The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome (11 page)

The sculpture burgeoned, taking up a good hundred square yards. Contemplating it, you wondered how one man alone could have given birth to an ectoplasm of such size without it costing him his life. But that was no doubt why Soler was old beyond his years, why little by little he’d come to look like a living mummy unable to so much as wiggle his pinky. His outsize dreams had sucked the marrow from his bones, withering his body, tanning his flesh into leather stiffer than jerky. His life essence was gone, consumed by dream. David knew that ectoplasms wore your body out. Each time he managed to bring something back from the depths of dream, he lost weight, as if the object expelled through his mouth corresponded to an actual portion of flesh. Each time he stepped on the scale after a dive, he was convinced he’d undergone a mysterious amputation. Something had been taken away from him, he didn’t know what; it was painless, and yet his anatomy was no longer complete. Each dream consumed an organ. Sometimes this idea took on obsessive proportions. For the ectoplasms were not made of smoke, as he’d initially believed; further veterinary studies had shown their texture to be composed of living cells suspended in a very loosely structured protoplasmic compound. Some popular science magazines had even compared ectoplasms to benign growths that developed literally outside the subject. This rather unappealing view of the process, which reduced dreams to
the approximate level of mere warts, had not, however, cooled the public’s enthusiasm. David often thought of the emaciated Soler Mahus, looking like a recently unwrapped Egyptian mummy. The ectoplasms had eaten him alive. His children had carved themselves bodies from his very flesh, leaving him but bones, skin, and just enough organs to lead the life of a vegetable, reduced to a few basic functions. It was his flesh spread out there for all to see, on Bliss Plaza. His organs—sublimated, purified, rid of their ugly visceral materiality, but his organs all the same … David had no illusions. These days, an art gallery was nothing but a monstrous anatomical display. Below each work the following inscription might as well have been engraved:
shaped from the artist’s liver
. But the public would probably not have appreciated this overly organic truth.

He stopped at the foot of the steps. The prodigious size of the ectoplasm terrified him. He had but to close his eyes a brief second to see Soler, melting like a candle, consuming himself in a sizzle of hot wax to give birth to this monstrosity—so beautiful, and so poignant.

The great dream was, in fact, a state commission. When people spoke of it, they called it “the sculpture that stopped the war,” for that was indeed what had happened. Time and again, journalists had told the story of how Soler had been flown in a helicopter to the front line between two warring nations on the verge of a bloodbath. In a single night, he’d shaped this dream whose benign radiance had put an end to the homicidal impulses of both sides, and order was restored. A truce was declared, treaties were signed, and finally peace had returned and everyone
gave themselves a shake as if coming out of a nightmare, wondering with worry-tinged disbelief why it had almost come to mass murder.

The great dream that had stopped the war had sat enthroned on Bliss Plaza for five years. Though it showed a few tiny signs of fading, it was far from withering away. Its presence had driven up the apartment prices in the neighborhood, everyone wanting to live close to the work to benefit from its soothing emanations. Health services had conducted statistical studies that proved residents in buildings overlooking Bliss Plaza were wholly free of psychosomatic complaints, and enjoyed excellent health. Better still: incurable diseases had completely vanished in a three-hundred-yard radius around the oneiric object. The lucky few lived with their windows open, naked most of the time to offer up as much of their bodies as possible to the miraculous rays it gave off. A stroll in the nearby streets was all it took to tell the people here were much more beautiful than anywhere else. Their flesh was sound, their features lissome and easeful. Not a single line showed on their skin, and a trace of gray hair was the exception that proved the rule. Visitors were dumbstruck by the sight of children playing naked in midwinter in the snow along the avenue’s balconies, but no one around here feared colds, throat infections, pleurisy anymore. Their bodies no longer knew the tyrannies of such afflictions from a darker age. There was always something slightly dreamlike about the sight of these nudists of all sexes wandering past open windows in luxurious interiors appointed by the best decorators, but not a single one of them would’ve run the risk of concealing some part of his body, having it miss out on the rays
from the sculpture and, as a result, age faster than the rest. Those without the means to rent apartments nearby made pilgrimages to Bliss Plaza whenever their schedules allowed. Sundays the museum esplanade was carpeted by a silent, naked crowd sprawled on the steps and grass. They exposed themselves to the benefits of the sculpture just as they had once persisted in sunning themselves on beaches colonized by paid vacation time. David found the silent, smiling crowd slightly alarming. Like all professional dreamers, he was impervious to the power of oneiric objects. Draped in his wrinkled old raincoat, he tried to beat a path through all the breasts, all the members generously offered up. Weren’t these people cold?

