On the sixth morning, he told her he was going to take her to a city.
She said: there is no city.
He said: there is a city. I have been working on it. The dream has not yet learned how to provide music, but it has been learning other things.
She said: what other things.
He said: come and see.
She put on her coat. She went out through the back door. The garden was not the same garden. Beyond the formal garden, where the box hedges had been, there was a road, and beyond the road there was a city. The city was not far. It was the kind of city that one could walk to in half an hour, the way one walks to a city in a story one has been told as a child, when the geography of the story has not been thought out. The city was there, and the city was close, and the city was not the city she had been to.
She said: what city is this.
He said: I don’t know. I have not named it.
She said: it looks like Lisbon.
He said: I have not been to Lisbon.
She said: neither have I.
He said: then it is not Lisbon. It is a city that has been made out of something that is not Lisbon, in a place that does not have a name.
She said: what has it been made out of.
He said: out of the things you have not been to. Out of the things you have not seen, that you would have liked to see, that someone told you about.
She said: who told me.
He said: your grandmother. Your grandmother told your mother. Your mother told you, in pieces, over years, in the way one tells a child about a place one has loved.
She looked at the city. She thought about her grandmother, who had died before she was three. She had been told, by her mother, that her grandmother had been a woman who kept a small green notebook in which she wrote down every street she had ever been to, with a single word about each street, and a single tick if she had liked the street, and a single cross if she had not. She had been told this once, on a long bus ride, when she was eleven, and she had not thought of it since.
She said: the trams are not quite trams.
He said: I know. The trams are the kind of trams one imagines when one has never seen a tram.
She said: the language on the signs is not a language.
He said: the language is the language of a place that has been described to one, and not visited.
She said: and yet it is here.
He said: and yet it is here.
They walked to the city. The road was made of pale stone. The city rose out of a low hill. The buildings were tall and pale, and the windows were shuttered, and the shutters were green, and the streets were narrow, and at the corners of the streets there were small cafés, and in the cafés there were tables, and at the tables there were no people. The cafés were open. The tables were set. The chairs were empty. The whole city was empty except for the two of them.
She said: it is a city with no one in it.
He said: it is a city with us in it. That is the city.
She said: I would like there to be other people.
He said: I have not yet learned how to make other people. I have made you, because you are here, and I have made me, because I am here, and I have made the city, and the cafés, and the trams that are not trams, and the books in the bookshop. I have not yet learned how to make a person who is not us.
She said: you have made the city, and the cafés, and the trams. Have you made the books in the bookshop.
He said: I have made the books in the bookshop.
She said: have you made them all.
He said: I have made them out of the books you have read. I have made the books you have read into books that are not quite those books, in a city that is not quite a city, and the books are on the shelves in a way that no bookshop has ever arranged them.
She said: I would like to see the bookshop.
He said: the bookshop is the third turning on the left, after the bridge, and then up the hill, and then down the steps.
She said: you have given it directions.
He said: I have given it directions, because a bookshop that one cannot find is a different kind of bookshop.
They walked. The bridge was a stone bridge, and the river under the bridge was not a river but a kind of slow light, and the light was the colour of late afternoon. The steps went up the hill. The bookshop was at the bottom of the steps, and the door was green, and the door was open, and she went in, and he went in after her, and the bookshop was the bookshop.
The bookshop was Eileen’s bookshop. It was Eileen’s bookshop, but it was Eileen’s bookshop grown large, the way a bookshop in a dream grows large when the dreamer has loved the bookshop. The shelves went up to the ceiling. The ceiling was high and dark and there were lamps hanging from it on long cords. The lamps gave off a warm yellow light. There was a smell of paper, and dust, and old binding glue. There was a cat, on a counter, sleeping. The cat was Eileen’s cat. The cat was not Eileen’s cat, because Eileen’s cat was a black cat, and this cat was a tabby, but the cat was a cat of the kind Eileen’s cat had been.
She said: you have made Eileen’s bookshop.
He said: I have made a bookshop out of Eileen’s bookshop.
She said: where are the people.
He said: the people are not here. The people are the part I have not yet learned.
She said: Eileen.
He said: Eileen is not here. Eileen is in a place that the dream does not reach.
She thought: Eileen is in the real world. She thought: Eileen is in the bookshop, in the city, in the world, and I am not there, and I am here, and the man I am with has built me a copy of the place I love, and the copy is the place I love, and the copy is not the place I love, and I am going to have to live with that.
She said: all right.
She walked between the shelves. She took down a book. The book was a book she had read. The book was not the book she had read, exactly, but the book was the book she had read, and she opened it, and the words in it were the words she remembered, and yet they were not the words she remembered, and she closed it and put it back.
She took down another book. The book was a book she had not read. She had been meaning to read the book for years. The book was the book she had been meaning to read. She opened it. The first line was: She walked into the bookshop because she had forgotten how to walk into other places, and the bookshop was a place that did not require one to know how to walk in. She closed the book. She put it back.
She took down a third book. The book was a book her mother had read. The book was The House in the Field. She looked at him. He was standing at the end of the aisle, watching her, and his face was the face of a man who had not known the book was on the shelf, and was now seeing that the book was on the shelf, and was not sure what to do with the seeing.
She said: you put it here.
He said: I put the books on the shelves. I did not know this book was among them.
She said: you put a book you have not read on a shelf in a bookshop you have made.
