Fancies and Goodnights

INTERPRETATION OF A DREAM

A young man entered the office of a well-known psychiatrist, whom he addressed as follows: «Doctor, save me!»

«By all means,» responded the mind specialist suavely. «After all, that is what I am here for.»

«But you can't,» cried the young man distractedly. «You can't! You can't! Nothing can save me!»

«At all events,» said the psychiatrist soothingly, «it will do no harm to talk it over.»

With that he waved his hands a little, smiled with a rather soapy and ingratiating expression, and before he knew it the young man was seated in a deep armchair, with his face to the light, pouring out his story.

«My name,» said he, «is Charles Rotifer. I am employed in the office of an accountant, who occupies the top storey of this skyscraper. I am twenty-eight years of age, single, engaged to be married. My fiancée is the best and dearest girl in the world, beautiful as an angel, and with lovely golden hair. I mention this because it is relevant to my story.»

«It is indeed,» said the psychiatrist. «Gold is a symbol of money. Have you a retentive attitude toward money? For example, you say you are employed in an office. Have you saved anything considerable out of your salary?»

«Yes, I have,» replied the young man. «I've saved quite a bit»

«Please continue, Mr. Rotifer,» said the psychiatrist, benevolently. «You were speaking of your fiancée. Later on I shall have to ask you one or two rather intimate questions on that subject»

«And I will answer them,» returned the young man. «There is nothing in our relationship that needs to be concealed — at all events from a psychologist. All is complete harmony between us, and there is nothing about her that I could wish altered, except perhaps her little habit of gesturing rather too freely as she speaks.»

«I will make a note of that,» said the other, scribbling on his pad.

«It is not of the least importance,» said the young man. «I hardly know why I mentioned it, except to indicate how perfect she is. But, Doctor, thirty-eight nights ago I dreamed a dream.»

«Thirty-eight, indeed!» observed the mind doctor, jotting down the figure. «Tell me frankly, when you were an infant, did you by any chance have a nurse, a teacher or a female relative, on whom perhaps you might have had a little fixation, who happened to be thirty-eight years of age?»

«No, Doctor,» said the young man, «but there are thirty-nine floors to this skyscraper.»

The psychiatrist gave him a penetrating glance. «And does the form and height of this building suggest anything to you?»

«All I know,» said the young man obstinately, «is that I dreamed I was outside the window of our office at the top, in the air, falling.»

«Falling!» said the psychiatrist, raising his eyebrows. «And what were your sensations at that moment?»

«I was calm,» replied the young man. «I imagine I was falling at the normal rate, but my mind seemed to work very fast I had leisure to reflect, to look around me. The view was superb. In a moment I had reached the ornamental stonework which separates our windows from those immediately below. Then I woke up.»

«And that simple, harmless, perfectly ordinary little dream has been preying on your mind?» asked the psychiatrist in a jocular tone. «Well, my dear sir …»

«Wait a moment,» said his visitor. «On the following night I dreamed the same dream, or rather, a continuation of it. There I was, spread-eagled in mid-air — like this — passing the ornamental stone-work, looking into the window of the floor below, which is also occupied by our firm. I saw my friend, Don Straker, of our tax department, bending over his desk. He looked up. He saw me. His face took on an expression of the utmost astonishment. He made a movement as if to rise from his seat, no doubt to rush to the window. But compared with mine, his movements were indescribably slow. I remember thinking, 'He will be too late.' Then I dropped below his window, and down to the dividing line between that floor and the next. As I did so, I woke.»

«Well,» said the brain doctor. «What have we here? The dream of one night is resumed on the night following. That is a very ordinary occurrence.»

«Possibly,» said the young man. «However, on the next night, there I was, having just passed the dividing line between that floor and the floor below it. I had slipped into a recumbent posture, with one leg slightly raised, like this.»

«Yes, yes,» said the psychiatrist. «I see. It is not necessary to demonstrate. You nearly knocked over my ash-tray.»

«I'm sorry,» said the young man. «I'm afraid I have picked up the habit from Maisie. Maisie is my fiancée. When she wants to say how she did a thing, she just shows you. She acts it out. It was the night she told me how she slipped and fell on the icy pavement on Seventy-second Street, that we became engaged. Well, as I say, there I was, falling past another floor, looking about me in all directions. The hills of New Jersey looked magnificent. A high-flying pigeon coasted in my direction, and regarded me with a round eye, devoid of any expression whatsoever. Then he banked and sheered off. I could see the people in the street below, or rather their hats, jammed as closely as black pebbles on a beach. Even as I looked, one or two of these black pebbles suddenly turned white. I realized I was attracting attention.»

«Tell me this,» said the psychiatrist. «You seem to have had a good deal of time for thought. Did you recollect why you were falling; whether you had thrown yourself, or slipped, or what?»

«Doctor, I really don't know,» said the young man. «Not unless my last dream, which I had last night, sheds any light on the matter. Most of the time I was just looking around, falling faster all the time, of course, but thinking faster to make up for it. Naturally I tried to think of subjects of importance, seeing it was my last opportunity. Between the seventeenth and the sixteenth floors, for example, I thought a lot about democracy and the world crisis. It seemed to me that where most people are making a big mistake is …»

«Perhaps, for the moment, we had better keep to the experience itself,» said the brain doctor.

«Well,» said the young man, «at the fifteenth floor I looked in at the window, and, really, I never believed such things happened! Not in offices, anyway. And, Doctor, next day I paid a visit to the fifteenth floor here, just out of curiosity. And those offices are occupied by a theatrical agent. Doctor, don't you think that confirms my dream?»

