VLADAN CUKVAS

Dream Tamer

IS A STORY WITH THREE ENDINGS
THE FIRST ONE IS WRITTEN FOR THE IMPATIENT READER
WHO READS ONLY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE BOOK
THE SECOND ONE IS FOR THE PATIENT READER
WHO READS TO THE END OF THE BOOK
THE THIRD ONE IS THE ENDLESSNESS
IN WHICH THE BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN

TCR brings the first third of Dream Tamer

First part

 I

A greenish blush spread along the winding mountain top, then turned softly up towards the sky like the scent of poppies. Birds started then to pick at the solemn silence, while the wind tore it apart and spread its remnants down the steep mountain slopes. At last, night flew over to the other side, dragging its long tail through the narrow ravine. A lone cloud stood still for a moment, just under the rocky mountain-top. But it, too, slipped quickly away. A dazzling circle of light surfaced, as unstoppable as a tide, and quite soon it stood high above, bending over the mountain. The northern side, at the bottom of two small hills, remained in shadow, so it seemed that the mountain was frowning upon this joyful morning.

      
Morizok lifted his head lazily and, without opening his eyes, placed his hands on his hips. The sharp morning air was dragging itself along the low ground and Morizok felt its freshness fill his nostrils. For some time, he remained lying still under the big oak tree. Drops of morning dew began to glide down his hair and face. Then a single shaft of light, shimmering like a Syrian sable, slashed through the treetop and stopped boldly on Morizok’s face. Bathed in the dew and the first rays of the morning light, he opened his eyes and saw a winding mountain top. One step ahead of him, an insect with golden wings was trying to climb a tiny blade of grass but began to sway, throwing light from one wing to another.
       Morizok blinked and bent his head away from the morning light that was as sharp as a blade. The treetop began to rustle above him and he noticed that it was already pierced through and through by the rays of the eastern sun.
       ‘There is no place here for dreaming’, he thought, and stood up, shaking the remains of the morning dew from his hair.

      
He walked uphill for a long time, following no road. Yet he knew he was walking towards water. There was no road for him to follow - Happy Valley was too big for roads and signs - so his footsteps did not follow each other in a blind or unerring way. He might have looked as if he were wandering about aimlessly, but in fact he was following the sound of rippling water, which would disappear from time to time, then make itself heard again, albeit as a sound more distant and indistinct.

      
He walked in irregular circles, now smaller, now larger, in order to deceive the light. He did not know how he had found out how to do this (it seemed as if he had always known it) but he had been performing this morning dance for a long time now. Turning around with his head crooked slightly to one side, it seemed to him that he could make it all spin - the meadow, the woods, the flowers, the mountain that bent over the valley nestling below - and it seemed to him that he could see all of it in a single turn of the head, in a single stroke of light broken into a wonderful jumble of colours.

      
Once, he had been a butterfly. He had had black, fan-like wings, white around the edges, with yellow spots. He had flown with those wings all day long, around the wasteland under the silverfish woods. He had flown hither and thither as if in a kind of delirium, freely and flutteringly, paying no attention to the time. He had even dared to fly over the gorge, which was coloured with a gray darkness. But that flight had worn him out and shuddering flames of fear had reached up from the darkness of the gorge below him. Then he had seen a garden of flowers with a multitude of different petals, on which all of the allure of Happy Valley was dancing. A mild tiredness had landed Morizok’s wings on a rather large tulip and he had sipped from it to regain his strength. The flower juices had made him feel so drunk that, in the end, he had plunged down under the shadow of a nearby pine tree, and there, in an oak apple, he had fallen asleep. The same sable light and winding mountaintop had woken him the next morning.

      
He remembered this as he wandered enthusiastically around the green-eyed landscape. He was overcome by laughter. He always laughed at the memory, happily and heartily with the same joy, untroubled and honest.
            The wind gently swayed a branch of a nearby oak tree and its flickering leaves twinkled, forming white slices of light on the dewy grass. He knew that the forest too was laughing at this memory of his, but he did not care. Sometimes it troubled him that he would never again be a butterfly, and at those times he would sigh with yearning. But he was not troubled by it now, so he moved on towards the rippling water.

      
At the bottom of the hillside, where the slope ended, a birch tree stood, winking in the distance. Morizok waved his hand carelessly, somewhat timidly, as he bent his gaze towards the right, over the tops of the sycamore trees. A nightingale’s gentle melody had been following him since early morning but he only now noticed it. He stepped on a dry twig, breaking it with a tinkling noise. And for a moment the melody disappeared. It was then he remembered he knew the language of the forest and the animals living in it. The wind and the silence were the language of the forest and the only way Morizok could reply was with his gaze.

