Bright green fields and flowering trees, strangely silent. The song of laughter omissive, no birds nor children. Homes dotting the edge of the forest abandoned, overgrown. The trees had taken root, growing through pounded dirt floors, with branches extending through broken windows. An urban Angkor Wat, I was thinking.
The windows intact are covered in a strange film, and empty rooms covered in the dust of film. There are golden pears, but nothing to eat. They glow like the vials in Marie Curie’s apron pocket. You are in Chernobyl, says a voice. Fukushima. Mars. You are in the deposits of a gone mine where the water is shimmering with the mercurial shadows of rusted chemicals.
What will we do, we the living, with our hands wringing?
Rounding a corner, sudden snow. I catch a glimpse of a boy on a bobsled. Everything is going downhill, he cries with delight. I shook myself out of it. There was a tray outside my door. A thermos of very strong hot coffee and some kind of jerky made from venison, root vegetables, and warm bread with jelly made from Siberian buckhorn berries. I ate without tasting, then wrote a list of what I would need.
I located the whistle given to me by the Secretary. It was wrapped in an old white handkerchief, much worn; I wondered if it had belonged to the Emperor. I turned it in my hand, resisting the temptation to blow. I had a sense that if I blew with any force, the frequency would cause a ripple effect and the walls of my room would fall away. Useful for the near future, but tonight I needed comfort, stability. I found a red plaid throw of boiled wool in the bureau drawer. I poured more coffee and switched on the television, scrolling through the channels and stopping at a documentary on the history of animation. I watched a long segment saluting the 100th anniversary of Felix the Cat, a childhood hero. I was overjoyed to see him and curled up in the easy chair by the foot of the bed, watching old cartoons of my champion with his big bag of tricks until I fell asleep.
In my dream there was great expanses of snow, and Felix and I tramped over hill and dale of infinite whiteness. Glancing back, I noticed only one set of footprints, my own. We stopped, still surrounded by snow and he set down his magic bag that I had attempted to duplicate as a child. I saw immediately he was carrying mine- a worn doctor’s bag I bought in a church bazaar for fifty cents. The bag was very heavy, as if filled with my father’s tools. Actually books, each a world opening into another world.
In my dream Felix the Cat set down the bag and it sank deep into the snow, all the way to the center of the earth. Soon, a tree will grow, he said, not with words but thought, and hanging from each branch will be the things that you will need.
I woke up and the hotel phone was ringing. An urgent missive at the front desk. I sleepily rose and stumbled out into the hall. Everything had taken on the translucent colors of a fractured rainbow. The walls were not walls but a cloud of emeralds, the corn was not corn but stalks of topaz. Stones were sapphires, dew moonstones, blood rubies. But I passed them all, and did not pluck up a single jewel. I touched nothing, until I found what exactly what I was looking for- a small object seemingly insignificant yet radiating the beginning of time.
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