Dreamer

by Daniel Quinn

  He shoved the bed away from the door and let himself out.

  Outside on the deserted street, he unhesitatingly turned right—and was immediately assailed by a doubt. It came to him in a spurious memory that, according to wilderness rescue teams, lost travelers invariably turn to the right, whatever their situation, often directly away from inhabited areas, shelter, and safety. Although his steps slowed for a few moments, he went on, deciding that the fact that lost travelers invariably turn right doesn’t mean they’re invariably wrong. Nevertheless, from that point on, Greg thought of each block he crossed as one he might have to cross again going the other way. The prospect filled him with gloom.

  Looking around, he had the feeling he was moving through a deserted city. There was no resonance of life in the buildings that stared down at him with black, empty eyes; no one moved or breathed in those thousands of dark rooms. The cars at the curb were layered in dust, as if they’d all been abandoned the same day, nosed in carelessly and left to decay. It was inconceiv-able that life and movement could return to these streets in just a few hours.

  There was a rhythm to Greg’s journey, a strange parody of the human life cycle, enacted again and again in shadow play. Each time he passed under a street lamp, a compact blob of black was born at his feet, grew long before him, developed a head, arms, and legs, and then gradually wasted away into the dark-ness ahead. He came to think of it as an unfaithful companion who greeted him cheerfully enough at well-lit street corners but who cravenly slunk off in the tenebrous midblocks, where he needed its company most.

  At one corner he smiled, because it seemed to be there waiting for him: an oil stain under the street lamp. He stepped into it and imagined it locking onto his feet. Predictably, it began hustling before him, growing more recognizable as a human form with each step. As it stretched out, its head already melting into the gloom, Greg decided he would keep an eye on it and catch it in the act of slipping away, perhaps darting upstairs to the doorway just ahead. His steps faltered and his mouth went suddenly dry. In the shadow of that doorway he saw a deeper shadow, the profile of a human figure, unmoving. His gait wobbled as he tried to think of what to do. Stop? Turn back? Cross the street? Any of these would make it obvious that he’d seen the figure in the doorway and wanted to avoid him. His legs were carrying him toward a crisis that every city dweller knows in imagination if not from experience: the encounter with violence, perhaps with insane malice.

  Greg’s brain seemed frozen, but his feet were still moving. See nothing, keep going, he told himself. Look confident, purposeful.

  He was abreast of the doorway now, and, in spite of his commands, his legs were rubbery and his head felt as if it were going to topple off his neck. But he kept going, fighting with every step the urge to break into a run. Don’t run, he told himself. To run is to proclaim your fear, is to provoke the attack. The safety of the next street lamp lay a hundred yards ahead. Two hundred paces at most. After twenty, the muscles in his back ceased twitching. After fifty, he permitted himself a sigh of relief. At one hundred, he thought, it will be safe to assume that—

  Greg heard another set of footsteps spring to life on the sidewalk, and he thought, Oh God.

  His body carried on as he began to live through his ears alone, listening compulsively to the quality of the footsteps behind him. Were they hostile? Surely not. Weren’t they just stroller’s footsteps, very like his own? Perhaps they belonged to someone who was simply walking in the same direction. Were they hurrying? No, they seemed measured exactly against his own. Wait: just then they seemed to hurry for a bit, for just a few paces. Like someone trying to catch up unobtrusively.

  As Greg walked into the protective cone of light of the street lamp at the corner, he felt it gladly on his face, like sun-shine. For a few moments his body, operating on its own in-stincts, slowed its pace as if reluctant to rush through this zone of safety. But the footsteps behind him came on as before, and he wondered what he was going to do. Stop here and confront his follower? Unthinkable. He pushed himself forward across the street and saw with a sinking heart how soon he’d be walking out of this oasis of light and how far away the next one was.

  As he was engulfed in darkness, Greg felt a surge of hope. The footsteps behind him fell silent, and he thought, He’s turned the corner. He wasn’t following me after all. But a moment later they resumed as before; they’d only been lost briefly in the sound-absorbing asphalt of the street.

