Two More Tries At It

by P. David Hornik (July 2015)
 

1

When he interviewed me about becoming his editor, I explained that, for my part, I have no comprehension whatsoever of his work. But he said that was all right, as long as I could help with the English. In all the time since he hired me, though, he hasn’t written a single thing. Yet I’ve still had to spend many hours in his study—he says my presence helps his concentration, and he wants me to be on hand in case anything does happen.

2

I know a mystic. He wants me to interpret dreams for him. I told him I know absolutely nothing about interpreting dreams. He said that’s all right, I’m an editor, I can put them into writing.

He has me sleep outside on his balcony with him. The idea is that if he wakes up with a dream, he’ll be able to wake me up too, and I’ll be right there to “interpret”—write it down, in good English—for him. He says he dreams deeper and purer dreams when he sleeps outside.

By now, of course, I’m not even sure that the part with the dawn mist on the balcony wasn’t also part of the dream. Or at least, I’m led to think that way by another strange thing that happened.

Just a few mornings later, when I woke up, he was sitting, with a sullen, annoyed look, on the parapet staring out at the street. He told me that during the night he’d at last had a dream—something he couldn’t remember clearly anymore, about being in a rowboat in an ocean—but when he tried to wake me up, I lay like a log and the most he could get out of me was a mutter or two. Wasn’t this what he’d hired me for? I was very sorry, and told him so.

P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator in Beersheva, Israel. In recent years his work appears especially on the PJ Media and Frontpage Magazine sites, and his book Choosing Life in Israel was published in 2013. He has recently completed an autobiography.

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