Twelve Collections and the Teashop Read online

  The dream collector waited for me to say something in return, but in my confusion I remained silent.

  “Perhaps it would be easier for you to accept this, “he continued after several moments, “if you imagine it’s not about a dream but rather a work of art. The comparison is not at all incongruous. Many people try to create works of art, but only the exceptional few succeed. It’s the same thing with dreams. Many people dream, but the number of successful dreams is very small. That’s the nature of things. Talent is needed for dreams as well as art, and talented dreamers are a rarity. You are certainly one of them.”

  “I had no idea,” I mumbled.

  “That’s what usually happens. Talented dreamers don’t know they are talented until collectors tell them. I’m proud of the fact that I have discovered some of the most talented. If only you could see my collection. There’s not a single dream collector who doesn’t envy me. I have a complete gallery of purple dream masterpieces. Your dream will be in excellent company.”

  “How nice,” I said, not very eloquently, but nothing more coherent came to mind at that late hour. “So all I need to do to get the reward is give my permission?”

  “Yes. and answer some questions.”

  “What questions?”

  “About yourself. I have to ascertain some facts. Sometimes there is an impediment that prevents a dream from entering a collection.”

  “Impediment?”

  “Yes. We are not like art buyers in this respect. Such verification would be unnecessary if you were, let’s say, a painter and I owned a gallery. Your private life wouldn’t interest me in the slightest. But dream collectors have to stick to strict rules. only the dreams of untarnished dreamers can enter a collection. This requirement has caused me to lose several unique specimens. Don’t be concerned, I’m almost certain that everything will be fine with you. Shall we begin?”

  “Go ahead,” I said after a short pause.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Whatever gave you such an idea?” I replied angrily.

  “Please don’t be offended. The question is by no means directed at you personally. Murderers dream too. Sometimes their dreams are of a much higher quality than those of ordinary people. one of the prettiest dreams I ever saw slipped away just because the elderly dreamer, when he was a young man, had inadvertently caused a traffic accident in which an old woman died, even though she would have died just the same a few years later. But what could I do? rules are rules. let’s continue. are you allergic to pollen or goose feathers?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Fine. Has any member of your family in the past three generations been treated for a serious mental disorder?”

  I bristled once again but all I did was say through clenched teeth, “of course not.”

  “Very good. Have you ever had a contagious disease?”

  I thought for a moment. “Scarlet fever and mumps.”

  “That’s all? You haven’t had typhoid fever, malaria, cholera, smallpox or the plague?” I shook my head vigorously, although it was pointless. “no, I haven’t.” “Wonderful. Do you take pleasure in torturing household pets?”

  “I don’t have any pets in my house.”

  “So, you don’t take any pleasure. all right. are you color blind?”

  “How could I dream of pygmy firefighters with purple helmets if I were color blind?”

  “That wouldn’t stand in your way. You might not know it, but the dreams of the color blind are a real explosion of color. It’s a shame that the rules won’t let us include them in our collections. are you afraid of heights?”

  “A little,” I said reluctantly.

  “When you are on the edge of a cliff, do you become totally paralyzed, overcome by dizziness, and covered in cold sweat?”

  “I stay away from the edges of cliffs.”

  “Smart thinking. That means we can conclude that you do not suffer from acute fear of heights. Do you collect stamps?”

  “No.”

  “That’s really good. Up until now I’ve lost the most dreams because the dreamers turned out to be philatelists.”

  “What’s wrong with being a philatelist?”

  “There’s nothing wrong, of course. I personally have nothing against philatelists; I actually like them, even though they’ve caused me losses. But those are the rules and I wasn’t the one who made them. In any case, you’re making great progress. We only have three questions left. Did you ever go through an earthquake stronger than six and a half on the Richter scale?”

  “I’ve never gone through an earthquake.”

  “Not even a tiny one?”

  “Not even a tiny one.”

  “You’re lucky. Even little earthquakes are quite unpleasant. Do you count the steps when climbing upstairs?”

  “No. and I usually take the elevator to go up.”

  “That’s not very healthy. It’s been shown that people who prefer to take the stairs instead of the elevator live an average of three years, four months and seven days longer. on the other hand, it’s hard to say no to comfort. and finally, here is the last question. Did you drink an alcoholic beverage before you went to bed last night?”

  I hesitated briefly. “Yes, I did. Half a glass of wine, just like I do every evening.”

  “Red or white?”

  “Red.”

  Silence reigned on the other end of the line.

  I waited a bit and then asked, “That’s not good?”

  The dream collector sighed noisily before he answered. “no, it isn’t. The rules are explicit. not a drop of red wine is allowed. It counts as strong doping, unlike white wine, which is allowed in moderate amounts. Dreams under the influence of red wine are considered to be artificial, not natural.”

  “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have touched it.”

  “If you hadn’t, it’s questionable whether you would have dreamed about pygmy firefighters with purple helmets.”

