Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) (11 page)

“The picture of this man is full of power and poignancy,” he said in an accusing tone.

“I knew that at the time,” she said, “but I didn’t know why, and I had a feeling that I didn’t want to know why. So I stopped.” Her heart was pounding. Leave it alone, Ricky, why pursue it?

“You do know who this is, don’t you?”

Reluctantly she stepped nearer to look again. The portrait showed the face of the head in her dream, the one that was thrust on its pole up outside the judge’s window.

“From my dream,” she said, dry-mouthed. “A severed head.”

“He’s from reality. This is a recognizable likeness of Danton, one of the architects and leaders of the Revolution and later one of its most illustrious victims. He was guillotined during the Reign of Terror.”

Dorothea stood hugging her crossed arms to her body. She did not doubt him for a moment. But how could she have made this picture? How long had this intrusion from the past been brewing within her, scarcely noticed? Funny; now she remembered that she had nearly flunked out at the end of her sophomore year because she’d been reading all about Danton and Robespierre and the rest instead of doing her course assignments.

“You said there was a series?” Ricky said. “Where are the rest?”

“Destroyed,” she said forcefully, glad that this was so.

He made an angry, impatient sound.

“They scared me, Ricky. I produced these disturbing images, I didn’t understand where they came from then any more than I do now, and I quit. I threw out most of the work.”

“They ought to have been taken away from you,” he snapped. “Someone ought to have been posted to snatch each piece from you as you completed it. What disturbed you might enlighten others; didn’t you think of that? If you’re lucky enough to have visions to set down, you shouldn’t complain that they aren’t pretty or soothing or entertaining enough for you! You should have the courage of your gifts, but instead you’ve denied your own creative impulse. I’d give a great deal to see the rest of this group, do you know that? And I’m sure others with educated eyes would agree with me. You had no right, you know. You had no right, in this world that tears down so much, buries and drowns so much, to obliterate your own work.”

He set the drawing on the seat of the velvet chair and stalked out of the studio, leaving her open-mouthed.

What the hell had just happened?

Mortality, she thought grimly. The man is dying, what do you expect? He would leave nothing like this work behind him. She remembered once urging him to make a book of the best of his essays, but he had protested that his pieces weren’t worth republishing. His writing gift was not great, she had to admit, and she had admired him for recognizing his own limitations.

She was an artist; he was not. The feeling behind this outburst had had to come out somehow: the fury of the dying at the continued existence of those around them who were dying much more slowly, or, worse, wasting the ability to leave something behind them that was valuable enough to be “undying.”

Well, what did you expect, she asked herself bitterly. Good cheer and roses all the way?

The Danton portrait compelled her eye. God, it gave her the shivers to look at that blunt and passionate face, risen from some inexplicable depths of her consciousness years before the damn dreams ever began.

His regular evening coughing fit was past, but he was feeling faintly nauseous and could not sleep. His unpardonable behavior in the studio weighed on his mind. He was ashamed, and afraid of what his outburst might have done to their friendship.

Much of her attraction for him now, he realized, was that she needed help. At first he had resented this — he was the one who was dying, after all — but now he was beginning to find vastly liberating the idea that he was here not so much to take as to give. He felt retrieved from the rubbish tip, infused with alertness that had nothing to do with his earlier frantic grasping after each moment in anticipation of the end of all moments. One had not yet become one’s own complaining, lingering ghost. One had the trust of a friend materially beneath one’s hands, there in her dream-pages, just as if one were still a companion in life, fit for consultation over the puzzles of living.

Perhaps today he had thrown all that away. This unbearable thought circled in his mind.

At some point he surfaced, listening in the quiet of the night and the uncomforting confines of his bed. He heard her in the kitchen moving softly about, the muted clink of a spoon on china; 4:15 am, read the illuminated clock on his bedside table.

He got up, shrugged into his robe, and went to join her. She was standing at the stove stirring something in a small saucepan with a long-handled wooden spoon.

“Dreams wake you?” he said awkwardly. Was he forgiven?

“Yup. Wait till you read my notes.”

“I’m sorry,” he began, “about my outburst —”

“Yes,” she said. “I know. Want some hot milk? It always helps me to get back to sleep.”

He was distressed to see the smudges under her eyes, the hollows in her cheeks. He accepted a cup of milk knowing he would not drink it and thinking how she had ankles lean as a whippet’s under the hem of her robe.

“You know,” she said, “you mustn’t feel apologetic about this afternoon.”

“Having cancer does not excuse one from basic, ordinary decency,” he said.

“Having bad dreams doesn’t justify grabbing up all of somebody else’s time and energy, either. I feel guilty when I see you working so hard on my damn dreams.”

“I work hard,” he said, “because I think the matter is urgent.”

She looked down at the pot of milk. “I’m very grateful, Ricky. Have I said so? Grateful, and bowled over by what you’ve gotten out of that mass of scribbles. I couldn’t do a damn thing with any of it, and here you are wrestling it all into submission.”

