Daniel's Dream (14 page)

Alex!’ he yelled as he made a dash towards her. It was a miracle, a miracle he hadn’t dared pray for: she was alive, alive and well, alive and well and...

He was only two or three yards away from her when he realised his mistake. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the stranger as she walked past, oblivious of the gawking man who had almost bumped into her. Daniel could feel the tears accumulating in the corners of his eyes, and even though he understood that Piccadilly Circus on a busy summer’s afternoon was no place to break down, he could not stem the flow of tears nor prevent a howl of despair issuing from his tonnented soul. A few people stared at him, some with sympathy others merely out of curiosity.

Not wanting to embarrass himself further Daniel went down the stairs into the Underground, boarded the first northbound train and headed for home. The train trundled along the darkened passageways that bored through the London subsoil, turning the capital’s foundation into a hole-ridden hollow, like a giant slab of Gruyere.

The incident at Piccadilly Circus had unsettled Daniel. It was precisely because of the possibility of such events that he had sought solace, safety and solitude in the confines of his own home, hiding from the Big Wide World and all that it threatened. Because if there was one thing clear in the morass of confusing signs and signals that obsessed him, it was that the world did not forgive, did not forget, and would take any and every opportunity to remind him of his past misdeeds and misdemeanours. Why else was he now haunted by ghosts and chimerical apparitions?

Not that he had done anything really bad, really evil; certainly nothing that required this level of punishment. Hadn’t he suffered enough? Weren’t his physical injuries, the disabilities that still prevented him from returning to work, the mental torment that he had to endure... weren’t they enough? Hadn’t he done his penance?

Poor Alex, thought Daniel as he emerged from the Underground station at Manor House, and started to walk home.

Poor me. 

He had been walking for only a few minutes when a peculiar sensation came over him; a discontinuity of some kind, like
déja vu
only not as clear or well-defined. He had, of course, walked that road before - the section of Green Lanes that ran alongside Finsbury Park - a hundred times or more, so a sense of familiarity would not have been strange or alarming. It was not the sights of the street that disturbed him, but an altogether less prosaic vision.

For a split second as he looked down the road, all the shops and cars and buses and people, all the noise and tumult and smog and stench disappeared, and he was once more walking along the sandy beach of his dream. So realistic was the vision, so complete in detail, that had he not known better he would have sworn that, for a split second, he had been transported to another place, another time.

The vision, which was enchanting and disruptive in equal measure, stopped him in his tracks. This can’t be happening, he thought to himself: it just can’t be. It was one thing to see visions of paradise in one’s dreams, but to conjure up such Arcadian scenarios while wandering down a busy north London thoroughfare was beyond a joke.

And then he heard it, playing faintly in the background, almost drowned by the noise of the passing traffic: the music of his dream. Only the source of the music was neither ethereal nor other-worldly; it was emanating from the open doorway of Aphroditi, a music shop, just a few yards ahead of him.

A sign in the shop’s window proclaimed it to be the biggest Greek music store outside Athens. Daniel had passed it on endless occasions and not once had it ever occurred to him to go inside. Even though he had lived in this overwhelmingly Cypriot community for years, and even though he knew his local greengrocer, off-licence, dry-cleaners and newsagent well, there were certain establishments that he still felt were off-limits to him.

Green Lanes was littered with Greek or Turkish men’s clubs that were as foreign to him here in his own neighbourhood as they would have been in Cyprus. And while Aphroditi was nothing more exotic than a music and record store, like many of the clubs, with their indecipherable signs and air of exclusivity, he had never felt bold enough to enter.

He took a few steps towards the door and was both surprised and thrilled to hear the strains of the bouzouki become louder; for a moment he had thought it might be some sort of musical hallucination, the aural equivalent of his disturbing encounter with Alex’s
doppelganger
earlier that day. But as he entered through the half-opened door, there could be no doubting that this time the experience was real, for the music spluttered and crackled from the ageing loudspeakers on the counter, and echoed all around.

Daniel felt transported. He wanted to close his eyes and allow himself to be whisked back to Atheenaton, to the village of his dream, but feared he might faint or collapse or do something equally embarrassing. Instead he took a few moments to look around and, once he had assured himself that there was nothing either dangerous or threatening about the environment, wandered over to the racks of records that stood in great banks along the walls and beneath the windows, and started to thumb through them.

This was more like it, he thought, recalling the frustrating experience of earlier that day when he had had to flick through hundreds of those nasty plastic CD cases, squinting at their tiny covers to try and make sense ofthe titles and names. Here it was a different matter altogether. Clearly Greece was still a few years behind in its embracing of the digital format, and to Daniel’s great delight the majority of the music in the shop came in the form of the now outmoded vinyl LP.

Even though he had no idea what he was looking at, Daniel derived a warm, comforting sensation from flicking through the racks of twelve-inch covers with their big, bright photographs and strong, clear typography. It reminded him of his youth and of the days spent with his friends rummaging through the racks of the second-hand record stores in Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, searching for that elusive Yes album or Genesis single.

It was an odd sort of shop, part record store, part news-agent and grocery store, and though it had an extensive selection of Greek-looking album covers stacked in the racks, it did not, in truth, look as if it could possibly stock the biggest collection of Greek records in the country. Still, Daniel did not dwell long on this. Neither did he prolong his search of the record sleeves. He knew exactly what he wanted.