      
Once, he had tried to name everything he could see. He had sat at the top of the highest cypress tree and had begun to sift through colours and reflections, shadows and faces, the visible and the hidden. At the twentieth name, he had paused. It had seemed to him that there was a lot more of what is hidden or in shadow then first meets the eye. And it was as if this were pouring from every named thing. And, as he named each thing, he had become acquainted with it. Then he had begun to  run out of names. He had decided to make it all simpler by using larger words so he could cover as much of what he saw as possible, to squeeze and lock into everyday words, all the vague and unclear things boldly imposing themselves on him.
He had thrown words into words, names into names, fitting words into words, names into names, creating new, larger and larger words. And yet the world had somehow got ahead of him and was wandering about, silently observing Morizok and his colossal words and the way they were swaying at the top of the cypress without touching anything around them. Morizok had been obsessed with this hard work for a long time. The names had become so large that they had begun to obscure the view so that he saw even less than before. It would be much better, he thought, if he climbed the stony shoulder of the mountain. Then he could perceive the world from above. Winter had come, and a snowflake as big as a haystack had alighted on the top of the mountain. It had remained there for quite a time, not paying the least attention to Morizok’s hard work.
       The names had become so numerous and clumsy that in the end he could neither pronounce them nor remember what he had put into them. One day, they fell to the earth from a great height, scattering over the soft fur of the mountain. Petrified, Morizok had watched his large words roll down the steep hillsides only to disappear among the thick ferns below. For a moment, a feeling of sadness had come over him while he stood still, gazing into the distance.
       It had taken him a long time to see all the joys and beauty of Happy Valley again, proudly spreading before him like the tail of a peacock. Then he had laughed with the twittering of the swallow, and had gone on making irregular circles. That had been before he had been a butterfly.

      
The sun was giving off heat in glowing rings and Morizok felt his skin tighten. Somewhere in the middle of the day he felt hungry, and he stopped under a black locust tree that stood somewhat removed from the nearby grove. He leaned against the soft bark and bit into a quince. He ate voraciously. A tiny ray of light split the shade in two and, within it, an insect with silky wings was busy throwing light from one wing to the other.
       Morizok finished the quince and ran to the grove. He squeezed through thick hazel bushes, tearing through spider webs on his way. Then he clambered up a small, stooped tree, where he drank some honey. When he returned, the insect and the traces of light in the grass were gone. He picked up a chestnut and twisted it into his hair.
       ‘In case I get hungry later’, he thought.
Under the black locust tree, the rippling sound of water was fading away, nearly vanishing, so Morizok decided to move on.

      
One night, the moon drew Morizok’s face on the quiet water of the lake. For a long time, he looked and looked, wondering at the image as if he were looking at a puzzle. 
       ‘What kind of face is this?’ he asked himself.
The face possessed an impenetrable and serene tranquility.
       ‘Stone face’, he thought.
The moon leapt quietly to the other side of the forest and turned its moonlight towards the north. Now it had got itself stuck on the top of the juniper tree, laughing its heart out, shaking off golden dust. This made Morizok angry, and he waved his fist as if to threaten it. The moon laughed for a long time and then it left.
       Now the night took on the appearance of stars. Morizok lay down on the grass beside the lake and stared up at the sky, trying to recognise his face in the shy twinkling of the stars. He was hindered in this by a dream in a sleep as sound as a nut.

      
Once, he had been slapped by thirst, as angrily as a nettle and, since then, he had often heard the same rippling sound of water. He was bothered by this thirst, persistent and merciless. He never forgot its blow. It dragged him with a vengeance along the steep hillsides and the surrounding craggy lands. An evil thirst, it was. And yet, he knew from the start that they would not part, thirst and he. It was strange and incomprehensible. He had a premonition that he would have to walk the valley much longer before he would be able to quench this thirst at some spring.

      
While he rested, hidden among the wild flowers, he let a snail crawl over his leg. He looked at his leg and the glittering track of slime, and wondered whether this snail felt the same thirst as himself and whether it might also hear the distant rippling of water. Morizok could walk a thousand snail lives in a day, although he did not know whether he was happy because of that.

He twirled the chestnut in his hand, straining his ears to hear the muffled and barely discernable rippling sound. It was difficult to locate its direction. The wind knew where the sound was coming from but, scarcely touching him, it had silently passed him by. Thinking that the forest might help, Morizok ran deep into it, whispering his troubles to the oldest trees. He spent the whole night there waiting for a reply, but his waiting was in vain. This thirst was his alone. 

      
Clouds marched in clusters, following the scent of the meadow. Morizok watched their flying shadows. The mountain was far behind him and a hilly landscape, decorated with white rocks and moss, now lay before him. The forest changed its voice. This new voice was rustling and wrinkled, somehow raucous. Red oak branches folded around the silence, spilling over it their reddish leaves. On the other side of the forest, a group of black locusts shone with a yellow colour so that the whole picture took on the scent of autumn. Morizok loved that scent. Moist and melancholy. Two drops cracked the quiet surface of the lake, and a third pounded directly under Morizok’s chin.
In the corner of the lake, in the part of it that remained undisturbed, he could see a large black cloud rolling by like a drunkard, dropping rain. Two oval stones who were his only company, remained seated on the edge of the lake. Peevishly, Morizok moved towards the forest, looking behind him as if his glance were somehow wedged between those two stones.

      
He lay curled up beneath a pile of acorns, pretending to be asleep. Rain fell relentlessly and Morizok wished he could rip away the leash that bound time. He frowned, and a raindrop slid down his forehead. Because of the hard rain he could not hear the rippling sound and just then, while he lay balled up beneath the pile of acorns, he experienced thirst. He decided to go on. At first he walked along the edge of the grove. Then he turned onto a dried-out riverbed. He noticed how the rain made the riverbed happy. Then, to Morizok’s satisfaction, the rain stopped.
The air cleared and the white rocks that were strewn about shone even brighter.

