The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  It sounds trivial enough. Yet this was a limitation, I soon found, which debarred the higher reaches of picturesque writing, because upon no occasion had my protagonist seen quite enough of anything to afford me the material for an elaborate describing of it. There was, for the rest, no noticeable abatement, he reported, in hearing or in touch: but three of his senses were as though drugged, two of them completely, and the other in part.

  Moreover, there was in his dream no perception of time. For the convenience of the reader I have suggested here and there a short interval of time, just as it have mercifully divided the book into chapters, to afford breathing spells. Yet here again has my friend remarked dubiously, “But that is not the way it was.” For in point of fact, he declared, there were no intervals. Everything happened, as it were, simultaneously, or at least almost simultaneously, now that events, and many persons too, merged swiftly and unaccountably, but quite naturally, into yet other events, or yet other persons; so that the action of this dream could not be thought of as consuming any definite period.... There seemed, in so far as my reporting dreamer could phrase the affair, to be no important difference between the length of a minute and the length of a century and the length of a yardstick, because time had become a matter incomprehensible and remote. He did not any more travel through time, but instead, time was now travelling about him, at a varying and, in so far as he was concerned, an irrelevant gait.... And space did very much the same thing. He did not often go to any place in this dream, for the sufficing reason that the place—swiftly and unaccountably, but quite naturally—came to him. He had severed, in brief, all his day-lit relations with time and space.

  But I forbear to cite further the conditions of any normal dream, inasmuch as these conditions are familiar to all mankind. My point is merely that I have endeavored to conform to every one of these conditions, and have found them to be both hampering and stimulating, throughout this book.

  I remark likewise that to write truthfully about human dreams is an enterprise, howsoever difficult, which I would recommend to my fellow realists, because their continued avoidance of an entire third of every human life seems to me a bit cowardly. Finally, I rejoice to have rectified, at least, and at howsoever long a last, my own delinquency in this matter.

  Richmond-in-Virginia

  October 1933

  PART ONE. POINT OF DEPARTURE

  “In describing Peter the Hermit, Gibbon says that ‘his stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively; and he possessed that vehemence of speech which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul.’ He had been a soldier, but is declared to have adopted a monk’s robe in order to escape from an old and ugly wife.”

  I. AFTERNOON OF A VIRTUOSO

  You lived in contentment. Your desired work was done. The romantic novels which you had written pleased, at all events, you. Sedately and wholly, as cool water contents a thirsting man, so did these books satisfy you, not because of their super-eminence in any special grace or profundity, but because they were what you had desired to do, and that which, somehow, amid all dissuasions, all stumbling-blocks, and all treacheries of chance, you had done. The completed novels thus figured, in your more frank moments of reverie, as a tangible prize, no more valuable in itself, perhaps, than a blue ribbon or a laurel wreath, but none the less as a tangible prize, in the prolonged game played against time and accident and one’s own frailty.

  For they were, whatever else they were, very much what you had desired them to be: they existed to-day in fair accord with your first, your now ancient, your not ever stinted or altered design. At times it seemed to you that something more strong and more deeply rooted than you could quite imagine had willed these books to exist, making use of you, willy-nilly, as the makeshift to get them on paper; so that your true part, in the outcome, had been but little more premeditated than was the contribution of the people who had manufactured your carbon ink or your typewriter: but more frequently you elected to let complacency lounge on a free stage, whensoever you regarded those assembled and unique books in which, now, you had no further need, nor of any real wish, to read.

  “I prefer not to infringe,” you said modestly, “upon posterity’s privilege. Let us avoid hubris, that overweening pride which destroyed Oedipus, and Prometheus, and so many other protagonists of Greek drama.”

  Your books were done. They represented the prize gained from a prolonged contest in which you had been victorious. Yet they represented also the receipt for a debt honorably paid in full. For there had been, not merely the desire, but, in some sort, the obligation likewise, to make these books, to make these books and no other books. Their corporeal existence thus contented alike your sense of thrift and your sense of honesty.