The gentle, lilting bouzouki was still playing, joined now by the deep, mellifluous tones of a baritone, singing in what could only be Greek. It was a wonderful combination, and even though Daniel had no idea what the man was singing about, he felt a delightful tingling at the back of his neck - the same sensation he used to have as a teenager when he listened to his favourite bands. Daniel stood quietly and listened, allowing the music to flow over him as if he were standing beneath a waterfall of sound. That the music was beautiful was beyond dispute, but there was also something sad, heart-achingly mournful about that voice.

When the song came to an end Daniel could barely stand the silence, which entered him like a vast, empty hunger, and he was greatly relieved when the resonant sounds of a bouzouki playing the opening refrain of the next track swelled from the speakers and filled the air around him.

The store was deserted. There was no one behind the counter, and Daniel could not hear anyone moving around in the back of the shop. He walked to the counter and peered into the gloom. Nothing. The area behind the counter was filled with shelves, stacked floor to ceiling with records. To one side was the antiquated stereo system; the record was still playing, but it was too far away for Daniel to be able to see the label.

On top of the counter, however, lay an empty record sleeve. Daniel picked it up and examined it. The front cover was a collage of old photographs and postcards. The photographs were mostly the sort of ancient family snapshots that one could find in the bottom drawers and attics of a million homes the world over, many of them in sepia, others cracked and faded with no attempt to disguise or retouch them. The postcards were, if anything, more interesting: turn-of-the-century views of the Acropolis and period impressions of other famous Greek sites. Together they made a pleasing composition.

There was nothing written in English on either the front or the back cover, and Daniel could not decipher any of the strange Greek letters that made up the titles. But as his eyes scanned the foreign symbols he felt again the momentary faintness that had caught him off-balance outside, and experienced the strange but unmistakable sensation that he was standing on a beach in the bright sunshine with the sweat dripping from his forehead. He could even, for a split second, feel the sand between his toes.

The sensation disappeared as swiftly as it had arrived, leaving Daniel a little dazed. He reached out to the counter and steadied himself, then took several deep breaths. As he was recovering his balance, he saw someone move in the back of the shop. A moment later a young man with black hair and several days’ worth of stubble emerged from the darkness, clutching a stack of records which he placed carefully on the counter. He smiled at Daniel and then nodded towards the cover.

‘Mitropanos. Can’t beat him, eh?’

‘Huh?’

‘Dmitri Mitropanos; the boss!’

Daniel smiled and nodded swiftly. ‘Right,’ he said, still not fully understanding what the assistant was saying, then handed the cover to him. ‘I’ll take it.’

Once home, Daniel slipped the album carefully out of its cover and placed it on the turntable. He turned on the amplifier, cranked up the volume, and waited for music.

Music arrived.

Daniel could hardly believe the clarity of sound that emanated from the loudspeakers on either side of the bay window. In the record store - and in his dreams - each time he heard the music it was being played on an old record-player, the sort that could not possibly do justice to music of such finesse and delicacy. But here, on his own hi-fi, the music came into its own. The sound of the bouzouki, full and resonant, seemed to spring from the loudspeakers with an almost hyper-real intensity, each note ringing with the clarity of a struck wineglass; it was, quite simply, sublime. And when the vocalist began to sing in hid deep, melancholy voice, he imbued words that remained mysterious with a quiet, unmistakable force that made their translation - for the time being, at least - unnecessary.

But it was neither the resonance of the bouzouki nor the power of the voice that sent Daniel into paroxysms of pleasure; it was the melody, the harmonies, the nuances of timing and timbre that most deeply affected him and confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the music of his dream.

Daniel closed his eyes and allowed the music to conjure up visions of Atheenaton. Perhaps, he thought, if he concentrated hard he might find himself back there, wandering along the sand or swimming in those crystal-clear waters. What, he wondered, had become of the girl with the mane of blond hair who had greeted him, who knew his name? Where was she now? And where were Barry and the waiter? Did they still exist, locked into a world to which he had only occasional access? And what did he have to do to gain access again?

But no matter how hard he tried, when Daniel opened his eyes he was still in his living room in north London, and his dream world was an eternity away.

In desperation he sought ways to trigger his return. He ran up to the bedroom and grabbed his notebook, thumbing anxiously through the pages, rereading his tired scrawl, the notes he had written on waking from his dreams, in the hope that the strange melange of vaguely connected words might precipitate the return he longed for.

But it was to no avail. He retrieved the paperback that he had bought the other day, Robert Jameson’s
Greek Idyll
, and spent ten minutes gazing at the cover believing that it might be a gateway to his lost world. But nothing happened. He even read a few more pages, but the prose was so turgid that it only annoyed him.

‘I want to go back,’ he mumbled aloud, too ashamed to cry out loud but desperate to give vent to his frustrations, but the songs, shifting from one mood to another, like his random words, echoed each other and would only hint at sights unseen. Frustrated at his inability to bring back something as simple as a dream, Daniel sulked miserably.

The first side of the record came to an end. Exhausted by his exertions, Daniel decided he would lie down on the sofa for a while. He kicked off his shoes, padded over to the hi-fi, lifted the disc from the turntable and replaced it carefully in its sleeve. He examined the cover again; somewhere among the pictures and words, there had to be a key, a password; something which would show him the way to Atheenaton. If there were clues they remained undetected, but in some way, he felt sure, the music would provide his ticket to paradise.