Sleep as a wake-up call?
~~~
It was a few days after his 67th birthday when Bernard dreamed of hell for the first time.
He had never given much thought to whether he had been a good person. He was rich, just as he had always wanted to be, and could fulfill any dream that money could buy. And actually, that was true of all his dreams. Even old age seemed less frightening with enough money in his bank account than it might have seemed to many of his employees.
Even now, as he pulled himself up, his face glistening with sweat, and threw off the covers, gasping for breath until the air in his lungs no longer felt burning hot, even now he didn’t think about what this dream was trying to tell him. He had never been a believer; this nightmare could only be due to too much food or the buried memory of a horror movie.
As a precaution, he had a check-up with his family doctor the very next morning after a restless night without much sleep. There was nothing abnormal, he was healthy, very fit for his age, and the blood values revealed nothing unusual at the consultation the following day. And so Bernard would have forgotten the dream had it not returned a few days later.
This time it took him longer to wake up from the agonizing pain that was still drilling into his body from all sides in the transition between sleep and reality. Maybe he had cancer? Another previously undetected illness? The fear remained and did not leave him the next morning when he saw his family doctor again, and still not when he left the practice with referrals to specialist doctors.
This dream had been too realistic to ignore again. And yet even the specialists confirmed that he was perfectly healthy. If he really did have a disease, it was too rare and too well hidden to be discovered in all these examinations.
And perhaps he would have forgotten the dreams again, perhaps exercised more and eaten more healthily, had it not been for the third dream. This time it seemed almost impossible for him to wake up from it, for hours or days he thought he was fighting against the pain that enveloped him and took his breath away, until he finally emerged from the burning sea that was still stretching its tentacles out at him when he had already staggered into the bathroom and stood under the cold shower in his pajamas.
Bernard had never given much thought to whether he had been a good person. He couldn’t remember anything specific that would make him deserve hell – of course he had recently fired a few employees who simply hadn’t been productive enough; of course he ignored all his employees’ private worries as a matter of principle; and of course he wasn’t always friendly to everyone – he was the boss after all and had better things to do than bother with such trifles. But perhaps all the little things he had or hadn’t done added up over the years, so that the scales now tipped to the wrong side. He had never been a believer, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility that as he got older, his conscience would come to the fore and remind him of all those little things … and perhaps it would draw on a deep-seated idea of hell from his childhood.
At that moment, when he was freezing and hoping that the cold water would drive away the burning pain, he felt for the first time that he wanted to change his life. Nothing dramatic, of course, nothing that would attract attention, and certainly nothing that would diminish his wealth. But perhaps a little something here or there, one less dismissal, a more friendly way of phrasing orders to his employees, no increase in the price of food in the canteen this year.
And as if these thoughts had already developed enough power to extinguish the fire on his skin and in his lungs and stomach, he felt himself slowly becoming calmer, the coldness of the water penetrating him. He laboriously took off his wet pajamas, set the water to a normal temperature and enjoyed the water on his skin for a while before washing his hair and soaping the rest of his body. After drying off, he shaved thoroughly in front of the mirror, thought about whether he should have his slowly greying hair dyed as he did every morning, got dressed, drank his usual two cups of coffee while reading the daily newspaper and set off for his office.
While he worked through his current appointments there, had his secretary inform him of new appointments in between, made phone calls and held meetings with the department heads, he sometimes had the feeling that his employees could tell that he was different today than he was yesterday. Maybe that’s why he paid closer attention than on other days and didn’t ignore conversations in the canteen or in the corridors. And maybe that’s why he lay awake for a long time that evening, while fragments of sentences kept flitting through his mind, not really tangible and perhaps not even real, and yet they seemed to form a picture as he slowly drifted off to sleep. Nothing serious, no earth-shattering problems, but many small ones, and strangely enough they all seemed so easy to solve now, half asleep, that he wondered why no one did.
And the next morning, as if sleep had ordered his whirling thoughts, he realized that all these little worries might seem much bigger to his employees, and that perhaps they were not the right people to solve their own problems.
For that day, he decided to extend the opening hours of the canteen by an hour so that his employees could take their lunch break more flexibly and spend less time queuing to get their food. The chef got the requested additional assistant and an increase in hours approved and was satisfied; the change would take effect from the following month.
The next day, he instructed the production manager to ask the employees in his department about their requirements for better-fitting work clothes and to order a selection of appropriate clothing so that they would feel less constricted at work in future.
The following day, he had various desk chairs and height-adjustable desks demonstrated for the office staff so that they too would feel more comfortable at work.
But there was much more to do, as he realized since he no longer closed his eyes and ears. Some apprentices who no longer lived with their parents could barely afford even a one-bedroom apartment; for these, he anonymously awarded a small grant if their instructors agreed. He made part of the lawn around the building available to his company’s biodiversity club, which he had never even heard of, and supported the planting of native trees and the creation of a species-rich meadow, also anonymously, of course. He would not have been happy if any of his employees had thought him sentimental; he was still the boss who ran the company with a strong hand.
Over time, he realized that fewer thoughts were running through his head in the evening, and slowly his concern grew that the dream of hell might return if he had nothing more to do. Besides, he couldn’t judge for himself whether he was on the right path at all. If he died now, would he have done enough to tip the scales to the right side? He set up a grievance box, which he of course mocked publicly, and was pleased to see that there were actually many more small problems that he could take care of.
And he noticed how the letters in this grievance box changed over the weeks and months, perhaps because his employees realized that their little wishes were fulfilled when they expressed them there. While at first it was about better coffee at meetings and more comfortable gloves for the cleaning staff, the private problems increased – the high house payments after the young employee was left by her husband; the again broken refrigerator; the still unapproved kindergarten place for the couple’s second child, who worked together in sales. Much of this could be solved with small, inconspicuous salary increases or special payments, but some problems remained. When a fire devastated his secretary’s daughter’s apartment with everything the young family owned, he discreetly suggested a fundraising campaign at the company, and while he saw how the donation amount grew and yet would never be enough, he inconspicuously added a larger sum. It was the first time he had used his own personal money for this, and it was unexpectedly easy for him to cross that line.
After that, he noticed many other things, not only in his company, but also in the rest of the city where he lived. The public library, which urgently needed more support … the homeless people who retreated to the covered promenades of the pedestrian zone in the evenings … the small café near the town hall, which unexpectedly baked delicious apple pie and could urgently use new chairs … He made sure that no one found out who he was helping. After all, he didn’t want anyone to think he was old or even confused. When his bank advisor spoke to him every few years about his declining bank balance, he raved about the works of art he had treated himself to, sculptures and paintings, very exquisite and very expensive. And sometimes, when he planned the next day in the evening, on the narrow path between day and dream, he delighted in the way he made fools of everyone else before drifting off into a deep, whirling sleep with ever new ideas.
Bernard was almost eighty-one when he dreamed of hell again. He could feel the burning heat on his skin, and this time he didn’t fight it. If his life was still not enough, then so be it. He thought fleetingly of his plans, which he could no longer realize, the remaining money, which he could no longer put to good use, and the new cleaner at his company, whose wish for his own janitorial service he would have liked to support. But this time he didn’t feel he could wake up from this dream again, so he didn’t even try. The burning heat became a warm, soft embrace as he let himself drift and immerse himself in the dream forever.
[ Pikers love feedback! Comment on this article . ]