“At least now we know what art is for,” an old woman had told him. “Back in the day, we used to say, ‘It’s beautiful.’ But what does that even mean? Beauty never stopped me from getting hemorrhoids. Now it’s different, there’s nothing to understand. It’s like vitamins. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, but it does me good!”

David made his way slowly around the dream. Though he admired it as a feat of prowess, he felt in no way flooded by euphoria or good health. This aspect of things remained unavailable to him. He was like a deaf worker who made hi-fi stereos. He knew all the mechanics, but couldn’t enjoy them because of a mysterious infirmity that no doctor was able to explain.

As he readied to head toward the museum, he suddenly spotted Marianne coming toward him, a case file under her arm. She was wearing her usual gray outfit: shapeless skirt and sweater, worn-out flats. Her bun made the bones of her skinny face stick out.

“I saw you from the window in my office,” she said. “This is a better place for a chat.”

David frowned. What was she hoping for? That the sculpture would elate them both, easing the passage of an especially bitter pill? Or maybe she was the one who needed some fleeting anesthesia from her stress to deliver what David could already tell was bad news?

“Your last dream was designated a no-pass,” she blurted, mumbling slightly. “It didn’t survive the anti-allergy injections. The biohazard tests weren’t encouraging either. Apparently you had a close brush with nightmare during that last dream? You were scared, and the dream object was suffused with adrenaline, something the lab is afraid will have a negative effect on potential buyers.”

David grimaced. A no-pass meant it would never leave quarantine.

“You know the mandatory precautions,” Marianne murmured. “Too much adrenaline amounts to saying your work is poison. Unfit for consumption. Safety standards are very strict. We don’t want customers traumatized by high-stress radiation breathing down our necks. You’re tired, David. All this dreaming is wearing you out. You have to stop and take some time off for a while.”

The young man stood before her, staring right into her eyes. She didn’t blink. The nearness of the sculpture cleansed her of her habitual tics. Her lips weren’t pursed, like usual. Her whole face seemed relaxed, at voluptuous ease. She was even almost … beautiful? She spoke in a slack voice, making no attempt for once
to browbeat her listener.
It’s her, and at the same time, someone else
, he thought,
a kind of twin sister who just slipped out …

“I’m sorry, David,” she said, “but we’re taking you out of the running for a while. Your last few dreams have all died in the incubators. Plus, the objects you’re producing are just getting smaller and smaller; what they bring in barely covers the warehousing costs. We can’t put them up at auction anymore, and gift shops rarely carry them. If you can’t get ahold of yourself soon, it’s big-box stores for you from here on out; your dreams will be sold in the aisle with the air fresheners. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

David shrugged. “Quarantine’s a slaughterhouse,” he grumbled. “Any dream that’s at all delicate doesn’t make it. Your batteries of tests would stop a tank dead in its tracks.”

“You know that’s not true!” the young woman said with aggravating patience. “Besides, that’s not all there is to it. Most dreams are sold with a one-year warranty. Yours wither so fast we had to cut it back to six months. Now we’ll have to reduce our coverage to ninety days. People just don’t trust objects with really short warranties, you know that. They feel like they’ve just sunk their money into rubbish. You aren’t selling, David. You have to get back in shape. Give up diving for a year; it’ll do you a world of good.”

“You can’t just turn it on and off. You go where it leads you.”

“Don’t be such a romantic! Even if we don’t fully understand the ectoplasmic creative process, we can at least suppress it. All it takes is an injection, a quick shot, and you won’t be able to dream for twelve months. Of course, we can’t force it on you. But from
now on, you won’t have psychological monitoring during trance periods. No one will come watch over you while you’re dreaming. You know what that means?”

David nodded. To dive unassisted was to run the risk of sinking into a weeklong trance, sometimes more, with no medical supervision. That meant no glucose drip, pure fasting, dehydration. Many divers had died that way, starving or dehydrated, while deep in a dream.

“The Ministry’s policy gives priority to big dreams,” Marianne murmured, turning to Soler Mahus’s ectoplasmic sculpture. “I know the government would like to install similar monuments at every intersection. We’re looking for the next Soler. You make trinkets, David. Fashion isn’t on your side. Trinkets belong to an age when the public conceived of dreams only as an intimate and solitary experience. These days, people gather together to enjoy works collectively. They commune in a shared passion for serenity.”

“No, keep going,” David snickered. “Don’t hold back. Say what you were thinking. I know the military’s interested in dreams. Ever since Soler Mahus stopped that war, the top brass has been busy trying to figure a way to weaponize dreams. I know some of them even wanted to materialize nightmares capable of scaring potential enemies to death.”

“Those are just rumors,” Marianne cut him off with a frightened blink. “I’d advise you not to share them with anyone.”

