They came and touched me with their soft, damp palms. As their hands rested on my sweating shoulders, I felt a refreshingly cold wave spreading from them to the rest of my body. It was as if with their hands they were cooling my perturbing thoughts and holding my mind back from drowning deep down into myself. Forgetting everything else, my body and my mind united with their weightless hands in a blissful confluence.
Then they slowly lowered their heads to my ears to whisper something. With their deeply feminine voice they told me to wear my best uniform and all those stars I ever got to greet the Colonel - the Colonel who died many years ago when I was on duty in the safer Eastern Front. They told me to stand up and salute when the Colonel comes. Those words sounded as if they were coming from a medieval European cloister, traversing all the centuries in between, travelling through all the revolutions those centuries had witnessed. I wanted to give a face to those voices, so I tried to turn my head and see them. I was not mistaken. They were dressed like some pious abbesses from a Christian monastery.
With their cheeks almost touching my ears they told me to forget whatever happened in the Zonal Headquarters yesterday. At that moment I understood that they knew everything. I was overwhelmed with relief – they too knew what had really happened, apart from the Colonel. Now I don’t have to worry at all. They will come in front of the panel and give a correct account of the affairs to the Enquiry Committee and save me from the eternal infamy of being called a traitor.
Happiness never lasts beyond a few moments for soldiers. The happiness of the possibility of someone, either the Colonel or those nuns, coming to my rescue lasted only for a few seconds; till my dream lasted. When I woke up the next moment I found myself sleeping with my head resting on my arms over the wooden table. The banality of the ink bottle on the table obliterated even the lingering vestiges of the dream and that temporary illusion of someone coming to save me.
Those nuns who came in my dream knew that I slept in the dim light just to escape from the thoughts of whatever happened within the walls of Lieutenant General’s room in the Zonal Headquarters yesterday. How vividly have they told me that the Colonel will come back to clear my position so that the inquiry into my association with the enemy back in the sixties would be summarily canceled. Who were they? And from where did they come? How did they, even if they were people in a dream, know about what happened between me and the enemies?
But then again, by coming into my dream they shouldn’t have disturbed my sleep. They shouldn’t have woken me up, for I started to think about the thick black walls of the headquarters and about the Lieutenant General’s hateful fleshy face once again.
And sadly, now those thick walls somehow started to resemble very much like the walls of a European Monastery.
To stop thinking I got up from the table and went to the closet to wear my best uniform and pin all my insignia on to it. After that I waited for greeting the Colonel who will come back from death.
