CHAPTER XLVI.
My brother's letters, written close on very fine paper, continued to
reach us from time to time; he could only send them to us by sailing
vessels bound in our direction which lay-to in that part of the world
where he was stationed. Some of them were written particularly for me,
and these were long, and filled with never-to-be-forgotten
descriptions. I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid
language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite
island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as
does a chimerical realm, ardently desired, but as inaccessible as if
situated upon another planet.
During my visit to my cousins my father forwarded me a letter from my
brother addressed to me. I went up to the garret roof, on the side
where the plums were drying, to read it. He wrote of a place called
Fataua which was situated in a deep valley and surrounded by steep
mountains. "A perpetual twilight," he wrote, "reigns here under the
great exotic trees, and the spray of the cascade keeps the carpet of
rare ferns fresh." Yes; I could picture that scene to myself very
well, now that I had about me mountains and moist glens luxuriant with
ferns. . . . He described everything fully and vividly: my brother
could not know that his letters exercised a dangerous spell over the
child who, at his departure, appeared to be so tranquil and so
attached to the home fireside.
"The only pity," he wrote at the end, "is that this delightful island
has not a door opening into the home-yard, into the beautiful arbor
overgrown with honeysuckle, for instance, that lies behind the
grottoes and the little pond."
This idea of a door in the wall at the foot of our garden, and
especially the association between the little lake constructed by my
brother and distant Oceanica, struck me as very singular, and the
following night I had this dream:
I went into the yard and found it enveloped in a sort of deadly
twilight that gave me the impression that the sun had been
extinguished forever. Every where there seemed to be an inexpressible
desolation that is known only in dreams, and which it is almost
impossible to conceive of in the waking state. When I arrived at the
bottom of the garden near the beloved little lake, I felt myself
rising from the ground like a bird about to take flight. At first I
floated aimlessly as thistledown, then I passed over the wall and took
a south-west direction, the direction of Oceanica; I had no trace of
wings, and I lay on my back in an agony of dizziness and nausea as I
travelled with frightful rapidity, with the swiftness of a stone shot
from a sling. The stars whirled madly in space; beneath me oceans and
seas faded into the pallid and indistinguishable distance, and as I
journeyed I was ever enwrapped in that twilight bespeaking a dead
world. . . . After a few minutes I suddenly found myself encompassed
by the darkness of the noble trees in the valley of Fataua.
There in the valley my dream continued, for I ceased to believe in it,
--the utter impossibility of really being there impressed itself upon
my mind,--for very often I had been duped by such illusions which
always vanished when I awoke. My main concern was lest I should wake
wholly, for the vision, incomplete as it was, enchanted me. At least
the carpet of rare ferns was really there. As I groped in the night
air and plucked them I said to myself: "Surely these plants are real,
for I can touch them and I have them in my hand; surely they will not
disappear when the dream vanishes." And I grasped them with all my
strength to be sure of keeping them.
I awoke. A beautiful summer day had dawned, and in the village was
heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the
hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the
weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was
still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh,
the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed of the
impalpable stuff of dreams.
