When I first read about the ghost of Patroclus in the Iliad (Book XXIII), I immediately thought that Achilles must have been dreaming under the pressure of grief. And yet, one detail from that encounter lodged itself firmly in my memory: the ghost of Patroclus is described as dissolving into a kind of smoke that disappears with a faint, scraping sound.
It is not a vulgar noise. It is not the accidental crash of a piano lid, nor the heavy clatter of a pot slammed shut. It is closer to the song of a cricket, to the dry murmur of sand slipping through an hourglass. The sound of the other world and of dreams. A thin, persistent sound, like an old clock.
With this sound aboard, I came across a marginal note about Cirtă the oniromancer.
This man—whose story I want to tell today—was well-traveled and well-tried. He had walked the roads to Istanbul and to Vienna, where he had bought himself a tall hat, shaped like a princely kalpak. He had read a fair amount in his life, including Artemidorus’ manual on dreams. He also kept notes from conversations with sorcerers and with the symbol-mongers of the eighteenth century—men who, much like today, were always ready to dazzle you by tossing you headlong into potholes made of words.
You have surely met people who glimpse a number—say, one painted on a gate—and from it construct a whole tale of obstacles and ominous predictions, often catastrophic. It was much the same back then. Cirtă wrote all this down and could provide an answer to any question you asked him.
When someone dreamed of something that lingered heavily for more than an hour, they slipped on their slippers and knocked at Cirtă’s door. He lived in an attic overlooking the Dâmbovița, a narrow little room furnished with a table, where the visitor would be invited to sit.
To begin with, the visitor dropped a coin into a small tin bowl and waited to be invited to speak. If the dream was simple, Cirtă was an honest man and asked for nothing more. But if it was complicated, he demanded another payment—sometimes a small coin, sometimes as much as a taler.
For instance, if you dreamed that your mother appeared to you, though in reality she had long been dead, no interpretation was needed. Everyone knew it meant a minor trouble, nothing of true consequence. In dreams, the dead do not linger in conversation unless something serious is at stake. When they merely pass through, as if belonging to another reality, there is no reason for concern.
Dreams in which you flew were also benign, as were dreams of clear waters, flowers, and the like. Among the complicated dreams were those involving messages, letters, or books—intellectual dreams, requiring deeper analysis.
One day, a neighborhood spice seller came to Cirtă. She was an unlettered woman who sold garlic, cumin, and other local spices, carrying them daily to the market.
Her dream was indeed filled with mouths speaking without pause. She had dreamed of an assembly of sages who declared that the history of the world had come to an end. Morals lay in ruins, villains roamed in packs, and fools decided the fate of the majority, which—as usual—seethed in silence.
Among all the sages’ words, the spice seller remembered only one sentence, which she repeated from home to Cirtă’s door, afraid she might forget it:
“When you hear a long, drawn-out scraping sound near Colțea, know that it is the souls of the dead, come from the other world.”
Cirtă asked for another coin and some time to think. The dream troubled him; it was complex.
Not after an hour, nor after two, nor even by the end of the day did he find an answer. Admitting his limits, he went to return the woman’s money.
The spice seller lived in a somewhat larger dwelling, with curtains that made you feel as though you were inside a glass of Cotnari wine—always dreaming, always rushing off to sell spices.
They spoke again about the dream, trying to make sense of those souls at Colțea. And because they spoke of dreams and sleep, Cirtă fell asleep there, in that room of liquid light and unspoken promises.
In the days that followed, it seemed natural for Cirtă to visit the spice seller again. After all, it was her dream; she had planted it in his mind, along with that sound from the other world. He spent another night there. And another.
But on his next attempt, the door was closed. The woman returned to her vegetables and spice baskets, and after a week she forgot both the dream and Cirtă.
Cirtă, however, was increasingly undone, convinced that the future of the entire world lay hidden in the garlic seller’s dream. And with whom could he discuss such a dream, if not with its author?
He went to Colțea, counted the steps, examined the columns, and stood with his ear pressed inside the nave. He needed a sign, a confirmation of his suspicions. The woman had not come to him by chance; the message had been destined for him. And now, instead of telling him more, she had shut the door and vanished forever.
One morning, Cirtă awoke with a sound in his ears. It was long and pressing, like a cord drawn tight through the eardrum, like a silver thread twisted with fine wires. At times he heard the bellow of a dying bull; at others, millions of crickets burrowing into his ear.
His quiet life as a great interpreter of the god Oneiros was over. The spice seller had dreamed especially for him. He was convinced that this sound was the scraping murmur from the other world—the undeciphered language of ghosts.
And since a message belongs to the one who believes in it, the oniromancer took up a quill and began to transcribe the long story of souls escaped from death. His book—where, naturally, the spice seller plays an important role—remained one of the most tangled writings ever produced, periodically igniting another mind much like his own.
At the end of the book stands the date of the final ending: a day in April, when a long, thin scraping sound will be heard near Colțea.
One question still haunts me, if you will allow it: what, I wonder, was it that scraped and murmured in Homer’s reality—or in that of his character, Achilles?
