Tulunasia Park

Patrick Keppel

Continued . . .

      My gape slid gradually into a smirk. I emitted through my nose a few short bursts of breath, and then at last I broke. I laughed so loud and long that even cynical old Harry Sneed from way across the newsroom stood glaring at me, obviously impressed. How on earth could I possibly respond to such a letter in eleven column inches below the horoscopes and to the left of the comics? Should I tell him the truth? I wondered. Should I tell him he should quit his job and leave this town for good before it was too late? That was after all precisely my suggestion for the both of us. I stared into the mountain of letters, randomly tiered on my desk like the exploded white ruins of an Aztec pyramid, and my fit grew worse. "Their only hope," I kept muttering between a number of rather strangled gasps for air, "their only hope would rather be in Qatar!"
         This was by far my dream's lowest moment, but as Dr. Siam once said, such times ironically bring us closer than ever to insight. My mind had there for the first time in my dream taken one step off its usual track, and I assure you I felt both the exuberance and the solitude such supposed objectivity insists upon. I did not, however, consider myself as I had before, perched above my readers on some high plateau. To the contrary, I had now a glimpse of how little I knew, and though this is, as I mentioned earlier, a good definition of lucidity, I was unable at the time to regard this ignorance as anything but the most undesirable stupidity.
         At once my fit of laughter ceased. I felt the ensuing silence thicken inside me, and in a moment my spirits had sunk far deeper than ever into the swampland of self-pity. I cursed myself, my tiresome ennui, my inability to care about anything. I shuddered at just how indifferent I'd become--smirking at the insecurities of an entire city, toying with confidences freely given. Who was I to laugh, to manipulate? At least they had dreams, I thought, and with a sudden motion grabbed a fistful of letters.
         These dreams proved to be much like the one the medallion presser had described. They were always violent, usually self-destructive in places, and above all seemed obvious magnifications of the dreamers' waking misery. I pored over each as I had never before. At my right lay a university textbook, a study of dreams entitled A Study of Dreams, which I had brought my first day at the Examiner-Voice. I had never once looked inside it--not even while enrolled in the course that had required its purchase--but now I found myself scanning its pages for secret meanings as one might the I Ching. The latter would no doubt have proven much more helpful, but since I wanted so badly to redeem my earlier mistakes by making these interpretations as psychologically sound as possible, I stuck with the textbook far longer than it deserved.
         In any case, I remember I had responded to about eleven or so when I suddenly reached another impasse. Each dream seemed to demand my urgent attention--how could I dare choose but three for publication? Only my determination not to fail once more as Dr. Doppel prevented me from scattering the letters about the newsroom on my way out for good. I concentrated my efforts into the construction of an elaborate system of categorization designed to determine which dreams were the most pressing. I placed each letter into one of three stacks--the Absurd, the Grotesque, or the Hopeless--and then divided these into three sub-categories: the Temporarily Saved, the Brink of Disasters, and the Lost Causes. It was a ridiculous plan from the start, but in this most obsessive moment of my dream I even began to ask myself such questions as "Should I answer first the Hopeless Brink of Disaster or the Absurd Lost Cause?"
         Utterly exasperated after two choices, I turned angrily away from my categories, plunged my hand into the pile of dreams remaining, and randomly plucked out the envelope I swore would be the last one. At once I tore it open and began to read:

Dear Dr Doppel
         A while back I started with this dream. I was on this dirty beaten bus crowded with people who had sad eyes & mean looks & long grey faces all dressed in drab green. The bus stops in the middle of no where & I could not stand them any more they were so quiet so I got off. I did not know it before but it was the right place where I was going. I knew the land & weather right away which is importent to me. There was a sound like here & ponds but lot more woods & farms. There was only a few small cottages & some simple places where if you need some thing like food or clothes or any thing realy then some people there will just give you some just like that cause every body does some time. There was also no cars or bigger citys & only one bigger building made of stone with lot of rooms & books there if you want to read or walk around inside. I did not feel like a alien but I could not help but notice that the sky even in day had not one like us but two silver white moons. I felt thats nice & kept looking up to see when I walked. Oh yes the people were very friends & very peace. Two guest I was new & helped me find my home.
         That was one day & I dreamed about this place again ever night for a while. I like it there to do all kind of thing I wanted to but never had the time or was too scarred. Some time I fish which I like to do here. Then I learnt to play the flute like I remember how my grandfather did. They like me there too which is good cause I do not have too many here except my neecies who I do not blame. I just get sorry when I wake up & know its all a dream.
         Now Im awake & this is the problem I am writting about. It seems Im at work some times at the place where I count the pieces for those subs & its hard to stay up cause the numbers is always just like they counted them before. I start to dream about what morning is like in the place with the two moons where say I might take a nap & then wake up in my kitchen to cook dinner. What is this? My neecies they say you know dreams all right & they wanted me to tell you & ask for help. I know I stayed alone a long time but at 55 I had practice & can't see how I need it can you?