  He stifled a groan and went on, desperately considering his alternatives. There were several that seemed better than passive-ly waiting for the other to do whatever he planned to do, but they all meant acknowledging the follower’s menace. And that, Greg knew, you mustn’t do: the bogeyman will stay in the closet forever—but only if you pretend he isn’t there.

  In the midblock darkness the follower was closing the gap between them, was only some ten yards behind now. Greg fractionally increased his pace and looked ahead to the next street-light. Under it, at the bus stop, was a bench. He blinked, hardly daring to believe his eyes. Someone was sitting on the bench: a woman. Her head bent, her shoulders slumped, she looked lost, discouraged.

  In two, he thought, there is safety. Now he felt he could hurry more openly. He thought of calling out to her, of throwing out a lifeline of sound to her. Hello there! My name is Greg! What’s yours? But he didn’t. He concentrated on achieving the greatest possible speed without appearing to hurry.

  The woman on the bench had heard his footsteps and her head was up now. She was staring straight ahead, following the rule: See nothing, hear nothing, pretend you’re not afraid.

  Finally Greg entered the safety zone of light and felt his back muscles relax. Nothing could happen now. The woman—she looked very young to him—was still staring straight ahead, and he approached her diffidently.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “I know it’s none of my business, but there are no buses running this time of night.” She looked up at him nervously and he realized she was a startling beauty: flaming red hair and intelligent, emerald-green eyes. He went on, “This really isn’t a good neighborhood, you know.”

  She said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I’m doing here either. But I’d be glad of your company if you’re headed my way.”

  She looked around uncertainly. “Yes. All right.”

  As she got up and joined him, he wondered if he was taking her along for her protection or for his. Perhaps a little of both.

  Safety in numbers, he thought idiotically.

  He held his breath as they began to walk, listening for foot-steps other than their own, but there was nothing.

  No, not nothing. A presence. He felt that they were being followed silently.

  “Why is it so dark?” the woman asked.

  He glanced up at the sky. “No stars.”

  “So they’ve turned out the stars too,” she said mournfully.

  “I don’t know. It’ll be all right.” He leaned closer to her and whispered, “I think we’re being followed.”

  “Oh God,” she moaned.

  II

  A SINGLE TABLE IN THE LIVING ROOM served Greg both for dining and working. It was dark and hideous, with curved legs and claw feet, and he treasured it. He’d picked it up for twelve dollars at a Sheridan Road junk shop. Littered with pads of paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, and file folders, it faced a broad window that framed Greg’s favorite view in the world: Lake Shore Drive, the Outer Drive, Lincoln Park, and Lake Michigan.

  He was sitting at the table eating breakfast when he remembered the dream. As he thought about it, he took a bite of scrambled eggs and watched the lake, which was in one of its leaden, surly moods.

  Two dreams in sequence, the second extending the first? He’d never heard of such a thing. Or had he just imagined the connection between the two? No, he distinctly remembered recalling the first dream at the library, and the second was definitely a repetition of it
. He pulled a pad around and between bites wrote down the dreams, filling several sheets. When he was finished, he smiled and thought, By God, next time I’ll bring a broom and sweep out under the bed.

  He stood up, stretched leisurely, and looked around his apartment with a delight that familiarity never seemed to diminish. It was virtually one enormous, high-ceilinged room. During the twenties, when it had been new, it had undoubtedly been the living room of a ten or twelve room apartment. To attract renters during the thirties depression the management had been forced to cut all the apartments into smaller parcels, adding closet-sized bathrooms and kitchens as needed. Thus mutilated, the building survived but never prospered again, and it was thanks to its general seediness that Greg enjoyed the luxury of a twelfth floor Lake Shore Drive apartment at a rent he could almost afford. it was his one great extravagance.

