Mr Blottisham arrived at the Senior Common Room carrying a sheaf of papers secured by a substantial brass clip.
“I have made considerable progress,” he announced.
Professor Quillibrace looked up from his newspaper.
“Have you?”
“Three further dreams. Three distinct stages in the development of a single problem.”
Miss Elowen Stray put down her tea.
“What problem is that, Mr Blottisham?”
“The problem of interpretation. More precisely, the tendency of interpretive systems to become self-confirming, self-judging, and ultimately self-administering.”
“An ambitious programme,” said Professor Quillibrace.
“I have been working on it systematically.”
He distributed three papers across the table.
“The first concerns the Library of Unconscious Knowledge. The second, the Trial of Mr Blottisham. The third, the Office of Dream Interpretation. You will observe a clear progression.”
Miss Stray drew the papers towards her.
“From knowledge to judgement to administration?”
“Precisely! You see the structure immediately.”
“I see that you have arranged them in that order.”
Blottisham hesitated.
“Is there a significant distinction?”
“I thought you might tell us.”
Professor Quillibrace folded his newspaper.
“Perhaps you could summarise the dreams, Mr Blottisham. We should like to know what happened before we consider what it signifies.”
Blottisham seemed pleased by this invitation.
“In the Library, I discovered that every attempt to question an interpretation was classified as evidence of resistance. In the Trial, I was judged by seven versions of myself, all of whom found me guilty of failing to understand my own nightmare. In the Office, I was required to complete an endless series of forms before I could wake.”
“And in each case,” said Quillibrace, “you recognised the difficulty?”
“Immediately.”
“Yet you continued to interpret the difficulty.”
“Of course. One must understand a problem in order to overcome it.”
“Must one?”
Blottisham looked at him with the expression of a man who had discovered an unexpected objection in an otherwise well-constructed argument.
Miss Stray turned to the third paper.
“You mention a bird.”
“Yes. In the Office of Dream Interpretation, I found a room in which a bird sat on the windowsill. For a brief period, nothing happened. Then the bird flew away.”
“And what did you make of it?”
“I concluded that it represented an experience temporarily escaping interpretive capture.”
“Of course,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham brightened.
“Exactly.”
“I meant that you would.”
Miss Stray continued reading.
“You say that you felt relief before you began interpreting the bird’s departure.”
“I did.”
“Was the relief part of the interpretation?”
“It became part of it.”
“But was it part of the experience before you interpreted it?”
Blottisham opened his mouth, then closed it.
“I cannot see how that distinction helps us.”
“Perhaps it doesn't,” Miss Stray said. “I wondered whether the relief might be worth attending to in its own right.”
“Without interpreting it?”
“Without immediately deciding what it must mean.”
Blottisham adjusted the brass clip on his papers.
“One cannot simply abandon interpretation.”
“No,” said Quillibrace. “But perhaps one can sometimes postpone it.”
“Postponement is itself a procedure.”
“Then you may submit the appropriate form.”
Miss Stray smiled into her tea.
Blottisham did not.
“There is another point,” he said. “In the final dream, I saw Freud and Jung speaking to a third gentleman. He carried a notebook and appeared to be asking questions. I suspect the figure represents a further development in the dream’s structure.”
“Did you recognise him?” Miss Stray asked.
“I thought I did, but I could not see his face.”
“And what questions was he asking?”
“I could not hear them.”
“Then perhaps,” she said, “we should leave him unidentified for the present.”
Blottisham looked alarmed.
“But that would leave an unresolved element in the account.”
“Would it?”
“Certainly. An unexplained figure cannot simply be left in a dream.”
“Why not?” asked Quillibrace.
Blottisham gathered his papers.
“I begin to suspect that you are both encouraging an undisciplined approach to the unconscious.”
“We should be sorry to do that,” said Quillibrace.
Miss Stray returned the papers to him.
“May I ask one last question, Mr Blottisham?”
“Certainly.”
“In your first nightmare, you were trying to escape the station. In the later dreams, you were trying to understand the library, overturn the verdict, and complete the forms. In each case, you were trying to get somewhere.”
“Indeed.”
“Did you ever consider staying where you were?”
Blottisham stared at her.
“The point of a dream is surely to discover what it means.”
“Is it?”
“Miss Stray, if we abandon that principle, we abandon the possibility of understanding ourselves.”
She considered this.
“Perhaps. But if every experience must become an object of understanding, I wonder what happens to the experience itself.”
There was a short silence.
Professor Quillibrace reached for his newspaper.
“I imagine, Mr Blottisham, that you will have an interesting paper to write.”
“I have three.”
“Then I imagine you will have an interesting fourth.”
Blottisham gathered his documents, satisfied that the discussion had provided several useful avenues for further investigation. He intended to incorporate Miss Stray’s observations, although he would need to establish their precise theoretical significance before doing so.
At the door, he turned.
“One thing remains unclear. Why should the dreams have become progressively more bureaucratic?”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Stray, “because you have been reading more Freud and Jung.”
Blottisham considered this.
“An interesting hypothesis. Though I suspect the matter is more complex.”
“I expect it is,” she said.
He departed.
Professor Quillibrace watched the door close.
“Do you think he will dream again?”
“I imagine so.”
“And the gentleman with the notebook?”
Miss Stray picked up her tea.
“I think we should wait until he asks his questions.”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
Outside, somewhere beyond the college buildings, a train sounded its whistle.
Neither of them commented on it.
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