  “What now?” I said after a brief silence.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. We’re both losing out. You won’t get your lavish reward and I’ve forfeited an excellent dream. But don’t lose hope. as I said before, you are a talented dreamer. Just avoid red wine before you go to bed. I’ll keep a sharp eye on your dreams. I’ll call you again as soon as a purple one appears, although quite some time might pass until the next one. But at least we won’t have to go through the questions again. now, go back to sleep. Good night.”

  “Good night,” I said, after the line was already dead.

  I hung up the receiver and turned off the wall lamp. I lay there staring into the impenetrable darkness surrounding me until the sound of ringing came from the distance. The thunderous church bell came first, followed a bit later by the muffled sound of the bellwether, which quickly segued into the soft tinkling of the bells from my childhood. Finally there was nothing around me but silence.

  6. WORDS

  MR. PLUSHAL COLLECTED WORDS. He’d been doing this since the age of fifty-six, after reading his first anthology of love poems. It had been a small paperback with a beautiful purple flower on the cover, although the smell emanating from the book was wholly incompatible with this image. The copy had the stale, musty odor that inevitably permeates books after they spend a long time in a basement secondhand bookstore. Mr. Plushal might not have bought the anthology. Although he periodically made the rounds of the bookstores, he rarely bought any books, and when he did they were of a quite different sort. He had a small library in his house consisting primarily of handbooks. on raising houseplants, for example. He himself didn’t have any plants, but he considered himself very knowledgeable on the subject. or on cats. He didn’t have a cat because he was allergic to their fur, but if anyone were to ask him, he had plenty of useful advice to offer. There was also a handbook on freezer maintenance and repair. True, he had no need for a freezer, but useful knowledge is nothing to be sneezed at.

  He had decided to buy the anthology because of the flo
wer on the cover. As a plant expert he knew that such a flower did not exist, but that was the very reason it had appealed to him. He took the book to the cashier in a somewhat uneasy state. It seemed somehow unfitting for a man his age to show an interest in romantic verse. It was almost like buying a pornographic magazine. Luckily the salesgirl didn’t take note of the title. All she did was look at the price and take the exact change he handed her.

  He knew a thing or two about love, of course. not from personal experience in this case, either, but was that necessary? Most likely people are born with such awareness. How else could it be? nonetheless, when he set to reading the book, the unease from the store returned, despite the fact that he was alone. He even blushed. He only found relief with the thought that the anthology should be considered a handbook on love. Then everything became easier and quite pleasant.

  He was surprised to find that the words in the book charmed him even more than the tender and exalted feelings. He suddenly became aware of something that had escaped his notice. Beautiful words exist. They weren’t necessarily special or rare, rather ordinary words that were to be found in other books too. But for some reason or other they had never looked beautiful in the handbooks. Or rather, their beauty hadn’t caught his eye.

  The more he read, the more he was filled with the fear of losing something. When he turned a page, the words that stayed behind seemed to pale and evaporate. new ones came to take their place, but this was insufficient consolation. He had to save the earlier ones somehow. It made no sense to allow them to disappear. He could have gone back to them, of course, but then he would never finish reading the book. no, he had to find a better solution. And then he had a flash of inspiration.

  He bought a large lined notebook with a leather cover. Nothing less magnificent would suffice as a repository for beautiful words. How could he write them in an ordinary notebook? That would have been almost sacrilegious. He returned to the beginning of the anthology, holding the open notebook in front of him. Whenever he came across a beautiful word, he wrote it down promptly with his fountain pen. It was not made of gold, in actual fact, but it’s hard to arrange everything to perfection.

  His handwriting was neat. not ornate but measured, even a little austere. Beautiful in its own way. Just what was needed to write down beautiful words, not overshadowing them yet consonant with them. He normally wrote with large letters, but for this occasion he made the letters smaller. Just in case. He didn’t know how many beautiful words he would find. The notebook was quite thick, but he had to proceed with care.

  It was not until he had written down all the beautiful words in the anthology that he mustered the courage to check the results. Would they remain beautiful in his notebook or would their beauty be lost, as in the handbooks? Holding the notebook a short distance away, he breathed a sigh of relief as he took in the four densely filled pages. not only was their beauty intact, it seemed somehow enhanced. This was probably due to the fact that only beautiful words were present, not those other ones that were not exactly ugly, but did not stand out in any way. The notebook was concentrated beauty.

  After he had finished the anthology, he wondered what to do next. The notebook was nowhere near to being filled, it had barely been touched. could he leave it like that? It would be as if he’d merely chipped off a bit of beauty. no, he had to continue. There had to be many more beautiful words. They all deserved to be in one place. But where should he look for them?

  What first crossed his mind, naturally, was another anthology of love poems. He couldn’t go wrong there. He’d seen for himself that beautiful words find great expression in love poems. But if he kept buying just this type of book he would soon become conspicuous. Two or three more could pass unnoticed, but three hundred and thirty-five, the number he’d seen in the Main Library catalogue, would certainly give rise to derision. no, he would have to think of something else. And then he had a second inspirational flash.

