The Somnambulist's Dreams

by Lars Jerlach

  He walked over to the window.

  The light had changed considerably during the last hour. The darkness was less impenetrable and the stars in the sky had lost some of their candescence.

  On the horizon the sky was an almost translucent sapphire blue.

  He could just about make out a faint hint of copper against the darker surface of the sea.

  Another dawn was approaching.

  He checked his watch. Twenty two minutes.

  He went back to the table to pick up the bowl and lamp.

  He walked downstairs to the galley, where he deposited the bowl and spoon in the sink and placed the lamp on the edge of the stove.

  He grabbed the kettle, removed the lid and poured a couple of cups of water from the bucket inside. He replaced the lid and put the kettle back on the stove. He dug out the stones from his pockets and placed them on the stovetop next to the other two.

  He fetched the teapot, poured the cold tea into the sink and removed most of the old leaves before placing the teapot on the end of the stove next to the stones.

  He thought about Soule’s dream.

  There was no question in his mind that the white bull was the same as the one from the first dream. He had even flipped back through the pages to reread the description.

  He wondered how the bull had ended up on the floor in the taxidermist studio and how long it had been there.

  The taxidermist had obviously died some time before Soule’s visit.

  However, considering the amount of work on display in his studio, he couldn’t have been dead long.

  Although, there was always the possibility that the studio was used as storage space. That would certainly explain the amount of animals on display.

  He also wondered if the taxidermist knew that he was a phantasm or whether he believed himself to be alive.

  Judging from Soule’s account, it seemed as if the taxidermist had no idea that he was in a different realm. During his conversation with Soule, he had given no indications at all that he believed himself to be dead. As a matter of fact, right up to the point where the door opened, it had seemed like he was very much alive.

  He checked his watch. Fourteen minutes.

  He walked over to fetch the bag of tea leaves from the cupboard. “Damn it.”

  He had dropped the bag on the floor. A small amount of tea spilled out forming a small brown fanlike pattern against the grey background.

  He bent down to scoop at the leaves with his hand.

  He picked up the loose leaves off the floor and dumped them in the teapot, closed the bag and put it back on the shelf.

  It seemed obvious from the dreams that Soule was somehow bestowed a role as either messenger or recipient and that the dreams were often occurring in the vicinity of death. But now, when he thought about it, he couldn’t really be sure that was indeed the case.

  While it was true that the first couple of dreams had doubtlessly involved death as a crucial element in the narrative, most of the dreams had not.

  Perhaps it was fair to say that death, although central to all things in life, was merely a peripheral ingredient in majority of the visions and that he had put too much emphasis on the fact that the black raven was a symbolic harbinger of death and that he therefore had positioned the white raven as a messenger of life.

  However, he couldn’t be sure that the roles to which he had unintentionally consigned the ravens, were in truth accurate. Though he found it difficult to think of anything offhand, it was still conceivable that the meaning behind their colouration could be something else entirely.

  He picked up the kettle and poured the boiling water into the teapot and a little in the cup. He placed the kettle on the end of the stove and picked up the two hot stones and slipped them into his pockets.

  He grabbed the cup, teapot and lamp and walked back upstairs. He deposited the items on the table and walked over to the window.

  Everything was quiet.

  A faint whitish golden band was shimmering above the horizon, dividing the sea and the sky into two separate elements. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the rays of the sun would break the liquid palisade and brighten the infinite expanse once again. He often wondered what might someday be discovered out there beyond what could be observed.

  Endlessness perhaps.

  He checked the time.

  Four minutes.

  He walked over to the mechanism and began the last rewind of the night.

  He counted the revolutions and felt for the point of tension.

  When he was assured of the weights’ position, he stopped and walked back to the table. He pulled out the chair and sat down.

  He lifted the teapot of the table and moved it in small circular motions to agitate the leaves. After a while he put the teapot back on the table, waited a bit and slowly poured some of the tea into the cup.

  He then unrolled his scarf and wrapped it around the teapot.

  He pulled his jacket tight against his neck and fished out his pipe from his pocket and smacked the opening against the palm of his hand. Small lumps of blackened tobacco mixed with ashes fell to the floor by his feet.

  He ran his boot over them, leaving a grey and black smeared striation behind.

  As he stuffed his pipe with fresh tobacco, he looked at the diminished pile on the right. Gauging from the thinness of the pile, he reckoned that Soule’s dreams were coming to an end.

  He rummaged in his pockets and found the book of matches.

  When he enkindled the tobacco, he generated a substantial cloud of smoke around him.

  He looked at the swirling haze drifting in

  the air and breathed in the luscious aroma.

  He stuck the pouch back in his pocket and reached out to pick up another sheet of paper from the pile.

  The Cell

  The room was probably no more than six by eight feet and everything in it was a feculent shade of white.