      
All afternoon, he was followed by a leaf. Yellow, and brown at the edges. Part of it had been broken off and Morizok thought that the large raindrops must have done it. The leaf, which had come from an oak or chestnut tree, had become friends with the wind. The warm breeze, blowing in from the south, now carried the leaf as if it were a kind of treasure. It showed the leaf proudly to the wild plants, choking under their own thickness, pressing up against one another. Morizok saw them wrinkled by the water, as he climbed the hillside. He walked in solitude, happy to be in the company of the breeze and the leaf. Occasionally, the breeze would hug him round the waist and off they would go again, the three of them scarcely even touching the grass.

      
Night abruptly broke off a good part of the darkness, fastening it to the sky with nails the size of stars. The moon was a golden eyelash, bowing low as though she were ashamed. Covered by a leaden fatigue, Morizok stamped on the high grass and lay down. For some time, he listened to the clanging of the kingdom of the night. The breeze and the leaf left and, because of his loneliness, sadness tormented him like smoke that bites the eyes. He did not want to cry, in case the night might think he was afraid of it. It wasn’t long though, before he was able to enjoy the arrival of new company. Gaily entertaining, two fireflies flew above the bushes, making irregular circles. Their circling reminded him of his own morning dance and he began to laugh. His laughter stumbled clumsily over the remains of his sadness, then poured out as sweetly as honey, colliding at last with the sleep that was sound as a nut. He slept peacefully while the fireflies played above the bushes and mingled with the stars.

      
The next day, he came across the tracks of desire. He did not recognise her at first, but when he looked at her in the distance he realized that it was she. She was his, Morizok’s desire. From the distance, she reminded him of his thirst, as only one side of her was visible. But when, at sunset, he drew closer, he noticed the tracks of indifference following her. He thought then that the two tracks, her own and the tracks of indifference, must have been chasing one another and driving each other out. There were days when he desired, although he did not know exactly what he desired, and somehow those days particularly boiled with strength. And they were long with light. This feeling usually came over him in the morning hours. So it seemed to him he was desiring the day that was about to emerge. Consequently, indifference towards a day that would never come beset him too. It was then he decided to give the day to desire and the night to indifference.
      

For a long time, he lay on his back with his head resting on a large white stone. Four crows in gray coats flew by close to the ground, bitterly carping over something. The desire from that morning was still with him. Thick as any fog, it pressed against his chest from the inside, removing the sleep from his eyes. He knew indifference was to blame for this, since it demanded submission and reconciliation. But Morizok was not to give up so easily.
       A coal-like darkness moved across the sky in the flash of an eye. Night slept on a hill, while Morizok measured, with his index finger, the space between the stars. He did not sleep. A kind of restlessness moved in his legs, so he got up onto his knees. Water had gathered in a large oval leaf that stood beside him. Morizok bent over it and saw a face that was older than the one he had seen in the lake. He stared at the crease beneath its left eye. Desire had passed along that crease the day before.
Clouds in the form of black moustaches suddenly appeared in the sky and the image in the water vanished. Morizok thrust his chest out angrily. The restlessness started moving around his legs, intensifying more and more, while a shooting star bravely hammered its stinger into a black cloud, before fading away. The cloud remained, quietly curling the tips of its moustache.
Morizok thought his desire might fade away into the blackness of indifference. He shuddered at the thought.  Suddenly the Mistral began to blow and it shaved the sky clean. Morizok liked the mistral. It had a salty taste and it sang with a deep voice.
      

He carried on, his strides as wide as the strides of an ostrich. After four hills, his walking showed signs of fatigue and, after the sixth, he rested.  He was sitting with his fingers laced together like a girl’s braids when restlessness once again made its appearance and started moving about his legs.
For the past several nights, when he had lain down to sleep, the same restlessness had turned into a bed of thorns, and during the day it had hurried his footsteps along as if it were rushing them somewhere.

      
Morizok’s thirst and desire met once, while he was asleep. They admitted to each other that they were both afraid of indifference and they agreed to call upon anger to help them out. Morizok woke in the morning with a new glow in his eyes. He could now cut through the fog with his gaze, and that made him happy. He could cross nine hills without having to rest. He could spring over gorges and walk across fields. His own shadow could hardly keep up with him. It sat on a tree stump, breathless and worn out, calling out after him:
       ‘Hey, you fool! Anger is leading you from one circle to another, making you wander aimlessly about, doing no more than idling away the time. Turn back to the treasures of this world, bow in submission and get to know your first truth. Thirst is pursuing you as surely as life itself, the shadow hurriedly said, and then continued:
       ‘If you quench your thirst, will your life be saved or will you quench both your life and your thirst?’
Morizok shook a lock of his hair as if he hadn’t heard the last words. Then he placed a smug smile at the corner of his mouth. He wandered along, deeply absorbed now in thought.

      
The day dragged on as slowly as a turtle’s gait. Yet Morizok was rushing across a field with rounded corners. Convinced he had left his shadow far behind him, he sat down under a flowering pine tree. Something rustled in the bushes behind him. He turned around and saw the words that the shadow had spoken. They were following him, persistently and inexorably. Morizok was discouraged by their stubbornness When they came closer, they lined up into that same question: ‘If you quench your thirst, will your life be saved or will you quench both your life and your thirst?’
   Thirst, as real as life itself, he thought, blowing his nose into a leaf of the nearest bush. Morizok’s forehead looked like a small stone hill. He stood up and began to walk. For the rest of the day he wandered about, searching for words that could be composed into an answer.
 
Occasionally, he would lift his gaze and take a proper reading of the sun, doing this with a certain nervousness, almost deliriously. He had sent thoughts in all directions to find those words, but they kept coming back empty-handed. A quiet despair overcame him. He stood, faced with his own weakness and behind its left shoulder, indifference was standing on tiptoes, sticking its neck out as if it were waiting its turn. Morizok saw indifference and he felt something break beneath his ribs. In an instant, despair  had suddenly been replaced by anger.
       Morizok grew angry at the futility of the afternoon and of his mad quest. At first, he grew peevish as a spoiled child. By sunset his anger had grown into a resoluteness interwoven with granite. He seized the question and threw it onto the burning anger. Then he stretched out in the young moonlight. He heard his shadow coming over to sit down beside him. And he winked then rejoicingly to it and said:
       ‘I did not find the answer to your question today.  And I may not even find it tomorrow. You, shadow, you follow me faithfully, tormenting me with your questions, but I shall leave your questions and their answers to you. I shall leave them to you, ‘the shadow’. He paused there, making a movement that suggested he had said something important and then continued:
       ‘This thirst is all I have and all I know about. Every morning, she wakes up and puts on the same dress. She says she lives by the spring of wisdom, and that is where I am going now. I shall drink from the spring of wisdom and then I shall know the real sweetness of life’. Then he added:
       ‘Thirst whispered to me, as it once passed by, that wisdom’s most precious garment is eternity and that it would sew such a garment for me if only I would come with her.’
The shadow opened its mouth to say something but Morizok, with his mother-of-pearl gaze, kept on talking. Resoluteness, and a courage that was prepared for anything, were mingling in that gaze. He believed with absolute certainty that sweetness and the wisdom of life really existed and that they were always together.

      
That night, he slept more peacefully than ever before. He hadn’t yet tried the taste of wisdom but he already believed that it had the taste of honey, or at least the taste of flower nectar. Morning light crept from the grass and made a circle around Morizok. He brushed the dream from his face and began to sing like a cricket. The rest of the crickets heard him and they joined in his singing too. Soon, the singing resounded all along the hillside. Morizok stamped as hard as a drumbeat throughout the singing. The singing chopped the heat into the tinest of pieces, and it cut through skin like a pine tree’s needles.
      

He was carried by a footstep, braided into wild rose hair. The valley in front of him narrowed, and now it squeezed like a serpent between gloomy cliffs. At the end of the road, water blocked his way and it roared two times in a deep bass. A willow bent over the moody water, having only the courage to dip its branches, but not daring to step into it. Morizok picked some ferns and tore off a lock of hair to make a raft with it.
The water was turbulent. He steered skillfully among waves leaping over each another while they shouted something he did not understand. When he finally docked, the step that was braided into wild rose hair waited for him on the shore. And it bore him on his way. 

Morizok’s footsteps were breaking-off larger and larger pieces of the meadow. He noticed this for the first time when the moonlight fell upon him, and then again at sunset the following day. He had been waking at dawn, with blue blades of grass braided into his hair, all the while becoming more and more mature. More and more he was overcome by uneasiness and haste. He rushed over the meadow, leaving his tracks in swathes behind him. Sometimes he thought he could compress the whole world into a footstep or two.

      
It seemed to Morizok he had travelled quite a distance since that morning under the winding top of the mountain. Whenever he turned around, he would see the mountain disappear into a cold sea of indifference. Oblivion was his ally, but it kept its fingers crossed when it gave its promises. Morizok dispersed his memories like pollen. He waited for new mornings. Filled with desire and liberated from the burden of the mornings that had passed, he felt he was walking more freely and with greater ease. This was the lightness of a man who walks ahead of himself. The searching man.
      
‘How sweet is the light that winds about my gaze. How infinite is the challenging field of life?’ he thought, twirling the words like chestnuts.
These thoughts came to him silently, through drowsiness, and when he woke he could not remember them. He thought that they, too, might have dispersed in the air like pollen, but fortunately he found them in a snail shell. The snail kindly returned the words, making a face that demonstrated very well that he had not understood them.
 
      
A high spruce broke off from a group of trees where the woods began, offering him a fresh bit of shade. Morizok leaned his perspiring shoulders onto the rough bark, noticing that the spruce was actually quite tall. He sat for some time, gathering his strength. Then the spruce began to take notice and asked in a friendly tone of voice:
       ‘Is it large, the desire that draws your strength?’
       ‘Yes, it is large’, said Morizok, readily admitting it. ‘But in fact, I call it thirst. You know, it once slapped me so…’
Briefly, Morizok explained all his troubles. He recounted how he had been wandering about Happy Valley for a very long time and how he had been hearing the rippling sound in the distance, and that it was the rippling of the spring of wisdom, and how thirst had dragged him selfishly towards that rippling. He told the spruce about his conversation with the shadow and, when he came to the part about the decision he had made, he remembered that the spruce, just like the woods, had been able to understand him only when he had spoken with his gaze. Morizok leapt to his feet and gazed at the top of the tree. His gaze told her about his decision, but the spruce was much more amazed by the resolute glow in Morizok’s eyes. An absolute faith emerged from beneath Morizok’s clumsily hidden delight, and he suddenly stood upright. The spruce stood opposite Morizok’s faith, almost a head lower than it, and was somehow ashamed because of that. She felt all the strength of life that was boiling over in Morizok and that made her glad. Yet, she could simply not understand what was the wisdom he persistently sought.
       As he was about to leave, she gave him a branch from a silver pine tree to be his light. 

‘I leave you here, and I go on through life’, he called out to a small group of lilies.
His words fell all over them like dew. Morizok repeated them a little later, as he was passing the rounded part of the plain, and his words remained hanging in the air like a swarm of bees. He pronounced them again as he was wading through the green water of a brook, and this time they fell into the water like dry leaves and floated off.

In the early evening, he stopped by an anthill and looked at the ground. The ants were marching  in a line bearing his words, which had been broken into syllables. Two crows wrapped in gray feathers watched the scene from above, trying to read the broken words. After they had read them, they burst out laughing, cawing and clapping their wings. Happy Valley echoed then with their feathery laughter. Morizok looked over his shoulder and saw a sizeable piece of that laughter rolling down the valley. He thought it was about time to leave Happy Valley and its inhabitants. They did not understand his thirst. Nor, like the well,  were they able to understand what the wisdom was that he sought. They only thing they seemed to know was how to laugh at his crazy wanderings. It was then he realised he was different from them precisely because of this faith of his, the faith that he would find hidden wisdom, tear off all its masks and be able to see its face; and in spite of all that, he thought about all the sweetness with which he would then walk through life. His face became more cheerful, and the distance that now lay before him, gloomy and unclear, tugged him by his hand.

Morizok decided to quicken his pace. More and more what had been a careless wandering was beginning to turn into a quest. As he walked on, he rarely turned around, and he paid less and less attention to the giggling around him. He walked ahead of himself, holding life tightly by the neck, speaking then through clenched teeth:

‘Oh, life! I have grasped you in my hands and now you are mine. Never again will you leave these hands. And now we are summoned by distant spaces, so let us now go!

Within the half-circle made by the waters of the green river, lay a hill covered in the scent of reddish pitch. In the middle of it, Morizok was covering memories with stones he brought from the water. These memories were all the things he did not want to have with him on this trip. Memories that would be too burdensome, unnecessary for a life that looks only ahead, a life Morizok had become acquainted with when he had been slapped by thirst. Placing the final stone on the pile reaching now to his waist, a silence of a kind he had never before heard made its appearance. It was a silence both cold and formal. Its body was made of wax and within a minute’s time it had filled the space surrounding Morizok. This made him uneasy at first and he began to strain his ears. A faint sound seemed to be trying to cut through the thick walls of the silence. Morizok pricked up his ears and recognised the rippling. And when he walked along again he was happy.

The sky blushed around the edges and said something that sounded like ‘morning’. Morizok sat with his back turned to Happy Valley and his past life, while he watched the birth of a new day. He thought that some wisdom might be hidden in that birth. He watched silently, carefully noting every movement of the sun, which had begun to dance far away on the horizon. The nearby grove that had grown into hard, brown bark was silent, and Morizok could feel that silence. The birds were silent too, and so were the green leaves of the elm tree, the rain and the moss. Happy Valley’s laughter had almost completely disappeared. The silence that now followed him was the same silence that had followed him the day he had buried his memories by the shore of the river.
‘Maybe this silence hides some kind of wisdom’, he thought, as he blew a lock of hair from his face.
‘Even if the silence did hide some kind of wisdom, that wisdom might be unspeakable. It might not be able to be expressed in words.’

This thought made him sad for a moment. He realised he had been searching for the words in which wisdom might be hidden. Words that might appear to be completely ordinary, and yet which were woven together so as to fit true wisdom. He imagined those words to be like rays of sunlight sliding through the darkness and ripping it open, pouring light into the innermost darkness of life. He imagined himself walking boldly through that darkness, holding wise words in his hands like torches.
       ‘Brave searcher in the womb of truth’, he whispered, his face lighting up with joy.
His thoughts were disturbed by the intoxicating scent of the dream and it threatened to overwhelm him completely.  He stood up and stretched. The morning blush on the horizon had disappeared and white cotton blossoms passed by in the sky overhead. Moritz continued on his journey.
 
And silence was following behind. It seemed to Morizok he could hear words of warning in that silence and he stopped to listen more carefully. But he could not hear a thing.

       A fragrant, swaying breeze entwined itself in Morizok’s hair. He walked hurriedly on, leaping over a rotten tree trunk that lay before him in the high grass. The trunk reminded him of the silence, which had still not loosened its grip on him. He walked on, the plain ruffling and turning into a hill. Along the southern side of the hill, shadows of the clouds were drifting towards one another. They clashed together in a thunderclap like two bulls. The silence broke then like glass and Morizok took a piece of it in his hand. Turning it towards the light, he recognized his own face in the shard. His face looked different, as if it had aged, and it was covered with the silence of his bold searching. He saw two lines emerging from the corners of his eyes, disappearing into the thick locks of his hair. The lines bound his gaze to the distance before him. They did so mercilessly, almost routinely. He winked at the face he saw and it answered, satisfaction stretching across its mouth.

       The tips of the high grass were yellowish now, like the sun at noon. Mischievous whirls of wind dispersed petals of the wildflowers, mixing the scent of the meadow with the scent of sresla, whose leaves clothe those of the cherry tree. A small cluster of birches by the meadow’s edge, was making the light quiver, their branches swaying as though in a fervour.  Wild bees with yellow collars repeated in chorus the names of the different flowers, but their refrain blended with the heat so it seemed as though they were humming. Under the old oak’s roots, snowdrops began to gather. Barely audible, they had were playing a sweet melody. Two squirrels walked up to them. They stood there briefly, then sprang away, disappearing into a treetop. There was a rustling sound, as if someone were coming. At the other end of the meadow, a faint silhouette came into view. It appeared and disappeared within the flickering of the hot air, so that it was hard to determine whether it was going anywhere in particular or whether it was simply wandering about. A whisper as silent as the finest feathers spread throughout the meadow.
‘Morizok!’ whispered the yellow primroses, as if they were warning the other plants and the trees.
       ‘Morizok is coming!’ croaked the frog as he crossed the meadow in three hops.
       ‘There he comes!’said the snowdrops, and dropped their heads down.
The wild bees with yellow collars shouted the same thing but, because of the heat, it still sounded as though they were only humming. Morizok continued resolutely on his way. The lines at the edges of his eyes were clearly visible. They bound his gaze to the gloomy contours of the world in general, not caring about the details of the images of that world. He walked in the middle of the meadow, paying no attention to the life passing him by. Now he handled resoluteness as deftly as a sword. He felt the premonition of a wild strength concealed within him and he let that strength reshape the world.
When he reached the other side of the meadow he could feel he was tired, and he lay down to rest. Behind a nearby bush, whose branches were woven into a bun, the dream was sneaking up on him. And when Morizok laid his head on the grass the dream fell upon him. He slept then within the tight cover of silence. The tips of the high grass, yellow as the sun at noon, caressed his face with compassion.

When he awoke, his hair was as sharp as a resina bush and, when he rubbed it, a unicorn bumblebee flew out. Morizok stretched his body on the grass, making a sound like the hoot of a small owl. He listened, out of habit, to see if he could hear the rippling. And when he heard it again, he walked on.
He had not been walking for very long when he came to a well. The well was built of stone that was green with moss. One stone jutting out from the others was carved in a hollow through the middle. The water ran through it, dropping into a waterhole in a stream as fragile as an icicle. The water there was entirely transparent. The spot where the tiny stream struck the water hole brought forth foam, reminding Morizok of the rippling sound he had heard. Morizok bent over the cold water and, as he was about to touch it with his lips, he heard a voice:
       ‘Drink freely! This water is refreshing, and you have travelled a long time to find water like this.’
Morizok looked about but there was no one to be seen. The upper side of the well was overgrown with heather and blackberries. The blackberries were dark green in colour and on top of them perched flowers with gentle white petals. Around one of the flowers, a unicorn bumblebee was flying with the utmost care. Morizok stood for a moment watching, suspiciously, its flight. He noticed that the blackberry bush looked like a wreath and that the purple heather was angry because it was completely in the blackberry bush’s shadow. The unicorn bumblebee flew away and the humming of its wings disappeared. Again, Morizok bent over the waterhole and, as he was about to bite into the tiny stream the voice spoke again:
       ‘Go ahead, don’t be afraid! You have been seeking me and my water for such a long time. Don’t let my voice confuse you. It has been many years since anyone came this way. And I have been silent all that time.’

Morizok stepped backwards. He stepped away from the stony well. The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere in its depths. He stared at the green stones until he was able to make out a face. Two of the topmost stones were not completely covered with moss and, beneath them, two sunflowers emerged from the hole. They reminded him of the eyes of a doe. The hollowed out stone from which the water poured looked like a nose, the crack beneath it like a mouth and the lowest part was overgrown with grass. Together, they made him think of the bearded face of an old man. The sunflowers turned lightly towards Morizok and he had the feeling they were observing him with a gaze full of curiosity and good-heartedness. He felt hot goose pimples down his back. He stood silent and motionless, his gaze pinned to the crack from which the voice was coming. The sunflowers turned a bit more, as if they were not quite able to see him. Morizok was half-immersed in the shadow of the blackcurrant bush.
       ‘Hee, hee!’ said the sound of laughter.
       ‘Aren’t you thirsty anymore?’ the voice asked.
Morizok remained perfectly still and it seemed as if he weren’t breathing at all. He heard a humming sound, and turned his gaze towards it. The white flowers of the blackcurrant bush were sitting in a circle, and the unicorn bumblebee was sitting on one of the flowers, observing the whole scene. Morizok swallowed, and began rolling his tongue as if he were trying to find words that had been hiding.
       ‘Yes…’ he stammered, as he rolled his tongue again, licking his dry lips.

       ‘You must be very thirsty to have come all this way to see me’, the voice continued. ‘Others hardly ever come by’,  it added, sadly.
This time, Morizok listened to the voice very carefully. At first, the voice was hoarse and mixed with sand, but soon it turned into something that sounded like a rippling.
       ‘And who are you?’ said Morizok, after some time.
       ‘Me?’ the voice shouted. ‘I am the spring of wisdom you have been
seeking. I am a talking spring. I refresh seekers, I quench thirst just like the one you have.’

The well said this very quickly as if it were spouting a verse and grinned. Hearing the words, Morizok first felt a composure that only slowly transformed itself into an excitement that shone in his eyes. He pressed his lips together, folding one over the other. A strange mixture of satisfaction, excitement and doubt was swirling now within him. He wanted to say something, but only a drawn-out, insecure ‘ye-es’ flew out of him.
       ‘The spring of wisdom’, he said quietly to himself. And then much louder: Wisdom!’

‘You have gone through Happy Valley as powerfully as the wind. I can see that strength has matured in you, and you look like a man who is ashamed to talk to himself. Talk to me! Speak merry words, crazy words! I hope you saved some happiness for later’, the well gurgled as if it were chuckling. Morizok just stood there, a little confused by what the well had to say. The well’s words fell upon the thick and fragrant grass, shimmering like grains of rice.
       ‘Visitors are a rare thing here, and I have grown accustomed to silence. I call out to people by rippling and by offering them my clear water. But people have built roads far away from me. Only those who wander off the smooth paths come here. They come in anguish and say they are tormented by thirst, a thirst so great it can’t be quenched. But a well-intentioned thirst,’ the well added. ‘That is their predicament.’

Morizok stood there utterly perplexed, and the grains of rice in the thick grass shone even more.
      
‘Sometimes, you can still hear the merry laughter of Happy Valley, but it often gets choked by the quicksand of oblivion. You have lost your first sanctuary in the lap of happiness and now you wander the plains of life with a footfall as heavy as iron that leaves blisters on stone. That is how your resoluteness signs its name. You do not look back on the day that has past because, somewhere on the horizon, time exchanges a new morning for a night of ancient riddles.

Now Morizok was completely confused. He wondered how the well knew all this. The question hopped restlessly about and the well saw it, but spoke nothing. The large sunflowers turned on their stalks while the well gazed over the hill. Morizok saw desire in that gaze, a desire very much like the desire that came over him from time to time. And so he felt a kinship with the stony face of the spring and wished to confess to it.
      
‘Once, I was slapped so hard by thirst…’ And so it was Morizok began to tell his troubles to the well. He told him of his wanderings around Happy Valley, of his awakening and of his restlessness. The jumble of colours that enchanted the view, light and unbridled. The refined superficiality that cheered the eye. The woods that spoke with silence. He also told the well about the time he had been a butterfly, and of the malicious laugh, and of blushing mornings whose shifts were like a changing of the guards.
      
‘For a long time I have been gazing into the distance. But somehow what is distant has always been moving away from me. The horizons of this new world are blurred’, Morizok continued. ‘Anger would sometimes come over me like a fever. I would search for the words that were hidden like water in a desert. Yet one man’s words are like a dandelion clock. Most of the time, I walk alone and silence wipes my tracks away. Occasionally, I listen to the past, but it points its finger toward the wastes that lie before me. Once, in a dream, I saw a single drop into which the sea poured. I wish I knew a word like that drop. A wondrous word that would contain everything. The word of truth.’

 He stopped, and made himself more comfortable in the lap of the black currant .
 
‘I seem to hear that word sometimes, faint as a whisper, and when I hear it heat fills my chest. Then the word disappears and silence interposes itself once again. I imagine how the Queen of Words might dance and how she might smile seductively with a body of wind. Untouchable and innocent, so as not to be caught in a web of simple thoughts. I imagine how she might reveal the nakedness of this world, dressing herself in the garb of eternity. I imagine her as the truth.’
      
‘You are in love with that word’, said the well.
      
‘If until now I have been thirsty, henceforth I shall be in love.’
Morizok struck his breast boldly with his fist, though just a wee bit timidly.
      
‘The love of wisdom can be a wicked thing.’ the well rejoined.

Morizok didn’t say anything. The well coughed in a intermittent murmur and then went on:
       ‘Once, my rippling brought a man who was very much like you, and that man sat beside the very same blackcurrant bush as yourself and confessed. He said he was tormented by doubt and that he sought the essence of everything because it was a cure for that doubt. I asked him what this essence was and how he would recognise it if he were ever to meet it. He answered that this essence usually concealed itself and was invisible to an eye dulled by joy, but that he would recognise it when he had completely peeled off its false and fickle shell. To show me how he would do that, he ran to a nearby poplar tree and began breaking off branches. First he broke off the highest branches, then the largest, and in the end he split the tree in half. When he had finished, he looked at the tree stump. He wasn’t satisfied with this so he proceeded to cut down the next tree.  But neither that tree nor the third or fourth tree were able to drive his doubting away. Under every bark he peeled away, a new bark would appear, and it looked as though the essence he sought was leaping from one tree to another. He stopped only after he had cut the whole forest down. Ever since he has lived in solitude. And doubt has turned into a snake, nestling beside his heart like anguish.’

Morizok was shaken by this story. He was silent for some time, staring at the clear water.

‘Could love be wicked?’ he thought, anxiously. The thought became entangled in the blackcurrant bush and Morizok began to try to disentangle it. The well saw this and, to comfort him, added:

       ‘Wicked because of blindness, not because of its nature.

       ‘You have already experienced a desperate thirst, first love and the one life, and now you are searching for truth. The wondrous letter of wisdom. Would you hear it if someone were to whisper  it or call it out as a curse as it passed you by?’ asked the well. 
Morizok said nothing, pulling out blades of dried grass and throwing them into the waterhole. The grass fell silently, drawing Morizok’s face on the still water.  And the well saw the creases of desire under his eyes.
       ‘That word of yours is expensive, and you shall pay for it with prayer alone. You shall also need hope and faith. Comfort is something you can have for free. But words of comfort do not last very long. They are as corruptible as words of deceit.’

Morizok then spoke with a gaze as bold as a man who has broken off a branch of the dogwood tree with his bare hands. And with that gaze he squeezed the sun around its waist so that it shone even brighter than it had before. Then the well said:
       ‘You fear indifference. It always threatens like a flood in which even the strongest wisdom staggers impotently, like prey in the web of a spider. Walls of anger protect you against indifference’s might. That word of yours is dangerous. It has grasped you in its claws and has taken you to an eagle’s heights, as if you were searching for salvation in the heavens.’
 Morizok lifted his head, and his face lighted up. The sky now wore a foxtail collar, and clouds stood out like white buttons. Morizok made a movement as if to tear off one of the buttons.

A fresh breeze climbed the hill where Morizok and the well were standing. The breeze was out of breath and it bore with it the speech of the woods. But Morizok didn’t want to listen. The well noticed this and said:
       ‘Your happiness and your joy are holding hands and babbling happily together. And yet you turn a deaf ear to them both while listening carefully to silence with your other ear. That’s crazy!’ the well shouted, and continued:
       ‘You tirelessly seek words only Titans speak. Be careful not to be buried by those words. Listen carefully.?’ It may be that what you are seeking can only be expressed by reticence.

       Night rolled in through the thick grass, halting before Morizok’s feet while swallowing the shadow of the blackcurrant bush. Coldness followed the night, and the stars began to shiver from the cold. Sunflowers closed and the image of the old man disappeared. Morizok shivered too, wrapped in a squirrel’s tail. The moon bent over the waterhole in front of the well. It was dressed in a butterfly tie and looked quite festive. Just before dawn it cracked its knuckles and went on its way, singing a song. The sun now stood, where the moon had stood during the night, and Morizok awoke to a new day. He took a breath of satisfaction, which painted the air around him.
       ‘One night wiser’, he mumbled half-aloud to himself. ‘I am crossing off this day and counting down the time. And yet, in some way I’m not actually counting. I will close my eyes once more to the beauty that entices the senses and I shall replace it with the sweetness of the wise word.
Morizok said this as a prayer, just as the well awoke, and twinkling with the sunflowers’ yellow petals. Morizok was impatient and ready to learn the greatest word amongst words. He knelt in the soft fur beside the waterhole and waited. But that morning the well was especially silent. The unicorn bumblebee appeared out of nowhere and flew once again around the white flowers as if it were courting them. Its humming cut through the dry air that was full of expectation. Morizok couldn’t hold out any longer, so he pleaded to the well:
       ‘If you are the spring of wisdom, tell me the secret of life. Tell me its name.’
The well was silent for some time, and then it spoke:
       ‘If you respect great words, then you will need people, people with a lot of small words, babblers and charlatans, ignorant and empty-headed persons, those who bellow from the mob. Noisemakers. Their small words fly from the highest bell tower, reaching everywhere. Like snow, they cover everything. Learn from them, but don’t do as they would do. Learn the power of each of their words before you squeeze them into one or two words. Words are like footsteps. And a long road is made of many footsteps.’
The well coughed at this point, continuing then in a flowing voice:
       ‘Words are sometimes wicked, but mostly they are too narrow to embrace all that you have to give. You once dreamed of one wonderful word of wisdom. So let that word exist. I too once dreamed a dream. What a captivating dream it was. I wanted to fall asleep and wake up in that dream, the same way I wake up to a new day. And I wanted to call that dreaming awareness. But those dreams then turned into wild horses running off into the wastes. Powerful and mighty, they trampled on everything that stood in their way. The most passionate among them went the furthest distance. And with the tracks they left behind them, they drew the faces of unknown landscapes and unreachable depths. They crossed a world a hundred times larger than the world that could fit into an eye or a fist. They crossed a world so huge it only could fit into a poem. Ah, crazy dreams! They ran off in all directions and, for a long time, I waited for them to come back But in vain! The vast wastes are their home. At the same time, words stood all about me. As tiny as grains of sand, they averted their eyes shyly in the face of the wild horses’ might. The endlessness of the land the wild horses crossed had frightened them.’
The well paused, and looked up at Morizok. Morizok sat in the grass, devouring every word the well spoke.
       ‘And now you seek one word that is mightier than your dreams, or at least one word that is equal to them. A wild and unbridled word, a word as mischievous as a butterfly and as loud as the thunder of a horses’ hooves, echoing the infinite. Alas, my water does not house that kind of word. So you must continue onward on your journey! You yourself will have to make the word you seek out of grains of sand and drops of rain. Make a poem out of it and out of the poem, you can make your very own bridles. Only with a poem will you be able to tame dreams.’

The well stopped talking and for a time only the rippling of the clear water could be heard. Morizok bent over the waterhole and saw how the last of the words spoken by the well had fallen into it and turned into fish with yellow scales. Morizok picked a water lily and made a small pouch for feed out of it. He was able to grasp a few fish with his hands, placing them within the leaf he tied together with a branch of blackcurrant bush. He began his slow descent down the hill, holding tightly to himself the bundle of his first wisdom, the only belongings he had with him now.
       ‘I shall take these words with me to drive away the silence of night. And in the day they shall be my sign posts’ he thought, as he bounded merrily down the green hillside.

THUS ENDS THE FIRST PART OF DREAM TAMER

© VLADAN CUKVAS 2007
translation © The Copenhagen Review 2007