14 Sleep Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is
For gift or grace surpassing this,--
"He giveth his beloved sleep"? --E.B. Barrett. During her sleep, Carmen was again visited by her most frequent dream: nightmare that is. It always seemed she was not prepared for it, even being so used to it; it was like a jack in the box, popping out again. She had struggled with her sleep, staying awake half the night"again, not unusual as we all know, as you may have guessed by now. It would grow light soon, and she knew she'd not get to sleep again. She awoke to find herself naked in bed, with a little chill from the windy nearby open window. The dream was fading from her mind. When would the nightmare come to its gruesome climax? A question not asked, but thought. The only thing that remained"as Adam had said a hundred times"was, '...why don't you do something about it?' But he never said what that something was, or should be. She got out of bed, walked to the kitchen window, looked at the tower, grumbled a bit. [Caf meeting] Back at the caf, Gertrude was cleaning up; it was another Saturday morning. She sat down in the kitchen where Gnter was leaning against a window and register (water heater), trying to put together a conversation, a meeting if you will. "Gnter, you know as well as I, that Carmen has changed quite a lot in these past several months." Gnter looked inquisitive at her, putting his dough pizza and sauce to the side, walked toward her, "Yes, so I do." He said bluntly. "I mean Gnter, I know her quite well...too...well, and I know her idioms and what not...." Gnter interrupted, "Get to the point will you, you damn women go around in circles all day long, drive me crazy. If it isn't my wife, it's Carmen, and now you." She looked at old Gnter, and took in a deep breath, "Ok, I'll make it sweet and short; it has occurred to me she needs help, I think we, or me, with your support, should call her mother and let her know she had, or is going off the deep end. You know what I mean. She just is losing it. I'm really scared for her." "Is that a statement or a question?" he asked, "I mean are you expecting me to give you advice?" She looked a bit dumfounded; I guess she was. So she shook her head 'ja...' "Well, I make pizzas, that is what do, and what I am good at, maybe if she ate some, life would not be so complicated for her, tell her to stop thinking so much and eat some pizza...take life easy, not so serious... ." Gertrude wanted to either laugh or cry over the statement"or heave the pizza in his face, but the old greaser was kind of right. We make life too hard for ourselves sometimes, when we just need to do the basic things, and eat, work, love, pray and try to get along with one another. And the truth was, she never did have, or make much time to eat pizzas lately: as they say, '...smell the roses...'. Old Gnter, he didn't spend anytime looking for approval of his statement from Gertrude, he just turned around and threw a pizza into the oven, "One coming up," he yelled as if Gertrude was in the other room. For once he felt he did not have to feel or be apologetic; his simple life was good enough for him. "Adam had written out a letter to Carmen; it seemed he was to the point of exhaustion with her behavior; plus, every time he left her he had withdraws, as a person addicted would have, yet every time he was about to go visit her, he was always guarded; his body even came to the point of weakening, not knowing what to expect, and got physically sick. But then sex has its ardent drive does it not. Up to this point, he could not write this letter"he had started it only to rip it up and throw it away a number of times, up to this point that is, and now he could, and he felt he had to. Yet he was torn, should it not be face to face, he deliberated. He felt anger, resentment that he had to do it, he believed she was making him do it, or at least that is what he told himself"plus, the relationship was just not working. Working the way he wanted it to work, that is. The troops on base were now getting ready to move out on their thirty-day training up north. Frantisek had stopped by again, and was showing her breasts a little as they talked the last few weeks, knowing he liked to witness them (besides her little visit on the side), but he assured himself it was not because of her that he was breaking up, or going to break up with Carmen; for once the troops came back, she'd be right back home with her husband again, like many of the other housewives on base, whom once left alone did just that"for it was merely a good distraction for him in the healing process, so it did occur to him. Ay, yes for Carmen on Adam's behalf, it was not unconditional love was it", no, not on his part anyhow. He had told her the relationship made no sense anymore. He needed to be honest and straight forward, even if he was the bad angel with the bad news. [Breaking Up.] "I'm not a school boy Carmen, and I'm not sure how far I can go with dealing with your agitated or depressive nature lately. Mood swings, good lord, that's all I get, crazy behavior, I'm going mad just trying to figure out what is