The Rules of Dreaming

by Hartman, Bruce

  And she proceeded to tell me the most extraordinary story about her girlhood in the west of Ireland, a subject she’d carefully avoided in all our previous sessions. I learned for the first time about the younger brother who died after falling onto some rocks and the sanctimonious priest who blamed her for not accepting the Devil as the agent of his death. For that sin she was expelled from school and sent to London to live with an aunt. She was fourteen.

  “I don’t understand why they sent you to London,” I said. “So far away. Why didn’t you just go home?”

  “They didn’t want me at home. They knew that I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Knew that my father did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed my brother.”

  I kept a poker face. “Your father killed your brother?”

  “He beat him for every infraction. He beat me too, but not as badly because I was a girl and I was away at school. But Sean was only ten and when Father was drunk he used to slap him and push him around and I know as well as I know my own name that he pushed him or pummeled him off that cliff and down onto those jagged rocks. That’s why they wouldn’t let anyone see the body, there were marks on him and bruises that were already there when he died—doctors can tell that, can’t they?—and it would have proven that Sean was being beaten and that he was pushed or chased or maybe he just jumped off out of desperation.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I know it because I was sitting next to my father at the funeral and I could smell it on him, and on my mother as well.”

  “The alcohol?”

  “No. The guilt.”

  “What does guilt smell like?”

  “It smells like guilt. And I know what guilt smells like because I’ve plenty of my own. Don’t you see? I should have helped him. I should have protected him. I knew it was going to happen and I did nothing to stop it.”

  She lowered her face and started to cry, the first time she had shed any tears in our many therapy sessions. The crying continued for several minutes, and I made no attempt to stop it or comment on it. When she seemed almost done I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose.

  “Why haven’t you told me about this sooner, Nicole?”

  She raised her eyes blankly, aloof from her own emotions. “It has no relevance to my present life.”

  “It seems that it does, or you wouldn’t be so upset.”

  She blew her nose again and smiled. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “Do you believe in the Devil now?”

  “I don’t think of it as the Devil. That’s not my word for it. But I do believe in... something evil.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s not something out of Dante or Milton or even Stephen King. It’s not ‘out there’ somewhere. It’s inside us—Dr. Palmer’s right about that. But it’s not a superstition. It’s real.”

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head, as if to deny that she could answer my question. “If you think evil exists only in your mind, it can take you over in a way that couldn’t have happened to St. Anthony, who kept it outside of himself. Because when it gets inside you it doesn’t let go. It can take over your consciousness and direct your actions and it can pass from one mind to another.”

  “How can it do that?”

  “Through images, ideas, symbols. It can move from one mind to another and be passed forward through the generations along with language and literature and art. It can take over a person’s life.”

  I had listened to Nicole with growing fascination. Her mode of expression was unique, reflecting her unusual background and verbal abilities, but the content of what she said was easily recognizable as a variation on one of the standard fantasies of deeply troubled patients: evil forces at large in the world, communicating magically from one mind to another, directing their words and actions. “This evil force,” I asked her, “has it taken over your life?”

  “No,” she said, staring back at me with eyes that looked as tormented as St. Anthony’s. “But I’m afraid—”

  “You’re afraid of what?”

  “I’m afraid it’s taking over yours.”

  * * *

  Dubin was now spending every night with Nicole. At about two o’clock in the morning, lying hopelessly awake in his bed, he would finally admit to himself that he couldn’t face another sleepless night. He would down a shot of reposado and drive the forty-five minutes to Nicole’s apartment, where he would find her, as often as not, slumped over her keyboard with little to show for a night’s work. Sometimes they would drink tea, sometimes white wine or whisky, talking and laughing and helping each other through the night, and then just before dawn—like Scheherazade, she said—she would discreetly fall silent and crawl into bed and he would lock the door behind him and drive back in a daze to his apartment. With her wild red hair and her restless green eyes, she was an intellectual street urchin, unlike any woman he’d ever known. He knew she could help him finish what he’d started.

