Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

30 · Mircea Cărtărescu
my life could relate to all the others by invisible filiform pipes, at a distance
of years or months, or of a single night. But not all catacombs, pipes, cables,
wires and channels were equally important. The dream thoroughfares
swerved suddenly into real world highways, making up constellations and
engrams – from very high above one could read them like a multicolored
tattoo, and from below they would have felt like torture, a sadistic marking
on one’s skin. At times I got up in the middle of the night with a totally
dead hand, as cold as serpent skin and strangely heavy, a soft object that I
could only move with the help of the other hand. I could see it black-blue
in my mind and massaged it with the same incomprehension and terror
with which I would have caressed the mosaic back of an anaconda, in the
absurd hope that some time I would be able to feel it a part of myself. As
soon as I let go, it spread back on the pillow, and only when the to-and-fro
motions on the cold skin became more frequent did the inert flesh start
stinging and I could slide it again into the numb glove. Its lace of nerves,
veins, lymphatic vessels and little pipes of psychic energy all grew lively
and soon my body’s frame was completely restored.
My dreams pulled me back to the past as well. For some two years, before
they raised the apartment building across the street, I used to dream I
climbed peaks of dizzying height. Usually there were inhabited areas and
stairs inside the black rock, as thin as a skyscraper, but I preferred to climb
on the outside, to hang on to stone after stone, going ever higher, until
I could reach the peak enveloped in mist. But now the peaks and towers
had disappeared and the dream took me to immersed spaces, wet with
emotion, through buildings and rooms that I knew, without being aware
where from, when I had been there before, or what had happened that had
caused the hysterical weeping now, the faint and inhuman sadness of living
in such interiors. I dreamt of buildings submerged in clear cold water,
where I could breathe, but only move slowly. I was heading, through diffuse
light, for the massive ruins, for yellow and blue walls thousands of meters
deep, at the very bottom of the water, and my hair waved in the liquid currents.
Red crabs crawled on sand, little fish dashed here and there at some
windows. The façades were rotten and ruined. I went through doors swollen
with shells, in interiors filled with turbulent water. How tall the rooms were!
How profoundly eaten up by decadence and melancholy! Embroidered runners
floated over the sideboard, in a glass-door cabinet a sea lily rose from
a red crystal glass, coral grew from the worn-out swamp of the rug, krill
feeding on it. An octopus had made its nest in the toilet, and sparkling
dust milled around the bathtub. I explored every room, trying to guess
where I was, where I had seen the big radio with ivory keys and a magic
eye, the sowing machine with a pedal, worn away beyond recognition, the
painting with two woolen cats, whose frame had blossomed in millions
of flickering worms. Even the chairs, overturned and swayed by currents,
were familiar to me. Yes, I had once rested between their legs turned up