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"I can see you are a lady," the dream man told Grandmother. "You don't respond to just every dream that comes along."
"Certainly not," said Grandmother. She shot my father one of her how-could-you-have-let-this-happen-to-me? looks.
"But I know one," said the dream man; he shut his eyes. The singer slipped a chair forward and we suddenly realized he was sitting very close to us. Robo, though he was much too old for it, sat in Father's lap. "In a great castle," the dream man began, "a woman lay beside her husband. She was wide awake, suddenly, in the middle of the night. She woke up without the slightest idea of what had awakened her, and she felt as alert as if she'd been up for hours. It was also clear to her, without a look, a word, or a touch, that her husband was wide awake too--and just as suddenly."
"I hope this is suitable for the child to hear, ha ha," Herr Theobald said, but no one even looked at him. My grandmother folded her hands in her lap and stared at them--her knees together, her heels tucked under her straight-backed chair. My mother held my father's hand.
I sat next to the dream man, whose jacket smelled like a zoo. He said, "The woman and her husband lay awake listening for sounds in the castle, which they were only renting and did not know intimately. They listened for sounds in the courtyard, which they never bothered to lock. The village people always took walks by the castle; the village children were allowed to swing on the great courtyard door. What had woken them?"
"Bears?" said Robo, but Father touched his fingertips to Robo's mouth.
"They heard horses," said the dream man. Old Johanna, her eyes shut, her head inclined toward her lap, seemed to shudder in her stiff chair. "They heard the breathing and stamping of horses who were trying to keep still," the dream man said. "The husband reached out and touched his wife. 'Horses?' he said. The woman got out of bed and went to the courtyard window. She would swear to this day that the courtyard was full of soldiers on horseback--but what soldiers they were! They wore armor! The visors on their helmets were closed and their murmuring voices were as tinny and difficult to hear as voices on a fading radio station. Their armor clanked as their horses shifted restlessly under them.
"There was an old dry bowl of a former fountain, there in the castle's courtyard, but the woman saw that the fountain was flowing; the water lapped over the worn curb and the horses were drinking it. The knights were wary, they would not dismount; they looked up at the castle's dark windows, as if they knew they were uninvited at this watering trough--this rest station on their way, somewhere.
"In the moonlight the woman saw their big shields glint. She crept back to bed and lay rigidly against her husband.
"'What is it?' he asked her.
"'Horses,' she told him.
"'I thought so,' he said. 'They'll eat the flowers.'
"'Who built this castle?' she asked him. It was a very old castle, they both knew that.
"'Charlemagne,' he told her; he was going back to sleep.
"But the woman lay awake, listening to the water which now seemed to be running all through the castle, gurgling in every drain, as if the old fountain were drawing water from every available source. And there were the distorted voices of the whispering knights--Charlemagne's soldiers speaking their dead language! To this woman, the soldiers' voices were as morbid as the eighth century and the people called Franks. The horses kept drinking.
"The woman lay awake a long time, waiting for the soldiers to leave; she had no fear of actual attack from them--she was sure they were on a journey and had only stopped to rest at a place they once knew. But for as long as the water ran she felt that she mustn't disturb the castle's stillness or its darkness. When she fell asleep, she thought Charlemagne's men were still there.
"In the morning her husband asked her, 'Did you hear water running, too?' Yes, she had, of course. But the fountain was dry, of course, and out the window they could see that the flowers weren't eaten--and everyone knows horses eat flowers.
"'Look,' said her husband; he went into the courtyard with her. 'There are no hoofprints, there are no droppings. We must have dreamed we heard horses.' She did not tell him that there were soldiers, too; or that, in her opinion, it was unlikely that two people would dream the same dream. She did not remind him that he was a heavy smoker who never smelled the soup simmering; the aroma of horses in the fresh air was too subtle for him.
"She saw the soldiers, or dreamed them, twice more while they stayed there, but her husband never again woke up with her. It was always sudden. Once she woke with the taste of metal on her tongue as if she'd touched some old, sour iron to her mouth--a sword, a chest plate, chain mail, a thigh guard. They were out there again, in colder weather. From the water in the fountain a dense fog shrouded them; the horses were snowy with frost. And there were not so many of them the next time--as if the winter or their skirmishes were reducing their numbers. The last time the horses looked gaunt to her, and the men looked more like unoccupied suits of armor balanced delicately in the saddles. The horses wore long masks of ice on their muzzles. Their breathing (or the men's breathing) was congested.
"Her husband," said the dream man, "would die of a respiratory infection. But the woman did not know it when she dreamed this dream."
My grandmother looked up from her lap and slapped the dream man's beard-gray face. Robo stiffened in my father's lap; my mother caught her mother's hand. The singer shoved back his chair and jumped to his feet, frightened, or ready to fight someone, but the dream man simply bowed to Grandmother and left the gloomy tearoom. It was as if he'd made a contract with Johanna that was final but gave neither of them any joy. My father wrote something in the giant pad.
"Well, wasn't that some story?" said Herr Theobald. "Ha ha." He rumpled Robo's hair--something Robo always hated.
"Herr Theobald," my mother said, still holding Johanna's hand, "my father died of a respiratory infection."
"Oh, dear shit," said Herr Theobald. "I'm sorry, meine Frau," he told Grandmother, but old Johanna would not speak to him.
We took Grandmother out to eat in a Class A restaurant, but she hardly touched her food. "That person was a gypsy," she told us. "A satanic being, and a Hungarian."
"Please, Mother," my mother said. "He couldn't have known about Father."
"He knew more than you know," Grandmother snapped.
"The schnitzel is excellent," Father said, writing in the pad. "The Gumpoldskirchner is just right with it."
"The Kalbsnieren are fine," I said.
"The eggs are okay," said Robo.
