The Faint-hearted Bolshevik (7 page)

That night I had a dream. Before I go on, it might be worthwhile explaining that when I say I had a dream this shouldn’t be taken the way it normally is. For almost everyone, when they say they’ve had a dream, it’s like saying they’ve just farted. It’s partly something improper and partly something no more important than that. For me, it’s different. I have an enormous respect for dreams and I’ve always had it, or to be precise, I’ve had it since I was little more than a baby.

When I wasn’t quite three I had a series of fevers that caused me to have terrifying hallucinations. My first memory, even before my mother’s face or my father’s voice, is one of those nightmares. In my dream it was stiflingly hot and my arms and legs were being devoured by a bale of tortoises. Put in those terms it seems a bit of a joke, but it scared the living daylights out of me. So much so that, according to my parents, the first thing I did once I was better and could go downstairs and play in the garden again was to bite the head off my little friend Roberto’s tortoise, the only representative of that species I had ever seen and which must have inspired that terrible dream sequence.

After that I went on accumulating other memories and other nightmares, less primitive, but much more terrifying. Between the ages of four and eight I dreamt almost every night that my parents had died. The dream would vary,
ma non troppo
, in which it was simply other people who told me this had happened and I would grieve for awhile until my mother and father appeared safe and sound. There was also a
fortissimo
variation, in which my parents were sadistically executed in front of me and then I would be tortured for hours with the mocking account of the lack of strength and courage my father had shown before they finished him off. When I woke up, I would feel a sense of abandonment and contempt for my father that sometimes stayed with me until midday.

In puberty, coinciding with the outbreak of all that hormonal business, my dreams took on an ephemeral but encouraging slant. I started to dream about abandoned castles, impenetrable forests, strange houses with myriad rooms. This in itself wasn’t particularly stimulating, but on exploring these places I almost always came across a series of delightful young (or not so young) ladies with whom I usually starred in lyrical scenes. From time to time we would just start fucking without further ado—why deny it? The good thing about both options was that they were willing to do whatever I wanted, things which the female I longed for at that moment refused to do: some would listen politely to my sweet compliments (not with rapture but with indulgence, which is a much more humane and useful thing), caressing me with their snow-white hands; others were tireless sluts and would take it however I wanted. Those dreams made reality unnecessary, and it’s partly due to them that I don’t complain about not having scored with anybody during my adolescence. Furthermore, I’m of the opinion that actual teenage love affairs are unbearably corny, while those who remain frustrated develop magnificent psychological shortcomings that will later delay the inevitable moment when having a screw is like lugging a sandbag up to a tenth floor apartment with your ankles tied together.

Once I reached adulthood and as part of the systematic amputation this state represents, my dreams started to become less frequent, until they almost ceased completely. This brings us back to what I was saying before. When I met Rosana, and when I dreamed of her that night, it was more than unusual for me to have had a dream, or at least one I still remembered in the morning. And that had increased the intensity of events in this area of my life. The nightmares I had in those days were so ghastly that I had to hold myself down tightly so as not to lose my marbles. If it was a dream about lovey-dovey little girls, it would leave me really quite upset, and when I woke up and discovered that the young lady had vanished I would become anxious and sink into an uncontrollably bad mood. In any case, it was always disturbing and I found it harder every time to shake it off and consume my daily portion of shit.

The strange thing about that night, and which might explain what came later, was that the young girl didn’t disappear. Not immediately.

The dream took place in a hypermarket. I think it is the first and last time I’ve dreamed about a hypermarket. Although in fact it wasn’t really a hypermarket, but one of those shopping centers with all different kinds of shops, bars, clubs, veterinary clinics, hairdressers, video stores, gyms, and also hypermarkets. It was a new shopping center and almost all the units were either empty or in the process of being occupied. Some—very few—shop windows were already full of merchandise, ready to attract and entrap the voracious
homo shopping
. One strange thing was that there were closed doors interspersed between the various shops that looked like front doors and harried people would occasionally go in or out of them, glancing around suspiciously.

