The commonest dream of my early
childhood was something like
this: It seemed that I was very
small and that I lay curled up
in a sort of nest of twigs and
boughs. Sometimes I was lying
on my back. In this position
it seemed that I spent many hours,
watching the play of sunlight
on the foliage and the stirring
of the leaves by the wind. Often
the nest itself moved back and
forth when the wind was strong.
But always, while so lying
in the nest, I was mastered as
of tremendous space beneath me.
I never saw it, I never peered
over the edge of the nest to
see; but I KNEW and feared that
space that lurked just beneath
me and that ever threatened me
like a maw of some all-devouring
monster.
This dream, in which I was
quiescent and which was more
like a condition than an experience
of action, I dreamed very often
in my early childhood. But suddenly,
there would rush into the very
midst of it strange forms and
ferocious happenings, the thunder
and crashing of storm, or unfamiliar
landscapes such as in my wake-a-day
life I had never seen. The result
was confusion and nightmare.
I could comprehend nothing of
it. There was no logic of sequence.
You see, I did not dream consecutively.
One moment I was a wee babe of
the Younger World lying in my
tree nest; the next moment I
was a grown man of the Younger
World locked in combat with the
hideous Red-Eye; and the next
moment I was creeping carefully
down to the water-hole in the
heat of the day. Events, years
apart in their occurrence in
the Younger World, occurred with
me within the space of several
minutes, or seconds.
It was all a jumble, but this
jumble I shall not inflict upon
you. It was not until I was a
young man and had dreamed many
thousand times, that everything
straightened out and became clear
and plain. Then it was that I
got the clew of time, and was
able to piece together events
and actions in their proper order.
Thus was I able to reconstruct
the vanished Younger World as
it was at the time I lived in
it--or at the time my other-self
lived in it. The distinction
does not matter; for I, too,
the modern man, have gone back
and lived that early life in
the company of my other-self.
For your convenience, since
this is to be no sociological
screed, I shall frame together
the different events into a comprehensive
story. For there is a certain
thread of continuity and happening
that runs through all the dreams.
There is my friendship with Lop-Ear,
for instance. Also, there is
the enmity of Red-Eye, and the
love of the Swift One. Taking
it all in all, a fairly coherent
and interesting story I am sure
you will agree.
I do not remember much of my
mother. Possibly the earliest
recollection I have of her--and
certainly the sharpest--is the
following: It seemed I was lying
on the ground. I was somewhat
older than during the nest days,
but still helpless. I rolled
about in the dry leaves, playing
with them and making crooning,
rasping noises in my throat.
The sun shone warmly and I was
happy, and comfortable. I was
in a little open space. Around
me, on all sides, were bushes
and fern-like growths, and overhead
and all about were the trunks
and branches of forest trees.
Suddenly I heard a sound. I
sat upright and listened. I made
no movement. The little noises
died down in my throat, and I
sat as one petrified. The sound
drew closer. It was like the
grunt of a pig. Then I began
to hear the sounds caused by
the moving of a body through
the brush. Next I saw the ferns
agitated by the passage of the
body. Then the ferns parted,
and I saw gleaming eyes, a long
snout, and white tusks.
It was a wild boar. He peered
at me curiously. He grunted once
or twice and shifted his weight
from one foreleg to the other,
at the same time moving his head
from side to side and swaying
the ferns. Still I sat as one
petrified, my eyes unblinking
as I stared at him, fear eating
at my heart.
It seemed that this movelessness
and silence on my part was what
was expected of me. I was not
to cry out in the face of fear.
It was a dictate of instinct.
And so I sat there and waited
for I knew not what. The boar
thrust the ferns aside and stepped
into the open. The curiosity
went out of his eyes, and they
gleamed cruelly. He tossed his
head at me threateningly and
advanced a step. This he did
again, and yet again.
Then I screamed...or shrieked--I
cannot describe it, but it was
a shrill and terrible cry. And
it seems that it, too, at this
stage of the proceedings, was
the thing expected of me. From
not far away came an answering
cry. My sounds seemed momentarily
to disconcert the boar, and while
he halted and shifted his weight
with indecision, an apparition
burst upon us.
She was like a large orangutan,
my mother, or like a chimpanzee,
and yet, in sharp and definite
ways, quite different. She was
heavier of build than they, and
had less hair. Her arms were
not so long, and her legs were
stouter. She wore no clothes--only
her natural hair. And I can tell
you she was a fury when she was
excited.
And like a
fury she dashed upon the scene.
She was gritting
her teeth, making frightful grimaces,
snarling, uttering sharp and
continuous cries that sounded
like "kh-ah! kh-ah!" So sudden
and formidable was her appearance
that the boar involuntarily bunched
himself together on the defensive
and bristled as she swerved toward
him. Then she swerved toward
me. She had quite taken the breath
out of him. I knew just what
to do in that moment of time
she had gained. I leaped to meet
her, catching her about the waist
and holding on hand and foot--yes,
by my feet; I could hold on by
them as readily as by my hands.
I could feel in my tense grip
the pull of the hair as her skin
and her muscles moved beneath
with her efforts.
As I say, I leaped to meet
her, and on the instant she leaped
straight up into the air, catching
an overhanging branch with her
hands. The next instant, with
clashing tusks, the boar drove
past underneath. He had recovered
from his surprise and sprung
forward, emitting a squeal that
was almost a trumpeting. At any
rate it was a call, for it was
followed by the rushing of bodies
through the ferns and brush from
all directions.
