Memory and Dreams II - Autumn leaves

... continues from Saints and Surrealism

The Dream

The dream is a close-set stage and I am the only watcher. The woman of my Melbourne misery is reclining stage right and facing the back curtain. In the middle is a friend I would never have expected to see in a dream, in diminutive size, eating an overfilled baguette and kissing her in between bites while he chews with his mouth full. A neutral pale, oversized, and unidentifiable figure – possibly a woman – is stage left, also facing the back curtain. The only action is my friend oscillating like a pendulum between centre and stage right.

It continues for a few minutes until I wake up with my heart thumping and my mind still. There is not a sound in the flat. Not even the gas hiss of the autumn radiator. Just the thud of my jugular. And the silent midnight street lights staring white into the window from the pavement below. I swallow in one of those moments when you know you will never have a dream like it again.

The American poet Louise Bogan wrote that if you give something of yourself to the wild hoof-rearing horse of your worst nightmares then it will come to your side and put down its head in love, which means you have to sacrifice something for a resolution. But if it is rearing up on ground you do not need to walk on again, all you need to do is step out from underneath and leave the beast to tear furiously at the sky while you go and lunch with others.

I get up late on Saturday morning, relieved and painfully tired. There is another dinner party tonight which I doubt I will make, but Bruno has arranged an extra invitation for me especially, so I breathe deeply and look ahead to the day.

That afternoon I walk until I feel achingly sleepless in yet another country whose language I do not speak. I think of all the vividly familiar things that make up my days and weeks and years in Melbourne – green tea in the garden, incidental spring dinners with drop-in friends, strong coffee, and bell birds with their peaking chirps in the trees along the Yarra.

I decide after ten weeks away that I have lost my rhythm.

Australians aren’t meant to get homesick. A nation of immigrants and unweary travellers, we easily sail over the horizon to reunite with family, avoid the cultural cringe, or get pissed with mates on different beer.  You might get sentimental about home, but not sick over it. I get sick, but I too easily think I am not as Australian as any expectations require.

All I really want is a few hours on the lounge with some company. The next best thing is a long email home in a quiet cafe. I have to accept Starbucks – the only place with free wifi that has seats inside and away from the blaring music of the Autumn Fair. I barely touch the drab black drip filter coffee as I type.

Prometheus’s liver

When I get back Bruno is ready with Champagne and smoked salmon. His kind and gentle boyfriend Roland is coming and he has prepared a special aperitif.

‘I don’t want anything to drink.’

‘But you have not drunk any wine yet today have you?’

‘No, but …’

His arm extends with the bottle and the bubbles hit glass.

‘Just half. I’m tired. Dankeshön,’ I sigh.

‘Bitteshön,’ he replies heartily.

‘Bruno, you have the liver of Prometheus.’

‘How is this?’ he asks

‘Prometheus is the demi-god who Zeus punished for giving fire to mortals. He chained him to a cliff and sent an eagle to pick at his liver, which was renewed every day, and his pain started all over again. You feel no pain, but your liver is renewed in a way mine isn't.

He looks at me quizzically and smiles. Bruno is chained by nothing and consumes what he enjoys and knows only pleasure. Prometheus’s pain is beyond his experience, but he looks pleased to be a God.

Then I tell him about being homesick and that when I leave Basel I am thinking of going back to Paris for a few days.

‘You are about half way through your trip? He asks

‘A bit less.’

‘Paris is a good idea. It is more familiar to you than anywhere else in Europe and you could stay with your friends again. But there is no-one chasing you out of this flat.’

I smile and swallow the lump in my throat and take the stem of the glass and sip the Champagne.

We walk to the party over the Rhein and past the new-city Novartis apartments in the cool after-rain humidity of an autumn night. It is almost cold enough to wear a scarf. There are three courses with wine. And at this welcoming table of Germans and Swiss I try to understand what German I can and speak what German I have, but everyone is very good with English and warm and kind about my poor German.

After some hours we walk back through the old city lined with quiet tram tracks and punctuated with late night cyclists. Bruno and Roland have scarves and beanies. My ears are cold. As we cross and walk along the river, the quiet silhouette of the Münster and the Autumn Fair ferris wheel watch from the high hill.

I sleep long and well and when I wake up I cook French toast with pears poached in wine and honey and cinnamon while Bruno makes coffee and Roland reads the paper. I tell Bruno I’d like to stay an extra two days and then go to Seville.

‘So, you sleep and then go to Spain, and not to Paris.’

I spend my time sleeping and visiting Basel’s quirky museums (cartoons, paper), eating Autumn Fair sausages and trying to capture the Autumn on the Rhein – a Symphony in Yellow, as Oscar Wilde wrote (of London):

The yellow leaves begin to fade

And flutter from the Temple elms,

And at my feet the pale green Thames

Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Along the Rhein yellow leaves fall and loftily pile up like a quilt, decay with the rain or lie in puddles, or are blown into the river and taken downstream in to the sea in the strong and swirling currents.