The rain had finally arrived and was falling on the vast expanse of the surrounding fields, on the small, still town, on the garden, and on the house; and the sleeping woman was becoming multiplied in that rain and flying off in all directions through the universe. When the rain stopped, though, she went back to being just the one body, confined by the bars of a bed. As she slept, she sensed that the permitted or possible space was rather limited, and, reaching out her arm beyond the sheet and the pillow, she touched something cold and polished, like a metal bar. Recoiling from that metallic contact, she tried to dive deeper into her dream.
It was a difficult dream, she realized as she advanced slowly and effortfully, as if she were swimming, her arms tied behind her, through a sea of mud. And yet, with a shiver of terror, she suddenly knew that if she didn’t hurry, she would arrive too late. Then she began to rush around the room, wildly flinging open doors, and, in her haste, she broke a mirror and knocked various vague objects onto the floor, but, at last, her suitcase was ready, and, with barely a moment to spare, she set off in all the trains of the night.
She was sleeping swiftly now and dragging with her trees, rivers, houses, boats, bridges, towns, beaches, lights, and she herself was all those things.
Until she fell, exhausted, into the moment just before the dream. Then she put the walls back in their proper places and stood motionless between window and bed, observing how, once again, there were permanent spaces between things and safe in the knowledge that, outside, the trees would never leave that landscape.
Now she was sleeping slowly, and the child was unsure as to whether it could or could not enter the dream, a child that existed in the rain and was in search of a body.
“Bodies are difficult,” said the woman when the child finally slipped inside the dream. “So hedged about by everything.”
She realized that she’d spoken in a rather admonishing tone and turned, expecting the child to have retreated. The child, however, appeared not to have heard and had followed her, and the woman again felt utterly exhausted, as if the child had been following her for many hours along that dark, narrow path that seemed suddenly to have no end.
Then she stopped and leaned against a tree, panting, her body running with hot sweat.
“Go back,” she begged in a faint voice that vanished into the thick branches.
She was afraid the child would disobey, and the confused thought surfaced in her mind that, if she couldn’t persuade the child, then perhaps she could simply wear her out. Still breathing hard, she resumed her walking.
When she stopped again, the child was so close that she could see her face clearly, her strangely bright eyes, so bright she had to close her own.
With her eyes still closed, she thought that, if the child took just one more step, then she would give in and let her have her body. Then, inside her, the child would advance like a blind animal through labyrinths of dark branches, and at the end of the labyrinth, her head would be squeezed between walls, her mouth would scream but no sound would come out, then, at the very last instant, she would tear down the walls and, still blind, emerge into the light and burst into tears, a small, naked body, humiliated yet victorious, lying stretched out upon the world.
All these things would happen if she surrendered, she thought, opening her eyes and again looking at the child; but, ultimately, the decision would always be hers.
In the game of tensions that had sprung up between them, the woman saw that she was the stronger one. She gauged the distance separating them and was conscious of the solid mass of her own body.
The child could only win if she agreed and said, “Come.”
The woman’s next thought, though, was that she was as strong as a tree, and in the dream she was a tree, shaking her branches in the wind. All she had to do was bend down a little and enfold the child in her leaves, and the child would grow inside her and become vast and warm as a fruit.
Leaning against the tree, she was filled with unexpected joy, a calm, irresistible joy. She would merely be a pretext, a door, a passageway. Nothing that happened subsequently would be her fault, all responsibility would fall on the child. Later, she could always say that the child had been the one to follow her, to pursue her down every path, desperate to be born.
Then she felt a tremor that shook her limbs, or perhaps her branches and her leaves: pure childish desire. It was then that she reached out her arms and said “Come,” but her hands touched something cold and polished, like metal bars, and she withdrew into a space—possibly inside herself—and bumped against the end of the bed.
In the dream, she continued to walk, but she no longer knew where she was going and felt unsure about everything. And yet she vaguely, despairingly realized that she would be forced to make a choice, otherwise, she would continue to walk, followed by the child, into infinity.
She stopped again, panting, struggling with words that seemed clear enough, but which she could not articulate because she had suddenly lost her voice.
“Turn back,” she said at last, tenderly but wordlessly. “The world is a place full of metal bars. And living without a body means you’re free to be anything.”
She sensed that the rhythm of the dream had changed and was once more moving at vertiginous speed. Somewhere, exhausted and panting, she was crying and running through a forest to the seashore, and the child was running with her, her sweet, stubborn head insinuating itself between the cracks of the dream.
And then the woman closed the doors of the dream on the child and dived deep and ever deeper into the sea.
Almost within reach at first, then very far off, a still larger wave broke over her like a sheet, and, inside it, she saw, just for a moment, a child sleeping, a child that would be borne up by the waves into the arms of another woman, somewhere, on the other side of the universe.
Margaret Jull Costa’s most recent translations include José Maria de Eça de Queirós’s The Illustrious House of Ramires and Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (both New Directions). She received the 2017 Best Translated Book Award, with co-translator Robin Patterson, for Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lúcio Cardoso (Open Letter).
