Fiction and Commentary By Rolf Rykken

A mid-1990s dream — needed for an academic class at the Corcoran College of Art and Design on psychoanalyzing dreams.

A Dream

I am visiting the country home of the French painter, Pierre Bonnard, with Lynn, my former wife and Sophie, our English Springer Spaniel dog.

Bonnard, tall, thin, old and balding, takes us out back to a pond. I know that I am with Lynn and Sophie but I can barely see Lynn, and she doesn’t speak. I sense that Sophie is chiefly staying by her side.

Bonnard is looking out over this pond in the backyard and I have a strong sense as he does this that we are in Chevy Chase in upper northwest D.C. As we stand there (Bonnard seems quite pleased with the surroundings), I see a boy on a bike zip through the yard over the pond somehow as if he is using the pond and yard as a shortcut. He seems furtive, as if he knows he shouldn’t be cutting through Bonnard’s yard. Bonnard, however, says nothing and ignores him.

As we stand there looking out over the pond, Bonnard’s neighbor begins to fly around over us and the pond in one of those pre-airplane, one-person propeller seats. He sits on a seat that has a revolving propeller above him. He flies about and Bonnard seems oblivious to this as well, even though the propeller contraption is quite noisy.

I find this all very odd.

Lynn and Sophie are behind me, but also seem not to notice this strange man and his propeller contraption; they are just looking about.

The neighbor continues to fly around, and I look over at Bonnard who now has a gun, a rifle perhaps, which he is shooting, though I can’t really see it. This, too, I find odd and am struck that here we are in upper northwest D.C. and Pierre Bonnard is shooting at ducks or something and his neighbor is flying around us.

Then the neighbor is joined by another man and they start shooting too, using rifles, though we can’t really hear the guns. The two are quite close to us, moving quickly and darting around.

I start yelling at them, demanding that they keep away, ordering them to get away from us. I see Lynn and Sophie nearby and I pick up a broken tree branch to wave at the two men. I am quite angry, “Get away, get away,” I yell. The neighbor and his friend tell me to shut up.

I believe that Lynn must think I am acting like an idiot, that I shouldn’t be displaying such anger.

Then Bonnard appears with a younger man who I think is very French looking (kind of ruddy faced and smiling) and very blond. Bonnard identifies him as his son, Jarre´.

I comment on us being in the city but that it’s almost like being in rural Delaware (where Lynn and I had lived) and I look at Bonnard and say, “And you were shooting — if it were at ducks I don’t want to know — and your neighbor was flying around.”

Bonnard responds, “Yes, that neighbor is quite annoying. He’s a former policeman.”

Then Bonnard, Jarre´ and Lynn are standing in a circle around me quite close to me, and Bonnard puts a small glass bowl of mushrooms, sweet red peppers and sliced plum tomatoes in a sauce in my face. Then the mushrooms become clams, and Bonnard says, “Here, have some clams.”

And then I say, “Well, as William Maxwell used to say” and I stop and laugh. I was trying to make a joke and say Bonnard’s name but I said the name of a novelist and short-story writer instead.

I then say, “It’s a joke. You can’t have too many clams.”

Then Lynn starts to offer me the clam dish and she is smiling, I sense, in approval over my earlier efforts to protect her and Sophie by trying to stop the neighbor and his friend from shooting their guns.

Then Jarre´ is in my face offering to serve me.

I see a male servant come by with more of the same appetizer, and I think, Why is everyone standing so closely. Then I wake.