The Book of Dreams

by Nina George

  “What was my father good at?” I ask.

  She replies without a second’s hesitation. “He was free of prejudice, Sam. That was one of his great strengths. He never thought of anybody as a ‘foreigner.’ He took a far more candid approach to the world and to others than all but a handful of people are able, or even want, to do. But he still had some blind spots. Have you heard of the blind spots of the soul? It’s when you’re unaware of some of your own characteristics, either unconsciously or deliberately. They might be weaknesses you refuse to accept or strengths you find unpleasant or creepy. Your father couldn’t see that he was wrong about himself. He thought he was incapable of love. I’ve figured out over time, Sam, that even the cleverest people are fools when it comes to love.”

  I take a deep breath and decide to run an emotional gauntlet. “Did he ever talk to you about me?” My voice is walking a thin line between yellow and fear. It catches, but cracks only a little.

  Eddie shakes her head.

  I knew it, but I’d hoped it wasn’t true.

  We fall silent, and an hour later we reach Oxford.

  * * *

  —

  Oxford is a little like Dr. Saul’s disc world. On its outer edges, where the countryside rubs up against the outskirts, the city comes across as cool and dull, but then the city condenses into something altogether more substantial. We drive past ruins and neat little town houses, past pubs adorned with advertisements for the TV series Inspector Morse, and along streets that could have been lifted from the film Billy Elliot. The city center is wide awake, its thirty-eight colleges a combination of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and a botanical garden. I spy punts drifting along the lazy side arms of the river Thames.

  The streets in the center are packed with tourists and buskers, steeped in stories and emitting a gentle hum I can only hear in my mind. Is it the hum of thought and knowledge?

  I’ve never seen so many church spires and battlements in one place, and of so many colors—copper, slate gray, white, and sandstone gold.

  “The city of dreaming spires,” says Eddie, as if she’s read my mind. “That’s the common name for Oxford, but to me it’s the city of slumbering stories. There are more authors per square foot here than in any other spot on this earth—well, apart from Ireland maybe. Novels are born here, Sam, and some people even say that stories lurk in the shadows of the parks and houses and streets until someone walks past whom they trust to tell them properly. Then they attach themselves to that person and don’t let them go until the person has written them down. Many people only discovered here in this city that they could—or had to—be writers. You cannot decide to become a writer. You either are one or you aren’t, and those who didn’t make it either went mad or lived unhappy and restless lives.”

  Her words tug at my emotions in the oddly familiar manner that I’ve always felt when I study the scrapbook or read my father’s articles. At the same time I’m assailed by a growing whirlwind of sensations: the city’s streets are full of questions, answers, and restless energy.

  I contemplate writing something about my father or other things most people can’t detect because they’re on the outer edges of their sensory spectrum.

  Eddie steers the car skillfully through the narrow lanes that wind around the high walls shielding the many colleges. She parks in a street behind the Bodleian Library, not far from the Museum of Natural History.

  Maddie’s library is in a side street near Christ Church College and Balliol College. Most people are familiar with these institutions without knowing it: the dining hall scenes in the Harry Potter films were shot in their formal halls.

  I imagine how Maddie might have left her imprint on this city. She must have passed Ben’s Cookies in the covered market and smelled the heady aroma of caramel. She’s bound to have looked up at the high college walls and seen the statues staring back at her. She surely skipped and danced along these streets.

  We reach the small library.

  “Would you like me to come in with you?” Eddie asks.

  The library is nestled snugly between two residential buildings and has probably been here for eight hundred years. The windows sit in pointed arches, and the floorboards in the entrance creak. The tops of the outside walls are crenellated, of course.

  Behind the counter sits a petite woman in a white-and-purple-striped jacket with a dark pageboy haircut and a kind expression behind enormous glasses.

  “Hello, dear, what can I do for you?” she asks me in a friendly voice. The sign on the counter indicates that her name is Myfanwy Cook.

  “I’d like to return a book. It was borrowed by a…friend.”

  Much as I’d love to keep the book forever, I nevertheless push it over the wooden counter. The librarian studies the card and then me, her eyes wide with surprise.

  “Oh, it’s Madelyn’s!”

  “You know her?”

  Myfanwy nods. “Of course. Madelyn has…,” she says, gently stroking the book, “hasn’t come to the library for a long time. I did wonder, because she usually drops in once a fortnight to borrow some books. Where’s she been? Is she on tour? Is she dancing with a famous singer again?”

  She can see from my face that this isn’t the case.

  “Perhaps we could go somewhere to talk about Madelyn?” suggests Eddie, who has appeared out of nowhere. Mrs. Cook turns pale. “You may be able to help us.”

  “Me? To do what?”

  “To wake Madelyn up,” I say.

  * * *

  —

  Myfanwy finishes work two hours from now. She’s jotted down two addresses for us. The first is Maddie’s home—“I take it that you’re familiar with the concept of data protection, so I never gave you this address”—and the second is New College, where “Maddie would always sit under the large oak in the college cloister. She once said that that tree was her best friend, along with music.”

