It seemed like a long span passed. We sat in stubborn silence like two monks lost in contemplation. The goulash bubbled over the pot rim and splashed onto the burner, hissing as though maimed.

“Been dreaming a lot lately,” he said at last. “Funny thing, that. In my whole life I think I can remember one, maybe two dreams. And those were from when I was a boy. But lately…” His voice trailed off.

“There was this one dream,” he said after a long pause. “I must’ve had it three, four nights in a row. I’m in this meadow, real peaceful, real pretty. I’m standing beside an old-fashioned watermill and I’m holding a large bucket with a rope handle. The mill’s wheel is turning slowly, but the weird thing is, the only noise I can hear is the creaking of those wooden gears. I can see the brook moving along, I can see it being lathed up by the paddles and I can see the runoff gushing back down into the brook, but the water moves completely silently. You know how sometimes in dreams you just know things about things? Well, in this dream I knew I had come to this brook to gather water to bring back to my village, which was on the other side of this great stone building that this watermill was attached to. Maybe they were grinding grain in there or something, I don’t know. But I was there for the water because the villagers were all dying of thirst.

“I reached down to scoop up some of that quiet water, when this awful, awful feeling came over me. I stared down into the brook and noticed in the reflection that a figure was now standing above me on the bank. I tried to cover my eyes because I didn’t want to see who or what that figure was, but the next thing I knew I was standing face to face with it. It was a woman, a very strange, very thin woman. She was trying to tell me something, but she was as mute as that water, so she traced some symbols in the air with one of her stick-like fingers. She spelled out that the water was poison. I nodded to show her that I understood. Then you know what I did? I filled that rope-handled pail and carried it back to my village and when I got there, I took a wooden ladle and I doled out that poisoned water to all my wretched-looking neighbours. When that awful deed was done, I poured the last sip into my own palm and drank it myself. Then I woke up.”

I wasn’t sure how to react to my father’s account, but I was desperate to keep him talking, so I asked him what he thought the dream meant. Again, he shrugged. Then he rose to tend to his food.