In Class "B"

[poliphilo]

I dreamed it was my first day at university. I was sitting in a large auditorium watching a sketch show, telling myself this was a provincial university so I couldn't expect the standard to be up to that of the Cambridge Footlights, when my neighbour turned to me and addressed me by name and asked if anyone in my class was familiar with the work of Ferdinand Pessoa- the Portuguese novelist- who exists, though he wasn't a novelist- or Gerald Manley Robinson- the Canadian poet- who certainly doesn't. I said I thought it likely but I really didn't know. I wondered how he knew my name and he said I had it embroidered on my shirt- as indeed I did, along with the letter "B" which stood for the class I was in. "Someone must have done that when I was asleep, I said.

Later, between engagements, I found myself in a crowd walking out of the university's medieval-modernist entrance hall and down the drive. A boy beside me said he was a watchman- which I took to mean a member of a cult like the Jehovah's Witnesses. "Watchman, what of the night?" I asked and he answered, slurring his speech, "The moon is rising through mist"- which I saw it was. A girl asked if I was going out with Margaret and I said I didn't know anyone called Margaret- so she offered to go fetch her for me. From the way she and her friends talked about her I gathered Margaret was odd. "Well," I thought, "I like odd...."