Sincerely

Thomas Fenster

22 Long Pond Road

         I had so many different reactions to various parts of this letter that I found it difficult when I finished to consider it as a whole. I was I admit disappointed at first because it did not sound as desperate as some of the others I had forsaken. It seemed, in fact, all too pleasant. Not only did I find that its language calmed my rather anxious state of mind, but I began to wish the dream were my own. I was so surprised by its ending that I looked for more on the reverse of the page. There was nothing there, of course, but at once it struck me that I already had enough as it was.
         By the time I had absorbed myself in it again and then once more, I felt I understood this Thomas Fenster unusually well. He was a lonely, timid man who was able to forget the world as easily as he could forget to count its components of destruction, who could replace our harsh complexities with a simple, benevolent world we could never allow ourselves to imagine, much less to understand. After all, there were in his vision two moons--a ridiculous sight, I finally decided, which only the most fortunate of us could ever hope to see.
         This was my "interpretation," and without once referring to that graph-riddled textbook I examined every detail in the dream accordingly. I agreed with Mr. Fenster that he needed no help--that he was in his mind only doing what we all wished we could do--and insisted he need only seek professional attention if for some unlikely reason he decided he preferred one moon to two.
         Then some time passed--perhaps two months, but definitely not three. It is impossible to say; here the narrative corners are particularly defied. But in any case, I do know that despite the initial burst of inspiration I received from Mr. Fenster's letter, I had not moved far away as soon as possible, as I had sworn I would. I had in fact only moved to a disheveled little house some five miles north and once there had rutted myself deeper than I ever had before. I was still Dr. Doppel from seven each morning until noon, though my percentages were dropping so fast I knew my tenure as that tired old phantom was surely in its last hour. After work I would invariably sit in a cinema for at least two movies, eat at any roadside diner I could find, and then read all I could about Chad, the Khirghiz, or Cephalonia, for instance, before dropping off at two o'clock sharp into my usual blank sleep, wrapped in the thin rough skin of a blanket my mother had inadvertently pinched from a KLM jet.
         I had given up my fight against such rage for order; in fact, I no longer believed I could or should live any other way. Surely this attitude bound me all the more tightly to my obsessions, but on the other hand I see now how such resignation provided for my rapid break from them. Consider the image I projected of myself in this dream as similar to that of a self-conscious caterpillar. I resisted for what seems now an eternity the cocoon which had begun to spin around me. I had no idea what metamorphosis meant; I only wanted to remain the languid worm I was. Only when I gave up my struggle against that over which I clearly had no control--only when I gave myself over to the unknown and allowed myself to be sealed--only then could I store the energy I would need to burst forth at the sun's first warmth.
         And so when I felt that first piercing ray--when I found in a grassy patch outside my front door that unstamped letter from Thomas Fenster--it seemed only natural that I change accordingly. At once I called the Examiner-Voice and told the whimpering Bundt that Dr. Doppel had written to himself and that the response he'd received back was to get out while it was still safe. I then prepared a substantial breakfast that took what seemed like the entire dream to finish. The unopened letter sat patiently on my right all the while.
         I had no idea what to expect this time from Mr. Fenster; I do not recall even making a guess. As soon as my plate was clean, I calmly laid the envelope out flat before me and with my butter knife slit its wax seal. The flap released its grip as smoothly as fish scales do for the seasoned angler, and with the same unconscious gentleness I peeled it open and extracted its folded square. I read it slowly, pausing a moment at the salutation, pleased to read there not my persona's affected name but my own:

Dear Tyrone
         Thank you for the answer which was very kind. I almost took your advice at the end about help when I got fried from my job without even knowing till maybe the next day when I shown up for work. My neecies they want to put me in the hospittle but I dont think it matter now any way. I dont have to live here any more if I dont want.

