A Drunkard's Dreams

A beggar caught my eye whom I used to see on my way to school every morning, and with the passing of the days his face became familiar to me. His appearance showed that he was a man once honored among his people and brought low. After a long struggle with my pride I went up to him one day and asked him the story of his life; whereupon he looked at me a long while, then stared into the far horizon as if drawing his story from the piled-up clouds, then brought his gaze back to me and began to tell the strangest story I have ever heard. He said:

My story began the day I was born to wealthy parents. I grew up and was reared in a house where everyone lived with a single hope in life — and that hope was I. God had granted my parents no child but me, so I was the apple of their eyes, and my father waited with the greatest impatience for the day he would see me grown to full manhood. But I was the very opposite of them: my father had lived and built himself a position and gathered money, and he wanted me to be like him, but I thought of nothing but amusement.

My father wanted to give me a higher education, because in his poverty he had never been able to satisfy his own desire for learning; but I would pretend to go to school, and from the moment I left the house I would make for the home of some bad companion or a seat in a café. So I passed my days, and neither a relative's advice nor a father's restraint did me any good; rather I took to frequenting certain taverns and dance halls, where I spent my nights in the embrace of vice.

My father lost all hope in me, and so at last he decided to marry me off, that I might find the straight path; but I deserted the house after my wedding party and lived in a hotel for years. Meanwhile my wife had given birth to a child created to live in perpetual misery. After his birth my father died, leaving me his whole inheritance — for death overtook him before he could transfer his fortune to the child — and I was utterly brutish when I hurried to the lawyer and took my share of an inheritance never created for the likes of me. I squandered that fortune in a matter of days on a dancing girl whose wantonness had bewitched me, and after the money was gone the calamities came upon me one after another: I gambled and lost, I drank and got drunk..

As for my son, he studied on the money my mother and my wife had saved, and he was always first in his class. The years passed, and then my son won a competition to go to Europe. He went, and there he was the finest example of the energetic young man devoted to his studies and nothing more; he paid no heed to amusement, for he had had misery enough.

The son came back from the lands of the West with a high diploma in his hand and obtained a respectable post, and with his return

the sufferings of the mother and the grandmother came to an end, for he strove until he had secured them a fine life.

And while my son's star was rising, mine was setting.

Some months later I remembered that I had a son in this world — it was after a day full of drunkenness and sins. I made my way toward my son's house and saw the house glittering with decorations and lights. I asked the crowd gathered there the reason, and they told me that he had married and that this was his wedding celebration.

When the crowds pressed close I stole a glance and saw my son and his bride; and I had scarcely seen them when I received a violent blow from a man who, like me, was trying to steal a look — but what a difference between us two: I was the father who had neglected his duties, and he was a man whose curiosity had brought him to that place.

And I went back, all sorrow and grief: my house adorned with the lights of rejoicing, while I amused myself alone by walking the deserted roads.

I walked until my feet grew weary; then I lay down on a sidewalk and slept. In my dreams I saw my son taking me home with him and setting me before his mother; I fell upon her hands, kissing them, and after a while she laid her hand on my face and spoke the word of forgiveness. Then I awoke to find myself lying on the sidewalk, with a dog beside me stretching its tongue toward me. So I got up and made for the streets that people had not yet walked.

Hardly had the beggar reached this point in his tale when a young man approached us whose bearing showed courage and high station; he spoke, and his words revealed the personality of a man sure of himself and confident of what he said. The beggar turned to me with eyes brimming with tears and said: this is my son, of whom I told you. He said this, and presently

answered his son's call and went off with him. I looked at the two of them, and they were two silhouettes of two clashing pictures: a young man who had spent his youth in misery and wretchedness, who had fought life and its accidents in every battle and come out to the world victorious, bearing a name that honors him and a post that shields him from the evils of time; and an old man who had passed his youth in play and amusement, who had fled from every battle in life to give himself more chances of squandering money, and had done the impossible until he stained his name with shame.