  They still talked constantly about the letter the librarian had given her. Dubin read it and reread it every time he came to the apartment. “There’s something in here I don’t understand,” he said one night. “‘A textbook obsession’ was how Maria’s lover described how he felt. I can understand that. But what do you think he meant by ‘like Hoffmann in the Venice act?’”

  “You don’t know?” They were drinking Jameson’s that night and Nicole had fueled herself to a cheeky defiance. “You ought to read your manuscript.”

  “What manuscript?”

  “The manuscript of The Tales of Hoffmann you’re trying to sell to Peter Bartolli. Remember? That’s what you told me the first time you came here. Or was that just a ruse?”

  “Absolutely not.” Dubin gulped down the rest of his Jameson’s and rapped his empty glass down on the table. “But the manuscript isn’t mine—as a matter of fact I’ve never seen it.”

  “Well, if you ever get a chance to read it—assuming it really exists—you’ll know what our distraught lover was talking about. But I’m surprised you even have to ask. Wasn’t The Tales of Hoffmann the opera Maria Morgan was rehearsing when she died?”

  “Yes, it was—and I ought to know more about it but I don’t. What happens in the Venice act?”

  Nicole smiled at Dubin’s helplessness. “Hoffmann goes to Venice and becomes obsessed with a courtesan named Giulietta.”

  “A ‘courtesan,’” he repeated. “I’ve always wondered what a courtesan is.”

  “It’s a high-class whore.”

  “That’s what I thought. All right, what happens next?”

  “In the traditional version, Giulietta tricks Hoffmann into killing his rival Schlemiel and then sails away in a gondola to the music of the famous Barcarolle.”

  “What happens to Hoffmann?”

  “He’s left crying his heart out on the canal bank. But now we know that the traditional version was nothing but a bowdlerized afterthought. The Venice act was supposed to be the grand finale, with Hoffmann killing Giulietta and her gigolo boyfriend in an orgy of death and degradation.”

  Dubin reached for the Jameson’s and poured himself another shot. “So much for comic opera.”

  “The Tales of Hoffmann was decidedly not intended as a comic opera,” Nicole said, pulling the bottle away so he couldn’t drink any more. “But you must know that. In that manuscript you’re selling, it turns out even worse, doesn’t it?”

  In the hour just before dawn, when the night is supposed to be at its darkest, Nicole felt weighed down with alcohol and melancholy and fatigue and could think of nothing but collapsing into her bed. But Dubin had to wait, as he always did, until the first light of day before he would leave her there alone. He perched on the edge of the couch lost in thought, tapping his fingers on the boxful of books that served as her coffee table. “There’s something else I meant to tell you about,” he said suddenly.

  “What is it?” />
  “You know I’ve been over Maria Morgan’s studio with a fine-toothed comb, and I’ve compared what I found there with the inventory Frank Lynch made right after she died. There are three things in that inventory that are no longer there today—a promotional photo of Maria Morgan, a kaleidoscope, and an old fashioned phonograph record.”

  “You’ve told me that before.”

  “The question is, what happened to them?”

  “All right.” Nicole could not begin to answer any more questions. “What’s the answer?”

  “Anyone could have taken them from the studio. Susan says it didn’t used to be locked. But she also says Avery Morgan wanted the place to remain just as Maria left it. So why would just those three things disappear?”

  “The lover took them?”

  “Exactly! Avery Morgan wouldn’t have taken them, but the lover would have—because they must have some sentimental value to him. And if he went to the trouble of taking them for that reason, he probably still has them stashed away someplace.”

  Nicole stood up and stumbled toward her bedroom, hoping that the first light of dawn would light her way. “So all we have to do,” she said, “is find someone with a picture of Maria Morgan, a kaleidoscope, and a phonograph record, who also has a dog named Nero.”

  “Exactly.”

  She turned to face Dubin, hopefully to say good night. “What record was it?”