Thank you though
Thomas Fenster

Long Pond

         I set the letter back down on the table and watched it absorb some of the ring of coffee my cup had left. It lay there while I washed every dish and spoon I could find, and it lay there while I gathered up the hundreds of maps and travel brochures I had collected and even my globe and flung them all in the trash. I assume it lay there while I walked nearly a dozen circles around Satayuga Park, and I remember its lying there when at seven o'clock I collapsed exhausted onto my couch.
         That the letter was in my dream what Dr. Siam calls "the perfect absurdity"--the initial element of unexplainable mystery that shatters one's usual vision of the world and repaints it in a strangely different hue--should be clear. I was at this point completely unconscious of my actions; I could do only what I felt I must, and never once stopped to consider the reasons why. Perhaps the La Duerma professors would insist that I was in this dream a prisoner of whim and therefore in grave danger. They would in any case undoubtedly find me or any of us here currently guilty of the same. All of us at one point could not help but see our frightening limitations; all of us were forced to admit we had absolutely no control over our lives. But if we told them that this was the very basis of our imaginative freedom, they would pronounce us insane and have us locked up to prove it.
         They would, however, have to find us first, and this is obviously impossible. I only mention this imagined conflict to give you a better idea of what I was struggling with in my dream. I felt on the one hand exhilarated by my spontaneous movements, but they were on the other quite unfamiliar. As I lay there on the couch, I considered the possibility that I was feeling a bit too electric, that I might be in a dangerous situation after all. I tried then to calm myself, and as always this had precisely the opposite effect.
         I noticed my hands had begun to wrestle themselves into knots twisted so tight I had not the energy to wrench them apart. It was a curious feeling at first, but I soon felt as repulsed by this phenomenon as by the condition of my lungs, which never quite seemed to fill to their capacity. I began to take huge bites out of the humid air but only gasped them back out again. Still, I was not particularly frightened. I was angry with myself, but mostly just weary. After about seven and a half more gasps, I curled into the shape of a conch and listened to my own voice repeat the words of Thomas Fenster's letter, which fell hard upon me like heavy drops of rain. A few arrhythmic beats spattered into a pattern and then out again, pelting the roof of my mind with unconnectable dots and then dropping off to a trickle, as if making then the decision to drop as one gray sheet, a drenching, hissing torrent of thoughts cascading into a dream, the first I'd had in years.
         I dreamt I was Fenster's boss in some generic little office partitioned by drab green cardboard. Bundt and Sneed are there, and so are my parents; they are all my employees.
         It is late in the afternoon when Fenster appears. He smiles, says hello to a few people on his way through the labyrinth, and puts his lunch in the refrigerator. I fired him three weeks ago. A few people laugh nervously, but I'm seething. What he needs is a good hard kick in the pants, I think to myself. He's trying to make me look bad, make me throw him out. But Fenster quietly sits down at his cubicle as if innocent and begins to count envelopes.
         I hover over him until he notices me. "Am I counting the wrong ones, Tyrone?" he asks timidly. I yell at him to cut it out. He looks puzzled, and I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because somehow I already know he has no idea what he's doing. "You were fried three weeks ago," I practically whisper, and he looks up at me, obviously frightened for a moment or two, but then just nods and smiles.
         I tremble what to say. I've never really seen a crumbled mind before, and all I can do is suggest he seek professional attention. Again he nods and smiles, then rises slowly from his chair. No one laughs as he leaves the office, but the moment he's gone they all go back to work.
         I return to my office, which is a replica of my apartment, and lie down on the couch. I remember how much I liked Fenster. I hardly knew him, but I considered him my best friend. He called me by my name and not Dr. Doppel like everyone else. He told me all about his dreams, even though I didn't have any to tell him.
         I look out the window and see that night has fallen. I try to picture Fenster in that place he always talked about, that place which sounded so much like him. I can just see him playing the flute. Me and some of the other farmers stop our work for a moment and listen. We all look surprised because he's just started learning to play, but he says it's nothing, we should have heard his grandfather. We all nod in appreciation. I can tell they like him here. Fenster smiles, and as if that were my cue I leave the others and walk with him to the pond to see what we can catch for the night.