  * * *

  —

  Maddie’s family lived on the outskirts of the city. It doesn’t appear to be a rich area and reminds me of Putney.

  “Can you manage?” asks Eddie as we approach the house.

  I immediately recognized Maddie’s house as we were driving along the road, scanning the house numbers for the right one: it is the bleakest house in the whole area. We pull over to the curb.

  The windows look as if they haven’t been opened for ages, the front lawn is overgrown, and the entire front of the house makes a miserable impression. Houses shrink when they aren’t lived in. As we stand gazing at the building, unsure what to do next, someone appears from the house next door.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asks. She’s wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  “Almost certainly,” says Eddie, walking up the garden path toward her. I cannot hear what she says to the lady, but she points to Maddie’s house, then to me, and the lady claps her hands to her mouth, nods, and vanishes into her house.

  Thirty seconds later she returns, having removed her apron, with a key in her hand. “Come with me,” she says. “There won’t be anything left in there soon. The owner sold the property, and the house clearance specialists are bringing their skips next week.”

  I feel slightly queasy. If we hadn’t come today, they’d have emptied Madelyn’s home. Just like that.

  Linda—that’s the neighbor’s name—unlocks the front door and says, “Please, go on in.”

  Maddie, I think, and it’s the last thought I have because soon I’m not capable of thinking, only feeling. The whole house is full of her presence. It’s well lit with lots of light-colored furniture. The walls are plastered with pictures of Maddie dancing, smiling, and reading, sometimes alone, sometimes with her parents. Her parents are always holding hands and leaning toward each other.

  Is this how fate strikes, so cruelly? This house used to be filled with la
ughter, kindness, trust, countless plans—and love. The loss of this love lingers on in the rooms like a plaintive echo.

  “I’ll wait in the kitchen, okay? Take your time. All the time you need.” Eddie lets me explore Maddie’s world on my own. I feel half thief, half archaeologist.

  There are pictures of dancers hanging on the wall above the stairs. They’re twirling onstage, on tightropes, in the street, everywhere.

  I hear a loud clatter downstairs. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m packing some pictures for Maddie. Pictures and a few other things she’s sure to want to have. We’ll let Linda know what we’re taking with us. Okay?”

  I have no idea if it’s okay or if it might land us in jail. I couldn’t care less if it did.

  There’s a silence in the room of the kind you only find in places where people no longer sleep or laugh or hold hands. My mother and Steve’s bedroom is sometimes this quiet.

  There’s a pile of books beside her bed. A mirror and a bar run along the whole of one wall, and a carefully rolled-up yoga mat stands nearby. A metal gull is attached to the papered wall above her bed. It has a gently curved yellow beak, outspread silvery-gray, black-tipped wings, and a structure of fine, delicate bones is visible on the gull’s underside. A herring gull that’s common in Brittany. A powerful bird. Not one you would expect to find in a girl’s bedroom, but so typical of Maddie.

  My heart is hanging by a thread. I sit down gently on the bed, pull back the covers, bury my face in her pillow, and weep. I miss her, I miss myself, I miss my father. The pillow smells of coconut shampoo, washing powder, and, very faintly, past warmth.

  I lie down on the edge of the bed. What could Maddie see from this position? Shirley MacLaine. A complete collection of Famous Five books. Her ballet shoes. A picture of the pianist Clara Schumann. A Rolling Stones poster. And a few jars containing sand and soil. I go over to examine them. There’s a slip of paper under each jar. The contents are from various places she has visited.

  I take a sheet of light-blue writing paper from Maddie’s desk and hastily note down everything I can see in her room. I hear footsteps, and Eddie appears in the door with an empty fruit crate in her hand.

  “What do you think? Shall we take her back a little piece of herself?”

  We put into the crate books and the jars of soil from Scotland, Australia, New York’s Central Park, and Paris. I carefully unstick the Shirley MacLaine poster. I add CDs and her ballet shoes to the other items in the crate and, on top of it all, the mobile made of shells, leaves, and bits of wood and glass that was hanging by the window. Lastly, I take her pillow with us.

  “She obviously likes piano music and beautiful little pieces of nature, and clearly she loves the color blue,” Eddie says as she leans against the doorjamb.

  “She also values friendships, even if she has very few of her own,” I reply. I feel both close to and distant from Maddie, but I now know that she likes coconut and used to read John Irving, prefers Russian to Italian composers, likes the color blue, and arranges her books but not items she’s picked up outdoors. She loves every part of a tree: leaves, bark, branches, and knotholes. There’s a picture of her looking at herself in the mirror, and in that photo I see the woman she might one day be. I want to be there when she becomes every Maddie she can possibly be. I want to see every woman she becomes, until my time comes.

  By her side, I will become the best man I can be. Without her I am nothing.

  “Congratulations, mon ami!” I imagine Scott saying. “You have now taken your place in a long line of men who could only offer their lives in return for love.”

  Eddie and I carry seven crates out of the house and then the car is full. Linda shakes Eddie’s hand and gives me a hug. “They were a team, Samuel. They were all different, but for all their differences they fit together and they watched out for one another. Some people are best protected in a family, while others…” She doesn’t finish her thought.

