City of Lost Dreams

THIRTY-FOUR

Boris was dead.

Pollina was aware that she had been dreaming. Boris had been dead in her dream, or was he actually dead? Dead in life?

Dead in life. That could be the title of an aria, for Nico, for her opera. He was a character in it, too. A character who wanted to die.

Then it occurred to her that she herself might actually be dead.

She was awake.

She had died in her dream.

No, the first part of her dream had really been a memory. She had remembered walking to the Lobkowicz Palace with Nico. Right before Sarah had come back to Prague.

She had never walked up the Old Castle Stairs. She was surprised when Nico suggested they try this together one morning. Nico did not particularly enjoy steps any more than she did, and there were one hundred and twenty-one of them on the route. Nor did he like crowds, and the route drew crowds, because the views from it were said to be spectacular. But the stairs were lined with walls, and many of them were too high for Nicholas to see over. Between counting the steps, and managing her cane, and being around so many people, and hearing them talk, and trying to ignore the pain in her chest, and the fear, it had not been pleasant.

But Nico had said that there were too many unpleasant things in the world to escape them. He had said that she needed to find a way to manage stress, not avoid it. He had said that the world was cruel, and that nothing could change the world from being cruel. He had been angry, and she could feel his anger through his arm, which was laced through hers.

“You would feel differently if you believed in God,” Pols told him.

“Who says I don’t believe in God?” he answered. “Once I believed that God was the great power of our universe and that God had created our world and everything in it and that God watched over all of us. Later it occurred to me that I had made a very naive assumption: that God had done any of that in a spirit of benevolence. So then when I prayed to God, I prayed that He would be less cruel, less vicious.”

“So you hate God.”

“I hate God with the same amount of passion that I love God,” Nicolas answered. “Which is to say a very small amount. I cannot . . . care . . . anymore.”

“You still have God’s love,” she said.

“And God’s hate.”

“You don’t think God hates you because He made you smaller than other people, do you?” she asked indignantly.

“Whether He hates me or loves me He has left me here all alone,” Nico said. “For eternity. Alone. Like our lonely planet. As above, so below.”

She had pulled on his arm until they were against the wall. And she had felt his face with her hands. She wasn’t sure why she had done that. She had never wanted to before. She had never deliberately touched a man’s face before. She had felt Nico’s jaw, and his lips and his cheeks and his nose and his forehead up to where his hair began. His skin was very smooth, so she knew he was very beautiful.

And they had not said anything more.

But that hadn’t been in her dream. Or had it? Her mind was confused. Was she dead? Was this what being dead was like? But where was Heaven? Pollina was starting to panic.

She must not panic.

Her dream. Yes, she had been thinking about Nico as she was getting ready for bed, and remembering that conversation and thinking about how it could be translated, musically, and then something had happened and she had fallen asleep. In her dream she had been walking down a smooth gravel path. The sun had been shining; she could feel it on her skin. But her chest was hurting and she was afraid. And sad. Because in her dream she had realized that Boris was dead, and would never run beside her again, and he would have liked this path, which was so straight and smooth, and therefore beautiful.

And then she had known that a creature was in her path, a creature that was not her dog, though it had four legs. It was a lamb. A golden lamb. But it was not beautiful. It was terrible, and it had jumped at her, and wrapped itself across her shoulders, and she had fallen to the ground and then she had rolled over on her back and she had felt as if she were broken and then she had thought, It has killed me.

Then she had woken up. Yes. She was awake now.

She was lying on her side, but not on gravel. It was hard, whatever it was, and it was moving, vibrating and jolting. Pollina decided she would try moving her fingers and toes. They responded. Her tongue felt very thick in her mouth. She moved a little more. Her back was not broken. Her legs and arms could move, but not very far before they hit things that were hard. Metal. Rubber. She was in a moving box made of metal and rubber. She listened.

Her head hurt. Her chest hurt.

She began to cry. This surprised her. She had not cried in a very long time. When she was younger she had cried a lot, in frustration, because her hands were too small to play what she wanted to. She had met Sarah then. Sarah had played for her, until she had grown.

Nico would not grow.

Nico was lonely.

Boris was dead. She had gone to the bathroom the night before and brushed her teeth and she had been thinking of the opera she was writing, of Ferdinand and Philippine overcoming the obstacles to their love, but also of Nico’s theme, of the bassoons. She would need to hear the woodwinds, to make sure they were all right. She thought they would be, but she would need to hear them played, with the strings, to make sure she had gotten it right. Max would have to arrange for the musicians to come and play it. Then she had drunk the glass of water by her bedside and gotten into bed. She had called Boris’s name, to say good night to him, and he had not come. And she had kept calling for a while but in her heart she had known that he was gone. He was gone forever. She had gotten out of bed and she had found him, as she had known she would, stretched out in front of her door. Until the end, he had been her guard. He had kept her safe.

And then . . .

And then she had realized that something was wrong, inside her. Different from the other thing that was wrong. This was new. Because she always felt tired now, but this was not tired. This was . . .

And then she had a thought: the water. The water had not tasted right. She had noticed, and not noticed, because she had been thinking of the bassoons.

Cars. She could hear cars.

She was in a box in a car. She was probably in the trunk of a car.

Pollina began to pray.