A nightmare in Chernobyl

I dreamed that I was in Chernobyl, and inside the dream was small library, and inside the library was man whose face I could not see. He got me the books I was looking for, and then he sat down on his table to read his book, as if he was in a hurry. Something was bothering me. There was a hole in the wall through which thick black smoke was coming in. I could leave but I couldn’t take my eyes off the librarian reading in the room being enveloped in radioactive smoke.

I asked, “What is that?”

“What?”

I pointed to the hole in the wall, and I remember walking to the hole. He said something but I couldn’t hear it because I was staring into the hole. I felt the intense presence of Roberto Bolano as if his hand was resting on my shoulder, telling me to have courage and not to avert my eyes, which I knew could not be true because even in the dream I remembered that he had been long dead from a bad liver.

“Why are you not leaving?” I asked going back to the door, still unable to take my eyes away from the librarian.

Even though he did not have a face, I could feel a smirk, as he said, “You think this is not going to happen to you?”

I remember leaving without my eyes. My eyes were still in the room watching the man read.