The Map of Time Collection, page 144
That was the first time he ever dreamt about Valerie.
When a few sharp slaps on his cheek brought him round, he found himself face-to-face with a well-dressed gentleman who was gazing at him with a concerned look. He was a middle-aged fellow, with a pleasant face that might have appeared anodyne were it not for a very black goatee that looked like it had been colored in with a piece of charcoal, and a pair of flamboyant gold spectacles. The man introduced himself as Doctor Clive Higgins and explained he had been following Clayton for a few streets, alarmed by his sickly pallor and unsteady gait. But Clayton had fainted just as he was about to catch up with him to ask if he was feeling ill. Clayton mumbled something about his recent stay in the hospital and asked the doctor to let him continue on his way, assuring him he was quite all right and that he lived close by. Clayton was lying because he wanted to be left alone as soon as possible, the sooner to be able to relish the strange, beautiful images the dreams had left in his head before they vanished. Doctor Higgins let him go, but not without warning him, in an oddly serious tone, that he was in need of help that he, the doctor, could provide. Then he pressed a cream-colored card with gold edging into Clayton’s hand. Underneath his name was printed the address of his consulting rooms and the puzzling title Doctor of Neurology, Psychoanalysis, and Other Afflictions of the Soul.
After promising to pay him a visit, Clayton hurried home. When he arrived, he emptied a triple dose of the sleeping pills he had been given at the hospital into his good hand, swallowed them down with a mouthful of brandy, and lay on the bed with his heart pounding, not even bothering to take his coat off. He was so desperate to resume his beautiful dream exactly where he had left off that he didn’t care if the number of tablets he had taken meant that he never woke up again. But he didn’t manage to dream about her again. He woke up a few hours later with a pounding headache and a feeling of anxiety produced by the overdose of pills.
He had to wait another twelve days before he dreamt about Valerie again, this time in the theater. The same icy hook in the stomach, the same sudden feeling of being hoisted into the air, the same dizziness and precipitous darkness. But also the same dream, so wonderful and vivid that when he awoke, for a few hours at least, everything around him seemed more illusory than any dream. A week later the same thing happened again, this time while he was making a cup of tea, which had ended up in pieces on the kitchen floor beside his unconscious body. And yet, he never managed to dream about her when he slept any other way. He had tried taking pills, alcohol, a mixture of the two, lying in bed all day reciting from memory tedious police reports, or stretching out on the sofa until the early hours. But it was no use. He never dreamt about her during his normal sleep. No, those dreams came to him only during those fainting fits.
And yet there was no pattern, nothing he could control. They were liable to happen to him at any moment, in the most unexpected situations, regardless of what he was doing at the time. It made no difference whether he was nervous or relaxed, standing or sitting, alone or in a crowd. They just happened: a slight dizziness followed by that sharp pull in his stomach that caused him to collapse suddenly. Journeys, he called them. How else was he supposed to describe them? In the end, while his body remained sprawled on the floor where he fell, his mind soared far away from there, always toward the same place.
Although he never felt happier than when he was having those strange fainting fits, they soon became a source of concern. They happened so often that Clayton had to admit he could no longer treat them as occasional incidents, but rather as an unmistakable sign that something inside him had radically changed, that his soul was no longer the same. His most recent journey alarmed him the most, because he had fainted in the middle of an investigation. He, the highly acclaimed Inspector Cornelius Clayton, had collapsed at a crime scene. What would Sinclair say if he found out? What would his superiors think? And how long would he be able to conceal those incidents? This time he had miraculously avoided being discovered unconsious in the old lady’s study, enabling him to omit that shameful fact from his written report, but next time he might not be so fortunate. He dreaded to think what would happen if it were revealed that he suffered regularly from fainting fits. Doubtless they would put him on sick leave, send him to a doctor, and refuse to let him carry on working until they had discovered what ailed him. And what would become of him then, if he couldn’t occupy his mind with other things? He would go crazy, that was certain. Work was the only thing that brought calm to his brain. Only when he was immersed in an investigation, fixated on the details of some case, juggling theories and conjectures, was he able to stop thinking about her. Almost.
While he had been working on the Madame Amber case, for example, he had all but forgotten about the countess. A routine case of suspected fraud had all of a sudden turned into an extraordinary mystery, a true puzzle for a mind hungry for challenges. Not only had a murderous spirit materialized during a fraudulent séance, but that same spirit had pursued one of the participants home a few hours later, apparently with the aim of stealing a mysterious book that, according to the old lady, contained nothing less than the means of saving the world.
