrate on the details of the parallel world he had created — that sunny day where nothing happened except that he nodded off over his book as he lay under an oak tree in Claverleigh Wood. Yes, he could see himself waking, rubbing his eyes, rising to his feet a little stiffly and unsteadily, picking up his book and walking home. Over the stile, through the walled garden — all the gardeners gone — and into the Hall through a side door, clattering up the stairs to the green drawing room where his mother was waiting and tea had been laid out on the circular table. Thinking — yes, she has rung the bell for more hot water to freshen the pot because I was late and the tea had cooled. There would be triangles of buttered toast and strawberry jam and a slice of seed cake, my favourite. I sit down and brush a blade of grass off my trousers. My mother picks up the silver teapot — no, it’s the pale-green china one with the pattern of coiling ivy leaves and the chip in its lid — and as she pours my cup of tea she asks me, “How’s the reading going, darling?”

Lysander paused, brandy glass held halfway to his lips. It was so real. Completely real and, to him, entirely true. He had chosen to go into a parallel world and had brought his imagination to bear. Extraordinary. His mother was wearing…What? A tangerine rest-gown with wide Magyar sleeves. A jade bracelet that clinked against her teacup. Stevens, the footman, cleared away the tray. It was so easy. What was it called? His fonction fabulatrice . He had made a familiar world and created a day in it where nothing untoward had happened. He felt only happiness…Maybe he should read some more of this Bergson person. He sipped his brandy, felt its warmth slide down his throat, its sweet smoky mellowness, and smiled to himself.