It was a cold and weary December. The half-moon had embodied for Mr. Floyd’s state of mind, delirious and hazy. One could see the silhouette of the grinning moon through the transparent white curtain reflected by thick glass of a window of the garret he had been renting for six months. The room was mediocre in size, two tainted windows with conventional ventilators, its ledges covered with black dust which made an impression of the charcoal which had just been poured water upon. The door was ajar. The crude unpolished old leather sofa lay adjacent to a wooden study table which had been scribbled all over from inks of blue and red while Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” looked like paradoxically and intentionally placed beneath an empty teapot which completed the chaos. Just opposite to this bedlam was placed a bed which looked rather comfortable while it was definitely small for Mr. Floyd who slept there quietly with his arms crossed beneath his giant pulpy head and against a bolster. It had been a day.
There in his warm and firm paradise he dreamt. At the outset he dreamt of his childhood home in the district of K___ where he was walking with his father who was clumsily dressed and wore an elevated “dhaka topi” which was slightly inclined to the right and with his left hand he had a firm grip of his son while the right one had been amputated and only the sleeve swerved with the gust of a wind. Floyd dreamt with a pre conceived notion that he had been quarreling with his father and they were not in talking terms and Floyd Sr. had been thrusting and dragging his son who was completely exasperated and was turning red with anger and without success had been trying to escape from the clutch of his father. He didn’t remember what the argument was about but it was lucid in his dream that his father performed like a conceited and malevolent ancient high caste.
Upon reaching home Floyd Sr. with all his might threw his son into the porch where for some time he laid, cursing and unable to see as he now had a burst of tears and it now appeared misty to him. How dare you vilify me, roared the father while picking up a brick and threatening to hit him. Floyd spooned tight and dropped his head to the ground and closed his soggy eyes. He was trembling and felt a chill through his spines. His father let the brick drop off his hand and strode inside the house with faltering odd steps. Floyd Sr. lived with his son and a pregnant wife who was about to bear him with a baby daughter. Now Floyd dreamt that he was alone in a boulevard and he was riding past a tavern in his little mare, the dreadful looking tavern produced a foul stench but he wanted to get inside and observe the place and listen to its profoundly Kafkaesque philosophers. A strong desire to attend this loathsome and grimly heaven grasped his heart. In a paroxysm of “id” Floyd rushed inside the tavern. A bright light from the bar side flashed upon his eyes and he began rubbing the blaze from his twinkled vision with his hands. A while later when his clear eyes ascended upon the place it was truly and horribly conceited.
He saw women, naked pregnant women drinking and toasting. He saw them dancing and arguing. The tavern looked plagued with women. One cannot find a difference between the plague and a woman. Naked women of all sorts. Fat and skinny, young and old, beautiful and spiteful, graceful and vengeful but all pregnant. He looked upon them with spite and vexation. “What place is this?” bellowed the indignant Floyd, but his voice was hardly audible to anybody in this the clamorous festivity. He hastily scrutinized the place with heavy breathing and now he saw a man with his hands crossed against the bar table while his head leaned upon it. He walked to the man and called upon him. The man didn’t respond to his call and it seemed that he was leaden in drunkenness. “Hey mister, hello, hey there errr……. Excuse me…..” wavered Floyd as he now felt incongruously thirsty. In his last attempt to revive the strange man he grabbed his soiled and food stained shirt and pulled him and looked into his face. It was his father! His closed eyes suddenly stared back and his countenance began to glow yellow. “Father…… Father!” Shouted Floyd but he didn’t speak back. Slowly and gently the father slid his hands from Floyd’s chest and ascended smoothly at his neck and with much vigor and swiftness he thrust his hand into his throat. Floyd tried to shove back the big and greasy hands but he wasn’t powerful enough. He began to get out of breaths…..
Mr. Floyd awoke abruptly. He was covered in sweat and respired heavily. He hands were cold and dizzy while his mouth felt very dry. To wake up from such dreadful dream, he felt bilious. He stayed there in his bed while his anxiety sufficed. He looked absentmindedly across the room. Suddenly he realized something and rummaged through his bed and after a while from underneath the bolster he produced a neatly folded paper and again, like before he had slept, hastily read the last sentence silently. He had been diagnosed for a throat cancer.
“It wasn’t a Kafkaesque dream after all”, he thought while he absentmindedly asserted, “Now I know what a pregnant woman suffers through, only that my baby is growing in my neck”.
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