From every side wild hogs dashed
into the open space--a score
of them. But my mother swung
over the top of a thick limb,
a dozen feet from the ground,
and, still holding on to her,
we perched there in safety. She
was very excited. She chattered
and screamed, and scolded down
at the bristling, tooth-gnashing
circle that had gathered beneath.
I, too, trembling, peered down
at the angry beasts and did my
best to imitate my mother's cries.
From the distance came similar
cries, only pitched deeper, into
a sort of roaring bass. These
grew momentarily louder, and
soon I saw him approaching, my
father--at least, by all the
evidence of the times, I am driven
to conclude that he was my father.
He was not an extremely prepossessing
father, as fathers go. He seemed
half man, and half ape, and yet
not ape, and not yet man. I fail
to describe him. There is nothing
like him to-day on the earth,
under the earth, nor in the earth.
He was a large man in his day,
and he must have weighed all
of a hundred and thirty pounds.
His face was broad and flat,
and the eyebrows over-hung the
eyes. The eyes themselves were
small, deep-set, and close together.
He had practically no nose at
all. It was squat and broad,
apparently with-out any bridge,
while the nostrils were like
two holes in the face, opening
outward instead of down.
The forehead slanted back from
the eyes, and the hair began
right at the eyes and ran up
over the head. The head itself
was preposterously small and
was supported on an equally preposterous,
thick, short neck.
There was an elemental economy
about his body--as was there
about all our bodies. The chest
was deep, it is true, cavernously
deep; but there were no full-swelling
muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders,
no clean-limbed straightness,
no generous symmetry of outline.
It represented strength, that
body of my father's, strength
without beauty; ferocious, primordial
strength, made to clutch and
gripe and rend and destroy.
His hips were thin; and the
legs, lean and hairy, were crooked
and stringy-muscled. In fact,
my father's legs were more like
arms. They were twisted and gnarly,
and with scarcely the semblance
of the full meaty calf such as
graces your leg and mine. I remember
he could not walk on the flat
of his foot. This was because
it was a prehensile foot, more
like a hand than a foot. The
great toe, instead of being in
line with the other toes, opposed
them, like a thumb, and its opposition
to the other toes was what enabled
him to get a grip with his foot.
This was why he could not walk
on the flat of his foot.
But his appearance was no more
unusual than the manner of his
coming, there to my mother and
me as we perched above the angry
wild pigs. He came through the
trees, leaping from limb to limb
and from tree to tree; and he
came swiftly. I can see him now,
in my wake-a-day life, as I write
this, swinging along through
the trees, a four-handed, hairy
creature, howling with rage,
pausing now and again to beat
his chest with his clenched fist,
leaping ten-and-fifteen-foot
gaps, catching a branch with
one hand and swinging on across
another gap to catch with his
other hand and go on, never hesitating,
never at a loss as to how to
proceed on his arboreal way.
And as I watched him I felt
in my own being, in my very muscles
themselves, the surge and thrill
of desire to go leaping from
bough to bough; and I felt also
the guarantee of the latent power
in that being and in those muscles
of mine. And why not? Little
boys watch their fathers swing
axes and fell trees, and feel
in themselves that some day they,
too, will swing axes and fell
trees. And so with me. The life
that was in me was constituted
to do what my father did, and
it whispered to me secretly and
ambitiously of aerial paths and
forest flights.
At last my father joined us.
He was extremely angry. I remember
the out-thrust of his protruding
underlip as he glared down at
the wild pigs. He snarled something
like a dog, and I remember that
his eye-teeth were large, like
fangs, and that they impressed
me tremendously.
His conduct served only the
more to infuriate the pigs. He
broke off twigs and small branches
and flung them down upon our
enemies. He even hung by one
hand, tantalizingly just beyond
reach, and mocked them as they
gnashed their tusks with impotent
rage. Not content with this,
he broke off a stout branch,
and, holding on with one hand
and foot, jabbed the infuriated
beasts in the sides and whacked
them across their noses. Needless
to state, my mother and I enjoyed
the sport.
But one tires of all good things,
and in the end, my father, chuckling
maliciously the while, led the
way across the trees. Now it
was that my ambitions ebbed away,
and I became timid, holding tightly
to my mother as she climbed and
swung through space. I remember
when the branch broke with her
weight. She had made a wide leap,
and with the snap of the wood
I was overwhelmed with the sickening
consciousness of falling through
space, the pair of us. The forest
and the sunshine on the rustling
leaves vanished from my eyes.
I had a fading glimpse of my
father abruptly arresting his
progress to look, and then all
was blackness.
The next moment I was awake,
in my sheeted bed, sweating,
trembling, nauseated. The window
was up, and a cool air was blowing
through the room. The night-lamp
was burning calmly. And because
of this I take it that the wild
pigs did not get us, that we
never fetched bottom; else I
should not be here now, a thousand
centuries after, to remember
the event.
And now put yourself in my
place for a moment. Walk with
me a bit in my tender childhood,
bed with me a night and imagine
yourself dreaming such incomprehensible
horrors. Remember I was an inexperienced
child. I had never seen a wild
boar in my life. For that matter
I had never seen a domesticated
pig. The nearest approach to
one that I had seen was breakfast
bacon sizzling in its fat. And
yet here, real as life, wild
boars dashed through my dreams,
and I, with fantastic parents,
swung through the lofty tree-spaces.
Do you wonder that I was frightened
and oppressed by my nightmare-ridden
nights? I was accursed. And,
worst of all, I was afraid to
tell. I do not know why, except
that I had a feeling of guilt,
though I knew no better of what
I was guilty. So it was, through
long years, that I suffered in
silence, until I came to man's
estate and learned the why and
wherefore of my dreams.
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