Around my inert body complete silence persisted. Naturally, I had not informed anyone of my resolution. I had chosen, in order to be undisturbed, the afternoon of a beautiful Sunday, on which our staff, Mélanie the cook and Anna the chambermaid, had been given leave, and when my Floriane was spending the day in the country with her parents, while I was presumed to be visiting our friends the Rouvions—whom my wife could not abide—in the vicinity of Marlotte.
Such was the ultimate perception that I carried away from my sojourn in this base world. It is claimed that violent deaths determine a sudden flux of thoughts in which the capital events of the completed existence are retraced in next to no time; there was nothing of the kind in my case. In the brief passage from life to death I really experienced nothing but the despair of being separated from Floriane, in circumstances that will be revealed in due course, and also a sort of buoyancy provoked by the relief of being suddenly rid of an organism with which I had been obliged to preoccupy myself for thirty-eight years. As for what would become of my soul, liberated from matter—the only interesting thing—that curiosity did not even enter my head.
Yes, what would become of me in my immaterial condition?
I shall refrain from debating here what the philosophies of all lands have had the pretention of establishing with regard to being after no-longer-being. For some, it is total abolition, a fall into the black gulf of nothingness, and that is all. For others, the spiritual entity, the soul, immediately finds a new substance, in which it incorporates, suddenly to recommence submission to a parcel of eternity, and so on. For yet others, without materially transmigrating, it nevertheless persists in this base world, floating there around the living, invisible, like the waves that science utilizes to harm people more than to serve them. Finally, for a number of religious believers, it escapes into a still-imprecise world beyond, where its terrestrial past is judged with a view to a supreme recompense or punishment.
That is what people think, but I had always abstained from applying my brain to it, in order to take sides, as it embarked upon the merrier skiff of literature. I also preferred devoting myself to material realities, that being much more in accord with my natural indolence. Then again, even at the moment when prudence might have commanded me to envisage that great problem, other concerns had intervened, which, one way or another, had turned me away from metaphysical speculations. They will be revealed in due course.
In fact, my first impression belied the doctrine of nothingness, since my body was there, inert on the floor, inaccessible to sensations, devoid of any breath or palpitation, and yet I continued thinking. It was the case, therefore, that something remained of me, something independent of my substance. It was the case, therefore, that my mind was not exclusively tributary to my body. It was the case, therefore, that my soul persisted. But what surprised me even more was that the soul in question, disengaged from matter, nevertheless retained a material image—to put it another way, that it conserved a visible appearance, and that the appearance was exactly that of my body.
I was no longer anything but a fraction of the association of the carnal and the spiritual that I had been for thirty-eight years, and yet the spiritual, the sole subsisting fraction, had not lost the representation of the carnal. Explain that as you may; I shall restrict myself to reporting it.
Another proof was given to me, in any case, immediately after my last sigh. It was the arrival, to either side of me, of two other spirits, as imponderable as me, but nevertheless similarly provided with a physiognomy, without my being able to imagine how they had got in, all the doors being locked.
I was dazzled by their appearance. Floriane excepted, I had never seen effigies so seductive. I am obliged, out of obedience to the rules of the French language, to give those spirits the masculine gender, but my admiration, always impressed by the feminine esthetic, would willingly have ranged them on the side of the fair sex. Let us say that they were the most tender, the sweetest and the purest expression of beauty. Their abundant hair—one was blond, the other brunet—was deployed over the shoulders. A vaporous tissue, harmoniously pleated and tightened at the waist, hung down to their bare feet, confusing its immaculate whiteness with two wings sprouting from their back, furled for the moment.
I would gladly spend longer describing the seduction of their features, the perfect oval of their faces, the candor of their long-lashed eyes, the velvet of their complexion, but I think enough has been said for the classical image before which I had piously joined my hands as a little child to be recognized in them.
“Angels!” I exclaimed, without being astonished at still being able to emit words, although the words in question were undoubtedly nothing but an exchange of thoughts.
