He stirs, and I wake up. We turn to each other; I lift my head, and he slides his arm under my neck, wrapping the other one around me. Now each one sighs contentedly. In a few minutes, my neck gets achy, and I turn around, tucking a pillow underneath my head to relieve the pain. This has become our unspoken ritual a while back. How lucky we are to wake up to each other’s embrace.
Some mornings, I wake up with a ghost of a dream I was having still hovering within me, as I return to this world. It is not a memory – quite often I cannot recall either the plot or the characters – more of a scent or a faded imprint of the realm I just left behind. This morning, though, the memory is still there, and I am running through the frames of the story to crystallise it in my mind before I speak.
– I had a dream.
– Oh, yeah?..
– I was there, or maybe I wasn’t…
– Were you naked?..
– Noooo, it wasn’t that kind of a dream! I was the narrator, not bodily there, you know, the way it is in the dreams… But at some point, I said, ‘her name shall be Felicity Fortunata’, as if I were in the story too.
Anyway, there are two guys in a cab. It looks like a London cab. It is dark outside. The season is either Spring or Autumn. It’s a ‘coats’ weather but not too cold. We are in a little town. The cab is either moving very slowly or stopped on the right side of the road (Europe or America?). On the other side of the street, we can see a shop, or a bar or a petrol station – it doesn’t matter. It’s just a local place with lights where sad characters, with undefined yearnings and nowhere to be, gather at night. And there are two or three such characters.
There are two middle-aged men in the cab. One is large, expensively dressed in a brown coat and a bowler hat, with a cigar and a sense of authority about him. The other one is dressed in black and grey, also a coat and a bowler hat, slimmer, respectable, subordinate to the first man. The fat one speaks:
– So, What is to be?
At this moment, I feel defiance overwelming me and speak out:
– Her name shall be Felicity Fortunata!
I got emotionally entangled with what, I knew, was coming, and materialised myself right into the story. From an impartial and bodiless observer and narrator, through the power of feelings, I shifted into a character. I had to say my word. I had to impose my will upon the direction of the plot. Because I couldn’t let a child suffer. And I detest unhappy endings.
—-
A bundle is conjured out of thin air and deposited on the pavement. The lights fade.
—-
Things have moved on; life is busy, and the scenery around us is more contemporary. Hands are unwrapping the bundle, and beneath a layer of cloth we can see a sweet face, content and curious, with clear blue eyes. An envelope is visible, tucked in between the blanket and the baby’s shirt.
The envelope contains a cheque and a note:
“Her name is Felicity Fortunata. Whoever finds the baby shall be bound by the invisible powers to do their best in raising her. The enclosed cheque shall generously provide for all possible needs of both hers and the caretaker’s, and more. You cannot decline this task; destiny led you here. It is to be.”
This place in Normandy is something of a hermitage. The monks from the nearby Mont St Michel used to (or maybe still do!) take little respite breaks in a house in this village: two weeks in the Abbey, four weeks in Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Norman clime is humid. It was determined that two weeks within the stone walls of the spiritual fortress is the healthy limit of endurance. The bodies, minds, and clothes of the inhabitants must go elsewhere to get thoroughly wrung out and dried before returning to the water-saturated air. Somewhere not too far, apparently.
On Sunday, we went to the Mont. On Monday, sitting at the dining table and gazing at it through the french doors, he asked me:
– Now that you have visited Mont Saint Michel, how do you feel, looking at it from here?
– Hmmm, I feel like one of those monks who are having their scheduled break before returning to the stone walls.
The house is solid and functional, with all the essentials, without the frills, just like the man who built it. It was meant for a family life, which lasted a while but not as long as intended. Now it stands here, on the shore, alone and patient, waiting to welcome anyone in need of shelter: the owners – remnants of the family, their friends, and random strangers. I am here, a random stranger, and in my mind, I run a conversation with the house:
– I want to know how to feel towards you, House. I like you and want to be friends, but will it last?
– Why does it have to?
– To be here and now, without expectations – is that what you want me to learn?
I sit at the table. In front of me is a window to see the grass, the sea, the Mont and the sky. Behind me, behind the wall, there is the coastal road. After a few days of winding down the inertia of looking busy, I am here, now, and I don’t want to move.
– Darling, what would you like to do today? We can go to Granville, we can do anything you want!
– I don’t mind. It is windy and rainy. I am quite content just to sit here and think. It feels like that kind of day. I am happy to gaze out and think up stories in my head. For example, what happens next to the baby girl left on the pavement with a note and a cheque? What do you think happens to her?
– Oh, I don’t know…
– Who finds her?
– A poor guy. He works in the mines, never has any money, but has good values.
– So, it is a struggle for him to know what to do with the money. Does he waste it all?
– No, he meets a financial adviser (saying that, he turns to me a wicked eye with a smile, and we laugh), who makes him invest the money wisely! She grows up not knowing that she is rich.
– Why? Does he hide from her that she is rich?
– No. He buys the house, buys the clothes, provides all that is necessary, but he doesn’t know much about spending. He could collect cars or watches, but he doesn’t know it. Poor man’s values. She grows, she begins to ask questions, and he has no answers for her.
– Why? Does he hide from her that she is an orphan?
– No, he doesn’t hide anything. There is simply no information about where she comes from, who her parents are.
– Oh, yeah!
– The children’s world is cruel. She is growing, without parents, no mother, no father. Who is this man to her? The other children make fun of her. She is alone, feeling different. But she grows strong.
– And the money, is it still there, invested wisely?
– Yes. And she doesn’t know she is rich. But one day she will have it because he saved it all for her.
I am pondering my man’s version of the story. We are still new to each other, and everything is a way to understand the other’s views and motivations. I like where his story is coming from. But the real question is, what’s mine?
My unconscious dropped this dream into my lap in a way similar to that of the baby girl being dropped into the lap of the protagonist, still inconnu, as if obliging me to do something about it. As if I have been charged with telling it, a contract signed by the mere fact of dreaming up the beginning of the story, choices removed.
On Sunday, at the Abbey, we saw a relief telling the story of Aubert, the bishop of Avranches, who had a vision of archangel St. Michael ordering him to build a shrine on the rock now known as Mont Saint Michel. Aubert ignored it once, then twice, but on the third visitation, St Michael poked a hole in the doubting bishop’s head, which finally convinced the latter of the validity of the vision. Thus had begun the story of the Abbey counting a millenium and more.
It is a little funny how the universe showed me this story in solid matter just after my own vivid dream.
And so, what is to be?
Bishop Aubert of Avranches having his head trepanated by St Michael ordering him to build a shrine on Mont St Michel
