A dream about an elephant - a homebody.

 

He crawled up to me one evening, when, half-conscious, I was humming a dreamy song. He nudged me with his trunk and began to accompany me with his empty eyes. And he stayed, and then I felt like I was light. I tiptoed into the apartment so as not to frighten him. And I gained a new respect for plushness when I realized that one could live without even blinking, only with missing tufts of fleecy material.

He spoke to me with his stubbled lips. Sometimes he complained about the scar on the belly of his back, but then I slipped away. I left quickly, before he started crying. Before I started crying. I always lost something then, then returned to find it. I asked the armchair, which always replied, to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow I found only the couch – speechless. It answered all my questions with the movement of its springs. But I never understood what yes and what no meant. Or maybe this whole depressing choreography meant a helpless: I don't know, princess. She quickly became very close to me. She appeared less and less often, replacing the armchair, as I lost myself less and less often as I walked away. Sometimes I'd still catch my sweater on the gold doorknob. Other times I'd fall with a thud on the patterned carpet. I'd inadvertently leave traces of oxygenated blood on the doorframe.

When I entered, I greeted the furniture, tidying up. I searched for her. Once, I mistook her for a silent armchair. The flowers on the windowsill (where from?) laughed at me, tapping their dusty leaves against the glass. They had hundreds of eyes. I knew they were gossiping, watching me walk through the intersection at dawn or dusk, photosynthesizing ironically. Then I remembered what I'd lost, but it was too late to return for anything. I walked forward, occasionally veering off on the straight path.

The carpet was then decorated with scraps of colorful paper cutouts. Flowers strolled around the sink, the blue of the ceiling falling on us as if from heaven. The elephant smiled ominously, stealing pieces of paper and shoving them under the rug (winking knowingly as he did so). His long trunk, though he couldn't control it very well, also moved. Touching the paper, it changed its color to his liking.

I tried to cover my tracks, being slow and calm.

"Why are you getting upset when I take that yellow one away?" the stuffed animal asked, growing impatient.

"Because I like yellow. I need yellow now. See? That'll be the prettiest.

" "And pink?

" "These cutouts don't come in pink.

" "You bought them specifically for that."

And he snatched the yellow one, and I pulled a spare one from my pocket and stuck it to the wound.

For that brief moment, I entrusted myself to the couch, if there was one. Otherwise, I sat on the floor, on the part not covered by the carpet. Cotton would rush over to watch. The elephant remained still, always by my side. He silenced the cotton and blankly followed my quick, jerky movements. I contorted my face, fearing only that this constant contortion would make me even more disgusted. The elephant would cuddle in that way I loved when I couldn't feel anything. I would later discover him in the folds of my sweater or hidden in a scarf tied carelessly around my cold neck.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted him to ask if it hurt.

I understood his delight.

"Can stepping outside yourself lead to 'leaving by slamming the door'?"

"You can slam your eyelids. And go to another room."

"What if...

" "After all... even a circus has doors... flimsy and makeshift.

" "Even the heavens open and close.

" "Those are the windows, actually. Why "heavens"?

"Because heavens are many layers of tulle heavens."

I'd leave, thanking, bowing, not remembering what I was doing. Tenderly, impertinent, lazy (but always to the point of exhaustion). I'd descend to earth and feel tainted by that interiority. Sometimes someone was waiting for me. Sometimes something was waiting for me, something I'd previously painstakingly brought to an irritating state of perfection just to have a reason to return. All sorts of contexts and pretexts, various announced surprises, and a fictitious coexistence – a luminous world. The consequences of allowing the imagination to dissolve. I forgot to take it everywhere, too, and it nestled in shop signs, window displays adorned with Christmas lights, or neon signs that provided the warmest warmth. Sleepily, I would fall into the arms of dog walkers, spreading terror among the henpecked and infuriating their dogs and cats.

I would run to R., panting. He would take me with him; I would help him pick raspberries. We would then return by bus. I was ashamed of my legs, enclosed in wet wellies, and of my dirty, red hands, which I would grip the ticket validator with, handing him the ticket for nibbling. I would lean against the railing and the trembling window, and a few perky fruits would spill out of R.'s basket. Delightfully chaotic, they made slimy circles on the dirty floor, making my eyes wander.

Finally, I would approach myself, standing silently and dependent on the independent in the reflected space. I opened windows, sewed my eyes shut, wove my hands into the mirror frame, grew into and out of the floor, reborn, each time hoping that this time I wouldn't die. Sometimes it just didn't hurt, so maybe I really wasn't dying.

I kept coming back.

As I searched for the yellow one, he approached me hesitantly.

"I won't take anything from you today."

I tore my eyes away from the uncontrollable drops.

"Where are your pupils?" I asked, replying.

