The Dream Maker (2 page)

I had acquired the vague conviction that the only reason the world was like this was because we lived in the cursed realm of a mad king. Until I was seven, it never occurred to me that this misfortune might be avoided: I could not imagine such a thing as elsewhere, worse or better but certainly different. There were the pilgrims on the Way of St. James, who had set off for faraway, almost mythical lands. I would see them coming up our street. With their satchels by their side, and their sandals in their hands, they would cool their feet for hours in the Auron where it flowed below our town. It was said they were going to the sea. “The sea?” My father had described it to me, a vast expanse of water, as big as an entire countryside. But his words were confusing: it was easy to see that he was merely repeating what he had heard from other people. He himself had never seen the sea.

Everything changed the year I turned seven, on the evening I first saw the creature's red eyes and tawny fleece.

My father was a furrier. He had learned the trade in another small town. When he had become skilled at handling the simple skins of foxes or hares, he moved to the big town. Twice a year at the major fairs, wholesale merchants sold the rarer pelts of vair or gray squirrel. Unfortunately, the dangers of war frequently made the trip impossible. My father had to count on petty tradesmen to bring him the skins from the wholesalers. Some of those merchants were hunters and had trapped the animals themselves, deep in the forest. They would head off using the skins as currency; they exchanged them on their way for food or lodging. These men of the forest generally wore fur themselves. But they wore the pelt on the outside, whereas the craft of furriers like my father was to turn the skins so that the fur was on the inside, to keep one warm, only slightly visible at the cuffs or the collar. For a long time this was my only way of distinguishing the civilized world from barbarity. I belonged to a society of men who had evolved, and every morning I put on a doublet lined with invisible fleece. A savage man was like an animal, and could still be seen covered in fur. It mattered little that it was not his own.

Piled in the studio that opened onto the courtyard at the back of the house were bundles of several qualities of vair, martin, and sable. Their gray, black, and white tones were just like those of our stone churches and our slate roofs turned purplish black by the rain. The ginger highlights of certain pelts made one think of autumn leaves. Thus, from our homes to the deepest forests of faraway lands, the same monotonous colors reflected the melancholy of our days. People said I was a sad child. In truth, it was rather I was disappointed that I had come too late into a world from which the light had departed. I nurtured the vague hope that someday the light would return, because I did not feel I was truly disposed to melancholy. All that was needed was a sign for my true nature to be revealed.

That sign came one evening in November. Vespers had rung at the cathedral. In our new house, made all of wood, I shared a room with my brother on the third floor, beneath the eaves. I was playing at tossing a ball of wool to my mother's dog. What I liked best was to see him dive into the steep stairway, his tail in the air, when I threw the ball. He would come back up holding it proudly in his jaws, then growl as I took it from him. It was a dreary evening. I could hear the rain pattering on the roof. My mind was wandering. I threw the dog his ball of hemp, but I had lost interest in the game. Suddenly an unexpected calm fell upon the room: the dog had scrambled down the stairs but had not come back up. I didn't realize at first. When I heard him yapping on the floor below, I realized that something unusual must have happened. I went down to find him. He was standing at the top of the flight of stairs that led to the ground floor. Nose in the air, he seemed to have smelled something downstairs. I sniffed, but my human sense of smell did not detect anything unusual. The odor of baking bread, which the serving girl made with my mother once a week, covered the fustiness of fur we were all used to. I shut the dog in the storeroom where my mother kept linens and cushions, and went quietly down the stairs to see what was going on. I was careful not to make the steps creak, because my parents did not allow us into the downstairs rooms without a good reason.