And now Clayton knew the reason why Mrs. Lansbury’s servant had never returned: poor Doris’s body had been discovered by Scotland Yard detectives the following day in a nearby street, so horribly mutilated that even the hardened officers had been appalled. No message was found on her. Clearly the murderer had intercepted the maid before she had been able to deliver it, and so the intended recipient never knew how anxiously the old lady had awaited him and Clayton had no way of finding out who the devil he was. Subsequent inquiries revealed that Mrs. Lansbury enjoyed no social life beyond her interest in spiritualism. The detectives had to limit themselves to interviewing the people who had bumped into her most frequently at séances, but none of them had any relationship with the eccentric old lady beyond the obligatory courtesies and were therefore unlikely to be the intended recipient of the message. Apart from that, she did not seem to have any family or friends. Catherine Lansbury had appeared out of nowhere in London society a few years before. She possessed a small fortune thanks to owning the patent for the Mechanical Servant, but no one had been able to discover anything more about her, except that she was a widow and came from a distant land, which seemed surprising given her impeccable English accent. Recent rumor had it that she had squandered her fortune on her obsession with the Hereafter and it was only a matter of time before her creditors caught up with her. Even so, the old lady did not seem to have relinquished her costly pastime, although, according to some of the statements, she never sought to make contact with anyone in particular during the séances, as was habitually the case. At no time had she asked to speak to her deceased husband, for example, and if some crafty medium declared joyously that he was in the room and wished to speak to her, Mrs. Lansbury would consistently refuse, waving her small, wrinkled hand in the air as though someone had paid her an inappropriate compliment before replying, “I don’t think so: my husband knows perfectly well I have no wish to speak to him. Besides, he isn’t the one I’m looking for. It is others I seek. I shall wait.”
After that she would remain silent, in expectation of those who it would seem never turned up. Could they be the same ones she herself had referred to as “those from the Other Side,” for whom the book was apparently intended? And who was the strange creature who had tried to steal it? How had he managed to appear during the séance, and how had he suddenly vanished in the middle of the street, leaving a trail of blood that had become visible only moments later? More important still, how had the old lady disappeared from a room that was locked on the inside? Too many questions without any answers.
Although they were frustrating questions, they distracted him, saving him from himself. He needed those questions because they were the barrier that kept at bay that other ferocious hoard of thoughts, which if they invaded his mind would end up destroying it. And so he had no other choice but to keep his fainting fits secret. None of his superiors must ever find out, not even Captain Sinclair. And if that also meant no more dreaming about Valerie, he would have to accept that, he told himself, as he fingered the gold-edged card that had been languishing in his coat pocket for the last six months like a treasure at the bottom of the ocean, until he had rescued it a week earlier.
The sound of a door clicking open and the gentle murmur of female voices announced that the session of the patient before him had ended. Clayton fixed his eyes apprehensively on the door of the waiting room. When he had arrived at Doctor Higgins’s consulting rooms an hour earlier, a plump nurse had guided him there along a corridor lined with doors, inviting him to leave his hat on the stand and to take a seat in one of the small armchairs. Noticing his ashen face, she had assured him that no one would disturb him while he was waiting, as no two patients were ever asked to wait in the same room, thus guaranteeing absolute discretion. Afflictions of the soul were apparently very delicate matters, Clayton reflected when she had gone. After standing rigidly for a few moments in the center of the room, he finally took off his hat and ventured to sit down, wondering about his fellow patients in the adjoining cells, which seemed to stretch out forever, like a hall of mirrors: neurasthenic gentlemen overwhelmed by the intolerable pressures of business; ladies suffering from chlorosis, their skins a delicate greenish hue, like forest fairies in which some child had stopped believing; hysterical young girls in desperate need of a husband, or possibly a lover? What the devil was he doing among this display of deviant behavior? But now it seemed it was too late. The murmur of voices had taken on the habitual inflection of departures, and the sound of a door gently clicking shut told Clayton that Doctor Higgins was done healing that particular patient’s soul. The tap of approaching footsteps followed, and the waiting room door opened, framing the nurse.
“You may go in now, Mr. Sinclair!” Clayton silently cursed himself for his complete lack of imagination when it came to giving a false name. “Doctor Higgins is waiting for you.”
• • •
WHILE HE SPOKE, DOCTOR Higgins was in the habit of tugging his goatee between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture that possibly betrayed an incurable affliction of the soul, and which didn’t exactly help Clayton to feel at ease. Indeed, it had the opposite effect on him, and so he had to take his eyes off the doctor and cast them around his spacious office. He studied the volumes lining the bookshelves, so thick they seemed to hold all the wisdom in the world between their pages; the engravings of body parts covering the walls; the uncomfortable couch; and the display cabinet in a corner, containing a few human skulls with deranged smiles lying on a bed of scalpels, syringes, and other sinister-looking instruments.
“So you would describe them as a kind of, er . . . journey. Is that correct, Mr. Sinclair?” the doctor inquired.
“Yes . . . more or less.” Clayton fidgeted impatiently in the uncomfortable leather armchair, unable to find a position that made him feel more relaxed. He decided to cross his legs and lean forward slightly, fixing his gaze a few feet beyond his shoes. “I don’t really know how to explain it. You see, the fact is, I know my body isn’t there—even when I am completely unconscious I know that I’m not completely there—and yet somehow I don’t feel I am dreaming either, and when I wake up I don’t even remember it as a dream . . . It is as if that place really existed and I am able to travel there with my mind—or my soul.” He shrugged, despairing at how all this must sound. “Does what I’m saying appear stupid to you, Doctor?”
