[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
I sat in my chair, haunted by what my son had said. Most particularly, I
thought of the incident in the cornfield. I will relate a dream I had had
shortly before we spoke.
The three of us were together in the English countryside to my dream. We had
rented a cottage. The inside of the cottage was identical to our cabin. I was
confused, because Anne and our son were not there and it was already the
evening. I was sitting up in bed when I got a call on the phone. I remember
saving to the caller. "No, it's all right, they're full staving out all
night." On some level I was full of fear. but on another I seem to have
accepted their disappearance by justifying it to myself
In the middle of the night there was a knock at the front door. I opened it to
find my son in the company of a group of "rescue workers," ordinary men and
women with deep, soft, and loving faces. My son was naked except for a dark
blue cap that one of them had put on his head. He was moving strangely, as if
he had no control over his own muscles. His eves looked as if he were in some
sort of trance. I gathered him in my arms, because they told me that touch and
hugging would bring him back to normal. Then I looked around for my wife.
They shook their heads sadly, and the care and love radiating from their eyes
was such that I
was not bereaved but reassured that she would be back soon.
Then I was abruptly transported to another place. I was given to understand
that Anne and our son had been found here, hiding. It was a cornfield. just
like our son's dream.
At bedtime that night he wanted to talk more about dreams. I did not record
our conversation, but he complained of two things. The first one was that when
he started to go to sleep, his whole body would tingle and he would feel as if
his hair were standing on end. A
Page 112
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
voice would then ask him about his day. how he felt, and "private things"
which he did not wish to discuss with me.
He also complained that he saw a skeleton looking at him when he was trying to
relax.
The conversation went as follows:
"A skeleton?"
"Yes, and it keeps staring at me like it was right in front of my face and it
won't go away "
"What does it look like?"
"Well, its oh. It's not a skeleton, it's one of the thin ones that stood
around behind the doctors."
"What thin ones?"
"You know, the thin ones that are always saying 'We won't hurt you'? Them.
It's not a skeleton, it's one of the thin ants."
The appearance of these people has never been discussed with my son at all,
not by anybody, and vet his description of short ones and taller, thin ones is
not only consistent with my own observations, it is consistent with the
experiences of many of the other people who have encountered the visitors.
He had bought a book of haiku at the Strand used-book store that afternoon, a
book entitled
A Net of Fireflies
. I did not tell him that I had bought the same edition when I was twenty and
living with my grandmother, and derived immense pleasure and comfort from it.
He wanted us to read haiku to one another. I read:
With tender impact on the icy air, The peach-buds burst: their silken petals
flare.
He smiled his huge smile and commented, "That was really a lot of pictures for
so little words." Then he read:
Without a sound the white camellia fell
To sound the darkness of the deep stone well.
Afterward he said, "Dad, you know, we like the haiku and all the beautiful
words. But the thin ones, it's like they are the haiku. Inside, they are
haiku."
That night a father staved a long time with his child, wondering about the
soft fire of communion that might be hidden between the breaths of his life.
SIX
No building ever came into being as easily as did this temple or rather,
this temple came into being the way a temple should. Except that, to wreak a
spilt or to desecrate or destroy it completely, instruments obviously of a
magnificent sharpness had been used to scratch on every stone from what
quarry had then come? of an eternity outlasting the temple, the clumsy
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]