I have no idea what I was doing there. I do know whom I was with: my sister and a group of her friends, four to be exact. The noteworthy thing about me being in such company is that I’ve never had a sister, unless there was some error or omission on my father’s part. For this reason, the first thing that aroused my curiosity was my sister herself. This didn’t last long. She had hair the same colour as mine and looked conventionally like me, that is, as much as sisters normally resemble their brothers. Brothers who look like their sisters generally do quite well out of it, but sisters who resemble their brothers tend to lose out by comparison. In short, after a few minutes, once the novelty wore off, my sister ceased to be of interest to me. As we walked away, she was chatting to one of her friends, whose face and way of walking suggested she also had a brother she resembled.

The other girls were a completely different kettle of fish. One of them, tall and dark-skinned, moved like a cat. Another, shorter but also dark-skinned, walked grabbing onto my arm and whispering obscenities in my ear while her heaving bosom, almost bursting out of her top, bounced up and down before my eyes. The last one, who had been talking to catwoman, was, quite simply, Rosana. In my dream she was perhaps three or four years older than in real life, no more than eighteen or nineteen. She was barely an inch or two shorter than the other girl and next to her, Rosana’s skin shone delicately pale. A detail that distinguished her from fifteen-year-old Rosana was the look in her eyes, hardened by some kind of eyelash make up that brought out the blue of her eyes very effectively.

We would stop in front of shops that were either ready to open or still being fitted out. They would have a look at the window displays and I would keep looking at what interested me, that is, the heaving bosom; and when its owner leant forward a bit, it detached itself of the fabric around the neckline and ran through the entire range of suggestive forms that a bosom on the loose can adopt. However, I felt a certain indifference. I won’t pretend I didn’t consider taking advantage of the fact it was a dream to tear her dress off without any hassle. But that shameless damsel didn’t really turn me on. She was the most easily attainable and that decreased her value by quite a bit. In dreams you aspire to the maximum, even though you sometimes run out of time and are left with nothing, just like in fucking real life.

While we wandered from shop to shop, I still hadn’t decided what the maximum was. I liked Rosana and the catwoman about equally and I was fairly confident I had enough time. However, the relative immobility of the dream, which basically consisted of moving slowly along a long corridor, didn’t last long. Although I had at no point had the impression that we were heading for a specific place, when we arrived in front of one of the closed doors that seemed to be an entrance to a residential complex, my sister stopped abruptly and said, “Well, this might be it.”

She took out a key and tried it on the door. The lock turned easily.

“This is it, then,” said her friend who also had a brother.

A steep staircase was visible behind the door. My sister and her friend went up first and the four of us left followed a short while later. Rosana took the initiative and the busty one and I brought up the rear. At the top of the stairs was a small, dark living room. We made ourselves comfortable in a variety of chairs and sat in silence. They were all waiting for some sign from my sister. She was wringing her hands.

“We’re not just going to sit here and wait until they decide to pay attention to us, are we?” the dark-skinned catwoman broke the silence.

“We don’t have much choice,” said my sister, “unless you have an idea?”

“Yes, I do. Of course I’m not waiting for anyone. Anyone who wants anything from me can come and find me. If they find me sitting here I know what they’re going to think, and I’m not prepared to put up with that. I’m going to take a look around.”

The dark girl got up and smoothed down her dress. It was a summery lilac robe.

“Maybe no one will come looking for you,” my sister warned her.

“Perhaps,” the other girl replied, leaving the room.

My sister looked bewildered for a moment. Then she composed herself and asked, “What are the rest of you going to do?”

“I’m staying here with you,” her sidekick set the tone.

“I’m in no hurry” said the busty one with a smile, pinching my arm.

Nobody else was in a hurry or felt like answering. My sister looked at Rosana and me, urging us on. In the end she insisted, “What about you two?”