         I remember then how we used to go fishing together, and what a seasoned angler he truly was. I start to wish he could take me to that place, because I like to travel and read but never seem to have the time or am too scarred. I look out the window again at the moon this time and blur my eyes to see what it would be like to have not one like us but two. I begin to wonder where he is right now and then remember his neecies putting him away. I hate to think of him there in that hospittle, but I don't think it matters now anyway. I don't have to live here any more if I don't want.
         My eyes had already opened by the time I awoke to the sound of my own voice mumbling these last few lines of Fenster's letter. All at once I felt I understood what these startling words meant, and a piercing sense of urgency raced through my body. In this hazy state of mind I was certain that Thomas Fenster was about to take his life, and I felt oddly responsible. I knew I had to find him right then.
         I stood up and wobbled from side to side, disoriented in the fresh darkness; what had seemed like only five seconds must actually have been about three hours. Giving my head a good hard shake, I stumbled over to the table to find Fenster's letter, which I recalled had mentioned where he lived, but it was no longer there. I fell to the floor to look underneath, but by the time my knees had touched, the two words had already flashed into my mind.
         Long Pond lay nearby, just on the other side of a thicket of ash behind my place. Of course, I did not then stop to consider how interesting or amusing it was that I'd unconsciously moved so close to Mr. Fenster's. I simply bolted out my back door and plunged headlong into the dark woods, crackling a path through the underbrush. It was nearly impossible to think, and at least twice I slowed, as though about to turn back. After all, I knew the land around the pond had years before been partitioned, sold, and developed, and it seemed incredible that I would find Thomas Fenster by going door to door. On the other hand, I felt compelled, pushed ever forward like the tide. I began to imagine what I would do if he were unconscious or dead, or what I would say to him if he were alive, but by the time I reached the clearing and saw the first house, I could only think how much I wanted to meet him. I stood for a moment as still as the pond to my right and stared into its imposing blackness. The silence too was unsettling in its perfection, and so I was relieved when I heard a fish break the water's surface, and then another. Taking a deep breath of the damp, fertile air, I turned toward the house.
         It was but a tiny brown cabin, apparently secluded from the others at the easternmost tip of the pond. I stepped onto its creaking porch and knocked on a crude screen door. Muffled metallic waves of sound echoed into the darkness all around me. Again I knocked, this time on the splintering wood of the house, but still I received no answer. I was about to continue my search elsewhere and had even taken two steps back, when my eyes fell upon the name Fenster carved on the floor of the porch. The next thing I knew I was on the other side of the door.
         I could see nothing in front of me for what seemed like an eternity. I was impatient with my eyes, but at last they adjusted to what little light there was and discerned a long, dark figure laid out on the floor. With each moment another of his features emerged from the opaque. He was wearing a navy blue shirt and black trousers, both flecked with dirt, and thick wool socks from one of which a pale toe had emerged. His gray hair flowed wildly down to his shoulders, and his round, leathery face was dotted with sharp white stubble. He looked precisely as I had pictured him in my dream, or at least so I thought then. I stared in silence at his fully materialized shape--a sculpture, it seemed, suspended ambiguously between life and stone--and at once I felt sick, expecting the worst. My hands began to wrestle. "Cut it out," I nearly shouted, then shivered in recognition.
         Thomas Fenster immediately woke and looked up and around, out the window, and then at me. His watery gray eyes appeared at once both bleary and quizzical. "Tyrone?" he guessed, and after I nodded, stretched like a cat into the gentle evening. "How in the world did you manage to find me?" he yawned.
         I suppose I could have asked him what in the world he meant by that, or explained that it was actually quite simple since he'd written the location at the bottom of his letter, or else answered him with the ten thousand questions I myself had. But all that really wasn't necessary, because by the time all those complicated possible responses finally registered in my mind, I had already followed his gaze out the window and awakened to see the twin, silvery white moons encircling Tulunasia Park, with quiet beauty and dignity, as I knew they always did.

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