"Maybe if you'd asked sooner, you might still have found them. Don't look at your trunk when I'm talking to you.

" "Who sewed your mouth shut?"

He handed me a dark green piece of paper. It's perfect for surprise and the desire for inappropriate omniscience about elephants. I covered the drops with the matte side. The top gleamed in the bright light of the sixty-watt lamp.

The rickety, three-legged table was such a quiet table that I hadn't noticed it until now. The elephant grumbled whenever I softly stepped toward it. He clung selfishly to my pant legs, crawled into pockets I didn't have. He shrieked shyly and waved his trunk. From the moment I recognized the table, I arrived later and later, when the stuffed animal was already in its thirteen-hour slumber.

A piece of luxurious furniture, its leg lost in the midst of voracious woodworms, a gentleman sinfully polite, carrying tea for me, even though I protested. While I sipped, the potted plants feeding by the largest window glared at me as if I were a murderer. They saw me like that a hundred times with every envious glance. In return, I wiped their leaves with a damp cloth. And the table, with its indulgent, varnished wooden top, carried a bowl of fresh cherries, tapping as discreetly as possible on the ceiling and floor. This is how our nights passed: I angrily swatting the woodworms away, he saw to my sustenance and begged me not to fall asleep yet.

Meanwhile, the elephant sleepwalked, repeating the polite phrases we uttered in his sleep. I'd wake up to his incoherent whispers, and just before he woke, I'd plead with him, speaking gently into his single ear, not to remember anything. He'd suddenly stand on his fluffy legs and get angry at me for being there.

The raspberries smelled stronger and stronger, spilling out of the basket more and more often, coloring the bus floor. I'd come here completely saturated with their scent, with wet feet that I'd dry on the radiator. R. might have assumed I lived here. Malicious flowers would deliberately drop duck feathers, deliberately plucked from the pillows, onto his head. He'd sneeze shrilly, anxiously looking up at the sky. He wouldn't hug me goodbye for fear of soiling my aging sweater. Nor would he greet me—he'd snatch the basket, contemplating the benefits of exchanging it for a tasteful bucket. He'd say that raspberries benefit from rain falling upwards. That with each gentle plucking, we embrace them, ripping away their lives with a single, painless tug. That we are foolish because we imagine such precipitation as drops bouncing meagerly off the sidewalk. But in reality, it grows from beneath the ground, bursting and liquefying the fruit.

The flowers cursed me, they called me a stranger, a person who had never been a tea person, forgetful, let these raspberries consume me, let someone stab me with a rusty pin. That's what they screamed. That's what the elephant told me, and I had no one to tell. An autotrophic revolution was taking place in the apartment, and I had no one to tell it to. For a while, I stopped visiting, hanging over the house like a cloud, blushing at the loss of who I was. When I returned, still frightened, I noticed the table was losing the second of its four old legs. The elephant had brought a cohort of bark beetles in a jar that had been deliberately leaked—out of possessiveness. As punishment, I locked him in a paper sugar bag. I sat down across from his makeshift enclosure and solemnly swore, smiling between words, that if he were less sinful, we would play diabolo. I brought R.'s electrolux into the apartment with the intention of sucking up the woodworms. And then I forgot to turn it off... From then on, the suction became ubiquitous, though imperceptible. Occasionally, small appliances would still glide across the floor. And under the window stood the vacuum cleaner, an underrated illusionist.

I didn't take the elephant to a play about the Dominican Republic because it would have rustled its bag. Next time, I'll take it to a gastrodrama, where it will rustle itself into intoxication.

"I'm suffocating!

" "You're not breathing.

" "You're heartless."

He continued to say something mormorando, faking his own death and scratching a testament on the interior walls of the paper cell with his button nose.

"Ever since you gave the table to the carpenter, not a day goes by without him trying to raise me.

" "I'm taking revenge. Besides, I want to make a man of you.

" "I won't be disgraced. Instead of pretending to be a sadist, you would have closed the window." He's blowing into my purse.

I let him out.

"Lock it yourself, Prince."

And I set off in search of the kitchen cabinets, because I'd brought six porcelain cups with me today. I tore open the bag carefully, along the line that neatly separated each phrase, spilling out the uneaten sugar crystals.

I dreamed of warmth. And the taste of Ukrainian mayonnaise to the music. Tango. She sat under the mirror, out of fear? She changed the world by tearing off the rose's thorns. I asked her to dance with me. After all, an aristocrat doesn't refuse. I watched her back, wanted to tear the harmony of her movements from her shoulder blades.

The sugar-intoxicated elephant knew he wasn't dying. He sat on the windowsill, arousing pity with his infinity. His dreams live in only one apartment, sometimes going out to visit. Sometimes they are my raspberries, which I share with R. for my own good. Raspberries – cuddles, raspberries – smiles...