  “Piano Music of Robert Schumann, played by Alicia de Larrocha.”

  The sky suddenly lightened and Dubin stood up to leave. Nicole felt a little queasy.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

  Chapter 24

  One morning Julietta greeted me wearing a gaudy new necklace. “These are diamonds,” she said, her eyes glistening. “Eighteen carats.” She pulled back her sweater so I could get a better view of the necklace.

  “Did Gottlieb give you that?”

  “I’m not saying. An admirer like you. And if you buy me something this nice, I’ll personally come down to your room to thank you for it.”

  “Is this what Gottlieb does? He pays you for sex—”

  “Shhh!” she hushed me. “Who said anything about sex? Now get out of here and let me do my work.”

  The phone rang and she answered it, dropping into a conversation with one of her girlfriends. As she spoke she held the telephone receiver clamped under her chin so she could continue with her “work,” which consisted of filing her nails into stiletto points. I started down the hall toward my room, hoping in some foolish way that Julietta would follow me, even though it was ten o’clock in the morning. But when I turned around I saw Gottlieb lolling in front of her desk, exactly as I’d been doing a few minutes before—smiling as I’d been smiling, gesturing as I’d been gesturing, like a monstrous reflection that had finally been released from the agony of the mirrors to ape my steps. And Julietta was laughing, chatting merrily, just as she’d been doing with me a moment earlier. My fingers tightened around the knife in my pocket and my vision clouded. I ran to my room and slammed the door behind me.

  It was during our next session that I finally understood how far away Nicole was from being able to function in the real world. She took a seat across from my desk as she always did, and after a friendly greeting I sat quietly waiting for her to begin the conversation. Admittedly I was distracted by my own problems and I might have been a little less warm and forthcoming than usual.

  “God is a comedian performing for an audience that refuses to laugh,” she said solemnly.

  Neither the tone nor the content of what she said surprised me. In our last session she had cried hysterically when we talked about the death of her brother, and so I took her solemnity at face value.

  She held her stern expression as long as she could and then burst out laughing. “Rousseau said that,” she giggled. “Not me.”

  I was not amused.

  “You’re one of the people who refuses to laugh,” she teased.

  I managed a weak smile. “You think of life as a comedy?”

  “No, not a comedy, exactly. But somewhere there’s an intelligence at work—probably not God or the Devil, just some indifferent cosmic scribe writing and rewriting the book of the world in a thousand different plots and a thousand different styles. And I’m one of the very, very minor characters.”

  “The book of the world,” I nodded. Accustomed to her habit of seeing the world in literary terms, I assumed I could safely indulge her in this metaphor. I had no idea that I was following her right down the rabbit hole. “What kind of book is that? A mystery? A tragedy?”

  “True Crime. That’s what Miss Whipple would have called it.”

  “Does that imply that the entire world is based on crime?”

  “Not everything fits into that category. For example, if you asked me about what’s been going on around here lately, I’d have to classify it as Post-Modern Neo-Gothic Horror.”

  “Horror?”

  “Sure.” Reaching in her jeans pocket, she pulled out a crumpled piece of writing paper which she then ironed flat on her knee. “Would you like to hear a synopsis?”

  I suppressed a thrill of expectation mixed with dread. This was the first time she’d offered to share any of her writing with me. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “’A beautiful opera singer hangs herself on the eve of her debut at the Met. Seven years later the opera she was rehearsing—Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann—begins to take over the lives of her two schizophrenic children, the doctors who treat them and everyone else who crosses their paths, until all are enmeshed in a world of deception and delusion, of madness and ultimately of evil and death. Onto this shadowy stage steps Nicole P., a graduate student who discovers that she too has been assigned a role in the drama. What strange destiny is being worked out in their lives?’”

  She stared at me as if she expected an answer. “I don’t believe in stories taking over people’s lives,” I said.

  “You believe in madness, don’t you? What is madness but a story breaking through from the other side?”

