The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  My father initially seemed cross with me, then just as I realized the folly of my behavior, he reassured me.

  “Jacques,” he said. “You have come at the right time. Come closer and take a look.”

  I took a hesitant step forward and the animal reared up, straining against the chain, which the man held tight in his fist.

  “No closer!” cried the stranger.

  He was an old man, his thin, wrinkled face tarnished by a short, scruffy beard.

  “Stay where you are,” ordered my father. “But take a good look, you may never see another. This is a leopard.”

  My father, with his marten fur cap on his head, gazed at the feline as it blinked slowly. The man smiled, revealing his toothless mouth.

  “It come from Arabia,” he whispered.

  I kept my gaze fixed on the animal. Its golden fur merged with the word I had just heard for the first time. And the man sealed this union even tighter by adding, “Is desert there, sand, sun. Always hot. Very hot.”

  I had heard of the desert at my catechism, but I could not imagine what that place must be like, where Christ withdrew for forty days. And suddenly that world had come to me. Today I can see it all, but at the time there was nothing that clear in my consciousness. Particularly as the animal, which had been standing calmly, almost at once began to roar and pull against his chain, knocking my father backwards into a bundle of beaver skins. The stranger took a stick from his tunic and began to beat the creature so hard that I was sure he had killed it. When the beast lay lifeless on the ground, he grabbed it by the paws and stuffed it into his bag. I saw no more, because my mother had laid her hands on my shoulders and pulled me away. She told me later that I had fainted. The truth is I awoke in my room in the early morning, certain it was all a dream until my parents, at breakfast, spoke to me about the incident.

  In hindsight, I know exactly what that visit meant. The man was an old gypsy whose trade was to show his leopard wherever he went. There were times when he was received at castles by lords eager for distraction. More frequently, he haunted fairgrounds and village squares. He had bought the animal from a merchant on the byways of the Holy Land. Now the gypsy was getting old, and his leopard was sick. If I had had more experience, I would have seen that the animal was weak, toothless, and malnourished. The gypsy had tried to sell it to another traveler, but no one wanted to give him a good price. That was when he came up with the idea of selling the animal for its skin. He had happened by my father’s workshop and suggested it to him. But no sale took place and I never found out why. In all likelihood my father had no customers for such a piece. Or perhaps he felt sorry for the animal. For though my mother was a butcher’s daughter, my father never dealt with anything but an animal’s remains, and he did not have the soul of a skinner.

  It was an isolated episode. It did not matter if it never happened again: it had left its indelible mark on me. I had glimpsed another world, a world that was here on earth and alive, not the hereafter of death which the Gospel promised us. A world that was the color of the sun, and its name was Arabia. It was a fragile thread, but I clung to it stubbornly. I questioned the priest at the chapter of Saint-Pierre, our parish. He told me about the desert, about St. Anthony and wild animals. He told me about the Holy Land; his uncle had been there, because he was from a noble family and acquainted with knights.

  I was still too young to understand what he was telling me. But he did confirm that my premonition was well-founded. There was more to the world than rain, cold, darkness, and war. Beyond the land of the mad king there were other places I knew nothing about, but which I could imagine. Thus, the dream was not merely a gate to melancholy, a simple absence from the world, but much more: the promise of another reality.

  One evening a few days later, my father, in a low voice, told us some terrible news: the king’s brother, Louis of Orléans, had been assassinated in Paris. The uncles of the mad king were intent on killing one another once and for all. John, Duke of Berry, who lived nearby and whose courtiers made up the bulk of my father’s customers, would not be able to remain neutral among his brothers for very much longer. Now war was breathing on us with its pestilential breath. My parents were trembling with fear, and not long before I, too, would have yielded to panic.

  Just when the world was too full of pain, the animal had leapt out of his bag and stared at me with a roar. It seemed to me that if everything went dark, there would still be time for me to escape toward the sunlight. And though I did not understand what it meant, I said that magical word over and over: Arabia.

  *

  It took five years for the war to reach us. When it touched our city, I was no longer of an age to fear it; rather, I desired it.

  I was twelve years old that summer when, allied with the Burgundians, the army of the mad king marched on us. The Duke of Berry, our good Duke John as my father used to call him, with a sorrowful smile, had been prevented from entering Paris, where he had a residence. Obliged to abandon his usual caution, he had sided with the Armagnacs. “Armagnacs,” “Burgundians”: I heard these evocative, mysterious names at the dinner table when my parents conversed. Outdoors, in our games, we took turns pretending to be a hero from one side or the other. We, too, fought among brothers. While we could not understand the politics in detail, we thought we had at least grasped some of its inner workings.

  Rumor from the countryside had it that the Burgundians were coming closer. On her way to see her parents our serving girl happened upon a company of soldiers. Several villages around their own had been burned and pillaged. The poor girl wept as she told us of her family’s misfortune. She needed to confide in someone, so I let her talk.

  While these events had happened very near to us, they aroused in me not fear but rather intense curiosity. I wanted to know everything about the soldiers and, above all, the knights. Our serving girl’s stories were very disappointing in that respect. The plunder in the countryside had been committed by vulgar ruffians; at no time did her parents see any real soldiers of the kind I had imagined.