  The heavy steel door, with a small hatch at eye height and a narrow low hatch close to the floor, had no handle and the small rectangular window opposite was barred and had a substantial wire mesh placed in front of the thick glass.

  The pane of glass on the low right hand side was missing and I could feel the cold air on my face as it the blew unhindered into the room.

  Gauging from the colour of the sky and the light coming through the window, it was either early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

  I was sitting on a white metal stool next to narrow rectangular white metal table. Across from me a metal bed frame, with an insufficient grimy looking mattress and an almost diaphanous wool blanket, was pushed up against the wall.

  The table and the bed were bolted to the grey stone floor.

  I was wearing a rough-hewn white shirt and a pair of oversized trousers that was fastened at my waist with a large button.

  My feet were covered by a pair of mottled grey woolen socks, that had been darned so many times, it was difficult to tell if any part of them was still the original wool.

  At first glance my hands looked like my own and when I ran my fingers over the contours of my face and through my hair everything seemed familiar. My beard was perhaps a little longer than usual and my hair somewhat unruly, but otherwise It seemed like I was indeed inhabiting my own body.

  I looked around the room.

  Above me the dirtied ceiling was peeling and the paint had been forcibly removed from the furniture to such a degree that their surfaces looked mosaic.

  The walls had been painted numerous times, yet the paint couldn’t hide the myriad of declarations that had been clawed or scraped into the surface.

  Except from the sparse furnishings, there was very little else in the room.

  In the corner behind the table, a steel bucket, with a severely dented flat lid, emitted a foul smell. A couple of sheets of paper lay in a small pile on the tabletop next to a small inkwell, a blotter and a much used quill with a flayed tip.

  I picked up one of the sh
eets. The paper was of reasonably good quality.

  I held it up against the fading light. It was white with no distinguishing marks and all the sheets were blank.

  I looked back at the walls.

  From the ground to about two feet from the ceiling, the walls exhibited a phenomenal amount of scribbles, drawings and other proclamations. They were like a multilayered tapestry that, except where it was interrupted by the window, ran the circumference of the room.

  The inscriptions varied in scale, depth and eloquence and had obviously been produced over a considerable amount of time. Not even the heavy metal door had been immune to the graphic onslaught and had had quite a few obscenities haphazardly scratched into both its frame and surface.

  I got up from the stool, took two small steps forward and leant down to run my hand over the wall above the bed, where the inscriptions were most prevalent.

  Besides the many obscenities, both written and clearly delineated in drawings, one of the more intelligible inscriptions caught my eye.

  Although small, the lettering was concise and rather elegant. It looked like it could have been scraped into the wall with a needle or a very thin nail and the person who wrote it had obviously endeavoured to arrange the sentences so that they aligned.

  Dying is to be regarded as the real aim of life

  The moment we die everything is decided

  All else is but a futile exercise

  I reckoned from the lack of paint that the text had been inscribed fairly recently and I looked around the room to see if I could find another example of the handwriting.

  After searching a while through the expressive morass, I located another text in the same hand high above the table.

  nothing ever comes into being

  or ceases to be

  I stepped off the table and sat down on the stool.

  Both inscriptions seemed familiar and I was convinced I had either heard or read them somewhere quite recent.

  However, no matter how hard I ransacked my brain, I could not recall where that might have been.

  The harder I tried to remember, the more elusive it became.

  Instead I walked over to the window to look out.

  The disappearing light indicated that it was nearing evening. A dense fog was obscuring my view and I couldn’t see much of the surrounding landscape. A wide winding graveled path leading away from the building cut through the long grass, and in the middle distance a group of tall cypresses were breaking through the fog.

  In the developing darkness, they looked like finger tips reaching up from under a surface, desperately searching for a stronghold.

  I walked back and sat on the bed. I could feel the cold hard metal on my buttocks through the meager fabric of the mattress.

  I wondered what I was doing in this cell. Had I been imprisoned for committing a crime? Judging from the austere surroundings and the lack of company, the crime must have been serious. Was I a murderer? If so, who’s life had I taken?

  Or could it be that this wasn’t a prison at all, but some kind of sanatorium? If that held true, why was I here?

  I stood up and walked over to the door.

  I ran my finger on the inside of the small hatch, before kneeling down to examine the second hatch that was positioned low to the ground. It was narrow and wide.

  I guessed that was where the food tray would appear. I was curious when I was going to get fed and who was bringing the food.

  I got up and walked back to the stool and sat down.

  The room was soundless.

  All I could hear was my own breathing and the unreasonably loud screeching of the legs of the metal stool scraping against the stone floor. I pressed my ear against the wall. I heard nothing but the sound of rushing blood.

