‘I dreamed of you, so I came,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am the person in your dreams.’
‘Then who am I?’
‘You are the person in my dreams.’
‘Do you exist here on Earth?’
‘No.’
‘What about me?’
‘Neither do you.’
‘But I felt it, when you pinched my hand.’
‘We don’t exist.’
‘I want to die.’
‘I dreamed that you died. But I can also dream that you live.’
‘Then dream that I live.’
‘It doesn’t make a difference.’
I woke up and felt amused. I started imagining I was a character in a novel. I saw a hunched author sitting in the glow of a lamp. He wrote my name on a white piece of paper before adding more detaiclass="underline" my clothes, where I lived, my school and friends, general personality traits, my life story, what would happen to me. And I in turn outlined his life. Every time my mind speeded up, I instructed myself to slow down. I planned it all, down to the songs he listened to when writing. He chose ten or so from his collection and listened to each in turn until the sounds of‘Silver Springs’ came from his speakers. This was when he found his writing rhythm. He wrote a few sentences, but it wasn’t quite flowing, so he read out loud. Anything just a little off, he excised like a ruthless despot. He stopped only when he felt it was too cruel.
‘That’s enough. You have to learn to forgive yourself.’
This gave him courage to continue. The inspiration had finally come, but just as he was about to throw himself into the flames of creativity, his telephone rang. A friend. He made some excuses to push the friend away, but more and more accusations came down the line. Flustered, and more than a little hostile, he sighed and went to meet the friend. He feigned interest well into the night, until the moment arrived when he could finally make his escape. But the inspiration had bolted, leaving him naked. He sat for hours, trying to catch it and bring it back, just one small bit of it, but nothing. He put his head in his hands and tried to cry, his regret as deep as the sea. He spoke to me, on the paper.
‘Work sucks my energy and destroys my intellect. But I had it, just then, for a moment. Then my friends stole it from me. Why can’t you give me one clean day? Why?’
‘You’ve already given half your life to me. Why are you so desperate to kill me off?’ I said to him.
‘Death is the only way you’ll live a little longer.’
‘In that case, I’ll kill you. I’ve murdered before.’
‘No. Even if you kill me, I won’t be a sell-out.’
He sucked in his cheeks and let out a long breath through his nostrils. I’d never seen anything so hilarious in my life. I patted him on the head and flew away.
I spent a lot of time absorbed in this wrestling match. Sometimes I gave form to a man in another dimension; he’s been asleep for years. He made us. I tried using sex as a way of denying the reproductive order he created, but then I realised sex comes from dreams. Humans have sex, he said, and so it was. Sometimes I saw a world in my head in which humans had already been exterminated and a complex modern society was revealed to be nothing more than a mirage, a reflection in a mirror, created by a Song or Ming dynasty witch. Sometimes I scaled it down. I became merely one of ten thousand different mes. I saw them everywhere, at the docks, living apathetic lives as carpenters, or taking flights to São Paulo, or waiting in crowds for the executioner to arrive. There were times when I pictured my future grandson taking me up in his helicopter away from Shawshank Prison; if he doesn’t take me away, he tells me, he won’t exist in the future. He is lost in thinking, high up in his plane, until we reach our highest altitude, when he speaks.
‘Actually, I only need your sperm.’
I lay like that day and night, living inside my own intricate drawings, excited to the point where I’d forget to eat and drink. If someone had come by and told me I could go free, perhaps I might have been angry to be disturbed. Where else could I find such peace? A life with no obligation to work, with free food and drink? This was the best place for me to reflect on humanity and the universe. Then, after nights of sleeplessness, my head would pound and I’d start to cry. I began to regret not considering the possibility of incarceration before committing my crime. I would have devoted myself to others, lived a healthy and harmless life. But in some ways this smugness was a product of knowing that I was soon to die – that I was locked up with nowhere to go.
The guard eventually took pity on me and gave me a piece of newspaper. He was originally going to give me one full side, but after a brief moment of reflection he took it back and ripped off a piece the size of my palm. I could have that instead. He laughed and left happy. But it was big enough. In it, I read a brilliant story with the headline: TOGETHER MAY WE EXPLODE.
One day, Tom lit a match to find out if there was any petrol left in the tank. Yep.
It kept spinning in my head and I began to invent a family saga about Tom’s ancient ape-man relatives. I thanked the guard. He’d given me a perpetually bubbling spring of the sweetest water.
On Trial
I have on occasion asked myself, who is going to miss me? And I suppose my mother is the only possible answer. I thought she would visit me in prison, but after waiting for an eternity I figured she must have remarried, moved and forgotten me. Then one day one of the guards came to tell me she was here. I said I didn’t want to see her, but he told me it would be good to get some fresh air and I was dragged over.
The visiting room had a high, vaulted ceiling and visitors and inmates were separated by a long, thick piece of glass. A large door at the opposite end was opened and a slow surge of free people pressed in, like a glacier, their arms outspread. Ma staggered dumbly behind, hands on the back of her thighs, her head bobbing, as if to say, ‘No, no, don’t hit me.’ I didn’t really want to see her.
She spotted me and sat down, placing a plastic bag containing a half-eaten bun in her lap. She lowered her head and said nothing, as if she was the criminal, not me. I snorted, a sneer. It was like a railway station waiting room, the noise bubbling, popping, drifting up, turning into a collective hum. Ma almost spoke several times.
‘Go on, say something.’
Trembling violently, she looked up.
‘Aren’t you going to say what you’re doing here?’ She lay out her palms, tilted her head and showed me her tears. Calluses, hard and dirty like a stone covered in weeds.
‘I’ve been burning incense and praying.’
‘What for?’
She didn’t answer, but wiped her eyes with her hand. ‘That’s unhygienic,’ I said.
She pulled at her scarf and that’s when I saw how white her hair had become. Last time I saw her, she had barely one grey hair.