  That was the main thing: the books were done, precisely as you had planned them. And upon less serious grounds also, you were content with life. Almost all your past had been—upon the whole—agreeable in the time of its being; and to recall it remained agreeable. The present had not any serious flaw. Your living, day by day, contented, at all events, you. Your home and your wife and your children appeared each to be a desirable enough example of such belongings. Your income sufficed. For the rest, you assumed tacitly that a certain amount of deference was due by all your associates; and from every one of them you received it.

  You were thus a personage, to a reasonable extent. It was a fact which your intelligence could not, and did not ever attempt to, ignore.

  “Nevertheless—” said the black dog.

  And it rather startled you.

  II. THE BLACK DOG

  Nevertheless,” said the black dog, “all these fine words and fine thoughts and these smug self-justifyings do not content Smirt.”

  It seemed odd at the time, because you had noted, with the trained perceptiveness of a professional writer, that dogs do not speak English ordinarily; and besides, this was a wooden dog, in which you kept stray bits of string. He was mostly black, but he had a white muzzle and four white feet; his back lifted off when you took hold of his white tail; and he stood on top of the radiator cover in your writing room, regarding the world without optimism. But that was not the immediate point.

  “Do you tell me, black dog, who is Smirt? For I can think of no name more flippant or more contemptuous sounding, nor of any name which I like less.”

  “Smirt,” said the black dog, “is Smirt.”

  “Thus far your logic is unassailable. Up to this point I follow your argument.”

  “And Smirt remains Smirt,” the black dog continued, “no matter what else he may be called in the telephone book or in your press clippings or in the adoring babble of idiots; and you know very well whom I mean.”

  “That is perhaps true, black dog. None the less, there was once a princess. And I remember that, off and on, in a world wherein princesses are to be seen only on Sundays, as they figure unalluringly in the rotogravure sections of the New York papers. I remember there was once a princess, all-beautiful and all-wise, a witty and a tender princess, of whom there are no tidings in that strange world which the newspapers tell about in their commensurably strange language.”

  “Zero Weather,” remarked the black dog, “Creeps South. Four Lives Claimed in Feud War, Five Wounded. Congress Meets in Heated Session.”

  “And of these matters, black dog, I would be the last to deny the importance. But my princess is more important.”

  “Rev. D. W. Cook,” the black dog said, “Resigns as Pastor on Account of Health. French Cabinet Split. 8 Killed, 100 Injured, in Ohio Store Blaze. This is How Doctors Treat Coughs and Colds. Threats of Ultimatum Loom.”

  “And what does that portend, black dog?”

  “It means that you are imprisoned in a cheap and tawdry and hackneyed place, poor Smirt, in a place where many people do not appreciate your genius properly. You have not in this place your suitable audience.”

  “And yet, black dog, I am well enough content here.”

  “Is it p
ossible for you to be contented, Smirt, anywhere that you do not matter? What matters in this place is that Worried Mother Slays Son & Self. County Sheriff Acquitted in Dry Law Case. Noted Painter Predicts End of Marriage Tie. On Saturdays Only You Can Get 10 Zip Razor Blades for 39c with This Coupon.”

  “But I do matter, black dog, for in a number of. romantic novels I have made mirth and wonder and loveliness.”

  “Who cares about your makings? Who cares anywhere, except in the obscurity of literary supplements, and in the chaos of columnists, about Smirt? Only a few hundred or so thousand persons heed the judicial comments of this small civilized minority now that Biplane Plunges Near Golden Gate. A great many living people are not talking about Smirt at this very it. It is more important in this place that ted Mob Forestalls Justice. Mild Losses Seen as Curb Closes. So-and-so Flayed in Quiz. Somebody Else Goes Jestingly to Death Chair. 43 Women’s Dresses, Formerly to $16.50, Now $5.00.”

  “It is very true, black dog, that many newspapers do not review my books on the front page of the news section—which has always seemed to me a mistake in editorial policy—nor do the newspapers anywhere tell you the one fact which really matters. One reads nowhere There Was Once a Princess.”

