Dream

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Dream

Anne could not sleep as before, nights were no longer a rest, night was a voyage in a morass full of hidden ugliness from which nobody would come and rescue her. Nobody would come, there was nobody, there was only her shadow and the ugliness which was both outside and inside.

Anne dreamt of a landscape, a landscape like a De Chirico painting,

a landscape a bit like a Dali, a soft horizontal clock, a yellow sky with a sun so big and so bright that there was no sun. The sand was dry, the bones had stopped dying so long ago that they could not remember which body they once lived with.

The clock was ticking, not ticking like a clock, but ticking like something that happens, something that will happen, something that could happen, something that Anne did not know whether it was expected or frightened.

The clock was flat, huge, round, so warm that it was freezing anything that would touch it, so cold it would blind anything that would hear it.

Anne woke up, she took her notepad, wrote down some lines to help her remember, listened to the night radio, read a chapter of "Smoke". She must have felt asleep again, when she woke up she was conscious enough to read the notepad, then she remembered.

She wrote down the full dream before it had dewed away (yes, I know there is no word like dewed, but I need it here, sorry).

Anne went to the analyst

Frank was her analyst. She still wondered whether Frank was his first name or his surname. If she asked he would ask her why she thought that this was important.

Before being analyst, Hone Franck had been in Real Estate, it was really a good time, just buy for a price and sell for a bigger price. Then, there had been that little annoyance with the mud slide, Hone Franck had been forced into litigation, he came out of it quite clean but also he had been taken through the dryer and he had to start a new career. There was so much you could do when you had to knowledge of anything but were really good at seeing an opportunity. he thought that while he was looking around he would have a bit of a rest and to keep busy and have a look at what was going on he started as analyst.

In the beginning he thought that he would just keep the Office for half a year, just to have time to look around, then the years passed, he found that he was really good at it and he could not really believe that you could make that much money with so little risk.

When he started it was really fun to overcharge the marks and see how much they could take, then something happened in him and he would even forget to charge them; Worse of all, he became interested in their stories; he had been an analyst for ten years now, and if somebody asked him what his patients wanted from him he would not have been able to give a sensible answer. Apparently they needed him; Something frightening was also happening with him, he needed his patients, the first four years he used to have winter vacations and summer holidays, now he could not endure being away even four days.

All these years. There had not been really any problem; Well, yes there had been one big problem, after all, his main gift was to see an occasion and grab it, and he could not understand that these poor wrecks would tell him all these secrets, it was really tearing him to pieces not to take advantage of all the inside information he was receiving. If he had been his old self he would be ahead on the Stock Exchange, on the Estate Market, he could have become the king Maker of anybody with all the secrets he had heard.

Anne told Frank about her dream. Little by little. Image by image;

The clock, huge clock, warm as a sun, cold as a dead eye, soft as a rotten kitten, hard as a dead bone, buzzing as a been swarm, silent like an echo less cliff.

The clock, what did it remind Anne of? Why was the clock flat On he ground? Why was the clock of that color? What did that color remind her of? what did she feel inside herself when she described it? Where in her body did she feel the clock? Did Anne notice where she had put her hand now?

Anne was getting dizzy, all her womb was hurting, she was pregnant of pain and memories.

The clock, did it have any hands? Were they moving? Where was the small one? How was the big one moving? What were they pointing at? What happened when the big hand passed over the small hand, yes, the small hand was moving faster than the big one?

Anne was remembering; Tears were hopeless. She felt so stupid; her left was blocked as if it was under the wheel of a huge truck, her right leg was trembling and trembling and she could not stop it from trembling and the shaking was growing all over her body while her leg kept being imprisoned under the truck.

Frank let Anne go through her emotional storm, he waited patiently for her to come back to the calmness of the couch, of the cup of tea nearby, of the soft music.

Frank spoke softly to Anne, she was calming down, he asked her if she would be kind enough to go into his Office and bring him his cat while he looked in his library for a similar story he thought he remembered.

Anne was now peaceful. She stoked the cat.

She asked Frank if it would be all right for her to come next week and whether he could like her to bring some new dry sardines she knew cats were so fond of; Frank agreed, Anne left.

Frank sat down, next patient was not due until a quarter of an hour.

It was really a hopeless business, he had again forgotten to ask her to pay, how do you tell somebody to pay who is telling you that she will bring sardines for your cat.

Frank was not really sorry that he had left the Real Estate Business. He could not understand why the patients were coming to him. Frank could not understand whether he was doing them any good or harming them.

This evening he would watch TV, but he was losing his interest in TV, he would have a few drinks, some years ago he would never have had drinks alone, She, whoever She was that time, would be sharing his drink, now, he could not even share a drink with She, something was going all wrong, She would tell him about her anxieties, about her fears, about her longing. She was no longer that soft body he was longing so much for, She had become something you could not yawn at.

Frank wondered whether he should get a dog.

What a fucking stupid life, he could not even want to write a book, now that he knew there was no point in looking beyond the mirror.

Frank wondered whether it was really worth it; Sure, he had know about the statistics for suicides amongst analyst, but, hell, he was not an analyst, he was a Real Estate Crook, so why should it concern him;

Anne was longing for her next meeting with Frank but afraid of the night to come.

(you may have noticed that Frank is also called Franck. For once it is not a spelling error)

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If it remind you of something, it could happen to be T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, he used the same conflict between High and Trivial; Only, I am not T.S. Eliot.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot