Four in the morning (nightmare and dream)
For R.
It’s four in the morning. The square is empty; the snow lies untouched. I see your breath: a white glow that almost enfolds me. Your hand warms my hand. I look up, from the green-moulded statue of Jan Hus, past the chimneys on the rooftops and the spires of the cathedral, to the low sky that slowly breaks under the weight of stars. I whisper my ‘I love you’ through the deep and almost holy silence of this winter night.
So full of you, so full of this strange and beautiful night, I feel like I am tip-toeing closer, maybe too close to the loadstone of the world:
I am the colony of half-feral graveyard cats, a few blocks from where we live. I’m the squirrels sleeping in their trees that guard the graves. I am the slow, weighted movement of all the tower clocks of Prague. I am the sound of trams and ambulance.
I am the reeking derelicts, half-frozen in the alleys – and the young Ukrainian hookers in their low-cut summer dresses, giving blow jobs for two Euros in public lavatories. I am the laughter and the jukebox and the sound of glasses spilling out of the pub, whenever someone enters or leaves.
For this one strange moment I am this whole angel and monster soaked city. I carry all the centuries and all the tired stones of Prague inside my head, my lungs, my heart.
Four in the morning – the square still empty – and now soot, like the ashes of burnt-out stars, falls softly on the snow. The smell of blackening, burning flesh hangs on the branches of winter trees. Before my eyes Jan Hus is burning. Next to him Jan Palach raises a jerrycan. Men with swords, men in priests’ robes slowly transform into hammer and sickle and tanks. The night is an open grave. Everything that ever was is now an indictment of all that followed.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
I close my eyes in a free fall moment. I feel my heart moving like a lamp in the mast of a storm-held ship.
“Ah…”
Devils roast doves. Strange Gods break open graves. Insanity and loathing rise up from the throats of sewers in black tidal waves.
“Ah.”
I’m sinking. You hold me. You whisper now – concerned, but also strong; so strong, so self-assured, as only a woman can be: certain of her love, and of her strength.
“Look at me.”
Just for a moment longer the skeletons dance. For a few more heartbeats the cancer rides me. Then the square is just a square again. The night feels as safe, and intimate as your hand that still rests in mine. I whisper - like a penitant, a midnight mass, a revelation:
“God, I love you.”
You laugh: relieved but not in the least surprised. You open your coat (you open my heart) and you hold me, for a moment and forever, close to you – and I, I am like Rick, the king of his café, while the Marseillaise plays: Casablanca with a happy ending. And you, you are Chet Baker – the trumpet: unearthly beautiful, almost too much for me to hold.
It’s four in the morning. The old square lies empty. The clouds have conquered the sky for the moment and the snow dances, flutters and falls. The city is merely city again, a breathtakingly beautiful set piece for all our dreaming.
I will try to remember the half-frozen derelicts, the shivering, young hookers, the squirrels and graveyard cats – all of them can have a place in my heart. The despair and loathing though, the arrogance which like a perverted Saviour or spoilt Dali sits on the top of the Mount of Skulls as on a throne; the dumb drum beat of doubt and fear that turn to madness, when love threatens solitude: enough of that – no, never again that senseless void.
For yes, I love you – and you hold me.
And yes, it is still so very hard for me to trust and to believe that you have chosen me, that you are here with me. So, bear with me – forgive me, please. I am still learning to trust my senses.
A few minutes later we’re standing on Charles’ bridge. Below us the sleeping swans; above us the low, snow-dressed sky. Prague yet again the dream that brought us together and will never leave us, wherever we go. The sleepy water of the Vltava whispers round the pillars of the bridge, like your hand holds my hand, like your breath enfolding me.
Too numb now for poetry and clever phrases, I hold on to you. There’s only one whisper, shaping my world:
“Renata…”
You smile.