by Lars Jerlach
He found the thought of that impossible.
There was no question, that Soule was imagining all of these events and yet he continued to describe them as if he believed that they were not the fabrication of a miasmatic mind, but somehow connected to reality.
He wondered if it was possible that Soule’s dreams were correlated to the real world.
“I must be mad as a March hare to even consider that,” he said, shaking his head in puzzlement.
He cleaned out the old tea leaves and washed the cup in the cold water in the sink and put it on the end of the stove.
The water began to boil and he poured a little into the cold teapot and cup and swirled it about, before making the second pot of tea of the night.
He picked up two of the stones and put them in his pockets. He then adeptly lifted the teapot and the cup with one hand, and the lamp with the other, and walked back upstairs.
He put the teapot and the cup down on the table, wrapped the teapot in the scarf and pulled his coat close around his neck. He looked at the watch and closed the cover. There was a dull metallic click as the lock connected. Six minutes.
He stood by the window and looked at the sea, while gently clutching the warm stones in his pockets.
He wound up the mechanism and slowly scanned the horizon before he walked over to the table and sat down.
He lifted the teapot and gently swirled the liquid around inside, before setting the pot back down on the table and covering it with his scarf.
He rubbed his hands together and picked up a sheet of paper from the diminishing pile on the right.
The Well
I was sitting with my back up against the wall in the bottom of a well. The ground around me was dry and sandy. I reached out and picked up a handful of sand. As it flowed between the gaps in my fingers, it created a small curtain of particles in the air. I brushed my hand against my trouser leg and looked up at the opening above me.
All I could see was a cloudy ceiling.
I looked at the lead grey stones and wondered what I was doing in an old well.
I stood up.
I was wearing a pair of sand coloured trousers, a light blue short sleeved shirt with white semi opaque buttons and a pair of brown sandals on my wide bare feet.
There was a dark brown leather bag on the floor next to me.
When I looked inside, I found a small black box filled with unfamiliar food and a canteen with a hot liquid that had a salty and tangy aroma. I screwed the lid back on the canteen and put it back in the bag.
I stretched my arms and turned around, touching the walls around me.
The well was nearly symmetrical. It was obvious that it had been constructed by somebody who knew what they were doing. I lay down on the ground.
When the top of my head was pressed up against the wall, I couldn’t fully stretch my legs.
The clouds moved slowly in the sky above.
I asked myself if somebody might have put me in the well, but I couldn’t imagine why. Also, there was a small rope ladder hanging down from the top, so if somebody had put me in here, they had not meant for me to be imprisoned.
It was a much more likely scenario, that I had climbed into the well on my own.
I thought that I might have been looking for something and began to scoop up handfuls of sand from the ground searching the granules.
After a while I gave up the search, having found nothing but sand.
Instead I thought about some of the reasons I might have crawled into the well. Perhaps I was hiding from somebody.
When I sat back down, I felt something in my back pocket. I reached behind me and removed a small black notebook with rounded corners. It had no distinguishing marks on the front or the back.
I opened it.
It was filled with characters that looked Japanese. There were hundreds of them, all drawn neatly in tight rows. I flipped through the pages, but nothing was written in a language I could understand.
The only familiar thing I found was a small drawing of a sitting cat in the margin of one of the pages.
When I moved it close to my eyes, it looked like the cat had the markings of a bird on its side.
Perhaps the cat might have something to do with me being in the well. If the cat was mine, it was possible that I had come down here to look for it.
I looked around. There were no signs of a cat.
I leant back against the rounded wall and looked up.
I was staring at the clouds slowly drifting by, when I noticed something moving at the top of the well.
I put my hand over my eyes to shield them against the light.
It looked like a bird was sitting on the edge of the well.
It turned its head from one side to the other, peering down at me inquisitively .
A short while later, it spread its wings and silently dove down the well shaft. It stayed clear of the walls and landed softly on the leather bag.
When it had been sitting at the top of the well, I thought the bird was a seagull. Now that it was only a couple of feet away from me, I realized it was a white raven. It shifted its position on the bag and looked at me with its head at a slight angle.
I noticed it had different coloured eyes.
Its left eye was the boundless colour of obsidian and its right was a lustrous crystalline blue.
As it stared at me, first with one, then the other eye, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being assessed.
The raven sat for a while inspecting me, as if it was deliberating its next step.
“Who are you?” it asked in a smooth low voice.
I was completely taken aback. I wondered if I had imagined the sound, as I stared at the bird dumbfounded.
“Who are you?” it asked again. “You are obviously not Toru, so you must be someone else. So, the question is: Who are you?” It shifted its position on the bag.
“My name is Enoch Soule.” I replied, after I had recovered my senses. “I am a lighthouse keeper.”
“This is an ironic place for a lighthouse keeper to be, don’t you think?” The raven looked around. “Are you sure you are telling the truth?”