  My passion for the Levant meant I had heard many stories about the crusades. At the Sainte-Chapelle I got to know an old man who was a deacon, and who in his younger days had gone to the Holy Land to fight.

  Thus, I shared the passion of many of my companions, although it was on the basis of a deep misunderstanding. They were yielding to their interest in weapons, horses, jousts, and every sort of violent deed or exploit considered prestigious among young men. For me, chivalry was rather a vehicle to the enchanted world of the Levant. If I had known of any other way to be transported to Arabia, it would have been equally fascinating. At the time, I was convinced that the only way to get there and to vanquish all the obstacles on the way would be astride a leather-clad steed, wearing a suit of armor with a sword at my side.

  There were a dozen or so of us, all children of the same age, born in the same neighborhood of town-dwelling parents. The offspring of servants or peddlers occasionally joined us; the sons of noblemen ignored us. I was somewhat taller than the others but I had a fragile constitution. I spoke little and never really let myself go when playing. Part of me remained aloof. My detached attitude must surely have seemed superior to them. My presence in the group was tolerated. However, when the time came for secrets or naughty stories, my friends arranged to leave me out.

  We had a leader. He was a fat boy called Éloi, a baker’s son. His curly, coarse black hair made me think of sheep’s wool. His physical strength was already impressive, but his power over the group was principally due to the fear his verbal boldness and bragging inspired. He was sure of victory before even beginning to fight, simply by virtue of his reputation.

  At the end of June the Burgundians were at the walls of the town. We had to prepare for a siege. Herds were hastily brought within the walls. Every square was covered with barrels filled with salt meat, wine, flour, and oil.

 
Summer came early and was miserable. At the beginning of July the storms began. Pounding rain caused the drainpipes to overflow, adding to the chaos and panic. To the delight of our gang of kids, the streets filled with armed men, who began to prepare our defense. The court of Duke John had always paid more attention to art and pleasure than to combat. Nobles never went around dressed for war. Now the threat hanging over the town changed everything. Noblemen once again adopted the accoutrements that, in a bygone era, had signaled that their ancestors were entitled to the rank of count or baron. And one day, for the first time in my life, I saw a knight up close.

  He was riding at a trot up the paved street leading to the cathedral. I ran to his side. It seemed to me that if I jumped up to ride pillion with him he would take me all the way to Arabia, to the land of eternal sun, with the vivid colors of the leopard. The horse was covered with a gilt-embroidered blanket, armor-clad feet in the stirrups. Inexplicably, I felt nothing for the man hiding beneath this carapace; what fascinated me more than anything was the way in which his armor had been designed to make him invulnerable—the hammered steel that went to make up the suit, the shining paint on the shield, the thick fabric covering the horse. A man in simple clothing on an ordinary horse would not have had the fabulous powers I granted this knight.

  I was, alas, doomed to dream, for it seemed impossible that I might one day leave behind my station as a simple burgher, something I had only just begun to be aware of.

  My father took me more and more often to the Duke’s palace when he had business there. He did not hope to make a craftsman of me, because I was extremely clumsy. He saw me, rather, as a tradesman. I loved the atmosphere of these visits—the rooms with their high ceilings, the guards at every door, the luxurious wall hangings, the ladies in their brightly-colored gowns. I loved the jewels in their necklaces, the shine of the pommels on the gentlemen’s hips, the light-colored wood of the parquet floors. My interest increased still further when my father explained, during a long wait in the antechamber of one of the Duke’s relatives, that the very particular perfume in these halls derived from diluted essences from the Levant.

  These visits to the palace, however, had quashed for good any hope I might have of entering their world. My father was treated with despicable scorn, and he tried hard to teach me how to put up with it. In his opinion, it was an honor in itself to sell something to a prince. Nothing was too good for such a customer. Every gift, every effort, the nights spent stitching, cutting, designing models—none of it had any meaning or value until a rich customer voiced his satisfaction. I remembered the lesson and accepted our fate. I learned to find my courage in renunciation. When we left the palace, after a visit where my father had been coarsely treated, I was proud of him. I would take his hand as we walked home. He was trembling, and I now know it was from humiliation and rage. However, in my eyes, the patience he had shown was the only form of bravery allowed us, since we would never be called on to bear noble weapons.

  Among my mates I maintained a distant reserve, following my father’s example. I rarely spoke, I agreed with what they said, and I played a modest part in the adventures that others conceived. They tended to scorn me, until something happened that changed everything.

  In the month of August of the year I turned twelve, we had finished preparing for the siege of the town. We were indeed surrounded. The oldest residents recalled the English sacking half a century earlier. Stories of those ghastly deeds were making the rounds. Children in particular delighted in them. Éloi impressed us every day with horrible tales that customers left behind in his father’s shop along with their change. He had set himself up as our captain because, according to him, under these new circumstances we were now a body of troops like any other. He had great ambitions for this little army, starting with procuring weapons. In the utmost secrecy he organized an expedition. For several days he held clandestine meetings, sharing his knowledge and his orders with the members of the group, the better to keep control of it. Shortly before the great day, one of his muttered conversations must have been about me, because everyone but me took part. Éloi came at last to deliver the verdict: I could be one of them.