  “Bah!” said the black dog.

  “None the less, black dog, there was once a princess. It does not matter that I cannot quite recall my dealings with her. There was once a princess, and she yet lives, just around, as it were, the corner of my consciousness. Some day she will again become apparent. Meanwhile I cherish the knowledge that, somehow, she is not far from me, even now. All beauty speaks of her yet superior beauty; the west wind has a rumor of her; the pallid moon remembers my princess with envy; and every pleasure which one gets “out of living is, in some way, a parable, and a promise also, of her returning.”

  “Which means,” said the black dog, “that to be a more or less talked-about novel-writer, but an increasingly less talked-about novel-writer, does not content Smirt.”

  “To the contrary, black dog, life is wholly pleasant. All passes smoothly, equably. Admirers are sometimes a nuisance, but even that, in a way, is flattering. The books are made, and a competent prose style appears established in American letters. The quest is finished, in brief, with some handsomeness; and one rests contentedly after the achievement.”

  “But for no long while, Smirt. By-and-by, as you well know, these honors and these solid-seeming benefits must be put aside, and left casually behind, when you set forth on another quest, whose nature is not yet revealed to you.”

  “Oh, yes, black dog, that knowledge also lives on in, as one might say, the suburbs of consciousness. Meanwhile this staid breathing space, wherein one is a moderately successful artist, seems, I repeat, wholly pleasant.”

  “What, every hour of it, Smirt?”

  “Every hour, black dog.”

  “Ah, but not every half-hour.”

  “In fact, black dog, I except perforce that half-hour about which you are talking.”

  III. LYING AWAKE

  Indeed that odd half-hour was a trouble to him. There was no evading it. Each night he would sleep tranquilly and normally enough, for just six hours and a half. Then he wakened, always, and then, always, it would be a half-hour before he could again go back to sleep. It seemed a slight matter when one spoke of it by daylight to one’s friends, one’s wife, or, tentatively, to one’s physician. It seemed by daylight a trifle.

  Even when he first wakened, with that odd pang of terror and of inexplicable remorse, his reason told him that nothing frightful impended. Nothing frightful had happened, either, it was likewise the enforced part of his reason to assure him, in that first instant of waking. For he wakened in a panic remorse, without at all knowing what he was remorseful about. “That was droll, his reason told him affably. When regarded that rationally, it was amusing. Nor did anything frightful await him, not even anything unpleasant. He was about to lie awake for a few minutes, say, for a half-hour, at ease, in his comfortable bed. Millions of his fellow creatures would be eager to exchange lots with him.

  At this very instant, reason would point out, howl many persons must make shift to sleep upon park benches or in flop houses, whatever flop houses happen to be. A great many people are dying at this very; instant; and nobody ever seems really to enjoy dying, if you watch them closely. There is a flavor of some disagreeable surprise and of a peevishness, even in the most peaceful cases.

  Think, reason exhorted, of how many thousands of people are lying awake, at this very instant, in one or another active sort of pain. What if you had back that abscess of the inner ear? Or if your teeth were hurting again? What about appendicitis? You may have an attack of it, at any moment, without the least warning.

  Remember, reason continued, that on the Thames Embankment, and under Waterloo Bridge, the best traditions of standard English fiction are being preserved, at this very instant, by quite a number of social outcasts. “So ’elp me, guv’nor,” they mutter, as they toss restlessly upon cold and damp, hard flagstones. Of course it is several hours earlier in England, so that they are all up and about, long ago; the principle is the same. One should always be guided by principle.

