I dreamed a dream you dreamed about me…..
The horse’s breath steamed against the fence as she stood and watched the children come down through the wood.
They had brought her icy sweet carrots, apples and juicy leaves of curly kale that they fed her while the late winter sun cast long shadows of trees and early afternoon across the field as the white coating of frost evaporated.
She chewed the food with pleasure, snorting and shaking her mane with the delight of texture and liquid combining on her tongue and between her teeth.
When she had finished eating, the children spread the broad deep brown blanket on the grass for her. She lay with her head on the girl’s knees and body stretched out on the blanket. The boy sat beside her, stroking her soft nose as he spoke while the girl fed her bits of apple that she took from the basket she had placed on the blanket.
The boy began the story.
“In a town in the far Northeast of Siberia near the city of Provideniya there was a woman whose name was Christina. She lived with her husband in a good sized house on the edge of the town and helped out in the bakery that was owned and run by her brother, making bread, cakes, pies and biscuits. In her youth she had been a stunningly beautiful girl and though many young men in the town and surrounding countryside had courted her she had married an older man called Yuri Ashkanov. This had not been her wish, but her mother and brothers, her father having been killed in a logging accident when she was only a baby, had persuaded her, with some insistence, that she should marry him.
“Love. What has love got to do with anything. He has money and he will look after you”
Which indeed he had. Not only her but the whole family had benefited from his wealth and status as manager of the sawmill, a position where he earned enough money that Christina did not really have to work.
“I don’t know why you work in that place. He hardly pays you anything. I tell you I don’t approve of my wife getting her hands covered in flour for another man even if he is your brother. You should be at home looking after the house. You’re my wife not your brother’s skivvy”
Christina smiled when he spoke like this and continued to work at the bakery as a way of relieving the tedium of life in a town where winter lasted for months and her husband was often gone, on business, sometimes for days at a time.
Now compared to most people living in that region her husband was a wealthy man who was generous with his money, often inviting friends, relatives and in-laws to the house for lavish meals, which Christina prepared and cooked. But he had one weakness, that over the years of their marriage had destroyed what little love and affection she might have felt for him.
He liked to drink. Mostly vodka and usually on his own”.
The horse turned her head and gently licked the girl’s hand as she fed her another piece of apple.
“To begin with Christina had assumed that like many men she knew it was a pleasure he only indulged at festivities, celebrations and occasionally at weekends. She soon learnt that this was not how it was with him. Unlike her brothers and cousins he drank every day and as the years passed he drank more and more. A smaller and weaker man would not have survived the quantities of alcohol he poured into his body. But Yuri was over six feet tall, built like one of the huge pine trees that the saw mill turned into floorboards and beams. Before becoming manager he had worked out in the forest logging and moving trees. He spent as little time in the office as possible, delegating that work to the assistant manager.
In spite of his consumption of alcohol he was still strong, perhaps he had put on a few kilos round his belly. He would go out into the forest with the men to supervise the felling and stripping of trees, sometimes wielding a saw or an axe himself. Though the spirit of the vodka did not seem to have had an effect on his health and body it worked away beneath the surface and Christina was the victim of the demon that the alcohol grew.
He never hit her. It was the verbal abuse he subjected her to that ate away at her soul. Contempt, insults, sarcasm, disgust and obscenities were spat out at her as he drank his way through a bottle or two of vodka, usually staying sober enough to climb the stairs and fall into the large double bed that they still shared. In the morning he would never apologise or even refer to the night before. Conversation at breakfast was non-existent and Christina would sit and watch him as he ate slices of bread with fried eggs, pickled cabbage and ham and wonder how her life had become so inescapable.
Though they still shared a bed and a house together they had long since ended any kind of relationship based on need or physical passion. There were infrequent occasions when he would turn over in the bed and make love to her quickly and brutally. She was sure that his business trips away included visits to the brothel in Providenya or that he was having an affair with another woman. But she never spoke of her husband’s abuse to anyone. Not to her mother or her brothers. She knew that her few female acquaintances were not likely to offer her support or sympathy and her only good friend had moved away from the town soon after her marriage. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to speak of it to anyone. It was as if she blamed herself for his drinking, his disgust and contempt for her. That what happened between him and her in the privacy of their home was some sort of nightmare. So she tried to carry on with the rest of her life as if Yuri and she were happily married and nothing was wrong.”
The boy paused for a moment in his story telling to chew a piece of apple that his sister had passed him. While he ate she continued with the story.
“Some days she would return to the empty house on the edge of the town and sit looking out the window at the endless vista of trees covered with snow stretching away to the horizon. She would take the mirror from the wall, put it on her lap and gaze at herself, seeing the lines in her face, the bags under her eyes and the grey in her hair. This once beautiful woman was old before her time.
She would cry, watching the tears splash off her reflection in the glass of the mirror.
Then she began to dream.
Like all of us she had always dreamt, but this was different. Every night, as she slept next to Yuri with her back turned to him, with the sound of his breathing echoing round the icy air of the bedroom, she would fall asleep and have the same dream with a reality more intense than her waking daily life.