  Today, Greg decided, he’d spare himself the trip to the library and spend the day writing up the best of the stories he’d collected in the last week. He cleared away the breakfast dishes and settled down at his table to work. From time to time he looked up to gaze thoughtfully at the heaving gray water outside. The lake looked like it was about to give birth to a monster.

  At four o’clock he got a call from a client asking if he was free for an assignment. With a pang of regret, he had to say he wasn’t. Twenty minutes later yet another client called to ask the same question. Greg was astounded and immensely tickled. To turn down two assignments in one afternoon was unprecedented—incredible! He thought, Wait’ll Karen hears about this! Then he remembered that Karen would not be hearing about it, and his excitement evaporated.

  With a sigh, he sat down and went back to work. He shuffled through his clippings for a while, then pushed them aside in disgust. A few minutes earlier they had all seemed delightfully absurd. Now they seemed uniformly stupid and pointless. His sense of humor gone, he was obviously finished for the day. He pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, and stared out the window. The sullen heaving of the lake matched his mood exactly.

  Maybe, he thought, he should take Mitzi to dinner. She’d get a kick out of that. Mitzi lived on the eighteenth floor in an apartment twice the size of his—alone, because she was Going Through A Divorce, an occupation that seemed to require all her attention and energy. She popped in once or twice a week to see if Greg didn’t agree that all the saints and angels of heaven would endorse whatever stand she was then taking against her brute of a stock-analyst husband and his battery of blood-sucking attorneys.

  She was his age, cute, and badly in need of reassurance. And altering their relationship by asking her out to dinner would be an idiotic mistake. He liked her, he was attracted to her physically, but . . . another Karen he didn’t need. Finally he decided to take himself to dinner. He would go to the Tango, one of the neighborhood’s more elegant restaurants. But it was far too early for that. He would walk over to the bookstore and see if he could find a thriller worth reading.

  And another evening would be gone.

  The girl with the flaming hair moaned, “Oh God,” and clutched his arm. Greg felt the strength drain out of her, and he said, “Keep walking. It’ll be all right.” But he didn’t believe it. The next streetlight, a long block away, flickered like a guttering candle, and their steps brought them no closer to it.

  The presence of the follower gliding silently behind pressed on his neck like an icy hand.

  “Look,” the girl whispered, nodding to a dimly lit store-front just ahead. An old, balding man in shirt sleeves stood in the window watching them with grave interest. Greg paused in front of him and silently mouthed the words, “Help us.”

  The old man cocked his head to one side and looked at him curiously.

  “Let us in,” Greg hissed.

  With a theatrical gesture, the old man held up a hand to silence him. Then he painstakingly rolled up his sleeves, waggled his hands to show that they were empty, reached into his pocket, and pulled out what looked like a silver dollar. He held it briefly up for their inspection, then pressed it against the glass. When he removed his hand, the coin remained in place.

  “Please,” the girl whispered. “We need help!”

  Ignoring her, the old man rolled his sleeves down and carefully buttoned them. Then he drew down a black shade that covered the entire window.

  Greg saw that the silver dollar had passed through the glass. He pulled it away and examined it. On the front was an exquisitely detailed scene in low relief: A shrouded figure was poling a boat across a murky river, oblivious of the men and women who sprawled and writhed at his feet. Just below the surface of the water Greg could see an octopus grappling with a serpent. Ahead, in rolling clouds of fog, a merman and mermaid embraced and the mermaid seemed to be weeping. A setting moon, barely visible through the mist, gazed blindly and mournfully up into the heavens.

  Greg turned the coin over and studied the legend printed there. It read:

  GOOD

  FOR ONE

  CROSSING

  III

  A NOTICE ON THE BULLETIN BOARD caught Greg’s eye as he was leaving the library the following afternoon.

  YOUR DREAMS

  What Are They Trying To Tell You?

