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.