  Who said beautiful words could only be found in anthologies of love poems? They certainly had to be in other books too. Why not even in handbooks? He was already expert enough to grasp a great truth. Beautiful words are everywhere. The skill lay not in the choice of books but in detecting the words. You had to have an eye for them. And he suspected he already had one. There was a simple way to verify this. He grabbed the first handbook within his reach and opened it. The same moment he was blinded by a blaze of beautiful words, as though someone had highlighted them with a bright marker.

  He was barely able to resist the temptation to open his notebook and start writing them down. What stopped him was his prudence, something that made him rightfully proud. One couldn’t be so impulsive. Where would that lead one? confusion would reign in an instant. He had to be steadfast and systematic. After thoroughly considering the circumstances, the solution presented itself at last, once again in the form of an inspiration.

  He struggled briefly with the thought of tearing up the first four pages in the notebook so he could start over again. But he dropped the idea. such an important undertaking could not begin in a disfigured notebook. He would have to buy a new one. That alone would be fitting. He chose the largest one he could find. It had a feature that he found particularly expedient: a gilded ribbon to mark the place where you had stopped reading or writing.

  The enormous dictionary had sixteen heavy tomes. When he opened the first one, a bevy of sparkling, beautiful words met his eye. The magnitude of what lay ahead did not frighten him, however. He was perfectly prepared for it. nor could he expect to find any shortcuts. Whatever time was needed to write them all down would be taken, neither more nor less. After all, what lay before him was joy and not suffering. Indeed, what can be more joyful than writing down beauty?

  When he finally brought his work to a close, Mr. Plushal was considerably older than fifty-six. But this did nothing to lessen his feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment. on the contrary. How many people that old can say their lives have not been in vain, for they have collected beauty? only one thing was left for him to do. There was room for just two more words at the bottom of the last page of the completely filled notebook. For the first time since he’d started his collection, he softened his handwriting a little. It was still austere, but also gentle, benevolent. Just the way a signature should be. entering the notebook, he slowly pulled the back cover after him, as though lowering a heavy lid.

  7. STORIES

  I TYPED THE LAST SENTENCE OF THE STORY. But there was no time to sink into the unique feeling of relief brought by the completion of writing. Before I had managed to press two keys on the keyboard to save the file, the screen suddenly turned purple.How awful! The monitor was indeed old, but I had nonetheless expected it to hold up for some time to come. Why did it have to go on the blink right then and spoil my moment of pleasure? What’s more, the last thing I needed was an unforeseen expenditure.

  Filled with frustration, I did something that actually made no sense. I turned off the monitor, waited a bit and then turned it on again. That’s what people do who don’t know anything about hardware, and I wasn’t one of them. When things start going wrong, those not in the know first turn off everything they can. Whatever for? It might be their confusion, it might be to let off steam, or it might be the irrational hope that when they turn things back on, everything will be put magically back in place.

  When the screen lit up again nothing, of course, was back in place. The purple shade was still there and at the bottom of the story, after a space of one line, something was written that hadn’t been there a moment before. I bent down and looked at the short addendum:

  Wonderful story! Congratulations!

  Staring close up at the three words, I tried to figure out what was going on. The only thing that crossed my mind was that someone had linked up to my computer over the Internet and had been spying on me as I wrote. There is all manner of abuse over the Internet, but I had yet to hear of something similar. It would be truly terrible if such spying were possible. B
ut that wasn’t my main problem at the moment. Without even checking the lower right-hand corner of the screen I knew that the intruder hadn’t come via the Internet because I wasn’t online. Why should I be, anyway, when I was writing?

  Bewilderment led me to repeat my senseless reaction. Even though I was aware that it wouldn’t solve anything, I reached for the monitor button again. My hand remained in midair, however, because the cursor jumped down to the next line and started writing new text right before my eyes.

  Turning the monitor off and on again won’t get you anywhere.

  I jumped back from the screen spontaneously, as though physically threatened. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. What was going on? How could he know what I intended to do? I started looking feverishly around my study, but a new message stopped me.

  There isn’t any camera, if that’s what you’re looking for.

  Great restraint was needed to stop me from turning off the computer. If I did, though, I would lose the story, which hadn’t been saved, and that had to be avoided at any cost. I brought my hands cautiously to the keyboard, as though it might bite me. I pressed two keys lightly, then quickly raised my fingers, but the normal confirmation that I’d saved the text was missing. In its place came a rapid series of letters in italics.

  Everything is all right. The story is saved. Don’t worry. We certainly couldn’t let such a good story go to waste, could we?

  I stared for some time at the four lines under the last paragraph of the story. When I finally returned my hands to the keyboard, hesitating as before, I knew I was getting involved in something dodgy. But what choice did I have?

  Who are you?

  A collector of last stories.

  There were much more important questions, of course, but all I did was type one word.

  Last?

  Yes. This is your last story. And probably your best. That is quite rare, by the way.

  I paused briefly before my fingers touched the keyboard again.