Now I am being buried in the earth. Every one leaves me and I am alone, quite alone. I do not stir. Before, when I imagined how I would really be buried in my grave, I always associated with it only the feeling of damp and cold. Now, too, I felt, that I was very cold, particularly in the tips of my toes, but I felt nothing besides.
I lay there and — strange to say — I expected nothing, accepting without question that a dead man has nothing to expect. But it was damp. I
do not know how long passed — an hour, a few days, or many days. Suddenly, on my left eye which was closed, a drop of water fell, which had leaked through the top of the grave. In a minute fell another, then a third, and so on, every minute. Suddenly, deep indignation kindled in my heart and suddenly in my heart I felt physical pain. 4 It’s my wound,’ I thought. 4 It’s where I shot myself. The bullet is there.’ And all the while the water dripped straight on to my closed eye. Suddenly, I cried out, not with a voice, for I was motionless, but with all my being, to the arbiter of all that was being done to me.
‘ Whosoever thou art, if thou art, and if there exists a purpose more intelligent than the things which are now taking place, let it be present here also. But if thou dost take vengeance upon me for my foolish suicide, then know, by the indecency and absurdity of further existence, that no torture whatever that may befall me, can ever be compared to the contempt whieh I will silently feel, even through millions of years of martyrdom.’
I cried out and was silent. Deep silence lasted a whole minute. One more drop even fell. But I knew and believed, infinitely and steadfastly, that in a moment everything would infallibly change. Suddenly, my grave opened.
I do not know whether it had been uncovered and opened, but I was taken by some dark being unknown to me, and we found ourselves in space. Suddenly, I saw. It was deep night; never, never had such darkness been! We were borne through space and were already far from the earth. I asked nothing of him who led me. I was proud and waited. I
assured myself that I was not afraid, and my heart melted with rapture at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not remember how long we rushed through space, and I cannot imagine it. It happened as always in a dream when you leap over space and time and the laws of life and mind, and you stop only there where your heart delights. I remember, I suddenly saw in the darkness one little star.
‘ Is it Sirius? ‘ I asked, suddenly losing control of myself, for I did not want to ask him anything.
‘ No, it is the same star which thou didst see returning home,’ replied the being who bore me away. I knew that he had, as it were, a human face. It is strange, but I did not love that being; I felt even a deep repugnance towards him. I had expected utter annihilation, and with that idea I had shot myself in the heart.
And now I was in the power of a being, who was, of course, not human, but who was, and did exist. ‘ So there is life after the grave,’ I thought, with the strange light-heartedness of a dream. But the essence of my heart in all its depth remained to me. ‘ And if it is necessary to be once more,’ I thought, ‘ and to live again by some one’s inexorable will, then I will not be conquered and degraded!’
‘ Thou knowest that I do not fear thee: therefore thou dost despise me? ‘ I suddenly said to my companion, unable to restrain myself from a humiliating question in which was contained a confession, and I felt my humiliation like the stab of a needle in my heart. He did not answer my question, but suddenly I felt that I was not despised, neither laughed at, nor even pitied, but that our journey had an unknown and mysterious purpose which concerned myself alone. Fear grew in my heart. Some dumb yet painful influence reached me from my silent companion and penetrated me. We were rushing through dark and unknown spaces.
I had long since ceased to see any constellation familiar to my eyes. I knew there were stars in the heavenly spaces, whose rays reach the earth only after thousands and millions of years. Perhaps we had already passed beyond those spaces. With terrible anguish that wore out my heart, I was expecting something. Suddenly a familiar yet most overwhelming emotion shook me through. I saw our sun.
I knew that it could not be our sun, which had begotten our earth, and that we were an infinite distance away, but somehow all through me I recognised that it was exactly the same sun as ours, its copy and double. A sweet and moving delight echoed rapturously through my soul. The dear power of light, of that same light which had given me birth, touched my heart and revived it, and I felt life, the old life, for the first time since my death.
‘ But if it is the sun, the same sun as ours,’ I exclaimed, ‘ then where is the earth? ‘ And my companion pointed to the little star which twinkled in the darkness with an emerald radiance. We were borne straight towards it.
‘ And can there be such repetitions in the universe? Is that the law of nature. . . . And if it is the earth there, is it just the same earth as ours . . . the very same, poor, unhapp3r, dear, ever-beloved earth, that rouses the same painful love for her in her most ungrateful children, just as our own? ‘ . . . I cried, trembling with irresistible, rapturous love for my own earth of old that I had left. The image of the little girl I had wronged rose before me.
‘ You will see everything,’ replied my companion, and I eould hear a note of sadness in his words. We were fast approaching the planet. It grew before my eyes. I could already discern the ocean, the outlines of Europe. Suddenly a strange feeling of great and sacred jealousy was kindled in my heart.
‘ How can such a repetition be, and why? It’s only the earth that I love or can love, the earth which I left, which was sprinkled with my blood, when I, the ungrateful, put an end to my life with a pistol-shot. But never onec, never once, did I cease to love the earth, and even on that -jglit when I parted from her, I loved her perhaps more poignantly than ever. Is there pain on this new earth?
On earth we can love truly only with pain and only through pain! We cannot love otherwise, and we know no other love. I need pain in order to love. At this very moment, I want, I long, to melt into tears and kiss only that earth which I have left. I do not want, I will not accept, life on any other earth.’
But my companion had already left me. Suddenly, as it were quite unperceived by myself, I stood on that other earth in the bright light of a sunny day, beautiful as Paradise. I believe I stood on one of those islands which on our earth are the Greek Archipelago, or somewhere on the mainland coast near to that Archipelago.
Oh, everything was exactly as on earth, but everything seemed to be bright with holiday, with a great and saeredb triumph, finally achieved. The smiling emerald sea gently lapped the shores, kissing them with love, with manifest, visible, almost conseious love.
Tall, splendid trees stood in all the glory of their bloom, and I am convinced that their innumerable leaves greeted me with a sweet, caressing sound, as though they uttered words of love. The grass was aflame with brilliant and sweet-scented colours. Flights of birds wheeled in the air, and fearlessly settled on my shoulders and my hands, joyfully tapping me with their dear, tremulous little wings.
At last I saw and recognised the people of that happy land. They came to me themselves, thronged me about, and kissed me. Children of the sun, children of the sun — oh, how beautiful they were! Never on earth have I seen sueh beauty in man. In our children alone, in their very earliest years, one could perhaps find a remote and faint reflection of that beauty. The eyes of those happy people shone with a bright radiance.
Their faces gleamed with wisdom, and with a certain consciousness, consummated in tranquillity; but their faces were happy. In their words and voices sounded a childlike joy. Oh, instantly, at the first glimpse of their faees I understood everything, everything! It was the earth as yet unpolluted by transgression; on it lived men who had yet known
