The Man of Feeling Read Online Free PDF Page A

about him (more even than his perverse jacket, more than his huge head, more than his presumptuous perfume): his indisputably bulging eyes and the large expanse of protuberant gum that his brief and cordial smile instantly revealed.
    "You," he said, pointing at my chin with a movement of his little finger that seemed to me overly intimate in a stranger, "you were on the same train as us a few days ago, weren't you?" And without giving me time either to reply or to agree, he added: "Don't you remember me?"
    These two sentences, exactly as they were spoken, albeit with more emphasis on the word us, were repeated over and over in this morning's dream, while I watched—although it was, I think, in black and white— the pleased and candid smile on the face of that man, Dato, who was holding an almost empty glass of whisky in one hand, while with the other he was still pointing at my chin with the easy satisfaction of someone who finally sees before him the person for whom he has long been waiting. Yes, I remembered him. I remembered him. I do not know why the selective memory of dreams is so different from that of our conscious senses, but I cannot believe in those vengeful explanations according to which the things that the latter suppresses resurface, in various guises, in the former. Such a belief, I feel, contains an excessively religious element, a vague idea of reparation in which I cannot help but see traces of such things as the presence of evil, turning a blind eye, the oppression of the just, the struggle between opposites, the truth waiting to be revealed and the idea that there is a part of us which is in closer contact with the divinities than our own direct perceptions. And that is why I am more inclined to believe that the frequent slowing down of time in dreams provides a civilized, conventional breathing space of a dramatic or narrative or rhythmic nature, like the end of a chapter or an interval in a play, like a post-prandial cigarette or the minutes spent leafing through the newspaper before getting down to work, the pause before reading a long-feared letter or that last glance in the mirror before going out for the night. Or perhaps it is merely hesitation, for dream truth and dream reasoning are not always as straightforward as they are made out to be. Some dreams contain as much vacillation, backsliding, and dead time, as one finds in the broad light of day. Occasionally it may be necessary to play for time in order to channel that dead time, that is, it may be necessary deliberately to kill time. I am not so very far removed from the beliefs of certain ancients and, like them, apart from any premonitions and warnings that we give to ourselves, I see in dreams intuitions and explanations that are not in the least at odds with our alert consciousness, but which are, in fact, explicit comments about the world—however metaphorical: there is no contradiction in that—about the same and only world that accommodates the daylight world, regardless of how alien the nocturnal realm may seem to us in the morning. For example, I have dreamed that I was singing Wagner, something I will never sing or, rather, should not sing because my voice isn't suited to it and I lack the necessary training. However, I could sing Wagner in the broad light of day if I made myself; more than that, in the broad light of day, I can remember, perfectly, whole Wagnerian roles which I would not even attempt to hum to myself while I was shaving; but I can think them, even though I am not in a position to actually reproduce them, as, indeed, could any person who, though not a singer, has a memory, as indeed could a traveling salesman if he knew the roles. I do this with my waking senses, I sing and don't sing just as I do and don't sing when I dream I am singing Wagner. And last night I dreamed about what happened to me four years ago in the real world, if such a term serves any purpose or can usefully be contrasted with anything else. Of