The Dream

“Who are you?”

 “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”                          

   And I find myself, lost in a dream, not knowing whence it originated, reveling in my ignorance, with her whom I know still less, reining it.

 She lowers her eyes at first, implying a feeling of indecision, then raises them again, an affable smile, restrained from showing on her lips, glimmering in them. “But it is impossible,” she says at last.

   “Why?” I inquire, letting my own smile appear.

    “Because I know of no mystery ever being interesting after you have known the solution to it.” Her gaze is fixed at me, expectation of what I shall say suffusing it.

     “You insist on making yourself a mystery to me? But no, I shall not have this as a definite answer. What I want is not at all a solution; you have no distinct shape in my head, and I’d like to clearly see you.” I pause, thoughts apparent in the creases of my forehead as I consider what exactly I shall ask her. “Your family, your house, and all those other matters may not show you to me. I want something that expresses you,” I again keep on trying to find a name to such a thing, but encounter only failure. “ Tell me about your friends,” I say at last, after realizing that I have spent too much time thinking, with a somewhat low voice, meant to hide my embarrassment of the silliness of the question that I asked only after I have found that I couldn’t find anything to say.

      “I cannot tell you about them because I have none,” she answers, not having recognized the abashment in my voice.

        She has unconsciously laid me a first thread for real conversation, and I unhesitatingly catch it. “You can consider me your friend then,” I say, feigning empathy that my former experiences with women affirm that they love so.

       “Well thank you.” The quizzical look in her eyes tells me that she has given me away. I lie in bafflement, not knowing what to say. She saves me and continues after looking away smiling delightfully to entail that I have been forgiven, “ After all,  how am I to have friends when nobody ever interests me? “

      “Why is that?” This time, I am genuinely curios.                                                                    

       “ Nobody ever interests me enough; nobody ever has anything new about him. Two minutes are enough for me to see that if I shall go on talking with this person or that, I’d be risking my life , dying out of boredom. Besides, I believe that the disliking I have towards people is mutual; I believe all people just find me strange.”
       “Strange?”

      “If you are about to deny it, then let me save your effort; I am strange.”

        My face, I am aware, falls into an expression of bewilderment, like my thoughts. It is true, she is unlike all others I have met; but to call her “strange” is nothing short of an offense. In her uncommonness, lies a magic, radiant, now in her eyes, now in her smile, that no one can ever call but enchanting, and it irks me still more that she believes herself to be so.
       “You don’t seem to be convinced? But I tell you, it’s true. In my head, run there strangest of all thoughts, and questions that drive me to the edges of insanity. I question everything, everything. I  keep on wondering, what for instance would happen if I were another; then, I ask myself, ‘would my view of the world change?’ for you know, some part of me likes to believe that reality does not exist but in our heads . It also likes to believe that when we are dreaming, we are conscious and alive in another world, and when we are awake, we are dreaming in there.”

  Her words are uttered, not with vehemence, but with a deep quiet serenity that adds to their exoticness that I heavily fall into.

    “So I now might be dreaming you?”

    “Perhaps.”

    “And how am I to restrain that dream?”

    “You don’t.”

      She lowers my face to hers, and delicately kisses me to prove herself real. At such proximity, I let my eyes discern hers and drown in their depths.

     “You are beautiful,” I say.

       But like in a dream, she has already flown away.