Of Dreams and Beyond

The assurance that the girl he adored was just in the adjacent room, elegantly sleeping and that he was just so close to her and that he was refraining from meeting her by his own will gave him poise.

There was only one dream that was not hazy among all of Harold`s slumber fascinations. Far away from the blaring horns of the city, far away from the smoke, dust and burning sweat, he would meet the brown-eyed girl. They would converse until the first sight of dawn, holding hands as they walked along the beach of that lone island, watching the moonlit sky wink at them as its reflection in the seawater rippled.

When he woke up, he would still reminisce her face more that he could fancy his own; beautiful, chaste, cast with a shade of longing. He knew and believed that she was more than just a whimsical recurring dream. He could strongly feel that she was real, hidden in some remote corner of the world. He would prepare what he would say to her when they finally met in this real world – “I`ve nothing else to give you other than my love and life, for eternity and beyond. I’m yours, forever.”

His friends thought of him as a charming young man overpowered by the sheer monotony of their lives. “Monotony awakens the most striking hallucinations,” they would say, in an attempt to explain away Harold’s delusions about the brown-eyed girl. Still, they would hear his narration of his dream. They found it entertaining to listen to Harold’s opulent courting of the most beautiful girl in the world, even though in a dream. “Why don`t you speak to her? Ask her name at least. And where she is in the real world?” Some of them would ask him, at times to mock him and at times, overwhelmed by the unfathomable realism that his stories had. “It`s my dream, remember. I can hardly be in control of what I speak,” Harold would explicate.

Time went on with its own sluggish elegance. Coincidentally, at about that time, word began to spread about the beautiful girl and her grandmother who had moved into the neighbourhood. Her parents had passed away in an accident when she was a child. The only relation she now had in this world was her very old and fragile granny, who had become blind with cataract and who always sat at the entrance of the house in an old armchair. The girl rarely came out of the house. The milkman was the only person who had had a proper look at her and he asserted that she had beautiful brown eyes.

Within a few weeks, everyone in town talked about her but no one dared to venture into the place, afraid that they would create the impression of an intruder in the girl’s mind. In any case, finally, Harold too heard about the beautiful girl with brown eyes. His friends could hardly sleep, worried if Harold’s nonsensically enticing blabbering was indeed going to be true.

One bright sunny day, the old woman was sitting on her chair, her expanding and shrinking torso being the only evidence that she was still alive. She was evidently diseased in her bony frame, her hair all gone, with very few thinning and fragile strands remaining on her scalp. Cataract had blinded her succumbing eyes with a white membrane and as Harold approached her, he knew that it was only some time before her body too succumbed to her disease.

“You smell of coconut oil,” the woman said as Harold crossed the well-manicured grass lawn.

“It`s a lubricant we use at our factory, not coconut oil,” Harold said in dismay. “My dress is almost drenched in it.”

“It’s not your dress, son, your sweat smells of coconut oil.”

Harold slowed down along his tracks. “Maybe not the best way to approach this way, but I have just returned from work. This is the only time I am free.”

The woman smiled and the wrinkles along her cheeks widened. “I sense ambition in your voice, young man.”

“I`m afraid to stay a dreamer.”

The two of them smiled in acknowledgement. The woman nudged on the adjacent wooden stool, asking Harold to take a seat.

As he sat down, Harold looked around the tidily kept place. Even the lawn was well kept, if not fashionable.

“The whole place is well maintained and beautiful,” he said.

“The gardener comes once in a week and it seems he does work well for his payment.”

Harold nodded as he looked at the woman. Her disease had brought her dangerously close to being a set of breathing bones.

“Who might you be and what brings you here?” the woman asked.

“My name is Harold. I`ve come in search of a girl I think I may know.”

“How that might be?”

“In a way you might reluctant to identify with.”

The woman laughed mildly, not stirring, yet taking constant breaths.

“I see you`ve come in search of love.”

“Yes, but not in search of it; to affirm it rather. I hear you`re her grandmother.”

A brief silence ensued.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Harold, because this is the time of her nap. A very strange time, yes, but that’s how she is. Shy at times, outgoing at others. Quite lazy for a girl of her age and too beautiful too. Which is why I don’t really have trust on your character. Just because you see a beautiful girl in the neighbourhood doesn’t mean that true love sprouts out of nowhere within you. Young men your age get attracted in too easily and call it love.”

Harold remained still, wondering how he could explain his state of mind. He believed his love to be sincere, even if it had seemed irrational. When the first dreams had started to appear, it was just a humorous set of events, adorned by the sheer contrast of the shagginess of his life and opulence of the dreams. The dreams were exceptionally clear and distinct to a startling degree. Yes, he did have numerous other dreams, but he could remember none of them the moment he woke up. But in this case, even the pricking feeling of the vapours of the sea lingered for a while after waking up. It came very other night after night until even his conscious affairs had been overpowered by this thought. It had ultimately convinced him into believing that it was a foretoken of love that awaited him.