  I sat back down on the stool, picked up one of the sheets of paper, placed it on the table in front of me and reached for the quill. I turned the quill between my fingers and opened the inkwell. I thought about dipping the quill but the light was rapidly fading, draining the colour from the already anemic room.

  Instead I replaced the quill and got up from the stool.

  I rubbed the side of my neck as I walked back to the window and looked into the approaching night.

  By now the fog had enveloped almost everything and it was difficult to distinguish anything other than the grey floating mass.

  I stood by the window, looking into the swirling mist, when I heard a metallic clang behind me. I turned around and saw a tray had been pushed through the low hatch.

  I walked over to the door, picked up the tray and carried it the short distance to the table, where I put it down.

  Besides a bowl of drab gruel and a cup of water there were a number of unexpected items on the tray. A white wax candle was lying next to a box of matches and a small, already stuffed, pipe.

  I picked up the pipe and sniffed at the tobacco. The scent was sweet and aromatic. I thought it was familiar, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t recall where I had encountered it before.

  I put the pipe down and picked up the candle and the box of matches. There were two matches left in the box.

  I removed one and stroked the head against the rough strip of paper on the side of the box. A bright flame rose like a small orange flower from the end of the stick. I held it to the wick of the candle and let the melting wax drip down on the table next to the pile of papers. There were remnants of wax already on the table and each of the new drips conjoined effortlessly to build a small semi fluid mound. I waited until the mass turned from clear to opaque, before turning over the candle to press it down in the center of the mound.

  The melted wax rose like miniature waves around the base.

  I held the candle in place until I was certain the wax had cooled.

  I let go of the candle and picked up the bowl of gruel. It was warm and the smell of oats and pork fat rose from its content. Although it was difficult to determine the other ingredients, the taste wasn’t entirely unpleasant and I slowly chewed at the salty mushy lumps until the bowl was empty.

  I put the bowl back on the tray, picked up the battered metal cup and lifted it to my lips. The crystal clear water was cold and delicious. I swallowed a couple of mouthfuls before carefully replacing the cup.

  I rubbed my hands together and was about to pick up the pipe, when I heard a murmurous noise coming from the window. It sounded like the rustle of leaves in the wind.

  I stood up, walked over to the window and peeked out through the glassless opening. A raven was sitting on the windowsill outside.

  Its head was slightly turned and an obsidian eye was staring at me from the other side of the mesh.

  The raven’s gaze was remarkably hypnotic and I had the impression that I was looking into a tiny bottomless well.

  The raven broke the spell by ruffling its back feathers and shaking its tail.

  “Good Evening Enoch Soule.” It said. “How are you doing?” Its voice was placid and mellifluent.

  I was startled by the bird’s unexpected action and automatically took a step back. The raven didn’t seem at all surprised by my behaviour.

  Rather it kept looking at me while I attempted to collect myself.

  “You can talk?” I said, when I had finally composed myself.

  “You are very observant,” the raven replied.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked.

  “You told me.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t recall us meeting.” I moved closer to the window.

  “Yes, I am sure,” the raven said. “In fact you have told me your name for as long as I can remember.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I just said. You have told me your name for as long as I can remember.”

  “When did we first meet?” I asked, looking at the bird, which was busy cleaning a feather on its left wing.

  “We have always met like this,” the raven replied.

  It looked at me with the
inky eye.

  “That makes no sense,” I said. “That makes no sense at all. That would indicate that there’s no before or after your arrival here. However, you just arrived, so you must have been somewhere else before you came.”

  “I have always been here, as have you.,” the raven said. “There is no before or after. We are always here.”

  “Listen,” I said, shaking my head, “when I looked out the window earlier this evening, I didn’t see you. Ergo, you must have been somewhere else.”

  “Just because you didn’t see me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t there. I was there, but you didn’t see me. Now you see me and I am here.”

  “That’s nonsensical,” I said. “Your statement is absurd. The simple truth is: I would have seen you, if you were there. However, you weren’t there, so I didn’t see you.” I paused and looked through the mesh. “Unless you can make yourself invisible that is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the raven said. “Of course I can’t make myself invisible, that would be fantastical.

  I am as real as anything I have told you.” It jumped on the windowsill and looked at me.

  I looked into the raven’s left eye. It was a radiant icy blue.

  In the darkness it seemed singularly alive, as if something phosphorous emanated from within. I gazed into the brightness, until the bird turned its head and the fulgid light dissipated.

  I ignored the raven’s last statement.

  “Do you know what I am doing here?” I asked instead.

  “This is what you are doing here,” the raven answered without mordancy.

  “Besides this,” I said, “do you have any idea why I am here?”

  “You are here for the same reason I am here.”

  “Could you then please tell me what you are doing here?” I asked.

  “I thought you might be able to tell me that, “the raven answered paradoxically.