Free A Dream of Horses & Other Stories by Aashish Kaul

spire. The lady in front of me hurriedly clicked pictures before it or whatever was left of it vanished into the darkness.
    The ferry took a turn about the cathedral, circumscribing Ile de la Cité. Wasn’t that Hugo peeping from behind a gargoyle? Because of Notre Dame, of course. Hugo, and not Proust. Proust could never have been up there. His image was of a ghost lying in bed, half-covered by a blanket, writing in the light of a lamp, and hemmed in by those cork-lined walls, silently sinking to death in the web of his own memories or what he was trying to make of them. It was too prodigious an impression to overcome: to interrupt his undertaking seemed a disservice to literature I could ill afford. I settled with Hugo.
    The ferry has just crossed Pont Neuf on its way back when she speaks again. This time she probes the past: Where is she? I don’t know, so I shake my head.
    She is looking at me, but her gaze is soft and there is just a flicker of irony in it. Her lips are now nearly touching my ear. She’s made a suggestion. A place where we can go dancing. In fact there are two. A close friend, she confides, plays at a nightclub in Montmartre – Odéon it’s called – and sometimes at a bohemian jazz bar, too, in St-Germain-des-Prés. Tomorrow, at eight.
    The Tower was sparkling with a colourful display of lights. My dream was nearing its end; come to think of it, it couldn’t go much longer. Soon, I reasoned to myself, the ferry will hit the dock, passengers will disembark one after the other, and so will she. No, I thought, not yet.
    Tomorrow, certainly. But what now? I’d like you to stay a bit longer. I am almost ashamed of myself. Little control over my tongue off which words bounce forth impetuously. She says she has to meet somebody. A friend who once bailed her out of a fix. She doesn’t need to say more. But she does: You’d agree that friendships formed in adventure, tragedy, or misdeed are closer to heart than those cemented by affection or respect. Darkness is more beautiful than the light, is it not? So full of intrigue and infidelities. Besides, he leaves for Egypt tomorrow and proposesnever to return.
    Ah, the poet she is turning out to be! What can I say to hold her back? Already I see them drinking and eating, discussing their past that somehow binds them intimately. I see her in his arms, their bodies close as they dance to soft music. What is this? Jealousy? Perhaps she has seen it too, for she speaks from under the shade of empathy: We can meet early tomorrow if you aren’t busy. We can roam around and then later we can go to the club.
    Although I plan to visit the library at Sorbonne the next day, I keep this to myself. She is fast learning the game, offering me a continuum. I just have to pretend that her evening away is a part of the dream, and in no time she will be with me once more. We are the last to disembark, walking close to one another. On climbing the stairs that join the pier to Pont d’léna, standing beneath the shining Tower, the shaft of light at its crown rotating above the darkened city like the outstretched limb of a compass, she suggests we meet at the Boulevard Saint-Michel, near the entrance of the Luxembourg.
    That is close to where I stay, I reply for the sake of it.
    So much the better. You won’t be late then. See you at noon!
    O you poor bastard, full of expectancy and loneliness, what an engaging phantom you had crafted to lighten your burden.
    Once she had left, I started walking towards the train station. Not far from the station I saw an Italian bistro and thought of having something to eat. I found a table next to a window from where you could watch the trains cross the Seine every once in a while. There, waiting for my order, I reconstructed, little by little, the day that had not been uneventful.
    V
    Of the time I speak, the city was not as one sees it today. Like any other old city, it was a metropolis of reserve and character. Modern capital had not yet