Part 4

III

I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to be

still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly dreamt that I picked up

the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my

head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right

temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly

my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and

heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten,

but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against

the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It

was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as

though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything

was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to

be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard,

stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest

movement. People were walking and shouting around me, the captain

bawled, the landlady shrieked - and suddenly another break and I was

being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin was shaking and

reflected upon it, and for the first time the idea struck me that I was

dead, utterly dead, I knew it and had no doubt of it, I could neither see

nor move and yet I was feeling and reflecting. But I was soon reconciled

to the position, and as one usually does in a dream, accepted the facts

without disputing them.

And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I was left alone,

utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever before I had imagined being

buried the one sensation I associated with the grave was that of damp

and cold. So now I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes,

but I felt nothing else.

I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting without dispute

that a dead man had nothing to expect. But it was damp. I don't know how long a time passed - whether an hour or several days, or many days.

But all at once a drop of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way

through the coffin lid; it was followed a minute later by a second, then a

minute later by a third - and so on, regularly every minute. There was a

sudden glow of profound indignation in my heart, and I suddenly felt in it

a pang of physical pain. "That's my wound," I thought; "that's the bullet .

. ." And drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed eyelid.

And all at once, not with my voice, but with my entire being, I called upon

the power that was responsible for all that was happening to me:

"Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational that

what is happening here is possible, suffer it to be here now. But if you are

revenging yourself upon me for my senseless suicide by the hideousness

and absurdity of this subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no

torture could ever equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly feeling,

though my martyrdom may last a million years!"

I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of

unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but I knew with infinite

unshakable certainty that everything would change immediately. And

behold my grave suddenly was rent asunder, that is, I don't know

whether it was opened or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and

unknown being and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my

sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had there been such

darkness. We were flying through space far away from the earth. I did not

question the being who was taking me; I was proud and waited. I assured

myself that I was not afraid, and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought

that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were flying, I cannot

imagine; it happened as it always does in dreams when you skip over

space and time, and the laws of thought and existence, and only pause

upon the points for which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly

saw in the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I asked impulsively, though I

had not meant to ask questions. "No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were coming

home," the being who was carrying me replied.

I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange to say, I did not

like that being, in fact I felt an intense aversion for it. I had expected

complete non-existence, and that was why I had put a bullet through my

heart. And here I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course,

but yet living, existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave," I thought

with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in its inmost depth my

heart remained unchanged. "And if I have got to exist again," I thought,

"and live once more under the control of some irresistible power, I won't

be vanquished and humiliated."

"You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for that," I said

suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain from the humiliating

question which implied a confession, and feeling my humiliation stab my

heart as with a pin. He did not answer my question, but all at once I felt

that he was not even despising me, but was laughing at me and had no

compassion for me, and that our journey had an unknown and mysterious

object that concerned me only. Fear was growing in my heart. Something

was mutely and painfully communicated to me from my silent companion,

and permeated my whole being. We were flying through dark, unknown

space. I had for some time lost sight of the constellations familiar to my

eyes. I knew that there were stars in the heavenly spaces the light of

which took thousands or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we

were already flying through those spaces. I expected something with a

terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly I was thrilled by a

familiar feeling that stirred me to the depths: I suddenly caught sight of

our sun! I knew that it could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth,

and that we were an infinite distance from our sun, but for some reason I

knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of

it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with ecstasy in my heart: the

kindred power of the same light which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it, and I had a sensation of life, the old life of

the past for the first time since I had been in the grave.

"But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our sun," I cried,

"where is the earth?"

And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the distance with an

emerald light. We were flying straight towards it.

"And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be the law of

Nature? . . . And if that is an earth there, can it be just the same earth as

ours . . . just the same, as poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved

for ever, arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same

poignant love for her that we feel for our earth?" I cried out, shaken by

irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth which I had left. The

image of the poor child whom I had repulsed flashed through my mind.

"You shall see it all," answered my companion, and there was a note of

sorrow in his voice.

But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was growing before my

eyes; I could already distinguish the ocean, the outline of Europe; and

suddenly a feeling of a great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart.

"How can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love only that earth

which I have left, stained with my blood, when, in my ingratitude, I

quenched my life with a bullet in my heart. But I have never, never

ceased to love that earth, and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I

loved it more than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our

earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot

love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in

order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth

that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"

But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite without noticing

how, found myself on this other earth, in the bright light of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was standing on one of the islands that make

up on our globe the Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland

facing that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us, only

everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the splendour of some

great, holy triumph attained at last. The caressing sea, green as emerald,

splashed softly upon the shore and kissed it with manifest, almost

conscious love. The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their

blossom, and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with

their soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of love. The

grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks

in the air, and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms and joyfully

struck me with their darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew

the people of this happy land. That came to me of themselves, they

surrounded me, kissed me. The children of the sun, the children of their

sun - oh, how beautiful they were! Never had I seen on our own earth

such beauty in mankind. Only perhaps in our children, in their earliest

years, one might find, some remote faint reflection of this beauty. The

eyes of these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their faces

were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a serenity that comes

of perfect understanding, but those faces were gay; in their words and

voices there was a note of childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from

the first glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth untarnished

by the Fall; on it lived people who had not sinned. They lived just in such

a paradise as that in which, according to all the legends of mankind, our

first parents lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this

earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing joyfully, thronged

round me and caressed me; they took me home with them, and each of

them tried to reassure me. Oh, they asked me no questions, but they

seemed, I fancied, to know everything without asking, and they wanted

to make haste to smoothe away the signs of suffering from my face.

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