Nowhere have I dreamt so much as in Russia. My notes from my time as cultural attaché are proof of it. I would wake up at night and write down the outline of a dream, I would climb into a car and although the ride would last only ten minutes, I would dream something. I dreamt during the siesta, in a boring meeting, at a movie, anywhere. Dreams appeared in bulk. The height of extravagance. Mephisto’s Waltz, née Bukhara Nocturne, emerged from those dreams. And on this trip, the same is happening. On the plane, coming from Prague I dreamt I ran into a classmate from the Faculty of Law, a dead man pretending to be alive, which I didn’t find the least bit amusing, and last night I had another dream that was interrupted when I went to the bathroom, and which I summarized as I went back to bed in four or five lines. When I woke the next morning I read what I had written and thought it was very funny. I don’t know why. It could have been, I think, if in the dream I’d been a mere witness to what happened and not a protagonist. I’ll try to describe it sparingly, removing the frills that have come to plague my work in recent years. I’m in Moscow, eating breakfast in the restaurant of the National. I recognize three or four famous international figures in the middle of a large group of writers. Suddenly I see the writer Catalina D’Erzell, a Mexican playwright, and I turn to greet her. I never met her when she was alive, I had perhaps seen a photo of her in a newspaper, but I don’t remember what she looks like at all. She had a modicum of fame in the forties and perhaps early fifties. I never saw her plays, nor have I read them. They were lachrymose and prim melodramas, of which the titles are proof: What Only a Man Can Suffer; The Sin of Women; Those Men! In the dream, I went to say hello and she told me that a conference on Slavic literature was beginning that day, that we, the only Mexicans—what an honor, what a tribute!—would open the first session, and she was a little nervous because she had not seen me in a few days. She would not have been able to translate alone into body language the Chekhov story we had chosen. Not even if they gave her an award, not even if they threatened to lock her up for life in a Siberian dungeon would she do it alone. Whom would she have as a partner? Who would know how to express all the registers of The Murder? She doubted that other than us anyone was competent enough. On the bus, Señora D’Erzell explained to me that she had for months prepared ways to interpret in extremely tense forms of body language the genius of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The Murder is one of the most difficult novellas to interpret. “There is a lot of philosophy, I can tell you, in this battle between two relatives who believe in God, one of them is convinced that Our Lord was born and died to teach men to live with dignity and happiness, while the other, who spends all his time in religious ceremonies, all the while stealing from his fellow parishioners using all kinds of tricks, believes that Christ is the equivalent of a punishment. That is my reading, full of philosophy as you can see. It’s a pity that you didn’t go to the university auditorium yesterday. I did the finale alone, they asked me, I couldn’t escape the commitment and, since you were not there, what was I to do. I expressed with my whole body the Christian revelation, the true epiphany, the stern brother who resorts to crime finds himself in a sinister prison, where he is stripped of everything, they beat him, insult him, and there, at last, he has begun to love God, to understand that He wishes us to love each other, to help each other, which also coincides with my philosophy. I don’t know what yours is, but whatever it is, I beg you, during the largo desolato at the end, which is so difficult, please hold me firmly, one long step, three tiny ones, one long and three short, do you understand?” I didn’t understand anything, not a word. What incredibly silly stunt were we about to pull in front of the public?…What a bunch of nonsense?…Suddenly we were on center stage. The music began to play, it was “Falling in Love Again,” Marlene Dietrich’s signature song. My compatriot, dressed entirely in black, with a corset that gave her the body of a dolphin in vertical jump, but a body nonetheless, rolled several times across the stage, at times with the slow ferociousness of a jaguar, others with the tenderness that the spectator always associates with the cooing of doves. I was almost hidden on one side of the stage, at times she approached me, bowed, extended her arm, pointed at me and then turned to the audience with a sweeping gesture that enveloped me and the audience. Suddenly, from the loudspeakers came a velvety but firm voice, serious, even severe one might think, that introduced us as the two greatest experts of Russian literature, especially Chekhov, not only in Mexico but throughout the Americas. The praise showered on the lady was excessive, a little extravagant, I would say, for example, they announced her as “the internationally-recognized supreme empress of Chekhov, heroic woman who has danced on Parnassus, but also splashed pitifully through the mud, a firefly and tarantula, a wholly dialectical being, from head to toe.” I then discovered that we were not in a university auditorium, but in a circus, and that the audience was not made up of academics or intellectuals but rather what one finds in circuses: families, children, noise, happiness, and among the throng of everyday people one could see the faces of the international dignitaries attending the Conference. A woman in a military uniform hugged my partner’s waist, took her