Roy wondered why he had dreams and what they meant. Sometimes entire stories took place in his dreams and other times only parts of stories or appearances by people he knew. He was in some of them, usually in places he didn’t recognize and in situations he could not completely comprehend. Occasionally dead people appeared, members of his family or their friends. Nothing frightening had happened in his dreams, at least not so far.
The day after he had a confusing dream in which Roy himself, at the age he was now—ten and a half—was lost in an unfamiliar city being followed by a strange man, he asked his grandfather, who lived with him and his mother, what he could do to better understand them.
“They’re like movies, Roy. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes bad or mysterious, like the one you had last night. There are lots of books by people who insist they can interpret them, mostly based on events that may be occurring in peoples’ lives, or occurred in their past.”
“Do you have dreams, Pops?”
“Of course, we all do.”
“How can I find out who the strange man was who was following me?”
“What did he look like?”
“He was wearing a suit and tie and a hat like my dad sometimes wears.”
“A fedora.”
“Yeah. He wasn’t very tall, about average. I couldn’t see his face.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Nobody said anything. I think I heard sounds coming from the streets, cars and streetcars going by.”
“Were you afraid of this stranger?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t come close to me.”
“You’re certain he was following you? Maybe he was just walking in the same direction as you were.”
“I’m sure. In the dream I was sure. But what did it mean?”
Roy’s grandfather had been reading a book which lay open on his lap.
“Take this book I’m reading about a man named Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian, scientist and philosopher. He had a dream that Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him to write a book called The Heavenly Doctrine. After that, Swedenborg believed he could visit both heaven and hell and consort with angels and demons. Based on this and other dreams he created a new religion he called Swedenborgianism. He did this two hundred years ago and even today many people believe in his so-called revelations.”
“Do you?”
“No, they’re just stories. I’m curious about him and other men and women who feel the need to tell people how they should behave and live their lives. It’s a type of mania, individuals who get carried away by their delusions. And sometimes it’s a collective mania, such as the Sons of the Prophets written about in the Kabbalah, a mystical text of the Jews. There are always people who are looking for answers. Who created the universe? What will happen to them after they die? When men like Swedenborg or Buddha or Muhammad come along and declare that they have the answers, they acquire followers desperate for a belief system.”
“Jesus, too?”
“Yes, but I don’t think he was so comfortable with it. Believing that he was the son of God, though, once he began proselytizing he couldn’t quit.”
“Were these prophets all good guys?”
Pops laughed. “Swedenborg seems to have been. I suppose more than a few of these self-proclaimed prophets misbehaved at one time or another. Probably more than a few.”
“How did they misbehave?”
“In the usual ways. Coveted and had their way with other men’s wives, pocketed money intended by donors for the church. Listen, Roy, why don’t you write down your dreams? What of them you can remember, anyway. There may be a pattern that we can discern and enable us to figure out what caused them.”
“Do you dream every night?”
“Not every night, no. I did have a dream last night that I remember.”
“What was it?”
“A pretty girl with peach-colored hair asked me if I wanted to take a lick of her ice cream cone.”
“Did you?”
“That part I don’t recall.”
“You like chocolate the best, like me. I’ll bet if it was chocolate, you did.”
