Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - Brushstrokes

 

    It was an extremely busy and tiring day with half a dozen meetings back to back. I took a very light meal and retired to crash out for the night. I requested the inmates of the house not to disturb me if there was a call from anyone.

    I fell asleep within minutes. It was one of those ideal periods of sleep that would block even pleasant dreams just in case they tickled my fancy or imagination and interrupted the repose induced by a deep slumber. I heard the mobile tinkle on my right. I declined the call. I decided not to check who it was from. I went back to sleep.

    I don’t how much time had elapsed but the phone tinkled again. Declining the call or the notification or the message, I picked up the device and switched it off. I had deported the spectra of cyberia and digitalia for the night. I closed my eyes and snuggled up into the cosy bosom of Morpheus, the patron god of restorative sleep and dreams.

    I was wrapped up in such a deep slumber no signal or sound would have been able to penetrate its depth. I was awakened by a chant that resembled an aria from an opera. A female vocalist was singing a cadenza in a mellifluous voice with a reprise of certain phrases in an undertone.  The chant and its melody was so magical they cast a spell on me. I got up from the bed to check where the voice was coming from. There was no one in the house to confirm the voice or its source. It was well past midnight. I sleepwalked back to my bedroom. By the time I fell asleep, the chant had softened to the diminuendo of a lullaby.

    Her lilting voice woke me up again. I opened my eyes in wonderment. There stood before me a dishabille vision so ethereal I could have sworn it was pure hallucination.

“This is for real,” she said. “Do you remember a poem about Susanna and The Elders by Wallace Stevens which Luiza shared with you in the good old days?”

    I was gobsmacked. How did she know that I had studied the poem with the help of Luiza and also earned good credits for the dissertation I had submitted for the rich intertextuality of the poem with other genres like painting, music, iconography, and theology?

    “Who are you? How did you enter the house, not least my bedroom?” I asked her, my eyes still clouded in drowsiness.

    “I am Susanna from hundreds of paintings in the Louvre and the Uffizi. The two paintings you repeatedly visited and gazed at in adoration were by Gentileschi and Blanes. While you studied the paintings Luiza, your ad hoc or pro tem guide, studied you.”

    “Your admittance to the house remains a mystery. Have you caused the staff of the house to vanish with a puff of your breath or something? Nobody is responding.” She stared at me quizzically for a space, then smiled in amusement.

    “I don’t enter or exit like ordinary mortals. I appear and disappear. I materialize and dissolve like frankincense. I know you are a bachelor. My presence in the small hours in the bedroom of a tall fair and handsome man can compromise us. I appreciate your uncharacteristic male gaze. It has not traveled below my chin to map my neck, bust, buttocks, and lower down to the keyboard of my toes. Most members of your gender undress a shapely, sexy woman with their eyes. Go back to sleep, cuddling your pillow to your bosom.”

    She padded round the bedroom slowly and noiselessly like a moth in dim light. I lay in bed semi-paralysed as if my limbs had been nailed to the frame. 

    “Time to depart, baby. The cockcrow time is drawing nigh”. She stood at the edge of the balcony and, head first, jumped.

    I let off a loud scream that exploded in my ears. Three staffers from housekeeping were leaning on my bed to shake me awake. They told me I had been talking in my sleep from time to time in the small hours. It must have a bad dream, sahib.

    “No.” I heard myself muttering to no one in particular. “It was a good dream.”

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