Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams

I repeated that we were guests, and wanted no more than what guests are entitled to: basic respect and whatever they order, in our case two orange juices. The inn-keeper withdrew. Within minutes the village cop approached us. He leaned on the table with both hands and breathed at me: You’re kindly requested to get out of here. For a brief moment his eyes wandered toward Abortus, who was innocently admiring his uniform. The policeman winced and grew pale, but he managed to pull himself together and give me a look which meant only one thing: get out or else. I began to explain that we wanted no more than two orange juices, which was hardly against the law, but he cut me short and said: boy, I’m warning you, if you don’t get out of here I’ll have no choice but to use force.

I remained cool. I insisted that my brother and I would not leave the inn until we were served. The policeman gave me a glassy look which faded into a vacant stare. The next moment he grabbed Abortus and ran with him to the door. He tossed him into the courtyard as if getting rid of a vile snake. Abortus landed on his head and lost consciousness. I ran to help him but the policeman hit me on the head with his truncheon. The last thing I remembered was sinking into a dark abyss.

“Adam,” I heard the teacher’s voice, “have you finished?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how this should end.”

“Well, it’s ending here,” said the teacher. “Because everyone else finished five minutes ago. Would you please come forward and read your composition to the class?”

“No,” I said. “This is a dream. I don’t share dreams with other people. Only with my little brother.”

The teacher snatched the exercise book from my hands and walked with it to the front of the classroom. “You’ll have to share it with me and the rest of the class,” he said. “And then I may decide to share it with your Father. Sharing is good. It tells us who we are, what we’re about. Cathy, will you come and read Adam’s composition to us?”

I grabbed my bag and ran to the door.

I ran to the end of the corridor, down the stairs, taking three at a time, then across the courtyard, and finally across the fields along the shortest route to the health centre. I was making longer leaps than ever, driven by a strange foreboding that something had happened to Abortus; I had not been to the basement for some time.

My first thought as I slid down the chute was that I would I never see him again. But there he was, floating in his glass jar as if completely unaware of what we had just gone through in my dream. His expression seemed more peaceful than ever; almost as though he were grateful for being condemned to live inside a glass jar, protected from the turbulence of the outside world. I reached past the jar to get at my dream diary and write down my latest dream, if only because it differed so markedly from all the others.

But as I did so I noticed a change in my brother’s eyes. They seemed to have clouded over and become withdrawn. That was his way of expressing a wish. My way of reading his wishes was trying to guess what he might have meant. It seemed to me that he would be happier if I did not record my latest dream. He would prefer not to learn what would have happened to him if he had grown into a little boy. I respected his wishes, so I said nothing, not a word. That was the best, the only way of protecting him. The main thing was that he was still there, safe inside his little home.

But my urge to talk to someone about the event at school was so great that I didn’t go home. I ran along hidden footpaths up the hill until I reached Grandpa Dominic’s house. At first it seemed that he wasn’t at home. The door was unlocked, but the dark, cluttered, slightly malodorous rooms were filled with an air of late-summer solitude. The sun rays penetrated the clusters of tree branches and shone through the gaps in the drawn curtains in the same way as during my first visit, resting on walls, floors and pieces of furniture in the shape of rhomboids, squares and strangely reclining animals.

A strange force made me hurry up the stairs to the first floor, and to the end of the corridor, until I found myself in Eve’s room. I went down on my knees. I buried my face in the blanket which covered the bed. I breathed in the smell of dusty old wool and, I could have sworn, barely perceptible traces of sweet feminine scents. I reached under the bed, half hoping to find the plastic bag with Eve’s snaps. Of course it wasn’t there.

I stayed in her room for a long time, feeding on memories. When eventually I wandered back down the corridor it was with a burning feeling of emptiness in my heart. I felt that I would never see her again, neither in dreams nor for real. It occurred to me that she may not have been real at all, but merely a phantom, born out of the summer solitude. I paused in the living room where half the African gods were basking in the sun shining in through the window. The other half stood in deep shadow, barely visible. I watched their white painted eyes, wondering what secret powers lay behind them. Would they be able to…

“Please bring her back,” I whispered. “Make her real.”

A floorboard creaked somewhere behind me. I turned, but there was no one there. Then I felt the weight of a large hand on my shoulder. It gripped me gently and turned me around. It was Grandpa Dominic.

“You mustn’t tell them everything,” he said. “They might turn things against you. They feed on human energy, you see? They hope to collect enough of it to fly back to Africa. I should’ve left them where I found them. Believing that they would protect me in my old age was a dream of a much younger man. Dreams of young men, especially very young men, rarely ensure a happy old age. Come with me.”

I followed him out into the courtyard and round the corner of the house into the orchard. We passed a pool of dark-green water, fringed by twisted brambles and long stalks of sorrel.

“Don’t look at that water,” said Grandpa Dominic. “I hate it.” We carried on to a large apple tree and sat down on the blanket he had spread in its shade.

“I’ve been reading old diaries,” he said, pointing to three large voluminous exercise-books half hidden in the tall grass next to the blanket. “You wouldn’t believe how much life there is on those pages. More than in ten surrounding villages! You should write a diary, too.”

It was like always when I was with Grandpa Dominic: it was either the expression in his eyes, or an encouraging gesture, but the floodgates in me suddenly yielded and I started to pour out things I would never tell anyone else, even things I never realised were bothering me. I told him that I was already onto my second diary, Dreams II, and that I had recorded in detail all my dreams, especially those involving Father and Eve. I told him about Father’s basement and his experiments, and about my little brother Abortus. I told him about the dream that Father and I dreamed together, and which was supposed to cure me. Finally I told him about the one dream I decided not to record in the diary, partly because of Abortus and partly because I had already written it down at school, as a free composition entitled “What happened to me during summer holidays”. I also told him about my fear that the teacher would show the piece to my Father.

Grandpa Dominic listened as intently as ever, almost as though he were hard of hearing. He looked very serious, but every now and then he would nod and give me an encouraging smile. He never looked me in the eyes; he was busy with the cigar which he took from his box, nervously twisting it in his fingers. He did not light it; he waited for the torrent of my words to abate.