Doctor Higgins smiled reassuringly. “If I devoted myself to treating stupid people I would have a full practice, and I would be a wealthy man.”
Clayton gazed at him in silence for a few seconds but decided it was best not to tell him that, to judge by the nurse’s excessive precautions, Dr. Higgins did have a full practice, and by his watch, his ring, and his flamboyant spectacles, all evidently solid gold, he was indeed a wealthy man.
“So tell me, Mr. Sinclair, this place you dream of, is it always the same?”
“Yes.”
“Describe it to me,” the doctor said, removing his spectacles and placing them on top of one of the piles of books on his desk, where they perched like an eagle on a rock.
“Well . . . it’s not easy.”
“Please try.”
Clayton heaved a sigh.
“It is a strange yet familiar country,” he said at last. “In my . . . dreams, I arrive in a place that could be anywhere in the English countryside. In fact, I could be in one of those serene meadows with babbling brooks that Keats described, or at least that’s how it feels when I am there. But at the same time, everything is different. It is as if someone had taken everything around me, placed it in a dice cup, and shaken it before throwing it over the world again. That place would be what came out. There everything is . . . all mixed-up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well . . . people aren’t just people, or perhaps they are, people like you and me, but they are also something else. It is as if they had animals inside them, or maybe it is the other way round: they are animals with human souls . . . Sometimes I see them in their animal guise, and the next moment I find myself contemplating a woman, a man, or a child. The whole of Nature is mixed-up, merged: the creatures in that place are both animals and humans, and possibly plants too. There are bat-men, fish-women, butterfly-children, but also moss-babies and old people who are snow . . . Only when I’m there, none of that surprises me. Everything flows harmoniously and naturally; I never think it could be otherwise. I myself am many things, a different thing each journey: sometimes an animal, or wind, or rain . . . When I am wind, I like to blow on her haunches, rippling her coat, and she runs over the hill, turns, and passes through me; sometimes I am the dew on the grass, and I soak her fur when she lies down on me; other times I run with her; she is swift and I can only outrun her when I am a wolf too . . . and sometimes we talk and drink tea in her elegant drawing room, and she picks a piece of fruit from my arm and bites into it joyously, for I am a tree, and sometimes a bird soaring in the sky, and she howls with rage because she can’t reach me—”
“You always dream about the same place, yet all your dreams are different,” the doctor broke in.
“Yes,” Clayton replied, both irritated and unsettled by the interruption. “I always go to the same place, and I always encounter the same, er . . . person.”
“A woman?”
Clayton hesitated for a moment.
“She isn’t exactly a woman. I already told you that the definitions we use here are impossible to apply there. Let’s say she is . . . feminine.”
The doctor nodded thoughtfully and stroked his goatee, a smile flickering on his lips.
“But each journey is very different from the others,” Clayton went on, trying to change the subject.
“That’s odd,” mused the doctor. “Recurring dreams usually present few variations . . .”
“I already told you they aren’t like dreams.”
“Yes, so you did.” The doctor gave his goatee a few gentle tugs, like an actor making sure his false beard is firmly stuck on. Then he glanced down at his notes. “You also told me they started approximately six months ago.”
“That’s right.”
“And that nothing like this has ever happened to you before.”
“No.”
“Are you positive you never suffered from any childhood episodes of sleepwalking, or other disorders such as insomnia or nightmares?”
“Yes.”
“And please try to remember: Have you at any other time in your life experienced any of the following symptoms: migraines, phonophobia, or digestive disorders . . .”
Clayton shook his head.
“. . . apathy, fatigue, depression, loss of appetite . . .”
“Well, lately there are days when I feel tired and have no appetite—”
“No, no! I’m only interested in the period leading up to six months ago, before you started having these . . . dreams.”
“Not as far as I can remember.”
“Hallucinations, mania, dizziness . . .”
“No.”
“. . . sexual dysfunction?”
“I fear I have led a rather dull life up until now.”
Doctor Higgins nodded and, giving his beard a rest, put on his spectacles before absentmindedly scribbling a few lines in his notebook.
“And what exactly happened to you six months ago, Mr. Sinclair?” he asked without looking up.
Clayton stifled his surprise.
“I beg your pardon, Doctor? I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear what you said.”
The doctor glanced at him over the rims of his gold spectacles.
“Clearly something must have happened to you. The sudden onset of this symptomatology with no previous history can’t have come out of nowhere, don’t you agree? Try to think back. It could have been something you considered trivial at the time: a slight blow to the head or some other seemingly harmless incident. Perhaps during a trip you ate some rotten food; blood infections can produce strange symptoms. Or was it something of a sentimental nature, a trauma that affected you deeply . . . ?”