  A lecture, with analysis of dreams

  submitted by the audience,

  by

  Agnes Tillford

  Author of “Your Dreaming Advisor”

  and “Listening to Yourself”

  The lecture was scheduled to start in half an hour in the basement hall. Greg hesitated, looked at his watch, and thought, What the hell, you’ve got nothing better to do.

  A dozen people had assembled in the lecture hall by the time Greg arrived twenty minutes later—probably, he thought uncharitably, the same dozen who assembled for slide lectures on the ruins at Chichén ltzá and readings by little-known poets—people with nothing much to do. Like me, Greg thought.

  He found a place neither conspicuously close nor conspicuously far from the front and sat down. A group of four were clustered around the lectern, and one of them leaned against it with a proprietary air: presumably Agnes Tillford, holding a pre-lecture séance. She was a short, blockish woman with cropped iron-gray hair and a cheerful, round face, and her unornamented gray suit had been cut by an expert. Unmarried, Greg judged; not a mother, possibly gay.

  A middle-aged couple entered from the back and found seats in front of Greg, and Agnes Tillford cleared her throat authoritatively.

  “Before we begin,” she said to the room at large, “I’d like to suggest that if any of you have a dream you’d like analyzed, you spend a few minutes now jotting it down.” She patted the top of the lectern. “I have paper and pencils up here if anyone needs them.” With a smile, she resumed her interrupted conversation.

  The couple in front of Greg put their heads together and after a minute of whispered conversation, the man shook his head. “Oh, go ahead,” the woman said. “I want to see what she does.”

  “Give her one of your own,” the man said without looking at her.

  “I never dream.”

  “Everyone dreams.”

  “All right, I never remember my dreams.”

  The man sighed and asked her if she had anything to write on. She said she’d get something. She went to the front of the room, burrowed through to the lectern, and returned with paper and pencil.

  Greg looked around. Three or four people were working away, brows creased in concentration.

  A few minutes later the circle of admirers around the speaker broke up and scattered into the audience, which Greg estimated to number about twenty. Ms. Tillford took her place behind the lectern and studied her notes for a few minutes, waiting for the audience to settle down. Finally, she looked up and gathered them in with her eyes.

  “Along with eating, sleeping, and procreating,” she began, “dreaming is a universal human activity. From childhood on—perhaps even from infancy on—every one of us spends part of every night dreaming, whether we know it or
not, whether we remember it or not. In fact,” she added with a smile, “it has been estimated that we spend twice as much time dreaming as in sexual activity.”

  A small nervous laugh from the audience.

  “Nevertheless—in spite of its ordinariness—dreaming remains a mysterious process to most of us. There are two reasons for this, I think. The first is that there have always been those whose interest has been served by making and keeping dreams mysterious. In ancient times, the interpretation of dreams was the special preserve of wizards, soothsayers, witches, oracles, mystics, saints, and prophets. Nowadays the interpretation of dreams is the special preserve of psychologists and psychiatrists, who would have you believe that only years of arcane study can enable one to understand this very ordinary process.

  “I’m here tonight to show you how to poach on their special preserve.”

  We smiled politely.

  “The second reason dreams seem mysterious is a little more rational. Our dreams speak to us in a strange and unfamiliar language. You might say that we can recognize all the words of this language but can’t always follow the syntax. We can recognize the family car when we see it in a dream, but what puzzles us is why it should be lying on its back in the middle of the living room floor.”

  A little more relaxed now, the audience laughed.

  “Writers of popular books on dream interpretation haven’t been very helpful in clearing up the mystery. This is because they concentrate on doing what’s easy to do—they compile lists of dream symbols. Dream of a purse? That’s a womb. Dream of a lance? That’s a phallus. Dream of a wall? That’s a problem to be overcome. Dream of a rainbow? That’s a promise. Dream of a goat? That’s a sacrifice you’ve made. And so on. This isn’t to say that these identifications are in error. It’s to say that symbols are invariably static, whereas dreams are invariably dynamic. They tell a story, and it’s in the unraveling of this story that meaning emerges—not in the identification of symbols.”