«Calm yourself,» said the psychiatrist. «The names of all the firms in this building are listed on the wall directory on the main floor. You no doubt retained an unconscious memory which you adroitly fitted into your dream.»

«Well, after that,» said the young man, «I began to look down a good deal more. I'd take just a quick glance into each window as I passed, but mostly I was looking downwards. By this time there were big patches of white among the dark, pebble-like hats below. In fact, pretty soon they were clearly distinguishable as hats and faces. I saw two taxi-cabs swerve toward one another and collide. A woman's scream drifted up out of the confused murmur below. I felt I agreed with her. I was in a reclining posture, and already I felt an anticipatory pain in the parts that would touch the ground first. So I turned face downwards — like this — but that was horrible. So I put my feet down, but then they hurt. I tried to fall head first, to end it sooner, but that didn't satisfy me. I kept on twisting and turning — like this.»

«Please relax,» said the psychiatrist. «There is no need to demonstrate.»

«I'm sorry,» said the young man. «I picked up the habit from Maisie.»

«Sit down,» said the psychiatrist, «and continue.»

«Last night,» said the young man despairingly, «was the thirty-eighth night»

«Then,» said the psychiatrist, «you must have got down to this level, for this office is on the mezzanine floor.»

«I was,» cried the young man. «And I was outside this very window, descending at terrific speed. I looked in. Doctor, I saw you! As clearly as I see you now!»

«Mr. Rotifer,» replied the psychiatrist with a modest smile, «I very frequently figure in my patients' dreams.»

«But I wasn't your patient then,» said the young man. «I didn't even know you existed. I didn't know till this morning, when I came to see who occupied this office. Oh, Doctor, I was so relieved to find you were not a theatrical agent!»

«And why were you relieved?» asked the specialist blandly.

«Because you were not alone. In my dream, I mean. A young woman was with you. A young woman with beautiful golden hair. And she was sitting on your knee, Doctor, and her arms were around your neck. I felt certain it was another theatrical agency. And then I thought, that is very beautiful golden hair. It is like my Maisie's hair. At that moment you both looked toward the window. It was she! Maisie! My own Maisie!»

The psychiatrist laughed very heartily. «My dear sir,» said he, «you may set your mind entirely at rest»

«All the same,» said the young man, «this morning, in the office, I have been a prey to an unbearable curiosity, an almost irresistible urge to jump, just to see what I should see.»

«You would have had the mortification,» said the psychiatrist, «of seeing that there were no grounds whatever for your rash act. Your fiancée is not a patient of mine; therefore she could not have had one of those harmless little transferences, as we call them, which have been known to lead to ardent behaviour on the part of the subject. Besides, our profession has its ethics, and nothing ever happens in the office. No, my dear sir, what you have described to me is a relatively simple condition, a recurrent dream, a little neurotic compulsion — nothing that cannot be cured in time. If you can visit me three or four times a week, I am confident that a very few years will show a decided improvement»

«But Doctor,» cried the young man in despair, «I am due to hit the ground at any moment!»

«But only in a dream,» said the psychiatrist reassuringly. «Be sure to remember it clearly, and note particularly if you bounce. Meanwhile, return to your office, carry on with your work, and worry as little as possible about it»

«I will try to do so,» said the young man. «But really you are astonishingly like yourself as I saw you in my dream, even to that little pearl tie-pin.»

«That,» said the psychiatrist, as he bowed him smilingly out, «was a gift from a very well-known lady, who was always falling in her dreams.» So saying, he closed the door behind his visitor, who departed shaking his head in obstinate melancholy. The psychiatrist then seated himself at his desk and placed the tips of his fingers together, as psychiatrists always do while they are pondering over how much a new patient may be good for.

His meditation was interrupted by his secretary, who thrust her head in at the door. «Miss Mimling to see you,» she said. «Her appointment is at two-thirty.»

«Show her in,» said the psychiatrist, and rose to greet the new entrant, who proved to be a young woman with the appearance of a rather wild mouse, upon whose head someone has let fall a liberal splash of peroxide. She was in a very agitated state. «Oh, Doctor,» she said, «I just had to telephone you, for when I saw your name in the book, of course I knew it was you. I saw your name on the door. In my dream, Doctor. In my dream.»

«Let us talk it over very quietly,» said the healer of souls, trying to manoeuvre her into the deep armchair. She was fidgety, however, and perched herself upon the corner of his desk. «I don't know if you think there is anything in dreams,» she said. «But this was such an extraordinary one.»

«I dreamed I came up to your door, and there was your name on it, just as it is out there. That's how it was I came to look you up in the telephone book, and there it was again. So I felt I just had to come and see you».

«Well, I dreamed I came into your office, and I was sitting here on the desk, just like this, talking to you, and all of a sudden — of course I know it was only a dream — I felt a feeling … well, really I hardly know how to tell you. It seemed to me as if you were my father, my big brother, and a boy I once knew called Herman Myers, all rolled into one. I don't know how I could feel like that, even in a dream, for I am engaged to a young man I love with all my conscious mind, and I thought with my unconscious, too. Oh, it's awful of me!»

«My dear young lady,» purred the psychiatrist, «this is nothing more or less than the phenomenon of transference. It is something which can happen to anybody, and usually it does.»

«Yes,» said she, «but it made me transfer myself to your knee, like this, and put my arms around your neck, like this.»

«Now! now!» murmured the psychiatrist gently, «I'm afraid you are acting out a neurotic impulse.»

«I always act things out,» she said. «They say it makes me the life and soul of a party. But, Doctor, then I happened to look out of the window, like this, and . . . Wow! There he is! There he was! It was Charlie! Oh, what a terrible look he gave us as he went by!»