coming next. I need predictability." Carmen, although in shock, was still standing up, listening over the phone ('Why did he not come and tell me this,' she thought). She noticed there was no gentleness to his voice; then she thought, 'He's feeling he has to be strong, stern, just like a man.' "M-mm," came out of her mouth, a voice not sure of what to say, or if there was something she was supposed to say; what does one say when the other voice is confirmed on its destiny for its listener [?] Spontaneously she coughed out: "So finish what you were about to say, before you went into your silence Adam." He was not expecting that, he was expecting much, much more. An emotional flip-flop, if not anger, or a slam from the phone, or swearing in German, or possibly, perhaps if she was that good at it, in English; if anything, she seemed at this moment quite durable, but then maybe she was in shock, disbelief, so thought the young man on the phone. She was quivering on the other side of the phone though, he just didn't pick up on it, notice it. Her face was averted from the phone, and had a low tone to her voice; she really had no more to say to Adam, to anyone"the pause was isolated, there was no love she sensed coming over the phone: she mumbled to herself, indistinguishable even to her. (Two hearts never seem to beat the same she thought, just like two minds never dream alike; thus she felt akin to an isolated tower, one standing alone for a thousand years: looking, just looking day after day, fighting to avoid the demolition team.) He finally broke the silence, "I don't want you to be cross with me, I can't deal with the relationship anymore," he concluded. Carmen said shyly to herself, the phone call was over; these new images, shades of fog, she was having had never presented themselves to her before; it seemed to carry a double shot of pain, her father had abandoned her, now him; both for their own reasons of course. She now dropped the phone, it simply was hanging, she didn't put it back into its proper place, what for, nothing was proper, why should the phone be, that would be crazy, so she thought. She walked over to her bed, pulled out from under it, a shoebox, got thinking, she simply filled a void, and for it to continue she'd have to keep him in the box, possess him I suppose: and how do you do that? Sitting there in thought she wrote a poem in prose, to calm herself: Dreaming within Dreaming I thought, in my dream, I dreamed I was dreaming, I was a tower, and there I died"alongside the solders that killed my father. In the stead of their asking for, forgiveness, I dreamed, that I was dreaming, I was a ghost, and thus, I arose in my madness to execute my fathers enemies"now hanging and rotting, rotting somewhere within the dream I was dreaming.... 15 Carmen was never sure what triggered her dreams at night, and more than often the dream, that same dream, the one she'd had most of her life came back. She called it, 'The Tower Dream.' She was in some kind of building, her father was in a coffin burning, the coffin looked the shape of a tower, a tower coffin if you will, and that is what it was. Her mother was with her, they were both looking into the burning coffin. Three soldiers [The SS-Men, Germans] were there. No one said a word, and the smoke got thick and thicker in the room, and no one moved, I mean no one, and thereabouts, she started to choke. Then she'd wakeup, looked around her dark room, looking for ghosts, the soldiers: were they coming for her, she'd asked herself [?] She could never find anything stronger than fear to put out this apprehensive fire, and so the dreams came sometimes almost nightly; sometimes not for weeks though, but seldom. And now it was even harder to sleep, to keep the eyes closed, eyelids tightly sealed against one another at night; sometimes she'd force herself to start thinking of the Pizzeria. A doctor had told her that by luck she'd grow out of it, but that was five years ago; she had now told herself she'd be better to trust in courage to make it through the nights and days. She often wondered who these three men were. She'd look at many faces, draw pictures of them, not knowing what they looked like really, completely, I mean, not exactly what they looked like, for that was over fifteen years ago. Perhaps if she knew who they where it might help, she deliberated; if they were all dead it would be better, better than her thinking some night they'd [the soldiers] be coming for her and she'd not wakeup from her nightmare and this ongoing drama would stop. And now something was reversing it, to where she'd not fall to sleep for hours on end...and sleep was light, it was becoming a treasure. The soldiers, the soldiers...it was like they were waiting for the fire to consume her, and then they'd take her away, but she always lived through the fire; alas, not her father. Maybe they lived in Dieburg or back where they had taken her father; in Augsburg, she had often thought this. It was in 1944, she was only four-years old when they took him out of the huge library, or so it seemed back then huge, she had returned to it several times when in Augsburg, it was not as huge as it seemed now to her, that is to say, as it was when she was four; he was a German-Jew, a professor at the University. Carmen and her mother hid behind the armchair, the big sofa chair, as he walked toward the three soldiers that questioned him, so they would not walk toward him and find them. They asked him where his wife and child were. He told them at home. After they took him, Carmen and her mother went to London until after the war. 16 'You know,' murmured Carmen at the tower, as she walked around it (it was forenoon, and she had just talked to Adam less than an hour ago). 