She is walking along the beach to the north of the village on the edge of the Bering Sea. It’s a beach she remembers from her childhood, though she is no longer a child, she is a grown woman, strong and alive in the cold bright air of a winter morning. The beach is made of grey, black, brown shingle and stones. The water stretches out in front of her, frozen solid by the intensity of the cold. Behind her at the edge of the beach is a steep slope with trees at the top, a mix of pine and birch.
She stands looking out at the translucent white of the frozen ocean, the shimmering blue of the cloudless sky and feels that she is being watched. She turns towards the forest and there, at the top of the slope, is a huge black bear, upright on his hind legs. She feels fear mixed with curiosity for she knows that in this part of Russia bears have not been seen for decades. Most people assume they no longer inhabit the forests, which for tens of thousands of years had been their home.
For a moment she looks at the bear, then she turns, hearing the shingle crunch beneath her feet. She begins to walk out onto the ice, knowing that the bear is coming down towards her.
She can feel the ice through the soles of her feet and, looking down realises that her beautiful, perfect body is naked apart from a waist length red leather waistcoat embroidered with stars, planets, moons and intricate patterns of sequins glinting in the light of the sun that hangs at the far edge of the horizon towards which she is walking at some speed.
She begins to run, knowing that the bear is also on the ice. Her feet slip as she moves faster, hearing the slap and thud of the bear’s paws behind her, gaining on her, closing the gap.
Then she is at the edge of the ice. The sea in front of her in whose freezing embrace she could not possibly survive. She turns and the bear is only a few feet from her. It rears up. She has nowhere to go and she hears it roaring as it opens its mouth and she knows it will tear her apart……..she is terrified and she wakes, shivering. The quilt and blankets pulled off her and onto Yuri’s huge sleeping body”.
The girl took a hairbrush from her bag and began to groom the horse’s lustrous brown mane with long slow strokes while her brother continues the story.
“Every night for weeks this dream. Without variation. Each time she goes to sleep, knowing that the same sequence of events will happen. Feel the ice, taste the salt wind off the sea, watch the sinking sun orange on the horizon, but with no idea of how the dream will continue. Each time a completely fresh experience but with every detail the same. An unavoidable unfolding of events. Until at last she can stand it no longer. She has to talk to somebody…..anybody, though she knows there is no point in telling Yuri.
On the day she decides she must share her dream he is away in Moscow attending an important meeting of sawmill and timber yard directors from all over the country. At least that is what he tells her and she has no choice but to believe him.
She tells her brother Vadim in whose bakery she works. Prompted by his enquiry about her health that morning as she is finishing work. “You look tired Christina. Sometimes I see fear in your eyes. Is something the matter? Is there anything I can do to help?” Though they work side by side in the bakery, he rarely talks to her, in fact he rarely talks to anyone. But behind this silent and seemingly unfriendly exterior is a sensitive and intelligent soul who loves and cares for his sister. He had said little when Yuri came to talk to him and his brothers about marrying her, but had been the only one in the family who had expressed any doubts about the match. As the youngest of the three brothers no-one had paid any attention to his “Maybe she should marry someone her own age, somebody she cares about”.
He had never married himself, since his childhood sweetheart Natalya had died in the typhoid epidemic when they were both in their late teens. If she had lived they would by now be happily married and have children. His heart had been broken by her death. He himself had only survived the fever due to the care and knowledge of Gala Svetlana the herbalist and wise woman who lived some distance out of town.
Christina had broken down in tears and told him the whole story about her and Yuri’s problems and the matter of the repeating dream. He waited until she had finished telling him everything and then held her close to him, gently stroking her hair. He had made them some hot sweet tea and sat with her in the room behind the small shop where she worked selling the bread, pies, biscuits and cakes. It was the only bakery in town and indeed in the surrounding region, though many people baked their own bread, the shop was always busy with customers from early morning through to lunchtime. It had a reputation as an excellent and reliable bakery. Christina would work behind the counter while Vadim made deliveries or prepared for the next days baking.
The shop was now closed until the following morning and Vadim would not have to start preparations for a good few hours yet. They sat for a while in silence while he rolled and smoked a cigarette and she sipped the hot sweet tea. Then he spoke. “There is only one person I know who can help you. Gala Svetlana. You must go and see her tomorrow morning. I will find someone else to work in the shop. She is a wise and righteous woman. I am sure she can heal you my sister. Do you know where she lives?”
Christina had told her brother that she knew how to get to Gala’s house. She had almost burst into tears again as she thanked him for his advice and his friendship. He had locked the bakery and walked her home, as light flakes of snow fell and settled on the streets of the town. He had politely refused to come into the house. He had to get back before Arthur the assistant baker arrived and they began the ritual of preparing for the night’s baking. He gave her a long hug and said, “You must go and see her Christina. What is happening to you is very bad. She will know what to do”. She had held his face in her hands and kissed him long on each cheek. “Thank you Vadim. Thank you my lovely brother”. He had started to walk away and then had turned towards her and said “And if he ever strikes you you must tell me immediately, do you understand?” His voice strong and angry. She nodded silently as he had walked away and she stood at her open door watching him disappear into the growing snowstorm.
