Dream Story (7 page)

"It was all so confused—and I'm tired. You must be tired, too."

"Not in the least. I don't think I shall go to bed at all. You know, when I come home so late—it would really be best to sit right down to my desk—it's just in such morning hours—" He interrupted himself. "Wouldn't it be better if you told me your dream?" He smiled a little unnaturally.

She replied: "You really ought to lie down and take a little rest."

He hesitated a moment, then he did as she suggested and stretched himself beside her, though he was careful not to touch her. There shall be a sword between us, he thought, remembering a remark he had once made, half joking, on a similar occasion. They lay there silently with open eyes, and they felt both their proximity and the distance that separated them. After a while he raised his head on his arm and looked at her for a long time, as though he could see much more than just the outlines of her face.

"Your dream!" he hinted, once more. She must just have been waiting for him to speak. She held out her hand to him, he took it and, more absent-mindedly than tenderly, clasped his hand about her slender fingers, as he had often done before. She began: "Do you still remember the room in the little villa on Lake Worther, where I lived with Mother and Father the summer we became engaged?"

He nodded.

"Well, it was there the dream began. I was entering this house, like an actress stepping onto the stage—I don't know where I came from. My parents seemed to have gone on a journey and left me alone. That surprised me, for our wedding was the next day. But my wedding-dress hadn't yet arrived. I thought I might be mistaken, and I opened the wardrobe to look. Instead of the wedding dress a great many other clothes, like fancy dress costumes, were hanging there, opera-like, gorgeous, Oriental. Which shall I wear for the wedding? I thought. Then the wardrobe was suddenly closed again, or it disappeared, I don't remember. The room was brightly lighted, but outside the window it was pitch black . . . Suddenly you were standing out there. Galley slaves had rowed you to the house. I had just seen them disappearing in the darkness. You were dressed in marvelous gold and silver clothes, and had a dagger in a silver sheath hanging by your side. You lifted me down from the window. I, too, was gorgeously dressed, like a princess. We stood outside in the twilight, and a fine gray mist reached up to our ankles. The country-side was perfectly familiar to us: there was the lake, the mountain rose above us, and I could even see the villas which stood there like little toy houses. We were floating, no, flying, along above the mist, and I thought: so this is our honeymoon trip. Soon, however, we stopped flying and were walking along a forest path, the one leading to Elizabeth Heights. Suddenly, we came into a sort of clearing in the mountains enclosed on three sides by the forest, while a steep wall of rock towered up in the back. The sky was blue and starry, with an expanse far greater than it ever has in reality; it was the ceiling of our bridal-chamber. You took me into your arms and loved me very much."

"I hope you loved me, too," remarked Fridolin with an invisible, malicious smile.

"Even more than you did me," replied Albertina seriously, "but, how can I explain it—in spite of the intensity of our happiness our love was also sad, as if filled with some presentiment of sorrow. Suddenly, it was morning. The meadow was light and covered with flowers, the forest glistened with dew, and over the rocky wall the sun sent down quivering rays of light. It was now time to return to the world and go among people. But something terrible happened: our clothes were gone. I was seized with unheard of terror and a shame so burning that it almost consumed me. At the same time I was angry with you, as though you were to blame for the misfortune. This sensation of terror, shame and anger was much more intense than anything I had ever felt when awake. Conscious of your guilt, you rushed away naked, to go and get clothes for us. When you had gone I was very gay. I neither felt sorry for you, nor worried about you. Delighted to be alone, I ran happily about in the meadow singing a tune we had heard at some dance. My voice had a wonderful ring and I wished that they could hear me down in the city, which I couldn't see but which nevertheless existed. It was far below me and was surrounded by a high wall, a very fantastic city which I can't describe. It was not Oriental and not exactly Old-German, and yet it seemed to be first one, and then the other. At any rate, it was a city buried a long time ago and forever. Suddenly I was lying in the meadow, stretched out in the sunlight—far more beautiful than I ever was in reality, and while I lay there, a young man wearing a light-colored fashionable suit of clothes walked out of the woods. I now realize that he looked like the Dane whom I mentioned yesterday. He walked up and spoke to me courteously as he passed, but otherwise paid no particular attention to me. He went straight to the wall of rock and looked it over carefully, as though considering how to master it. At the same time I could see you hurrying from house to house, from shop to shop in the buried city, now walking underneath arbors, then passing through a sort of Turkish bazaar. You were buying the most beautiful things you could find for me: clothes, linen, shoes, and jewelry. And then you put these things into a little hand-bag of yellow leather that held them all. You were being followed by a crowd of people whom I could not see, but I heard the sound of their threatening shouts. The Dane, who had stopped before the wall of rock a little while before, now reappeared from the woods—and apparently in the meantime he had encircled the whole globe. He looked different, but he was the same, nevertheless. He stopped before the wall of rock, vanished and came out of the woods again, appearing and disappearing two, or three, or a hundred times. It was always the same man and yet always different. He spoke to me every time he passed, and finally stopped in front of me and looked at me searchingly. I laughed seductively as I have never laughed in my life, and he held out his arms to me. I wished to escape but it was useless—and he sank down beside me on the meadow."

