Gradually the number of people with dreams to report decreased, and the Recorder felt more and more lonely, yet he continually stretched his neck out stubbornly and stared toward the end of the road. He was hoping for a dreamland that had never yet been described, one charged with heat and blinding light. He was not even sure what he had imagined in his own mind. But he believed firmly there was such a dreamland. Yet he could not by himself write this dreamland directly into the black notebook; he had to wait for someone to come in who could set it forth as it had appeared in his own dream. That person would describe this dream to the Recorder in the shed by the roadside, and the Recorder would copy it down for him. Because existence travels in zigzag paths, all the Recorder could do was wait.
Day after day, the people who arrived could never describe directly the image in the Recorder’s mind; therefore, this image could never be turned into words, and its authenticity could never be established. As a result, the Recorder became disheartened day by day, yet he still stretched out his neck stubbornly. His hands and feet cracked in the bitter wind of winter, and in the dampness of spring his joints swelled like little steambuns. In addition, the run-down shed by the roadside started leaking. Most passersby no longer stopped to describe their dreamlands; instead they flung cold glances in his direction and continued on their way. The Recorder observed every one of them carefully, and his heart pulsed regularly between hope and disappointment. Sometimes a whole day would pass with only one or two people coming into his shed. And their dreamlands were nothing out of the ordinary, although they were filled with the mad joy of wandering in the vast universe; or with the conceitedness of a person who locks himself inside a cave deep within the shell of the earth; or with the horror of being captured by some beast of prey; or with the ghastly feeling of being in the process of dying. However, no one ever dreamed the image that appeared in the Recorder’s mind.
Maybe this was nothing but a kind of torture. The Recorder had asked himself this question numerous times, and numerous times had failed to find the answer. But just at the moment when the passersby with dreams were leaving, the light of that dreamland that had never been described would make his body tremble all over. This trembling — the trembling itself — confirmed in him the existence of that image. So he named that image that had never been described nor had ever occurred clearly in his mind “the wind.” “The wind” always arose when the person with dreams was leaving. Now what he was expecting with his stretched-out neck was more than merely the dreamers. When they were leaving, he knew, that light would appear. He had begun to see this more and more clearly.
Then in the rainy season there came an old woman holding a huge umbrella. Her snow-white hair had been tousled by the wind. The eyeballs inside their deep, narrow sockets had no vision, yet she was not blind. She entered the shed and let the Recorder touch her ice-cold fingers, then she went on her way. It was on that day that the Recorder stopped writing down the descriptions of the dreamlands of the passersby. Nor did he stare down the road anymore. He was still waiting, however, and he seemed to know what he was waiting for. With the passing of time, that image of his had changed gradually into something less definite, and his hearing deteriorated daily. Very often when a passerby entered the shed, the Recorder was still in his reverie. Only one thing was clear: at a certain moment his heart would throb in response to that invisible light and that empty image, and his blood would surge like a herd of running horses.
Once in a while there were still people stopping by his shed. The dreamlands they described had become more and more outrageous. Each one complained that the thing he had seen was indescribable. And because it was indescribable, they sometimes left, disheartened, in the middle of their account. The Recorder, understanding all this, held his black notebook and pen in his hands and pretended to be listening carefully. As a matter of fact, he did not record anything. When the person with the dream left, in his mind’s eye there still appeared the image that once had made him tremble, yet it had faded into a blankness with something like shadows swaying back and forth within it. He couldn’t confirm this, yet he was satisfied. Closing his notebook he sat on the floor for a break, and the instant of the break was sweet.
The following is a dialogue between the Recorder and a person reporting a dream:
DREAMER: What have I been talking about? What I have said is not even as much as one tenth of what I saw. That feeling could never occur again. Why can’t I describe it? It’s so disheartening! The wind is too strong here.
RECORDER: Uh-huh.
DREAMER: Whatever you have recorded here is all rubbish. Yet we still come to you because everybody knows you are the only person who records those things here. I really want to describe it. Please tell me — is it because I am not verbal?
RECORDER: What you’ve said is really interesting.
After the dreamers left, they never revealed to others the image that they had described to the Recorder, as if there were an unspoken agreement among them. After they had described their dreamlands to him, they felt they had left a piece of valuable property in his run-down shed. As a matter of fact, they seldom reflected on what they had described, yet they remembered making the description because that was their property. They paid no attention to whether or not the recorder had written anything in his notebook. What they did pay attention to was the very act of describing inside the shed. Although during their descriptions they were also continually grumbling and complaining, as if impatient or totally bored, deep inside they were quite satisfied with themselves. Once they left that shed they felt they became mere ordinary people. They tended to consider the unique communication between themselves and the Recorder as a supreme secret. They also tended to see that black notebook as something that made them feel intimate and commited to something in their hearts.
Nobody had expected that the Recorder would abandon his black notebook, because it contained such a quantity of unique and strange dream images, and it was therefore considered by many people as the property of the many dreamers. But now he had thrown the notebook away, and he explained this only indifferently: “It flew away without wings.” And he refused to raise the issue again.
Random passersby continued to enter his run-down shed, As usual he sat on the floor, straight and solemn, listening to their descriptions without making a sound himself. The disappearance of the notebook hadn’t affected the unique communication between them. Among those random passersby were some who had visited him before and others who had never been there. Without mentioning it, they all experienced the benefit of not having the notebook because now they could talk about whatever they wanted without worrying. After they had arrived at the Recorder’s shed, every one of them would speak, whether for a long time or a short time. So they started talking, yet who could hear clearly what they were talking about? That was impossible. It was not until today — this is quite a few years after it happened — that we realized that those people had never said anything meaningful. Instead they were only pronouncing some syllables willy-nilly to pass the time. And the Recorder was not listening carefully but only pretended to pay attention. As a matter of fact, he was thinking of something else. It was certain that he was thinking of that blank image and waiting impatiently for its arrival. Yet he knew that one cannot rush this sort of thing. Therefore, he had to pretend to be listening to the dreams. It was with such purposeful procrastination that they passed the endless time, repeating the same thing again and again, patiently.