A glance through the open door was enough to ensure that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the kitchen. The courtyard was deserted. I went over to my father's workshop. The shop workroom that gave onto the street was closed, as on every evening, by panels of solid wood. That meant that the journeymen had left for the day, after the last customers. Yet my father was not alone. From where I hid by the door that led to the courtyard I could see a stranger, from behind. In one hand he was holding a burlap bag in which something was moving. The silhouettes of my father and the visitor stood out against the white background of a wall hanging made of squirrels' bellies that was being assembled. A torch cast a bright light into the room. I should have gone back upstairs right away, as my presence there—during a visit, especially—was strictly forbidden. But I had no desire to leave, and besides, it was too late. Everything happened very quickly.

My father said, “Open it,” and the man let go of the neck of the bag. The animal that leapt out of it was the size of a small mastiff. A collar held it to a chain. The chain suddenly went taut when the beast pounced toward my father. It gave a stifled sound then arched its back. It looked in my direction, then with its mouth wide open, gave out a hoarse roar such as I had never heard. I abandoned all caution, stood up straight and went to stand in the doorway. The animal was looking right at me, and its eyes were a porcelain white fringed with a sharp line of black fur. It was standing at an angle to me and I could see its haunches. I had never seen such a color, and could never have imagined a coat like that existed. In the light from the candlestick its fleece was golden, and scattered against this background of motionless sunlight were round spots shining like dark stars.

My father initially seemed cross with me, then just as I realized the folly of my behavior, he reassured me.

“Jacques,” he said. “You have come at the right time. Come closer and take a look.”

I took a hesitant step forward and the animal reared up, straining against the chain, which the man held tight in his fist.

“No closer!” cried the stranger.

He was an old man, his thin, wrinkled face tarnished by a short, scruffy beard.

“Stay where you are,” ordered my father. “But take a good look, you may never see another. This is a leopard.”

My father, with his marten fur cap on his head, gazed at the feline as it blinked slowly. The man smiled, revealing his toothless mouth.

“It come from Arabia,” he whispered.

I kept my gaze fixed on the animal. Its golden fur merged with the word I had just heard for the first time. And the man sealed this union even tighter by adding, “Is desert there, sand, sun. Always hot. Very hot.”

I had heard of the desert at my catechism, but I could not imagine what that place must be like, where Christ withdrew for forty days. And suddenly that world had come to me. Today I can see it all, but at the time there was nothing that clear in my consciousness. Particularly as the animal, which had been standing calmly, almost at once began to roar and pull against his chain, knocking my father backwards into a bundle of beaver skins. The stranger took a stick from his tunic and began to beat the creature so hard that I was sure he had killed it. When the beast lay lifeless on the ground, he grabbed it by the paws and stuffed it into his bag. I saw no more, because my mother had laid her hands on my shoulders and pulled me away. She told me later that I had fainted. The truth is I awoke in my room in the early morning, certain it was all a dream until my parents, at breakfast, spoke to me about the incident.

In hindsight, I know exactly what that visit meant. The man was an old gypsy whose trade was to show his leopard wherever he went. There were times when he was received at castles by lords eager for distraction. More frequently, he haunted fairgrounds and village squares. He had bought the animal from a merchant on the byways of the Holy Land. Now the gypsy was getting old, and his leopard was sick. If I had had more experience, I would have seen that the animal was weak, toothless, and malnourished. The gypsy had tried to sell it to another traveler, but no one wanted to give him a good price. That was when he came up with the idea of selling the animal for its skin. He had happened by my father's workshop and suggested it to him. But no sale took place and I never found out why. In all likelihood my father had no customers for such a piece. Or perhaps he felt sorry for the animal. For though my mother was a butcher's daughter, my father never dealt with anything but an animal's remains, and he did not have the soul of a skinner.

It was an isolated episode. It did not matter if it never happened again: it had left its indelible mark on me. I had glimpsed another world, a world that was here on earth and alive, not the hereafter of death which the Gospel promised us. A world that was the color of the sun, and its name was Arabia. It was a fragile thread, but I clung to it stubbornly. I questioned the priest at the chapter of Saint-Pierre, our parish. He told me about the desert, about St. Anthony and wild animals. He told me about the Holy Land; his uncle had been there, because he was from a noble family and acquainted with knights.