That night, asleep on her own in the big bed, she had the same dream.”
The horse stood up and shook herself. The late morning sun felt warm on her side. She galloped round the field before returning to lie on the blanket with her head resting in the boys lap. The girl continued with the story.
“Next morning she had risen at her usual early hour, added some coal and logs to the fire in the kitchen that she had banked up the night before. Looking out the window she saw that the snow was deep around the house after a fresh fall during the night. She dressed in her warmest clothes with a heavy ankle length coat, a thick green woollen scarf and a hat with earflaps tied under her chin. She pulled on a pair of long fur-lined boots and set off through the garden and out the back gate. Though the snow in the lane behind the house was deep it was possible to walk through it.
Christina loved the snow when it was crisp and dry and cold like this.
She followed the lane until it joined a small road, turned right and began the journey that would lead her to the healer’s house. A journey that in these conditions could take a few hours.
Gala Svetlana’s house was on the road running south from the town and seemingly going nowhere. After many miles it eventually joined a larger road that swung east and ended at Providenya. She knew this little road well as it went past fields that in late autumn were full of large mushrooms. When she was a child she and her friends had gathered them and taken them home to their mothers to fry and serve with potatoes, fish and salad. One of these fields lay next to the house where the healer lived and she would come out to watch them picking mushrooms. She had never said much to them but sometimes she crossed the field and gave the children delicious mint and fennel flavoured sweets. She had a reputation in the region as a healer and herbalist of considerable power and some even called her a shaman.
It took Christina nearly three hours to reach Gala Svetlana’s house. There was an empty blue sky and blazing sun above her as she walked along the road now almost obscured by deep snow and only visible because of the steep banks that rose from it, with fields on one side and thick forest of birch, larch and spruce on the other. She saw a single white hare running across a field in the distance. Her mind emptied by the repetition and exertion of walking and the cold clear day around her. Icicles hanging off the branches of the trees that grew close to the edge of the road.
Gala was sitting outside the front of her cottage in a large wooden chair. Her eyes closed and her face bathed in sunshine. A large wolf like dog slept on a blanket at her feet. Around her were bundles of herbs hanging off wooden poles forming a bower across the front of the house that Christina felt, because of it’s undoubted age and appearance, that it was about to return to the earth from which its stone construction had originally come, but would still be there for decades or even centuries to come.
A long low single storey house with small windows, stone slabs for tiles and an open door through which she could glimpse a dark room and a blazing fire.
The dog opened its eyes and looked straight into Christina’s. Gala rested her hand gently on it’s head and spoke quietly to it, then she stood and turned towards Christina.
“Welcome to my house. I was expecting you”
She smiled at her and Christina was immediately struck by how tall, strong and beautiful Gala Svetlana was. Not at all the old crone she had expected. In fact she seemed younger than Christina herself. Her face was suntanned with clear blue eyes, full red lips, her long dark hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail with a bright red and yellow scarf. She was wearing a pair of dark green trousers and a beautifully embroidered white blouse covered in intricate brightly coloured patterns of birds, trees and flowers. A single broad silver chain hung round her neck and on the end of it was a shining shape or emblem made of some kind of metal that Christina did not immediately recognise. Her feet were bare but she walked comfortably and easily across the snow towards her.
She came up close to Christina and took her by the hand. She smelt of sage, mint and something indefinable, a scent of such sweetness it was almost a melody.
“It is good that you are here. Come into my house and we will talk together. Come”
So together they walked the short distance to the doorway and entered the house. The dog, its silver fur glistening in the sunlight, slowly got to its feet, shook itself a couple of times and followed them into the house.
The door closed behind it.”
The Boy stopped talking. He stood up and stretched. The Horse also stood, then the boy turned to the Girl who had started to fold the blanket and gather the remains of their food into the basket.
“Will we be back tomorrow?” he asked her
“Oh yes I’m sure we will. So we can tell the rest of the story then. Though actually it still hasn’t got a proper ending. Sort of ongoing”
She stroked the horse’s nose and gave it the last piece of apple. The boy came over and gently patted it on its shoulders.
“And maybe we can go for a ride. See you tomorrow then”
The Horse whinnied loudly, shook it’s head and mane from side to side, then galloped across and up the field to stand under the large beech tree that grew in the far south corner and watched them leave.
They opened the gate, walked through, closed it behind them and then, before they set off down the track towards the river, both raised an arm towards the horse and stood facing her, totally still for a few moments.
The Horse raised herself onto her back legs, strong, powerful and certain to cut the air with her front legs before returning to stand beneath the beech tree.
The Boy & the Girl walked down the track as night began to fall.
Cut to high shot through branches of beech tree to follow boy and girl down the path and out of sight as light fades then pan round and down to horse lying beneath tree.
Fade to blue.