Rosana sighed and then let her words drop into my sister’s embarrassing failure: “I’m getting out of here as well. Not right now, later. When it doesn’t look like I’ve left with her.”

It was my turn. The dream had changed so much and I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I suspected that my sister would prefer me to say I’d stay, and the busty one took it for granted. I also realized that I was of very little interest to Rosana. I saw only one way out. I stood up and said forcefully, “I choose to go. Right now, as if I were going after her. To find her.”

The four of them sat there looking at me, incredulous, although Rosana less so than the other three.

“What a poor idiot,” mumbled my sister, turning away. “And I’m sure you’re thinking she wants you to find her.”

“It’s not a case of thinking anything, but of finding out. If it turns out she doesn’t, I’ll give up and come back.”

“Don’t waste your time,” said big tits resentfully. “He knows what he needs. Perhaps she’ll feel sorry for him and they’ll think they’re happy. Good luck, sweetheart.”

I left the room and started to explore the house. Its size was nothing like other houses I’d seen, the stunted offspring of real estate speculation. I walked through dozens of rooms, passages, flights of stairs, halls that led to other halls, basements, attics. It was a colossal labyrinth that spread in all directions, although it might be worth pointing out that none of its constituent parts was too big, which prevented you from gaining any sense of perspective. Besides, none of it was that well-lit.

After about approximately half an hour of searching, I was startled by the sound of something falling in one of the rooms. I inspected the room and saw a picture frame that had fallen over on top of a sideboard. Not far away was a small black cat, barely more than a kitten. The animal was motionless and I was struck by its eyes, not yellow as you might expect in a black cat, but a pale violet, almost lilac colour. Like my sister’s friend’s dress, I remembered.

I slowly approached it and reached out to pick it up. It didn’t resist. On the contrary, it snuggled up to me and gave me four or five quick licks on the back of my hand with its little pink tongue. With the cat in my arms, I continued my exploration of the house. While I examined the series of deserted rooms, the cat played with my fingers and in particular with my thumb, probably fascinated by its size. At the end of a corridor, after a long period of silence and with only the cat for company, a feminine voice stopped me.

“Wait.”

I turned round and saw Rosana. Her pale, almost white hair, made her stand out immediately from the shadows. I waited. Very soon after she was at my side.

“What are you carrying?”

“A kitten. It was all alone here.”

“A black cat.”

“You’re superstitious?”

“No. Let me hold it.”

I gave it to her and she took it by the scruff of the neck. The little animal was left dangling from her hand like a hanged man. Then she ran over to a window, opened it and viciously threw it out.

“You’ve killed it,” I said, astonished.

“I’m not so sure. Cats fall on their feet, but we’re quite high up. I might have.”

“It hadn’t done anything to you.”

“No, not to me,” she admitted, pointing at my hand. I looked at it. My thumb was bloody and the skin was torn.

“It wasn’t hurting,” I exclaimed.

“It always does later, when there’s nothing you can do about it. Was it a cat you were looking for?”

“What about you?”

“I was just walking around. I saw you and wanted to check on you. I won’t bother you anymore. See you later.”

Rosana brought her cheek close to mine and pretended to give me a chaste kiss, as a sister’s friend might. However, halfway through she changed it into something much more lascivious. She pulled back a bit and waited for my reaction. I didn’t move.

“Shall I go or shall I stay?” she said.

“Don’t be in such a hurry.”

She did the same thing several times, with more saliva each time. She tasted of fruit and smiled as if she were up to mischief. I tried to embrace her, but she always wriggled away from me. In the end I managed to grasp her shoulders. They were smooth and warm, they felt soft as if there were no bones underneath.

“I like your shoulders,” I confessed.

“Your sister would tell you off if she heard you. She doesn’t like me. And I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of this.”

I opened her blouse and let my fingers explore what was beneath it. Rosana didn’t put up any resistance. She looked at herself and then at me, amused.

“She’d be even more disapproving of what you’re doing now.”