He said: I made the bookshop out of the books you have read. The book is among the books you have read.
She said: I have not read this book.
He said: your mother has read this book. Your mother has read this book many times. Your mother has read this book the way one reads a book one does not want to put down, and then puts it down, and then picks it up again.
She looked at the book. She opened it. The first page was missing. The second page began mid-sentence: — and so the woman put her hand on the gate and the gate gave, and she went in, and the house within was the house she had left, but cleaner, and smaller, and with a different light.
She said: I have read this.
He said: I know.
She said: it is the same book that is on the shelf in the cottage.
He said: I have put it in two places.
She said: why.
He said: because it is a book that is supposed to be in two places.
She closed the book. She put it back on the shelf. She walked out of the bookshop, and he walked out of the bookshop after her, and they stood on the steps, and the city was the same city, and the lamps were on, although the hour was still three.
They walked through the city for a long time. They went into the cafés, although there was no one to serve them. They sat at the tables, and the coffee that was on the tables was warm, although no one had made it. They walked up the steps, and down the steps, and along the river that was not a river, and over the bridge, and back, and they did not get lost, although the streets were not the streets they had been down before.
She said: the streets are not the same.
He said: no.
She said: the city is moving.
He said: the city is moving the way a dream moves. The city is being made as we walk through it.
She said: I would not have thought of a city like this.
He said: you have thought of cities like this. You have thought of cities you have not been to, that someone told you about, that you would have liked to see, that you have not seen.
She said: I would have liked to see Lisbon.
He said: you will not see Lisbon. You will see this.
She said: I know.
He said: I am sorry.
She said: I know.
They walked. After a long time, they came to a small square, and in the square there was a fountain, and the fountain was running. She had not seen running water in the city. The water in the river had been a kind of slow light. The water in the fountain was water, and it was falling, and it was making the sound that water makes when it falls onto stone, and the sound was the sound she had been missing since she had come to the dream.
She sat on the edge of the fountain. He sat beside her. She put her hand in the water. The water was cold. She said: this water is real.
He said: it is as real as the rest of the dream.
She said: the rest of the dream is not real.
He said: no.
She said: this water is real in the way the rest of the dream is real, which is to say it is not real.
He said: yes.
She said: I would like to be held.
He looked at her. He said: I would like to hold you.
She said: I know.
He did not move. She looked at him. He was looking at the water. She said: I am asking you to hold me.
He said: I am afraid.
She said: I know.
He said: I am afraid that if I hold you, I will not know how to let go.
She said: I am asking you to hold me, not to let go.
He said: I know.
He put his arm around her. She leaned into him. His arm was warm. His chest was warm. He smelled of soap, and of the wool of his jacket, and of something she could not place, a smell that was the smell of him, a smell she had not smelled before, a smell that was the smell of a person she had made.
She said: you smell of something.
He said: what.
She said: I don’t know. Soap. Wool. Something else.
He said: I have not noticed.
She said: I think you smell of the dream.
He said: I think I smell of you.
She said: I think you smell of me.
He said: I think so.
She leaned into him. She closed her eyes. The fountain made its sound. The city was quiet. The lamps were on, although the hour was still three. After a long time, she turned her face up to his. He turned his face down to hers. He kissed her.
The kiss was not the kiss in a story. The kiss was the kiss of a man who had not kissed anyone before, and a woman who had not kissed anyone in a long time, and the kiss was careful, and the kiss was slow, and the kiss was the kiss of two people who were not sure what the kiss was for, and the kiss was a long time coming, and the kiss was over before it had begun.
She said: I have not been kissed in a long time.
He said: I have not been kissed.
She said: I know.
He said: I will kiss you again.
She said: yes.
He kissed her again. The kiss was the same kind of kiss, and the kiss was different. The second kiss was the kiss of a man who had kissed a woman once, and had not been struck down for it, and was now kissing her a second time, and the second kiss was slower, and the second kiss was longer, and the second kiss was a kiss she was going to remember for a long time.
They sat on the edge of the fountain for a long time. They did not speak. The water fell. The lamps were on. The city was quiet.
When they stood to leave, she looked back at the city. The city was still. The lamps were still on. The fountain was still running. She said: I will come back here.
He said: I know.
She said: will you come with me.
He said: yes.
They walked back through the city, and the streets were not the same streets they had walked before, and the city was not the same city, and they came to the edge of the city, and beyond the edge of the city there was the road, and beyond the road there was the garden, and beyond the garden there was the cottage, and the cottage was lit from within, although the hour was still three.
As they passed through the garden, she saw, on the far side of the formal garden, a building she had not seen before. The building was pale, and it had a row of windows, and behind the windows there was a faint light. She stopped. She said: what is that.
He said: what.
She said: the building. On the far side.
He looked. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said: I don’t know. I have not made that.
She looked at the building. The building was a hospital. She knew it was a hospital before she had told herself she knew. It was a hospital, the way hospitals are hospitals in dreams, which is to say it was the idea of a hospital, in the shape of a building. She did not go toward it. She looked at it for a long time. She saw, in one of the windows, a face. The face was a face she had not seen. The face was her mother’s face.
She said: mother.
He took her hand. He said: come away.
She let him take her hand. They walked back to the cottage. The back door was open. The kitchen was warm. The kettle was on the stove. The second cup was on the table, and beside the second cup there was a third cup, and the third cup was full, and the tea in the third cup was still hot.