“Another rumor is that the nightmare objects were so terrifying they resulted in the deaths of the divers and the officers overseeing the experiment. True?”

Marianne put her hand on David’s arm. “I know you think I’m a pain in the neck,” she said with a sad smile, “but I’m very fond of you. Don’t try to dive alone. You know what’ll happen: you’ll fall into a coma and your vital functions will fail one after another. Let me give you the shot that will keep you from going under.”

But the young man was no longer listening. Fists shoved deep in his pockets, he gazed at the great sculpture through half-lidded eyes. “So that’s what you go for, huh?” he jeered. “Art that soothes and pacifies. Above all, nothing tortured, nothing that comes out of a crisis, nothing fed by despair. That’s what quarantine is for: triage. You poison everything that might potentially disturb the public.”

“Don’t get paranoid! Some dream objects are harmful to your health. There have been cases of contamination. People who went into depression after being exposed to rays from an unauthorized novelty.”

“If you won’t have me, I’ll go work for the parallel circuit.”

“The black market? You’d be working in a complete breach of the law. Dreams marketed without veterinary sanction? That’s like what controlled substances used to be. Don’t get caught up in that trap; you’ll wind up in prison. It’s not our fault if your dreams keep withering away ever faster. You know the rest cure won’t cost you a dime; it’s in your contract. You have a right to a six-month stay at a therapeutic establishment every five years.”

“You call that a vacation?” David hissed. “They probably think of good old manual labor as physical therapy! Give everyone a pickax and a section of road to build!”

Marianne remained impassive, even smiling faintly. The nearness of the giant ectoplasm kept her from losing her temper. Her mood stayed even no matter what came out of his mouth.
Fuck!
he suddenly felt like shouting.
You filthy slut! You dumb cunt! You frigid bitch!
He knew she’d greet these abominations with the same indulgent little smile. She looked like a patient in preanesthesia. He could’ve hacked off one of her limbs, and she wouldn’t have made a sound. He turned and left before doing something he couldn’t take back.

In a café, he had three glasses of milk, then went over to see Soler Mahus, but the old dreamer didn’t recognize him, and didn’t open his mouth. They’d shaved his head, and his bare skin betrayed unsettling bumps that distended his cranium. It was as if something was trapped under the glacier of his skull, trying desperately to tear through the seams and make its way outside. David stayed at the artist’s bedside for half an hour, till a nurse shooed him off.

Miserable and exhausted, he dragged himself to Antonine’s. With an embarrassed look, the baker confessed she’d just chucked one of his dreams in the trash.

“It withered last night,” she whispered. “It was even starting to smell.”

Maybe he should’ve married Antonine, gotten back into normal life, given up the art that had made him live on the margins of the world for too long? He often tried to imagine what his life would have been like with the plump baker. It didn’t take much to see himself in a cardigan, face dusted with flour, kneading dough in the darkest hours of the night. He’d shape the stretchy dough, turning it into even boules, cocoons of crumb asking only to be hardened by the hot breath of the wood-fired oven. Yes, a normal life, one that left you with an aching lumbar and seized-up shoulders, but so very fulfilled. At dawn, with the batch done, he’d have stepped into the courtyard out back for a cigarette and watched the sunrise, watched the windows in the nearby buildings light up one by one. Antonine … or Marianne? Why not Marianne?
Didn’t she become strangely sociable as soon as she stepped into the aura of a dream? All he’d have to do was fill the apartment with dream knickknacks. At night, when she came home from work, the dreams heaped on the shelves would wipe the bad mood right off her face. In a few seconds, she’d be carefree as a little girl again, ready to laugh at anything, to have fun at the drop of a hat. Thus anesthetized, she’d become someone else; even her angular figure, all skin and bone, would seem to soften, round out. Yes, maybe he should’ve turned in his art worker’s license, and just dreamed for himself alone, with no end in mind other than lightening Marianne’s chronic bad moods? Maybe … or else quit this filthy habit for good, let his powers atrophy by deliberately refraining from practice, like a bodybuilder watching his splendid musculature melt away as soon as he stops working the barbells? Amputate that unhealthy part of himself; wait for his brain to rust and stiffen till it produced nothing but run-of-the-mill dreams, dreams like the ones that haunted the sleep of Mr. Average Joe? Oh, to dream at last of dumb, inconsequential little things, woolly nonsense that didn’t force its way out of his body to become works of art. To dream of things that would fade away all by themselves when he woke and not stubbornly linger in reality, like ineradicable clues in an absurd crime. Well, then? Antonine? Marianne? A woman of flesh and a woman of bones … either was better than Nadia, that ghost he could never embrace, right?