A. Yehoshua - A Late Divorce

“Yes?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it? Did you wake up at that point, or did you go on dreaming?”

“No, I woke up. The telephone rang, and I heard Calderon begging for dear life.”

“Did you awake with a feeling of anxiety?”

“Don’t you ever give up? No… there was no anxiety… the phone simply woke me. But had I gone on dreaming, I’m sure I would have climbed down to see what the hose was attached to and who had shut it off.”

“And that English teacher… what did you say his name was?”

“The students called him Mr. Foxy. He was like a long, gray fox.”

“Do you have any associations with him? Have you seen him lately?”

“No. He doesn’t mean a thing to me. I didn’t even know he still existed in my mind. I haven’t seen him for years… haven’t thought of him… why should he suddenly have turned up like that?”

“Were you a good student in English?”

“No. A very bad one. Totally resistant to learning. I don’t think I ever took the final exam…’’

“Were there other courses that you didn’t finish?”

“No. I think it was the only one. Once I lost interest in getting my diploma I didn’t bother with it anymore.”

“When did you start night school?”

“After my junior year in high school.”

“Before that you studied in the same school where your father taught?”

“Yes.”

“Was he ever your teacher?”

“No. He only taught the seniors.”

“Was that why you left?”

“I don’t get you.”

“So that you wouldn’t have to be a student of his.”

“Oh. Maybe… it’s possible… that’s not how I thought of it then… but I wouldn’t rule it out. There were several reasons, but that may have been one of them… only how does that help us with the dream?”

“This English teacher… you say that he was a peripheral figure for you… are you sure you haven’t run into him lately?”

“Absolutely.”

“But in dreams such peripheral, meaningless figures are stand-ins for others. They conceal other, more meaningful figures.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“This Mr. Foxy… he’s more or less your father’s age… and like him, a teacher… did you ever have a run-in with him?”

“Never.”

“But you failed his course. If nothing else, he stands for the one exam you never took, because of which you failed to get your diploma.”

“That’s of no importance to me.”

“But it’s inconceivable that it didn’t bother you at some point…”

“No. I don’t buy that. But go on.”

“The teacher spoke English, but you understood it as though it were Hebrew. Now your father is in America, with a new, English identity. Behind it, though, his old Hebrew self is still there.”

“Go on. I’m listening. I don’t say you’re right and I don’t say you’re wrong.”

“The teacher in the dream had changed. He always used to wear a heavy winter suit — and here he suddenly was in a summery white shirt. He was different, no longer the same… like your father, about the change in whom you keep talking… about how young and artsy-looking he’s become. You said that the teacher was pretending to be a squire — the same gray personage who used to smoke the cheapest cigarettes…”

“The cheapest cigarettes? Hold on there. Who told you that?”

“His nicotine-stained fingers…”

“Are you an amateur detective?”

“I was just listening to you… to the details that you yourself were giving me. I’m trying to base myself on them. In the dream the teacher is waiting for some kind of meat dish, for his hunting … while last night your father went hunting for some red borscht. The link is so obvious: red… blood… Something about your father’s appetite evidently upset you. You disguised him as another teacher who meant nothing to you, you put glasses on him and made him bald… why was all this camouflage necessary? Perhaps because of what you’ve been thinking about him… because the dream expresses some extreme wish. You need to conceal it in order to protect yourself, while at the same time giving it vent. What it is, though, remains to be discovered.”

“I’m still listening. I don’t say you’re right and I don’t say you’re wrong. One little question, though: this theory of concealment — is it generally accepted or did you make it up especially for me?”

“Of course it’s generally accepted. It’s the ABC of our work. Every dream is a concealment, an entire system of them.”

“But what was I trying to conceal?”

“Something having to do with your father, or with your intentions toward him. That’s up to you to find out. Because from the outset the dream makes clear it’s about you too, about a problem of identity that concerns you. I’m referring to the building with the double staircase. Stairs in dreams generally stand for sexual feelings. Ascending or descending them refers to the sexual act itself…”

“Now you’re putting me on.”

“I would never do that.”

“Then you’re putting yourself on.”

“It’s an almost classic symbol, and in your case it’s expressed most clearly. You ascend one type of stairs, the straight, light ones. But there are others near them — dark winding ones that seem useless to you and are covered by an old, red, worn carpet. Red again, please note. And the stairs pass by a series of rooms that once were inhabited by people who have left behind possessions that are distinctly feminine: shawls, pins, dirty absorbent cotton, colorful robes… Between the two sets of stairs is a divide you don’t cross — a small, not terribly dangerous one which indeed can perhaps be bridged. What was it you said to me just a few minutes ago? There are women I can make it with…”

“This is beginning to sound awfully talmudic.”

“But dreams do work talmudically, abstractly, by means of condensation and displacement. You have to interpret them, to take them apart in order to re-establish connections and understand what they are trying to say.”

“Following your logic, then, what about the water hose and the bushes?”

“You have no associations with them?”

“None.”

“It’s not a place you can identify?”

“No. I’ve already said that something about it didn’t seem like Israel.”

“Maybe it’s some place connected with your childhood?”

“My childhood? Not as far as I can tell…”

“Or perhaps it resembles the place where your mother is now.”

“My mother? Up there? No… those bushes… there’s no thicket like that there. And on the whole…”

“But it is by the sea… way up north…”

“This wasn’t by a sea. It was by a small lake. With mountains around it. Someplace lush, like a Swiss landscape… I distinctly remember the mountains ringing it…”

“But that could be Haifa Bay. It curves in an arc. In the dream, for reasons of your own, you simply completed the circle.”

“You mean that the mountains in the background are the Carmel?”

“Perhaps.”

“No. That’s not where it was. You can’t get me to give in to you here.”

“I would never want you to give in to me. I want you to find your own association.”

“It was a dreamlike scene… can’t I create a new place in a dream?”

“You can. But it’s generally a composite of old places.”

“Well, then this was such a composite.”

“Do you remember any other details?”

“No.”

“There was no one in the thicket?”

“No. There was a movement that had just taken place. That had to do with…”

“The water hose?”

“Yes.”

“And does the hose itself suggest anything to you?”