“Yes, I’m telling the truth.”
“Just checking,” the raven said, jumping on the bag.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am a raven.”
“I can see that,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Nevermore,” it answered, and looked at me with its obsidian eye.
It must have noticed my obvious skepticism.
“Only joking,” it said, “my real name is Tom.”
“ Tom? That’s a peculiar name for a raven,” I said. “Who named you?”
“That has always been my name.” The raven ruffled its back feathers.
“What are you doing here?” It asked.
“I was thinking about that before you arrived,” I replied. “I might be in here looking for something, but the truth is, I don’t really know. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“When I first met Toru, he told me he was looking for his cat,” the raven said, “However, he enjoys being down here. I believe it’s his way of escaping the drudgery of reality and at the same time creating a bit of
mystery in his life. He’s been coming here for quite some time you know.” He looked at me with his icy blue eye.
“I don't know anyone named Toru,” I said. “Who is he?”
“He’s the guy looking for the cat.”
“Yes, you said that already, but who is he?” I asked.
“Just a guy looking for a cat, that he seems to be unable to find,” the raven replied.
“What is his profession?” I asked. “He must be doing something with his life, besides coming down this well?”
“At this moment it’s of no importance what else he is doing in his life,” the raven said. “The important thing is that he’s still looking for his cat.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, when I realized I w
asn't getting closer to the identity of Toru.
“Having a conversation with you,” it answered. “Although, sometimes I merely listen.”
“What do you listen to?”
“I’ll give you an example,” it said. ”Not too long ago, I was sitting in the crown of a large tree. On the ground below me, a man and a bull were talking about the meaning and interpretations of words. At first, I wasn’t paying any particular attention to their conversation, but then a woman arrived. She asked the man why he was there, and he explained to her that the bull was dying. I could sense that she became overwhelmed with a profound sadness and as she touched the bull with her hand, everything dissolved into nothingness.” The raven looked at me inquisitively.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” it said , “but, I suspect I was there because I needed to listen to their conversation. Also, the man talking to the bull was not who he seemed to be.”
“Who was he?” I asked.
“He said his name was the same as yours. Enoch Soule.”
“That's preposterous,” I said. “I have never had a conversation with a bull about the interpretations of words. That's pure nonsense.”
“So you've had conversations with bulls about other things?” The raven cocked its head.
“That's not what I said,” I replied, “I said the notion of having a conversation with a bull was absurd.”
“Yet, here you are, sitting in the bottom of a well having a discussion about the absurdity of that with me, while inhabiting the body of another person.”
The raven shook its head and jumped around on the bag.
“Do you have a particular liking for the paradoxical?”
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked. “Is this an attempt to question my sanity?” I rubbed my chin, which was clean shaven and remarkably smooth.
“I don't know,” it said, “are you sane?”
“Until your arrival here, I would have given you a resounding yes. However, now I'm not so sure.” I scratched the side of my head, noticing the hair was a bit shorter and coarser than my own.
“Not to change the subject,” said the raven, “but I'm hungry. What's for lunch?”
It jumped down from the bag.
I reached over, picked up the bag and took out the small black box and the canteen. I placed the steel canteen on the ground beside me.
I opened the lid of the box to reveal the strange looking food. There were three compartments in the bottom of the box. In the larger compartment were eight small parcels of rice, each with a piece of pink raw fish on top.
They all had a thin dark band of an unusual material wrapped around them.
In one of the small compartments, there were some peculiar looking stringy green vegetables and some thinly cut disks, that looked like tiny onions. A couple of small white packets were lying in the bottom of the last compartment.
“Mmmm,” said the raven, “Toru knows I love Nigiri sushi.” It jumped over and grabbed one of the small parcels from the box. It held the parcel in its beak for a moment, then he threw it into the air, much like a seagull would a fish, caught it again and swallowed it in one bite.
The raven looked at me.
“You can pour some of the miso into the lid of the thermos,” it indicated with its head the canteen next to me. “But please swirl it first,” it added, when I picked up the canteen to unscrew the lid.
“It’s important that the miso is homogeneous when you drink it.” It watched as I poured some of the liquid into the lid of the canteen.
It smelled faintly of the sea.
I lifted the lid to my mouth and sipped at the edge. The taste was far from unpleasant. It wasn’t like tea at all; it tasted salty and sweet with a somewhat earthy aftertaste.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s miso soup,” answered the raven. “Toru told me it’s made from fermented soybeans. It’s good isn’t it?” I tilted the cup slightly as the raven put its beak in the lid to drink.
“You should try the Nigiri and the pickles as well,” it said, grabbing another parcel of rice and fish, that it flung into the air and expertly caught, before swallowing.
“You can open one of these and dip the Nigiri in soy sauce if you want.”