“We’ve been delegated to bring you,” said the blond.
“Where?”
“To Heaven,” the brunet confirmed, smiling.
“But my poor angels, you’ll never succeed in lifting my seventy-eight kilos!”
“Yes, of course—but you no longer weigh anything.”
“Let yourself go.”
It was then that the paradox was confirmed that, although I was immaterial, I was nevertheless still tangible. It sufficed for them to lift me up by a fingertip for me to come to my feet. Then they each put a hand under my armpit. I heard a slight flutter produced by their wings, and all three of us flew through the window, in spite of it being closed.
My house, the neighborhood, the entire city, the green countryside, and then the sea, overflown in less time than it takes to write, disappeared from my sight. The stratosphere was no more than an instantaneous passage. Then there was space, devoid of compass, without appreciable direction. We were floating in the world beyond.
Chapter II
Did our fantastic voyage in the heavens last for a second, a minute or an hour? I would have had difficulty in establishing that. I had lost the notion of the human value that the English assimilate to currency when they proclaim that “time is money.” I had similarly lost the notion of space, since I was now unable to measure the distance that we were traveling.
All that I remember of my celestial journey is the noise produced by the wings of my equipage. That could not result from the bating the air, since air is material and we were abstracted from matter, but even so, their palpitation produced a very soft musical symphony, which reminded me of “The Ride of the Valkyries,” which was my particular favorite, and the music delighted me.
I also remember that the angels, whose function as porters did not leave them on the same plane as me, turned their heads several times in order to smile at me. Was that to reassure me? Was it to hide their pity? No matter.
I was to be far more astonished when more powerful harmonies resounded, at the moment when we were cleaving though a sea of clouds to run abruptly into a wall, behind which something had to exist. I say a wall, but it was in reality more of an immense fortress, with crenellations, machicolations, a drawbridge and ditches disposed to drown aggressors: in brief, an entire powerful defensive system, contrary to the idea I had formed of penetrating into an essentially pacific realm.
Are souls also condemned, then, I wondered, to protect themselves on high against the evil that reigns on earth? I realized later that the formidable fortress was only raised in order to give new arrivals, still haunted by human wickedness, an impression of strength, which a welcome in a frame of simple clouds would not have inspired in them, and that the tragic representation was fictitious and illusory: a simple projection of images on vapor, much as the earthly cinema reproduces photographs on canvas to provide an illusion of reality.
When we reached it, terrestrial protocol was still observed. The drawbridge was lowered automatically, and a small door opened in the monumental portal. We passed under a vault that would have been dark had it not been lighted by the flaming swords of a double row of guardian angels, as delightfully lovely as those who had conveyed me. Then we went into a vast uneven courtyard circumscribed by arcades, at the
other side of which was outlined a monument in the purest Gothic style, in which the inscription Supreme Tribunal was inscribed in letters of fire.
The angels had left me to move by myself. I could walk as if I were still alive. My reflections were also those of a living person, in the sense that, expecting the novel, the surprising and unusual splendors. I was astonished to come across a monument that, in spite of its considerable dimensions, resembled some provincial Palais de Justice. Had it not been for the angelic guard watching over the barriers, the distant music that had greeted us and as still persisting, and also a view through a gap in the wall that revealed, a long way away, the light of a fire embracing infinity, I could have believed that I was still on our miserable earth.
Having gone up the steps of the Supreme Tribunal, we were received by an angel who was not carrying a sword but was equipped, like our ushers, with a chain dangling over the front of his torso. After a welcoming smile, he exchanged a few remarks with my transporters, who confided me to him.
I followed my new guide through dimly-lit corridors. I was able to perceive, when doors were opened therein, a succession of vast offices in which, under unreal lighting, multitudinous angels were working, some bent over papers, others running their pretty fingers over typewriters, exactly as in a place of business. Their occupation intrigued me less when I learned, subsequently, that they were employed in drawing up the identity documents of newcomers, compiling the accounts of their virtues and their sins, which must have necessitated an incredible amount of work, if other worlds are as populous as ours and if, by virtue of a universal equilibrium of conscience, morality is as relaxed there as it is on our world.