  Under normal circumstances, summer was a time of freedom for the schoolboys of the Sainte-Chapelle. The war was yet another reason to set us free. We spent our days together, idle, sitting outside our houses. We were not allowed out at night, and the soldiers on watch would arrest anyone wandering in the streets. Therefore we would have to carry off the exploit in broad daylight. Éloi chose a hot, stormless afternoon, conducive to siesta. He led us down into the tanners’ neighborhood, and from there, by crossing a grassy slope, we came to a swamp. He had located a flat-bottomed boat, its pole hidden not far away. There were seven of us on board. With the pole, Éloi pushed the boat, and we drifted slowly out into the stream. The cathedral rose in the distance, towering above us. None of us knew how to swim, and I’m sure the others were terrified. I was afraid until the boat was well away from the shore. But once we were slowly making our way through the algae and the lily pads, I was filled with an unexpected happiness. The sun and the heat of August, the mystery of the water on whose surface all roads are possible, and the reverberant flight of insects all made me believe we were on our way to that other world, even though I knew it was incomparably far away.

  The boat slid into a cluster of reeds. Éloi, still standing, leaned over and motioned to us to be quiet. We were still drifting down the narrow inlet bordered with the velvety tips of the stems when suddenly we heard voices. Éloi pushed the boat over to the riverbank. We jumped on land. I was given the order to stay and guard the boat. From behind a hedge we saw in the distance a group of men lying on the ground. They were surely écorcheurs1 from the army of Burgundy. A dozen or so soldiers sprawled in the shade of an elm tree, near another bend in the river, most of them asleep. The grunts we had heard were what passed for conversation among those still awake. Their campsite was in full sun, and at some distance from the men. It contained an untidy collection of fur blankets, satchels, water skins, and weapons, spread around the charred circle of what had been a campfire. No one was guarding the camp. Éloi ordered the three smallest among us to crawl through the grass to the weapons, steal as many as they could carry, and then come back. The children did as they were told. They threaded their way to the campsite and noiselessly filled their arms with swords and daggers. Just as they were about to head back, one of the écorcheurs stood up unsteadily to go and relieve himself. He saw the thieves and raised the alarm. When he heard the shout, Éloi set off at a run, followed by two other boys who never left his side.

  “They’ve got us!” he cried.

  He jumped into the boat with his two right-hand men.

  “Come on,” he commanded.

  “And the others?”

  I was standing on the bank, still holding the rope that served to tie the boat.

  “They’ll catch up. Come on, now!”

  As I stood there without moving, he grabbed the rope from my hand and with an abrupt shove of the pole, pushed the boat out into the reeds. I heard the stems snapping as the boat moved away.

  A few seconds later, the other three showed up, sweating profusely. Each of them had made it a point of honor to keep one or two of the trophies they had stolen from beside the campfire.

  “Where’s the boat?” they asked.

  “It’s gone,” I answered. “With Éloi.”

  Today I think I can safely say that it was at that very moment that my fate was sealed. I was filled with an astonishing composure. For those who knew me, there was no change with respect to my usual demeanor, that of a phlegmatic dreamer. But for me, it was very different. Habitually, my dreaming took me into another world, whereas now, I was truly in this world. I was acutely aware of the situation at hand. I could sense the danger, and identify all the protagonists of the drama. The privilege of knowing how to act like a bird of prey, overlooki
ng everything, gave me a perfectly clear vision of both the problem and the solution. While my companions looked all around, trembling and distraught, without seeing a way out, I said, as calm as could be, “Let’s go that way.”

  We ran along the narrow bank. The soldiers were calling out, their voices thick. They were not yet very near. They had to wake up, first of all, size up the situation, and agree among themselves, and in all likelihood these mercenaries did not all speak the same language. I saw clearly that our salvation lay in our small size and agility. I led my troop along the riverbank and eventually found, as I had sensed I would, a narrow wooden bridge to cross the inlet. It was a simple, rough-hewn tree trunk, already worn and sagging. All four of us stepped lightly across it. The écorcheurs would find it more difficult to cross and, with a bit of luck, it would break beneath their weight. We continued our flight and I kept up a steady rhythm, slower than my companions would have liked. It was out of the question to run until we were exhausted. It might be a long ordeal; we had to preserve our strength.

  I will not go into the details of our misadventure. We made it back to the town after two days and one night, crossing canals astride floating tree trunks, stealing another boat, and making our way past a troop on horseback. We arrived home as night was falling, our skin covered in bramble scratches; we were famished but proud. At no time did I lose my composure. My companions had followed my orders to the letter. I had insisted on their keeping the weapons they had stolen. Thus, we were not only safe, but also victorious.

  In the town there was considerable talk about our adventure. On the basis of the heroic self-aggrandizing tale Éloi had spun, everyone had thought we were dead. He claimed he had followed us to try to hold us back. “I wanted so badly to save them, alas . . . ” and so on. Our return suddenly brought the truth to light. He was punished severely, and, above all, his prestige evaporated instantly. He became the first of many enemies I would make throughout my life, simply by virtue of having exposed their weakness.