He was painfully conscious of the inadequacy of his labors. After all, nothing he had done so far had alleviated the problem of the dreams in the slightest: they still came.

She poured herself a mugful of the hot, spiced milk and padded over to join him at the table.

“This may sound peculiar,” she said slowly, “but do you think the dreams might have something to do with you rather than with me?”

His head was clearing of some of the hazier mists of his medication. Trying to get rid of the dream stuff, was she, the closer it got to herself? Trying to fob it off on him? He could well understand the impulse, but he was not going to make it easy for her. Frank never helped him slough off what was properly his own.

“I don’t think I see how that could be,” he said cautiously.

“Maybe my interest in the Revolutionary period, the interest I’ve had in it on and off since I was a kid, makes me receptive to something you’re carrying around from your own background, do you see?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Well, to begin with, maybe there’s a hidden connection with France and the French language through you. Is ‘Maulders’ a French name, for instance?”

Interesting. Thinking, he rubbed his chin. “In its oldest form it’s probably German, that is, Saxon. It meant something like ‘big mouth,’ related to ‘maw,’ I shouldn’t wonder. Became a French name, normally used as a Christian name, ‘Mauger,’ which was brought over by the Normans in l066. That, at least, is what I recall from the reports of my sister Margaret, who once made a study of our family background. By the time we became ‘Maulders’ we were thoroughly English, and that was well before the l789 revolution.

“And I did have an ancestor who was particularly interested in those events in France. He stayed closeted in London throughout the Revolution, writing an interminable tome on ancient Roman history. His book was intended to refute the Revolutionaries’ claims to have reconstituted the Roman Republic in France. You realize that in those days of nearly universal monarchism, any sort of Republican sentiment was considered violently radical by solid citizens. This kinsman of mine thought the French Republicans utterly depraved and mad, at the same time that he revered the ancient Romans whose state was the model for the French revolutionary republic. But he’s not our ghost. He was a good-for-nothing gentleman, not a judge, and he spoke no French, never went to France, would not have dreamed of contaminating rational analysis with subjective experience. And I’m afraid that’s the best I can come up with.”

“But couldn’t we still be dealing with something that’s trying to communicate with you but approaching through me because it can’t reach you directly?”

“Why bother?” he said. “Anything supernatural that wants to talk to me can do it face to face, or whatever one has in place of a face, if it will be patient for a bit. Unless there’s something it wants done, something only a — well, living person can do.”

Dorothea sighed. “To hell with that kind of talk, Ricky. If we’re going to converse in the kitchen in the middle of the night, let’s talk about something else: art, for instance. It’s less mysterious. Most of the time, anyway. Claire wrote me, did I tell you? Along with the usual urging to lead the Amazon rebellion, she saw a Turner show in Seattle. Wonderful stuff, she says.”

“I never cared for old Turner,” Ricky said, “till a few years ago. I’d shuffled past acres of sixth-rate rubbish at the Tate, was feeling very impatient, stepped into the first of the Turner rooms they’ve got there, and burst into tears. All that
light.”
He shook his head. “There. I’d never thought to tell anyone about that.”

Don’t yawn and blink, dear friend; don’t amble off to sleep and leave me alone with the rest of the night.

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said. “You know, once early in my marriage I was fooling around with my older son’s India ink and a couple of water color brushes from his paint box. He was going to be Picasso in those days. I was supposed to take his kid brother to the doctor for some shots that afternoon.

“I never did, not that day. I made one image after another, used up a whole tablet of paper and most of a bottle of ink. I didn’t stop until Bill came and took his toys away from me, very indignantly.

“I was glad of it. I looked around me and I thought, in absolute terror and confusion, ‘But if I do this, how can I have any sort of a normal life?’ I wasn’t thinking of the unwashed dishes, the missed appointment, that sort of stuff. It was the awful chill of coming out of that completely absorbed state back into the plain afternoon: home, kids, phone ringing, the whole schmeer. I thought if I had to make that transition very often, eventually I’d refuse to come back at all and I’d end up in the nuthouse — belong there, too.”

That was how Ricky had always felt returning from his travels: the re-entry into the drearily familiar airport, the end of enchantment. But return he always did. She was still at the wall.

Do you hear yourself? he thought urgently. Do you hear yourself telling me that you are bewitched by your own work, lost in it? That what you foresaw has in a fashion come about? Do you hear these dreams shouting to you that there are other matters demanding your attention?

She sipped her milk and began to speak of Turner.

She came back from taking the dogs for their summer shots. Mars, cheerful and unfazable as usual, went bounding off around the corner of the house on business of his own, but Brillo came inside to lie down and sleep off the effects of the vaccines.

“Oh, you’re so sensitive,” she chided, smiling into his reproachful amber eyes.

Ricky came in from the back patio while she was putting away the groceries she had picked up. He watched for a moment without speaking. Then he said, “You had a visitor.”