by the arm to greet the public while at the same time demanding a warm applause, a cosmic applause to comfort the heart of the Mexican woman who had suffered so much and had stumbled so many times in life. She said it just like that. I, on the other hand, was nobody—a shadow, a zero to the left. Anyone who has suffered a spectacular automobile accident will be able to understand me: everything happens at once, everything is simultaneous, a bit like in The Aleph, one loses the ability to know for sure what came first and what next. The visions in the dream changed constantly, became interwoven with others, they transformed into a permanent metamorphosis. I will try to make a semblance of their order, a story in a more or less successive form, in spite of the endless fits and starts, the vocation for chaos privileged by dreams. A master of ceremonies announced in a divine voice the first act of the Conference: the body reading of Anton Chekhov’s amazing and enigmatic gem: The Murder, performed by a famous Russian actress (not only famous but the most famous, my compatriot told me in a whisper), whose name was not mentioned, which I found strange, interpreted by the equally eminent bodybuilder Catalina D’Erzell and her assistant, also Mexican. D’Erzell in the meantime ordered me to “take a deep breath, relax, believe in God above all things, nimble feet, cool head, everything in its place,” while two long rows of men on the right, and women on the left, climbed to the stage. “A chorus of basses and altos, baritones and mezzos, tenors and sopranos!” the speaker announced. “Voices of cannon and crinoline, as it should be!” my compatriot whispered in the voice of a little bird. A stately woman, dignified and beautiful, ascended to the rostrum and sat on a throne. Ray beams bathed us in light. The ceremony began. The actress began reading Chekhov’s tale in an absolutely wonderful, lilting, superhuman voice; minutes later, the chorus began to repeat her words melodiously. The prose became music; the actress stopped talking, she sang the text and the choir sang with her, with spirit and splendor. At times the noise was deafening, enough to drive anyone mad, except, apparently, the attendees of the Conference of Slavic Literatures, who were fascinated. Who knows where the other smaller orchestra of balalaikas came from, that surrounded us during the body interpretation and followed our every step, faithful to the end! My compatriot commanded: “It’s your turn, cannon,” so I went: she made me do jumps of every caliber, squat on the floor, lift one leg, then the other, fall dead and rise again, run with my partner around the stage, lift her, throw her it into the air above my head, then stop her fall mere inches from the floor, then force her to maintain an upright position with her head down and feet up. Our greatest triumph was a series of turns we did on stage at a hair-raising speed, but also with absolute precision because had I released her, she would have crashed into the audience, and perhaps she and some spectators would have gone on to a better world, but our ability was extraordinary and there was not even the slightest incident. There were moments of dancing on point and others in which we jumped gaily and closed like accordions as we fell on the floor, only to propel ourselves immediately into the air by way of springs. We achieved ecstasy, delirium, another sky whose existence we never suspected, like in African ritual dances, at least I did. I was Nijinsky for a few moments, I was Nureyev, I swear, and she, no less than Terpsichore. The end of Chekhov’s story was one of the most beautiful that one could ever imagine. The austere Christian, the repressor, has murdered his cousin, and is sentenced to life in prison in Siberia. There, amid terrible punishments, he rejects what he has been and finds true faith in God, a simple faith like that of his cousin whom he had so hated, and that gives him hope to truly live, to save someone from perdition, to redeem himself. Then the great climax: she could be heard moaning suddenly, as if she no could no longer continue, as if she were about to surrender, only to demand tremulously greater speed from me, more rhythm, more muscle. Suddenly everything stopped, the musicians disappeared with their balalaikas, silent and downcast they descended the stairs, and the choruses of basses and altos, baritones and mezzos, tenors and sopranos, light and absolute, and even the masterful actress whose name we never knew, who had read Chekhov’s story. Without saying a word we fell like whipped dogs. We passed around towels soaked in vinegar for our faces; fans began to approach us. The crowd, crazed with enthusiasm, surrounded D’Erzell, but nobody noticed me. I managed to sneak off the stage and wander through a mysterious maze of corridors and stairways, a scene similar to Piranesi’s prisons, which slowly became a rickety passageway, and then an anodyne, ugly, gray street. An instant later, I was walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Some young people stopped next to me, looked at me, and one of them shouted rudely: “Wash your face, you clown son-of-a-bitch, or I’ll wash it with bleach.” A girl with beautiful eyes, the rest of her face covered by the collar of her coat, put a mirror in front of my face, and I almost threw up. The face I saw, rotten, decomposed, was telling me that I only had a few hours to live. What I can’t understand is why, then, I woke up so happy and wrote so happily during the early morning hours the first draft of the dream. Why then hours later, wide-awake, did I think that I had a funny dream, which now, as I transcribe it, causes me unbearable anguish?