  It was time to pull Nicole away from literary fantasy and back to her own life and emotions. “Obviously you feel very close to Hunter,” I said. “You want to help him, to save him, probably because of what happened to your brother and what you—”

  “Hunter isn’t the only character in the story,” she interrupted. “There’s Antonia, who can’t speak but could sing if her father and her doctors would let her. There’s Peter Bartolli and his otherworldly daughter who dances around the Institute like a sex-crazed wind-up doll.”

  “Let’s not go into that.”

  “And there’s you, Dr. Ned Hoffmann, who must struggle with his ill-fated loves—artiste, ingénue and courtisane—whoever they may turn out to be.”

  I rose to my feet, ready to end the session if she pursued her usual trick of turning the spotlight on me.

  “And of course there’s me.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, a little embarrassed to have reacted so abruptly. I sat back down. “And what’s your role in the story?”

  “I stumbled into all this blindly—against my will, in fact—when I was brought to the Institute in the middle of a mental breakdown that I can hardly remember. It’s obvious now that I’m here to play the role of Nicklausse, the faithful handmaiden of the other characters’ self-destruction. I know what’s going on, even if they don’t. I’m a Cassandra who can foresee what’s about to happen to them but I can’t prevent it because no one will listen to me.”

  She seemed to have finished, but her words hung in the air like a half-finished cadence, impatient for resolution. “Even if I knew who the killer was, no one would listen to me.”

  That was my last session with Nicole before I left for Venice—in fact the last time I saw her until this morning when she finally succeeded in tracking me down. We had an awkward moment when I tried to escort her out of my office.

  A few steps from the doo
r she suddenly stopped and pointed at an empty spot on the wall. “What became of the mirror that used to hang there?”

  I tried to keep her moving towards the door. “Well, that’s all the time we have for today. I’m sure that next week—”

  “It’s already happened, hasn’t it? She’s stolen your reflection.”

  I held the door open and nudged her out into the hall. “Actually, our next session won’t be for two weeks. Next week I’ll be on vacation.”

  “You’re going to Venice, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “You’re following her to Venice.”

  “Please!” I whispered. “Keep your voice down. People will think you’re crazy.”

  It was ridiculous, perhaps, but true. I was leaving for Venice on Sunday, flying Air France to Paris and then connecting to Venice on Alitalia. I had told Dr. Palmer about a psychiatric conference and I suppose that even in my own mind I imagined that my trip had a professional purpose. But I’d made a point to reserve my room at the same hotel where Gottlieb had booked his “Romantic Getaway Vacation For Two.” In the meantime my headaches and nightmares grew more frequent and intense. Every night I had the same dream: a woman hanging from the ceiling, her hands motionless at her side. I touch her and she sways slightly, rotating towards me. In a mirror on the wall I can see her face: she is bloated, unrecognizable—it’s not Mrs. Paterson, but someone else. There’s another figure in the mirror, standing beside her, touching her, spinning her around. Is that me? No, I tell myself, it couldn’t be—Julietta has stolen my reflection. It must be someone else.

  * * *

  It was the last time Dubin and Nicole discussed the murders—and by this time there was no doubt in Nicole’s mind that what they were talking about were murders. Four o’clock in the morning, Nicole in a playful mood, Dubin a little vulnerable. They’d split a bottle of chardonnay and for the first time Nicole felt that their relationship could turn in an amorous direction. He wasn’t the kind of man she usually found attractive, but that was probably a good thing, given her track record with men she found attractive. A little too old and careworn, he was, and far too cynical. And the resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe would definitely count as a negative on those long winter evenings when you didn’t want your life to read like a horror story. Then there was this matter of his being some kind of criminal—a blackmailer, Frank Lynch had told her. Blackmailers generally aren’t the right sort of people, and Dubin was definitely cynical enough to be one. But what about all the kindness he’d shown her? And the sense of honor he tried so hard to conceal behind his cynicism?