The raven said and picked up one of the small white packets.
I ripped the edge and a thin inky liquid poured into one of the smaller sections of the box. I dipped my finger and tasted it. It was not dissimilar to the miso soup, but much saltier.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the small dark band around the parcel.
“Nori, It’s dried seaweed. It doesn’t really taste of much, but I suppose it adds texture.”
I picked up one of the pieces of Nigiri and dipped it in the soy sauce before putting the entire piece in my mouth.
The raw fish was soft with a delicate fishy taste and the ball of rice was somewhat viscous, but the combined taste was delightful.
I found myself quite enjoying this unexpected lunch.
“Let’s talk about why you are here,” the raven said, looking at me from his perch.
“I already told you, I don’t know,” I said, chewing on some of the pickled seaweed.
“Don’t you find it particularly idiosyncratic that you, as the keeper of a lighthouse, are sitting at the bottom of a well? Surely you must have asked yourself why, of all the places in the world, you have ended up here.” The raven gazed at me with its obsidian eye.
“Yes, of course I have. I just can’t come up with a possible explanation. As I said earlier, perhaps I am in here searching for something. Although, I’m still not sure what that might be.” I looked at the raven, who turned its head and stared at me with its sapphire blue eye.
“Why do you think I’m here?” I asked. “You seem to be well informed as to my alleged whereabouts.”
“I can’t tell you why you are present. You are the only one who can do that. I can however tell you that you are present.” It spread its wings and flapped them lightly in the stale air.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. “That I’m here?”
“Yes,” it said “that’s exactly what it means. That you are here.”
“But why?” I asked.
“That’s what I just asked you.”
“But I don’t know why I’m here,” I said, irritated. “Or indeed why I would have been anywhere else you might have encountered me.”
“I didn’t say I encountered you. I merely said that I overheard somebody saying he was Enoch Soule.” The raven looked at me quizzically.
I stared back.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am Tom,” it replied.
“Yes, you said so, but what is your purpose? Why are you here?” I asked.
“I am here talking to you.”
“Why? What is it that you want to talk to me about?”
“Whatever you want to talk about,” it said.
“I want to talk about why you are here.”
“I am here because you are present,” it answered.
“That doesn’t explain anything,” I said. “You said you come here to visit Toru. He is not here, I am. Saying that you are here, because I am present is erroneous.”
“It is not,” said the raven. “You believe you are here because you are searching for something. I am here to assist you.”
“How can you assist me, if I don’t know what I am looking for?” “Hopefully I’m not the first to tell you this: Nothing is ever what it seems. Perhaps you have been asking yourself a sophistical question from the beginning. Maybe it is not about what you are searching for, but what you have already found.”
“That’s merely another gelastic statement, It doesn’t prove or disprove anything.”
“It proves that you are present in this well and that you have indeed found something.” The raven ruffled its feathers.
“That’s a feeble argument,” I said. “Even though
I don’t know what I am looking for, I would always find something.”
“Exactly,” it said, pulling at a primary wing feather with its beak.
For a while we were sitting in silence.
The raven kept pruning its feathers.
I looked at the clouds above. They were still moving slowly across the sky.
“Can I ask you a question?” said the raven.
“Of course,” I replied.
“Where do you think you are?”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “Where do you think I am?”
“I can’t tell you more than you already know, but I can show you something.” The raven jumped down on the ground and used its claw to draw a circle in the sand. It was about half a foot across and remarkably symmetrical.
“It’s a circle,” I said.
“Yes it is,” it replied.
“Is that supposed to tell me something? It’s a circle drawn in the sand of a dry well.”
“That’s a matter of perspective.” The raven looked at me with his melanoid eye.
I stared back at it.
I noticed that the iris was the colour of dark wet clay and the pupil was the colour of onyx. Where they connected, I could just make out a minuscule golden circle.
As I gazed at it, the pupil expanded. I thought I caught a glimpse of tiny pinpricks of lights inside. As I leant closer, the pupil expanded even further and I had the sensation that the ground and the wall of the well disintegrated and began to move away from me.
The raven disappeared and I was suspended in an illimitable space, surrounded by a profusion of stars and cloud formations in colours I could have never imagined. My hands left a trail of atomic particles behind, when I moved them to open the visor on my helmet.
When I woke up, I was sitting with my back against the pantry in the galley. I was wearing my pajamas, and my bag and my logbook were lying on the floor next to me. I was holding a half-eaten piece of kipper in my left hand and I had a salty fishy taste in my mouth.
I picked up my log and flipped through the pages. On the second to last page, I found a drawing of a small cat in the margin. It was sitting down and had the outline of a bird marked on its side.
As I have already stated, it is impossible for me to decode the narrative of these dreams. However, it must suffice to mention, that my latest dream is connected to the other events. Why? I do not know.