She was silent. Fridolin's throat was parched. In the darkness of the room he could see she had concealed her face in her hands.

"A strange dream," he said, "but surely that isn't the end?" When she said "no," he asked: "Then why don't you continue?"

"It's not easy," she began again. "Such things are difficult to express in words. Well, to go on—I seemed to live through countless days and nights; there was neither time nor space. I was no longer in the clearing, enclosed by the woods and rock. I was on a flower-covered plain, that stretched into infinite distance and, finally, into the horizon in all directions. And for a long time I had not been alone with this one man on the meadow. Whether there were three, .or ten, or a thousand other couples I don't know. Whether I noticed them or not, whether I was united only with that particular man or also with others, I can't say. Just as that earlier feeling of terror and shame went beyond anything I have ever felt in the waking state, so nothing in our conscious existence can be compared with the feeling of release, of freedom, of happiness, which I now experienced. Yet I didn't for one moment forget you. In fact, I saw that you had been seized—by soldiers, I think—and there were also priests among them. Somebody, a gigantic person, tied your hands, and I knew that you were to be executed. I knew it, without feeling any sympathy for you, and without shuddering. I felt it, but as though I were far removed from you. They led you into a yard, a sort of castle-yard, and you stood there, naked, with your hands tied behind your back. Just as I saw you, though I was far away, you could also see me and the man who was holding me in his arms. All the other couples, too, were visible in this infinite sea of nakedness which foamed about me, and of which my companion and I were only a wave, so to speak. Then, while you were standing in the castle-yard, a young woman, with a diadem on her head and wearing a purple cloak, appeared at a high arched window between red curtains. It was the queen of the country, and she looked down at you with a stern, questioning look. You were standing alone. All the others stood aside, pressed against the wall, and I heard them whispering and muttering in a malicious and threatening manner. Then the queen bent down over the railing. Silence reigned, and she signaled to you, commanding you to come up to her, and I knew that she had decided to pardon you. But you either didn't notice her, or else you didn't want to. Suddenly you were standing opposite her, with your hands still tied. You were wrapped in a black cloak, and you were not in a room, but in the open, somehow, floating, as it were. She held a piece of parchment in her hand, your death-sentence, which stated your crime and the reasons for your conviction. She asked you—I couldn't hear the words, but I knew it was so—whether you were willing to be her lover, for in that case the death-penalty would be remitted. You shook your head, refusing. I wasn't surprised, for it seemed natural and inevitable that you should be faithful to me, under all circumstances. The queen shrugged her shoulders, waved her hand, and suddenly you were in a subterranean cellar, and whips were whizzing down upon you, although I couldn't see the people who were swinging them. Blood flowed down you in streams. I saw it without feeling cruel, or even surprised. The queen now moved towards you, her loose hair flowing about her naked body, and held out her diadem to you with both hands. I realized that she was the girl at the seashore in Denmark, the one you had once seen nude, in the morning, on the ledge of a bathing-hut. She didn't say a word, but she was clearly there to learn if you would be her husband and the ruler of the land. When you refused again, she suddenly disappeared. At the same time I saw them erecting a cross for you —not down in the castleyard, but on the meadow, where I was resting with my lover among all the other couples. I saw you walking alone through ancient streets without a guard, but I knew that your course was marked out for you and that it was impossible for you to turn aside. Next, you were coming up the forest path, where I anxiously awaited you, but I did not feel any sympathy for you, though your body was covered with the weals which had stopped bleeding. You went higher and higher, the path widened, the forest receded on both sides, and you stood at the edge of the meadow at an enormous, incomprehensible distance. Your eyes smiled at me as if to show that you had fulfilled my wish and had brought me everything I needed: clothing and shoes and jewels. But I thought your actions senseless beyond description and I wanted to make fun of you, to laugh in your face—because you had refused the queen's hand out of faithfulness to me. And because you had been tortured and now came tottering up here to a horrible death. As I ran to meet you, you came near more and more quickly. We were floating in the air, and then I lost sight of you; and I realized we had flown past each other. I hoped that you would, at least, hear my laughter when they were nailing you to the cross.—And so I laughed, as shrill and loud as I could—that was the laugh, Fridolin, that you heard—when I awoke." Neither of them spoke or moved. Any remark at this moment would have seemed futile. The further her story progressed, the more ridiculous and insignificant did his own experiences become, at least up to date. He swore to himself that he would resume and conclude all of them. He would then faithfully report them and so take vengeance on this woman who had revealed herself as faithless, cruel and treacherous, and whom he now believed he hated more than he had ever loved her.