“I understand that it was not right of me to almost barge into your house and assert my love. But I will come tomorrow at the same time, and the day after. And for every other day until you may get persuaded that this is not a mere random gambling of my senses. Then, you may let me see her.”

The young man took his leave, a hopeful resoluteness weighing down his steps. The old woman, listening to the fading footsteps, muttered to herself, “I wonder what makes his conviction so strong.”

As the sun mellowed down into golden the next evening, Harold came into the old lady`s house and the woman had kept a chair ready for him.

“You didn’t think I’d return, did you?” he said.

“Of course I did, but I believed you`d at least spare me from the stink of your sweat.”

And so they talked. And they did the same the next day. And the day after. Every time, Harold felt a sense of fulfilment after the meeting.

“Do you know what I don`t like about men?” the woman would ask.

“No, what is it?” Harold would show eagerness.

“When men are in love, they become the biggest, dumbest idiots in the world.”

“Was that meant for me?”

“You and every other soul of your kind.”

“Thank you,” Harold would nod.

“But do you know what I hate about women?”

“No.”

“They love men becoming the biggest, dumbest idiots in the world for them.”

And they would end up laughing.

“What would you do if I fell dead this moment?” she`d ask at other times.

“I`d be happy that I could go in and talk to her for a reason.”

And then she would sluggishly slap his face with her fragile hands.

He got to learn that the old woman used to paint when her age had been ripe and that her paintings used be bought even by the monarchs. He, in return, told her about his once disastrous attempts at playing a mouth organ. But despite his passion, he made her promise that she would not tell her granddaughter about him until they both agreed on the right time.

Impending death lingered around every breath of the old woman and Harold thought it better not to inquire about her past so as to not bring about the complete shallowness of her present life into the conversation. Nevertheless, she always spoke of her day dreaming child, who always found it amusing to sit at a corner of the house and dream of fairy tales. Harold figured out the likenesses and the differences between him and the girl he loved, which also made him wonder about the possibility wherein she`d find him unappealing. In that case, he would be a real man and go away from her sight forever to let her live in peace.

Gradually, more people got to see the brown eyed girl, when she wandered into the market place, or went about cleaning the house, or watered the plants outside. All of them were equally sent into a trance by her mesmerizing beauty and the profundity of her beautiful, blue eyes. Harold’s friends, who saw her, told him that she was exquisite and that theirs would be a match made in heaven. Harold didn’t get excited by any of these. He had given a word to the old lady and he would hold onto it, no matter what. He even resorted to taking longer, distant roads to work, so that he wouldn`t run into her by chance.

And so, one silent evening of autumn, Harold and the old woman were engaged in their routine exchange.

“There are deeper and more compelling emotions than love in this world, Harold. But only love has the power to make the other ones look pale in comparison. That’s why it’s not always wise to be lead by love.”

Harold nodded. He had yet not disclosed about his dreams, but now, he felt that they were closer than the routine talking terms. He went on to tell her about how he had seen the beautiful girl in his dreams, how they would talk by the sea, and how they would hold hands every night.

“It’s a face I’ve seen only in my dreams. But now, no part of my reality is complete without it.”

The sky was cast with a shade of melting bronze that evening. The whole street was relatively silent and only the sounds of returning vendors and cheery lovers at the corners of the street could be heard. That silence was deafening.

“I see in you a man of honor, Harold. Come back tomorrow morning, and you can meet Anna.”

The whole place was crowded when Harold came to the old house the next morning. People were dressed in mourning. He slowly walked past the crowd. On the courtyard, lay the lifeless body of the old woman. Her granddaughter was sobbing with her back to Harold, along with a few relatives who had come in from the next town overnight. As he got closer to the corpse he heard them speak in distress.

“She was a beautiful soul. It`s a pity she had to die in solitude.”

Harold moved towards the man who was speaking. “Why wasn`t she married?” he asked.

“Well, she had her own delusions in her life. Always spoke of a handsome man she used to meet in her dream. She wasted her life in anticipation. Poor soul.”

As a vestige of overpowering insight occurred to him, he turned around to look at the weeping girl. She was a beautiful girl with deep brown eyes. Harold quivered. She was indeed a brown-eyed beautiful girl. The one he saw in his dreams. He steadied his breath as he gazed at her, beautifully tracing every detail of her face and beamed. The beautiful brown-eyed girl in his dreams was real.