'You know I just got the death of my relationship with Adam,' she said as if there was a second person to the monologue. 'You know,' she said again, as she started to comb her hair back with her fingers, rested her back against the tower, 'angels don't hurt you, only people, no matter what, no matter what, they, people will hurt you eventually.' In all terms known to man, the most descriptive I can give you is that she was having a meltdown. 'You know,' she said again, back leaning still against the tower, looking up at its ridiculous roof-hat, of sorts: 'The more one gives in with the heart, the more one loses' "she was now in the quiet world of her own, at knifes-edge. 'I don't blame him,' she commented to the tower, looking up at its top again, as if it was her father with a hat on. She had brought a small bottle of scotch with her, had it in her purse, pulled it out and drank half it down straight: coughed, tried to catch her breath, eyes bulged out, it was equivalent to at least four shots of straight whiskey or more. She had thought her truths and fidelity was enough to compensate for her emotional abstractions, as unable as they seemed, they were not meant to harm anyone. She walked over by the stream, an old couple was sitting on the bench she so much enjoyed: she contemplated: what a terrifying future it is to think I'd have to live to be as old as they with this infirmity: these nightmares, ongoing nightmarish horrors; these nightmares, nightly (if Satan had a nightmare demon, he was working overtime on her, so she whispered in a back chamber in her mind). She drank another shot of scotch; the old woman looked at her, shook her head, got up and walked away. "Entschuldigung!" (I'm Sorry) she bellowed out, drunkenly, the old lady never turned about. She put her bottle back into her purse, and picked up her shoebox, the one she had carried with her, the one she pulled out from under her bed. [Babenhausen] If she could, she told herself"her second-self that is, the neurotic voice inside of her, now getting into her car, if she could un-live the past, sixteen or seventeen years of her life, and just relive the first four over, it would be worth giving up the other sixteen or so; yes, every moment of it, she assured herself now of that. She kind of knew it before, but now she deep-rooted it, and it seemed those four years were becoming a replay in her mind, as if a movie was being developed: her father pulling candy out of that big candy glass jar that was high up on a shelf, that she'd see every time she went down the stairway into the cellar, and she'd try to jump up to reach it, and once it fell during her trying, fell down and onto the stairway. The times he came home, she'd run to meet him on the sidewalk, as he'd find a blade of grass and put it in his mouth, and she'd copy him. The times he'd have to leave for a few days, and he'd come back with lots of gum for her. A movie was starting to focus in sharply of her childhood with him. The car started, and it was pointed toward the Babenhausen Military Base; to its PX. "She had concluded in her mind, Adam gave her one gift, honesty, had she found out way down the road of life he would leave her, thus, she'd stay only to be separate later, it would be even more devastating she figured; plus, he could go on with life now, it was, evidently, paralyzing him in his own way, she presupposed. Her silence as she drove gave way to retrospection. Her endurance was snapped, she pulled out the bottle of liquor, took another drink, possibly a double shot. It was hard to swallow, but she pushed it down: coughed some of it up, shook her head, pushed it back down. She put more of her weight on the steering wheel, slumping over a bit as she drove. 'Opened the window wider to get fresh air,' so her second voice told her; she felt as if she was in that room again, but this time it was not a nightmare, it was possibly, just probably, the conclusion of the long sought out nightmares coming to reality in day-dreaming. She saw their faces now, three faces completely: how mysterious she pondered, as clear as day. They were always faded somehow before; she would recognize the SS-Men anyplace now, should someone had shown her a picture, but now she needed no picture, she had one. It was like they were looking at her, as she was hiding behind the armchair. She now came out from behind the armchair, not afraid anymore. They took her hand like they took her father's but she pulled it back, said 'no,' then she shook her head, and refocused on her driving. |