  And you, you are entirely comfortable here in bed, not even a crumpled rose leaf, like the what-was-his-name, observed reason drowsily, where tired nature’s sweet restorer knits up the ravelled sleave of something or other, not a sleeve as in coat, for the Temple edition has a note on it, but you have forgotten it, and, what the dickens is the use of such notes, all segregated, and in such tiny type too, in the remote back of the book, when nobody gives Dickens the credit for inventing the stream of consciousness method, as begun by Jingle, and brought to perfection by Flora I-forget-who, in Little Dorrit, but it is a poor art that never re-Joyces nowadays, like Agathon running on like a rivulet of oil, so flow gently, sweet Afton, but how do they stay awake when they are writing it, for I am almost, almost asleep now, not as in Afton, Virginia, because that is a mountain, so do not make them out of mole-hills, but go right back to sleep like a good boy now, my precious lamb.

  And again, thus wavering on the dear threshold of sleep, he was bludgeoned by anguish. He remembered that his childhood’s nurse, she who had used so tenderly to urge him, as a precious lamb, to go right back to sleep like a good boy, had been dead now for many years; and to remember that, thrilled him with terror and with remorse. There were no grounds known to him for this remorse, nor was his terror in any way explainable. It was merely that these emotions, like tyrannizing giants, had dragged him back into panic wakefulness.

  And with that, a shadowy crowd of persons once his intimates, and now dead, seemed gradually to approach him, with a certain air of reproval which stayed unexplained, these coming not quite into his thoughts, but, like the princess and like his knowledge of that unfulfilled quest, into, as it were, the suburbs of his consciousness, now that reason was asleep. It troubled one very intolerably to recollect by what trivial matters these persons had been engaged in the put-by time of their living, to recollect how unimportant and how irrevocably ended were all the doings of these dear dead: for into a great many lives, now done with, now dead as Hector or Hannibal, one had entered intimately, and had thus seen what concerns did actually engross the few years, the hours, or better still, the seconds, in which men and women lived.

  There was one instant, then another instant, then yet another, but only one instant at a time. You lived only in the instant which was present: that was a thought which, through no sound reason, seemed terrible. For no man had, at any time in his life, more one instant of existence. Every man’s past was fixed and removed from his control; his future was unfixed, but stayed equally uncontrollable. You had meanwhile your one instant of existence, your one clock-tick… Yes, life went by you with an inconceivable rapidity, with the rapidity of the small ribbon of film in a moving-picture machine. The screen (that would be his brain, he supposed) showed at each instant a different picture, if but slightly different, but
always just one complete picture at one time: then the revealed picture disappeared forever: so did the trivial, the dull, the magnanimous, the prurient, or the merely comfortable instants of living flicker by you. You could not change or stop the ever escaping pictures, those highly complex pictures which had in them, not only color and sound, but smell and feeling and taste also.

  That was nonsense, he remembered, as he turned over on the left side, finding a cool place on the pillow: you could not photograph a smell, nor did pictures have feeling and taste in them, either, except in quite another sense. All of it, however, seemed to be nonsense. All of it, all human life, appeared utterly inconsequent ... Yet he enjoyed it, this flickering series of instants, which promised him, somehow, that by-and-by a forthcoming instant would reveal a loveliness, a complete satisfaction, which did not as yet exist. It was this which kept life always interesting, this implied and perhaps untruthful promise of a beauty and of a happiness which did not as yet exist, but to which, by-and-by, he would be attaining.

  For he knew that his own life was different in nature from the lives of his temporary associates. They passed, fritteringly; but he was not thus transient. Even if, as that confounded black dog had said, he had not yet found his suitable audience, his books endured, to delight the cultured and the urbane everywhere, and to delight oncoming ages also. And besides that, he himself endured, with a fixed purpose, which he would presently discover. His living had its determined and lofty goal, if only one could recollect just what it was.

  To the other side (and suiting action to thought, he now turned over again) he had once dreamed, more or less like the philosopher Chuang Tzu, that he was a blue-bottle fly; and the resultant problem had never been straightened out quite satisfactorily… To the other side, even though he did not really desire to have absolutely everybody talking about him at every moment (as that irrational black dog had suggested), and even though “an acute but honorable minority of readers” contented any reasonable sort of writer as an audience, yet he did remain unknown to public at large...