Love in the Age of Haniel

واضح آرشیو وب فارسی:فان پاتوق: She couldn"t remember when she began to envy her husband"s dreams.
She couldn"t remember when she began to envy her husband"s dreams. Maybe around the fourth week of pregnancy, after he"d moved out and then moved back again. Or maybe around the twentieth week, when he wanted to name the baby after himself, and she said no. The truth is, she didn"t remember because the condition of envy had become a chronic background noise. Her husband had always had baroque and complex dreams and she"d never minded. Now her envy surrounded them both like a hot electric fence.
She could see her husband clearly. He was blond, bearded, surrounded by the haze of his dream. He woke up, propped himself up on one elbow, looking slightly disoriented. She didn"t ask to hear the dream. He told her.
This morning his dream was about time travel. He had visited a country where people still thought the earth was flat and never traveled far because they were afraid they were going to fall off. Since he knew the earth was round, he convinced them otherwise, but when they started to disappear over the horizon, it seemed he had made a mistake. She leaned forward, looking encouraged -- maybe this was a dream of failed adventure, after all. But no. It turned out that when everyone disappeared over the horizon, they were really flying. Her husband could fly, too: As he flew, he saw the entire country below him. Thatched roofs. Children with hoops. Quaint little streets. "A fairyland," he said, "just like Disney."
He often had flying dreams. They were giddy, hallucinatory, perilous. She lay in bed listening and her envy surrounded them.
"What"s wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," she answered.
She smiled, concealing her envy, but he caught it. "Just life," she reassured him.
In a sense, she was telling the truth. Their faucets leaked. Their washing machine overflowed. Yesterday they"d bought two dozen miniscule T-shirts that turned out to be for nine-month-olds, not newborns. They were investigating breast pumps that looked like devices from the regime of Torquemada. Lists of names for the baby lined their kitchen wall and they couldn"t agree on any of them.
But in another sense, the truth was only her envy — not any kind of envy, but dream envy, an affliction of trolls, gremlins, bats, sad, dreamless beings relegated to caves. A dangerous omen. An unhappy and violent passion. Her midwife had advised her of this, pressing into her hands herbs, amulets, arcane books, a dream pillow filled with lavender and sage. Dreams are essential, she"d said. You must work to get yours back.
Her husband leaned over and touched her belly. "Whatever happened to the good old days?" he asked. It was something he"d been asking for awhile, a compelling, urgent question.
"Nothing," she said. "They"re here right now." The baby chose this moment to shift inside of her. An obscure dolphin. A rumbling miniature subway. He was always, without a doubt, the most important person in the room, an unruly character, waiting for the chance to speak. On ultrasound he was the size of a kitten, his transparent heart no bigger than a dime. After they saw him, her husband drew a heart on her stomach and kissed it. See. I"m being good now.
Today he turned to her, not unkindly. "You resent my dreams," he said. "You begrudge me this little corner of my mind."
"Of course I don"t."
"But you do. You begrudge me. I know it."
She said nothing. Under her pillow, she could feel the velvet dream pillow the midwife had given her. It was prickly, filled with sage and lavender. The sage had come from the Bolivian mountains. The midwife found it last summer at the witch"s market in La Paz.
"I"m being exemplary these days," he continued. "I"ve found a crib. I went with you to buy those ridiculous T-shirts and today I"m going to help you return them. I"ve even gone to those damn birthing classes with what"s-her-name."
"Laurel Moonflower," she supplied. Laurel Moonflower was the midwife. Her husband didn"t like her. He said she was a New Age parody.
"Laurel Moonflower," he agreed. "I"ve gone there and I"ve sat there and I"ve admired her models of the pelvis. I"ve chanted atonal chants. I"ve offered prayers. I"ve rubbed your back. And you begrudge me my dreams."
I don"t begrudge you, I blame you. She didn"t say this, but thought it. The day after he"d moved out, to a lawyer friend"s place on a street with the improbable name of Taurus, she"d woken from a dream about being trapped in the city of Dresden during the second world war. She was in a house, standing by a cabinet full of fragile china, when a bomb fell. Cup after cup after cup shattered in slow motion. A miniature china shepherdess was severed from her sheep. Plates decorated with flowers crashed. This had been her last dream. Now her nights were a blank canvas.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"Are you hungry?"
"Just for grapes. Grapes are all I have room for. It"s like someone put a grand piano in there."
He went to the kitchen and came back with grapes for her and a huge hunk of toasted French bread for himself. He climbed into bed and they started to eat. It was a custom they used to enjoy.
"How are the grapes?"
"Fine." In fact, they were too soft.
Since he"d moved back, traits which she"d previously found charming had become irritating beyond belief. One surfaced now. The way he crunched his toast. Once it was boyish enthusiasm. Now it was greed.
"Do you have to eat so loudly?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you"re taking very big bites."
His hand slammed against the white comforter. "I"ll eat the way I want to."
She waited. The words arrived. "You pig." It was a dangerous thing to say. He could call her a pig, too. She looked a lot more like one than he did. You"re a pig. He could say that. But he didn"t. He threw his toast on the floor.
"Oh my," she said. "A food fight."
"Spare me your irony." He went into the kitchen for a sponge and soon was picking butter from the fringes of the woven rug.
It wasn"t a wanted pregnancy. That"s how she thought of it now. It wasn"t a wanted pregnancy, and it was a miracle that he stayed. A lot of them don"t, you know. A lot of them just leave. But when they finally see these wonderful little beings, they always love them. If they stay . . . . Laurel Moonflower, the midwife, had told her this last part. She"d also said she should be more generous with her husband. Allowing was the word she used. For heaven"s sake, be more allowing.
In truth, she thought, Laurel Moonflower had problems of her own: Last summer, in La Paz, she claimed to have fallen in love with an enormous black-and-white bull who lived near the hacienda where she stayed. She didn"t call it falling in love. She called it a soul connection. I have a soul connection with that animal. And it has cured me of my bitterness concerning males of every species. Not that the love would ever lead to anything. But it was real

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