Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams

I folded the sheet and pushed it back into my pocket. Grandpa Dominic was completely enveloped in smoke. Finally, as he was about to start coughing, he pulled the cigar from his mouth and blew the smoke away. But he was too late to avoid a fit of coughing anyway.

“And what do you think about this?” he asked when he regained his calm.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I trust my father. He always knows what he is doing. He’ll do whatever is best for me.”

“Yes, he probably does know what he’s doing,” grandpa said with an edge to his voice. “Very clever, your father. When will this dreaming together, as he calls it, take place?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow is Sunday and Mother will be away.”

“She isn’t supposed to know?”

“She wouldn’t understand. She understands very little.”

“Well,” he said after a while as he started to rise from the armchair, “make sure your father doesn’t lose you in the dream he wants to dream with you. It just wouldn’t do, being lost in a dream forever, would it? Not for a boy of your age anyway. It wouldn’t matter for me, but I’ve lived my life. Yours is before you. Promise you’ll be careful.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Let me show you to the door.”

The next day Mother got up very early, climbed on her bicycle and pedalled off to one of the neighbouring villages to spend the day with Aunt Yolanda. She said she would be back rather late, so we should get some lunch at the village inn. Yes, Father said, yes, we will, don’t you worry about us. As soon as she disappeared behind the trees, he rubbed his hands together and winked at me. “Ready?”

Not knowing what to say, I vaguely nodded.

Father said I should enter our common dream first. He would follow as soon as he found it convenient. He would stay at my side, waiting for the best opportunity to intervene. He did not elaborate on what he meant by that, he simply said that I should take a bath, comb my hair and put on my Sunday clothes. Dreams are like a journey into the unknown, where there is no way of knowing who you are going to meet. “Suppose we run into a pretty girl who’ll take a fancy to you? What sort of impression do you think you’d make in your filthy tracksuit?”

When I was dressed, he asked me to sit in the big armchair in the living room and wait for the dream to begin. It would begin as soon as I became aware of flames in the fireplace. From then on nothing would be real any more; everything would be a dream.

I mentioned that we were in the middle of summer. I would have to wait a long time for a fire to start in the fireplace. Father rapped me on the head with his knuckles and said that by the time I noticed flames I would already be in the dream world, where seasons do not follow one another in the same way.

He produced a pocket watch on a silver chain and dangled it in front of my eyes. I followed the movements of the watch until my eyes began to close and heavy tiredness began to sweep over me. Suddenly both Father and the watch dissolved. I found myself sitting next to the fireplace, trying to read a book. Logs in the fireplace were being consumed by crackling flames. Unable to concentrate on reading, I stared into the flames as if trying to pour all my tiredness into them. But tiredness grew, and eventually I became very light-headed. My body swayed and swivelled until it regained a precarious balance, a kind of hovering. Maybe I was sitting too close to the fire. But as soon as I thought that my unusual sensations might be caused by heat I started to shiver. An icy cold began to climb from my feet toward my knees, where it stopped.

It felt as if my body had poured all its weight into the lower half of my legs. When eventually the feeling of cold began to rise again, travelling towards my groin, it felt as if I were growing out of my legs into some kind of new, unfamiliar shape. The cold reached my penis and slid into it. My penis swelled as if trying to burst; it felt like a wild animal, attacking me.

Then I heard the crackle of the flames again, and felt the heat returning, and the cold draining away. The attack of the penis was over, unexplained, inexplicable, leaving a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth. Next I heard a car pull up in front of the house. I moved to the window and looked out. Sitting behind the wheel was a middle-aged, read-bearded gentleman of slow, careful movements, with a worried expression on his face. He switched the engine off, but remained sitting in the car for another minute. Then, still with an air of indecision about him, he opened the door and climbed out. He was wearing a black beret, and had a silk shawl wrapped round his neck.

Who could this be? He walked slowly toward the entrance. He rang the bell. As I opened the door I came face to face with Father! I could not have sworn that it was him; it could easily have been someone who just reminded me of him. The man’s eyes were after all mistier, less alive than my father’s. But something in his bearing and expression was telling me that this couldn’t possibly be anyone else; I even recognized his voice as he smiled at me and said, “Shall we go?”

He turned and walked back to the car. The car was definitely Father’s, together with the dented door on the driver’s side and the cracked rear indicator light. And as I climbed into the seat next to him, he swerved away from the house and onto the road with Father’s usual tenacity, as if claiming priority for himself.

“Is that you?” I asked him.

He said that we were both only dream images now, with uncertain and possibly overlapping identities. “But that’s not important,” he added. “We’re on our way. Everything we see, hear and smell is a dream. Everything’s happening, but nothing is real. Isn’t that nice?”

After a while everything around me turns soft and elusive, as if present and absent simultaneously, including the countryside opening up before us. It’s a beautiful day, we’re in the middle of summer again; the hills are bathed in sunlight. In one of the villages we are joined by a friend of Father’s, a building engineer, who then continuously grumbles about the weather, world, life, women, government. The road descends into the heart of a thick wood. Father parks in a lay-by and we walk among the trees looking for mushrooms. According to the engineer, they should be growing there “like mushrooms after the rain”. But we fail to find any — because “we’re blind”, the engineer says. Then they shoot with an old pistol. They refuse to let me try.

“You’re still a virgin,” the engineer slaps me on the back in a manner I find much too familiar. “First you have to aim at a soft target.”

I feign indifference, saying little.

We climb back in the car and drive on, leaving the wood behind. Late mist seems to be descending on the surrounding fields. The world looks bluish and empty. The road we are on leads to the city. In one of the villages, crossing a bridge over a stream, we notice two girls. They are leaning against the bridge railing. One is tall and blond, the other smaller, plumper, with jet-black hair, maybe a Gypsy.

The engineer looks at his wrist-watch and says, “Right on time.”

Father slams on the brakes, all three of us are thrown forward, then back against the seats. Father changes gears, slowly reverses and stops on the bridge. The girls smile. The blond one is pretty like a girl from a magazine.

“Which one do you like best?” the engineer peers at me from the front seat.

Father says, “Adam, answer the gentleman.”

I say nothing. I just look. To be honest, I like both of them, but the black one a little less. A lot less. To be honest, I only like the blond one. But they’re both taller than I am; at fourteen, I am smaller than most boys of my age.