He realized that he was still clasping her fingers. Ready as he was to hate her, his feeling of tenderness for these slender, cool fingers was unchanged except that it was more acute. Involuntarily, in fact against his will, he gently pressed his lips on this familiar hand before he let it go.

Albertina still kept her eyes closed and Fridolin thought he could see a happy, innocent smile playing about her mouth. He felt an incomprehensible desire to bend over her and kiss her pale forehead. But he checked himself. He realized that it was only the natural fatigue of the last few hours which disguised itself as tenderness in the familiarity of their mutual room.

But whatever his present state of mind— whatever decisions he might reach in the next few hours, the urgent demand of the moment was for sleep and forgetfulness. He had been able to sleep long and dreamlessly the night following the death of his mother, so why not now? He stretched himself out beside his wife who seemed already asleep. A sword between us, he thought, we are lying here like mortal enemies. But it was only an illusion.

AT seven o'clock Fridolin was awakened by the maid gently knocking on the door, and he cast a quick glance at Albertina. Sometimes this knocking awakened her too. But today she was sleeping soundly; too soundly Fridolin thought. He dressed himself quickly, intending to see his little daughter before leaving. The child lay quietly in her white bed, her hands clenched into little fists, as children do in sleep, and he kissed her on her forehead. Tip-toeing to the door of the bedroom he found Albertina still sleeping soundly; then he went out. The cassock and pilgrim's hat were safely concealed in his black doctor's bag. He had drawn up a program for the day with great care, indeed, even a bit pedantically. First of all he had to see a young attorney in the neighborhood who was seriously ill. Fridolin made a careful examination and found his condition somewhat improved. He expressed his satisfaction with sincere joy and ordered an old prescription to be refilled. Then he went to the house in the basement of which Nachtigall had played the piano the night before. The place was still closed, but the girl at the counter in the cafe above said that Nachtigall lived in a small hotel in Leopoldstadt. He took a cab and arrived there a quarter of an hour later. It was a very shabby place, smelling of unaired beds, rancid lard and chicory. A tough looking concierge, with sly, inflamed eyes, wishing to keep on good terms with the police, willingly gave information. Herr Nachtigall had arrived in a cab at five o'clock in the morning, accompanied by two men who had disguised their faces, perhaps intentionally so, with scarfs which they wore wrapped about their heads and necks. While Nachtigall was in his room, the two men had paid his bill for the last four weeks. When he didn't appear after half an hour, one of them had gone up to fetch him, whereupon they all three took a cab to North Station. Nachtigall had seemed highly excited, in fact—well, why not tell the whole truth to a man who gave one so much confidence—he had tried to slip a letter to the concierge, but the two men stopped that. Any letters for Herr Nachtigall—so the men had explained— would be called for by a person properly authorized to do so. Fridolin took his leave. He was glad that he had his doctor's bag with him when he stepped out of the door, for anyone seeing him would not think that he was staying at the hotel, but would take him for some official person. There was nothing to be done about Nachtigall for the time being. They had been extremely cautious, probably with good reason.