The Dreams

Dream 2

We entered the apartment, the girl in the lead and I right behind her, while the doorman carried our bags. The girl and I had a firm relationship — though it was somehow undefined. We had begun to arrange our things when I sauntered onto the balcony overlooking the sea, and became lost in its vague horizons, intoxicated by its broken roar and its humid breeze.

Suddenly a scream issued from inside the flat. I scurried toward it to find the girl convulsed in terror as flames licked through the top of the doorway. Before I could recover from the shock, a man with features so hard they seemed cut from stone came in and — with a wave of his hand — put out the fire.

“Maybe the water service here will be cut off for a while,” he said, turning toward us — then went away.

My mind now at rest, I left my room for the supermarket to buy some needed things. Coming back, I discovered the apartment door open with the doorman standing around. I went into the flat, feeling anxious, and found it was bare but for a fat package of clothes tossed onto the floor. An arm from a pair of pyjamas stuck out through a hole in its wrapping. There was no trace of the girl.

“What’s happened?” I wondered.

“You must have gotten mixed up, sir, on your way here — this is not your apartment,” the doorman replied.

Staring at the protruding arm, I said, “Those pyjamas are mine!”

He replied calmly, “You’ll find thousands like them in the shops.”

I began to accept that I’d erred, especially in recalling that there were three buildings in a row that resembled each other here. Quickly I raced down the stairway to the street — and saw the girl walking through its emptiness toward the square jammed with people and with cars. I ran to catch up with her before she melted into the crowd.