I was still too young to understand what he was telling me. But he did confirm that my premonition was well-founded. There was more to the world than rain, cold, darkness, and war. Beyond the land of the mad king there were other places I knew nothing about, but which I could imagine. Thus, the dream was not merely a gate to melancholy, a simple absence from the world, but much more: the promise of another reality.

One evening a few days later, my father, in a low voice, told us some terrible news: the king's brother, Louis of Orléans, had been assassinated in Paris. The uncles of the mad king were intent on killing one another once and for all. John, Duke of Berry, who lived nearby and whose courtiers made up the bulk of my father's customers, would not be able to remain neutral among his brothers for very much longer. Now war was breathing on us with its pestilential breath. My parents were trembling with fear, and not long before I, too, would have yielded to panic.

Just when the world was too full of pain, the animal had leapt out of his bag and stared at me with a roar. It seemed to me that if everything went dark, there would still be time for me to escape toward the sunlight. And though I did not understand what it meant, I said that magical word over and over: Arabia.

 

*

 

It took five years for the war to reach us. When it touched our city, I was no longer of an age to fear it; rather, I desired it.

I was twelve years old that summer when, allied with the Burgundians, the army of the mad king marched on us. The Duke of Berry, our good Duke John as my father used to call him, with a sorrowful smile, had been prevented from entering Paris, where he had a residence. Obliged to abandon his usual caution, he had sided with the Armagnacs. “Armagnacs,” “Burgundians”: I heard these evocative, mysterious names at the dinner table when my parents conversed. Outdoors, in our games, we took turns pretending to be a hero from one side or the other. We, too, fought among brothers. While we could not understand the politics in detail, we thought we had at least grasped some of its inner workings.

Rumor from the countryside had it that the Burgundians were coming closer. On her way to see her parents our serving girl happened upon a company of soldiers. Several villages around their own had been burned and pillaged. The poor girl wept as she told us of her family's misfortune. She needed to confide in someone, so I let her talk.

While these events had happened very near to us, they aroused in me not fear but rather intense curiosity. I wanted to know everything about the soldiers and, above all, the knights. Our serving girl's stories were very disappointing in that respect. The plunder in the countryside had been committed by vulgar ruffians; at no time did her parents see any real soldiers of the kind I had imagined.

My passion for the Levant meant I had heard many stories about the crusades. At the Sainte-Chapelle I got to know an old man who was a deacon, and who in his younger days had gone to the Holy Land to fight.

Thus, I shared the passion of many of my companions, although it was on the basis of a deep misunderstanding. They were yielding to their interest in weapons, horses, jousts, and every sort of violent deed or exploit considered prestigious among young men. For me, chivalry was rather a vehicle to the enchanted world of the Levant. If I had known of any other way to be transported to Arabia, it would have been equally fascinating. At the time, I was convinced that the only way to get there and to vanquish all the obstacles on the way would be astride a leather-clad steed, wearing a suit of armor with a sword at my side.

There were a dozen or so of us, all children of the same age, born in the same neighborhood of town-dwelling parents. The offspring of servants or peddlers occasionally joined us; the sons of noblemen ignored us. I was somewhat taller than the others but I had a fragile constitution. I spoke little and never really let myself go when playing. Part of me remained aloof. My detached attitude must surely have seemed superior to them. My presence in the group was tolerated. However, when the time came for secrets or naughty stories, my friends arranged to leave me out.

We had a leader. He was a fat boy called Éloi, a baker's son. His curly, coarse black hair made me think of sheep's wool. His physical strength was already impressive, but his power over the group was principally due to the fear his verbal boldness and bragging inspired. He was sure of victory before even beginning to fight, simply by virtue of his reputation.

At the end of June the Burgundians were at the walls of the town. We had to prepare for a siege. Herds were hastily brought within the walls. Every square was covered with barrels filled with salt meat, wine, flour, and oil.