The Dream Maker Read Free Page A

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.
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    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