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Chapter 7 - Brighter than Gold.With the breakfast behind us, I asked Anton what she thought that my dream might signify. "What is completeness?" I asked. "Are we becoming more complete, more secure, and more satisfied? Are we becoming emptier of what is not?" "I'm not an interpreter of dreams," Anton replied gently and then smiled as if she was searching for a better answer. Suddenly her face became alive with a grin. "I have felt on occasions exactly what you appear to have felt in your dream," she said. "There was a young man in Nicolai's office. He seemed to be a most complete person. Sometimes we worked together on projects. I loved everything about him; his confidence, his expertise, his gentleness. Just being with him made me feel all warm inside, and satisfied. We even met privately on occasions, after the day's work was done. Those days were golden days. Still, there was a wall between us. There was something spiritually lacking. He never removed my golden belt. He never as much as touched me, not even for the slightest kiss. It appears that a part of him had been kept undeveloped for whatever reason, but rich with caution, dishonesty, even fear. Or it might have been me, who had created this wall out of fear. Maybe I had discouraged him, as I had so many times rejected you. Still, we were beautiful to each other. There was a certain satisfaction in this union, nonetheless...." While she spoke, I marveled at how far we had come since the day we first met. It had been a liberation, and this liberation seemed to mirror all the vast changes that had occurred in the world at large. We world had become less tense than it had been in those days when we had our first dinner in Moscow, where we had discovered our love. The time that followed had become a time filled with daring adventures, apprehension, fear, and muddled thinking. We had hedged around the reality. We had tried to embrace it, and then to ignore it. Later we had fancied ourselves to acknowledge it, but without the faintest idea of what this meant. These footsteps appeared crude now. Her rejections, in those days, had been a part of this wilderness of a heroic stand on her part, against the unknown. It took time to fill this void. I also wondered how much of a void I had created by a too narrow perception of her as a sexual being? How could our love have been rich and full if so much of it had remained incomplete? I felt I owned a great debt to her in recompense for what I had done to her, and what I hadn't been able to do. I wondered what kind of a present would do justice to such a person who stuck it out with me through all this. The present was not meant to repay the debt, but to reflect justly the greater completeness of my perception of her now. The recompense wasn't out of guilt, but a forward looking fulfilling of what was due to her, and had been due from the first day on. And how much greater a debt I owed to Sylvia, for the same reason, who had been so long a part of my life, who had been taken for granted and put in a wheelchair, so to speak, in my loving stupidity. Oh, how much of her there was to love that I hadn't even seen, during all these years! Whatever hadn't fit the role I had cast for her, and for myself, was somehow cast aside. That night after dinner, Tony and I made several lengthy excursions to shopping malls. I asked him to help me look for some gifts. "How can I search for something without knowing what I'm looking for?" Tony asked, frustrated. I shrugged my shoulders and confessed, "I haven't the slightest idea, myself." Soon our search led us to the older shopping district, downtown. The small stores and bazaars in the old part of town looked more promising. At an open market by a street-side I bought a turquoise poncho of intricately woven pattern. The bartering for the price was difficult, though. I thought everyone understood my class-taught Spanish. Well they didn't. The price was finally negotiated by writing numbers on a piece of paper, crossing them out, writing down other numbers; and all this amidst a stream of sales talk of which neither Tony nor I understood more than a few words. A fine diplomat I made. But the price was good; so we bought some more items. Tony bought a summer dress for Heather, and I a tie clip for Ross. Still, I didn't feel satisfied with the poncho for Sylvia. So we kept on with the shopping. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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