The Stranger - Max Frei [113]
Later, when I found myself in the real Glutton Bunba, I recognized it immediately. I even discovered my favorite table between the counter and window onto the courtyard. I felt immediately at home in this place—the smattering of customers who stood along the lengthy counter all seemed strangely familiar to me, and their exotic mode of dress didn’t daunt me in the least. I might add that they, too, looked upon my trousers without any particular curiosity. Echo is, after all, the capital city of a large country. It is also one of the largest seaports in the World. It’s hard to shock the local residents, least of all with exotic attire.
In time, one of the regulars began greeting me. I greeted him back. Even a cat, as everyone knows, appreciates a kind word—no less so when it’s asleep and dreaming.
Gradually, this person established the habit of sitting down at my table just to chat. And Sir Juffin Hully can do this as no one else can—just give him the chance, and he’ll talk your ear off. Things went on like this for a fairly long time. Sometimes when I woke up I would relate to my friends some of the marvelous stories I had heard from my new acquaintance. They all told me to write them down, but I never got around to it. I somehow felt that certain things shouldn’t be entrusted to paper. Well, laziness was a factor, too; why hide it?
Our curious friendship began suddenly—and, for me, completely unexpectedly. One day my conversation partner broke off his story in mid-sentence, and with the mock seriousness of a conspirator, glanced around furtively, then said in a mysterious whisper: “But you’re sleeping, Max. This is all just a dream.”
I was thoroughly shaken, and my body jerked so that I fell off the chair and woke up safely on my floor at home.
For the next seven years I dreamed about everything under the sun except the mosaic paving tiles of the wondrous city. I was sad not to be visited by those dreams, and in my waking life things got worse and worse. I lost interest in my old friends, broke off with my girlfriends, and changed jobs more frequently than underwear. I threw all my books away, since they could no longer comfort me, and when I drank too much I invariably got into fist fights, as though I wished to smash to bits the reality I could not abide.
In time, however, I calmed down. I adopted the whole package of life-affirming values: friends, girlfriends, a tolerable job, decent living quarters, a large library attesting to the affluence of its owner, rather than to his literary tastes. In bars I began ordering coffee instead of spirits. I showered in the morning, shaved no less than every other day, took my underwear to the laundry, and kept my wits about me, resorting to withering glances and biting comments instead of using my fists.
Instead of justified pride, however, I still experienced that dull longing and boredom that drove me out of my mind in my youth. I felt like a walking corpse that had risen from the grave, and had for some reason settled down to a quiet, unobtrusive existence among people who were only half-alive, just as he was.
But I got lucky—and how!
One day, early in the morning, as soon as I had fallen asleep after work, I saw in a dream the long counter of the bar, my favorite table, and my old acquaintance waiting for me at the neighboring table. I remembered right away how our last conversation had ended. I knew I was having a dream. But this time I didn’t fall off my chair. I didn’t wake up. I wasn’t even afraid. I guess as I had grown older I had learned, from necessity, to keep my wits about me.
“What’s happening?” I inquired. “And how is it happening?”
“I don’t know,” my old friend answered. “I don’t think