"I Die, but the Memory Lives on" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mankell Henning)
The Mango Plant 1
One night in June in 2003 I dreamed about dead people in a coniferous forest. Everything in the dream is very clear. The smell of moss, steam rising after rain. But it isn't summer. Fungi are growing around the roots of the trees. The dream landscape is autumnal. September, possibly October.
Unseen birds take off from damp branches.
My dream is about dead people in a coniferous forest. The faces of the dead people are let into the tree trunks. It is as if I were walking through a gallery of unfinished wood sculptures. Or I am in a studio hastily abandoned by the artist.
The faces are contorted, but no screams come from their half-open mouths, only silence.
They are black faces, African faces, yet the forest is in Sweden.
The dream is unexpected. There again, are not all dreams unexpected? No dreams can be planned nor do they turn up to order. The messages of the night can never be prepared for, nor can they be averted when they do come. These messages often disappear without trace, without their meaning being interpreted.
Dreams are like skilful jesters: whimsical, surprising, never quite possible to keep tabs on.
The dream fills me with uncertainty. But one thing is unambiguous, on one point there is no uncertainty.
The black people whose faces can be made out among the tree trunks have died of Aids. The skin is tightly stretched over the bones of their faces. The dead people are thin, fading away, in great pain. Nowhere is there a trace of calm or resignation.