  Maddie’s house watches us drive away.

  * * *

  —

  We have only fifteen minutes remaining to explore New College. The cloister is cool and shady. The large oak gleams silver in the afternoon light. I imagine Maddie talking to it or sitting among its roots to think. I sit down there too.

  “Maddie?” I ask. “What are you searching for?” I shut my eyes and rest my hand on the trunk of the tree.

  Is she searching for something? Yes. For an exit? Where to? From her solitude into the solitude she imagines life to hold, or does she want to leave this world and be reunited with her family in the place we all hope exists but cannot be sure?

  I gather up some large oak leaves that lie scattered on the ground. I’ll take them with me for Maddie and then maybe the tree can tempt her back.

  We go to the Eagle and Child, a pub in a white building on St. Giles’ Street with cavernlike booths and a surprisingly small bar. Myfanwy Cook is already there and orders tea for three. I tell her about Maddie, her accident, the coma, and the idea that people find it easier to come back if they’re surrounded by their favorite things.

  The librarian takes a long sip of tea and then waves to the barman. “A gin please, Oliver,” she says. “No, make it a double.” She wrings her hands before commencing her story. “Madelyn was a little girl when she started coming to the library. She loved stories, especially books such as The Hunger Games and Pippi Longstocking about girls who escape from sticky situations, not stories about princesses and stuff like that.”

  Mrs. Cook tells us that Maddie prefers cats to dogs and blue to green. She also says that her parents love her very much—“loved,” she corrects herself, then she weeps, but in such a way that the tears flow inward, while on the outside she dabs at her eyes and drains her double gin in one long swig.

  Mrs. Cook also mentions that Maddie loves tarte tatin. “She read about it once in a French cookbook. It’s made with cinnamon and caramel from Brittany sea-salted butter and baked facedown.” She really does say “sea-salted” and “baked facedown,” and it’s at that moment that I decide I never want to be without Maddie again in my whole life.

  “Can I come and see her in London?” Mrs. Cook asks.

  I nod and glance at Eddie, for none of this would have been possible without her. “Yes,” I say. “Please come as soon as possible. Maddie’s so lonely.”

  “No, my dear, she has you!” she says.

  I don’t know which way to look in my happiness and vulnerability. However, I do still have one last question. “Can you tell me if there was anything in particular that Maddie really loved or would really like?”

  She considers this for a second and then says, “A pajama party.”

  Henri

  I was once at the beginning of my life. I was once immortal, but now I’m dead, or as good as. That’s right. It’s the truth. I’m as good as dead.

  I’m lying on my back under a streetlamp, and my heart is bleeding out underneath me in great spurts of blood.

  I grope along the asphalt and then I beg the young man, who is staring at me in disbelief, to take off my wristwatch and hold it up in front of my eyes. I want to see my final hour. I want to know the time of my death at the end of this gray day.

  Without Eddie, all color has seeped out of life, its very pulse has gone, as if that final bright October day has been followed by one very long, gray day. I spent that long, gray day looking for what was real. Many times the world has seemed shaky, as if it were flickering and behind the flickering there were something else. Mind you, that might have been caused by alcohol.

  When I was in London without a new assignment to rescue me, I felt as if I were in a great urban cage. I drank too much and if on those hazy nights I met a woman who suggested, either forthrightly or subtly, that I might spend a night with her to recover, I didn’t take up her offer. What was I supposed to do when I
kissed her, embraced her, undressed her? If she wanted me to watch her? Me, a man who never manages to hold on to what he loves.

  I was always roaming, continually inebriated to dull the pain, but not drunk enough to be able to sleep at last without being plagued by dreams. And then, as I reached a stretch of road where some of the streetlights were broken, Carl was waiting for me in the dark.

  “Hey, mate, I need help, you know,” he said. “Name’s Carl. What’s yours?”

  “Henri.”

  “I’ve got two kids, see, but me wife tells me she don’t wanna see me shooting up no more, so I’m out on the street. Can you help me out?”

  I realized that this wasn’t some uplifting message or a plea for a place in rehab. I gave him all the money I had.

  “Ain’t you got no mobile, mate?”

  I gave him my mobile.

  “Shit, it’s fucking ancient.” He threw my Motorola Razr into the bushes. He really did look like a stressed-out father of two, but in the dull glow of night his face had twisted into a junkie’s.

  “I sniff, I do pills. I’ll take anything that’ll get me high. What’s the time, by the way?” he asked slyly.

  I glanced at my watch. “Just before three.”

  “Gimme yer watch!”

  “We can go to a cash machine instead.”

  “Forget it. Too many people.” He scratched himself. His eyes were red. “Go on, gimme yer watch. Now!”

  “There are derivatives now that ease the withdrawal symptoms and—”

  “Shut up and gimme that watch!”

  “No. It was my father’s.”

  “So what? Did he croak or something? Gimme the fucking watch or I’ll chop yer arm off!”