All I Did Was Shoot My Man

12

Katrina was still snoring so I settled in on the cot in my office. Between the buffers of the traffic from the street and a solid oak door I was able to drift off; not that sleep was any succor.

Freud says that dreams use the content of the past day or so to chum the depths of a timeless unconscious. That’s what my father taught me when I was eleven years old, wishing that I could go to a normal school. I wanted to learn about cowboys and steam engine trains, spacemen and naked women — all the things that I was sure other little kids were learning.

In the dream that night my father was lecturing about guilt.

He was wearing a white suit and a brown T-shirt. He was old, but because he was sitting behind an ivory-colored desk I couldn’t tell if he was infirm or not.

“A truly guilty man is like a maniac,” he was saying (maybe to me). “He doesn’t know his disposition because he believes in a set of rules that defy the beliefs of the worker.

“The worker deals in reality and rules. She cannot afford insanity or feel guilt because she is the law and the foundation upon which the law is based.

“You, Leonid,” he said, shifting his gaze in such a way that I was the only subject in the world. “You are both insane and guilty of terrible acts performed in the haze of your madness. You don’t know it. You don’t realize or even remember the crimes you have committed. You believe in the lies of the despot and have therefore sentenced yourself to the ultimate punishment.”

This pronouncement tore at my heart. I wanted to speak up, to deny the accusations leveled by my judge, my father. I tried to speak but my voice was gone. I tried to stand but found that I had no legs. My arms ended in stumps. And though I racked my brain I couldn’t recall the good things that I’d done.

“You are the living dead,” someone said.

I wanted to cry but I had neither breath nor eyes.

I wanted to wake up but instead I fell into a dark cavern of pitiless sleep.

If a dead man could shake off that ultimate repose, he would have felt like I did with the sun lancing painfully into my eyes that morning. My body was too heavy to lift, the air so thick that breathing felt liquid, viscous. The thought that I was experiencing a heart attack went through my mind and I sat bolt upright, then laughed.

“A dead man scared to life,” I muttered, and smiled again.

Katrina was on her back in the bed, fully clothed. Her eyes might have been open.

“You up?” I asked.

“What happened?” She tried to rise on her left arm, but the elbow slipped out from under her and she fell back on the pillow.

I turned to her and held out my hands.

Pulling her to an upright position, I smiled at the similarities between us that morning.

“Well?” she said.

“Dimitri moved to his new place and you passed out.”

“Did I make a fool of myself?” She covered her face with her hands.

“Mothers get a dispensation when it comes to seeing their firstborn go out into the world.”

She put down her hands and gazed right through me. At that moment she looked every one of her fifty-three years.

“That woman is no good for him,” she said.

“She’s a piece’a work,” I agreed, “that’s for sure. But D’s got to find it out on his own. He’s never had a woman before. And you know how men are.”

“Don’t you care?”

“What do you want me to do, Katrina? Try and break his spirit? Make him into a child rather than letting him become a man?”

“She could get him killed. You know that.”

“He knows it too.”

She let go of my hands and turned away.

I waited a moment and then went to take my cold shower.

An hour later I was leaving the house. Katrina didn’t come out to say goodbye.