I could not help pitying those delightful bureaucrats, in thinking about their work, but my pity was attenuated by the reflection that the work must be their happiness, and that they were surely endowed with a cerebral facility not sheltered by the baldness of the paper-pushers whose mild indolence the State hires in France.
Finally, my introducer halted before a small door indentified by the simple label: St. Peter’s Office. He knocked on it.
A fine baritone voice from within, such as one hears on the Canebière, but without any distinguishable accent, gave permission to enter. I obeyed, tremulously, at the sign that the angel gave me to advance.
I was before the master of my fate—of all fates.
And yet, the saint in question—the most powerful of all the saints—offered no particularity calculated to frighten me. I will even say that I had never encountered anyone who seemed, at first sight, to be so spontaneously likeable. Ensconced in a copious leather armchair, at a table laden with papers, with a telephone within arm’s reach, he presented, in his capacity as chief saint, the worthiest face of the worthiest man one could imagine. Had it not been for his sacred toga and the luminous aureole circling the thicket of his hair—scarcely grayed by the millennia—one might have taken him for the benevolent father of one of those French families whose situation is prosperous, who eat well, drink well and sleep well, leaving their affairs to run on the tracks laid down by their ancestors. His candid blue eyes, his rather prominent nose and the abundant beard spreading over his breast completed that reassuring impression.
He also encouraged me with a sign. “Come closer…don’t be afraid…I won’t eat you…not today, anyway...”
When I had taken a few steps toward him he addressed the angel: “Do you have his form, my child?”
“Here it is, St, Peter.”
After a genuflection, the angel withdrew. St. Peter read the account that had just been handed to him attentively. His bushy eyebrows reflected the various impressions of his reading, during which I was astonished again that he was obliged to have recourse to the form to recognize me. Why did he need it? Ought he not to know everything about me by virtue of his special privilege? Was a simple cast of the cerebral probe into my past not sufficient for him, then? But again, I realized that all these stratagems were simply to impress the client.
Now, I shall reproduce our conversation exactly. I ought, however, to warn my readers not to be offended by the manner in which he proceeded as soon as we were alone. Although they might expect, as I expected myself, only to hear benign language emerging from the mouth of St. Peter, and all the devout compunction to which we inhabitants of earth attribute to the delegates of the divinity, he employed, on the contrary, a liberty of expression sometimes spiced with cheerful slang expressions, of the kind that the relaxed manners of our epoch tolerate. Doubtless he wanted to put me more at ease, in order that I would more easily yield to him the secret of my soul. Artists are fond of spices, it must also be said.
After that preliminary, off we go.
Still consulting the form, he began: “You’re Jacques Louis Paul Perdunier, known as Giky to his friends?”
“Yes, St. Peter.”
“You were born in Seclin, in the Nord, and you’re thirty-eight years old?”
“Yes, St. Peter.”
“Your youth was uneventful. After brilliant studies at Lille, you obtained a first prize in philosophy in the general competition, in consequence of which you were about to undertake studies in law—license and doctorate—in order to enter the Bar, when the Great War broke out. Moved by a laudable patriotic sentiment, you anticipated the call-up, and at the end of the abominable world conflict you emerged as a lieutenant, with four citations and three wounds?”
“Not serious ones, St. Peter.”
“No matter…you had given proof of courage and shed your blood. Not everyone can say as much. I recall the indignation of poilus with regard to ambushes when, in that epoch, we were receiving them in droves—which, in parentheses, caused as a lot of trouble. Poor fellows, they arrived in a real state! Yes, I know, there were also drunkards, jailbirds and rogues among them, but their ordeals inclined me to indulgence. The lice of the trenches alone equilibrated a considerable number of sins, so far as I was concerned.”
“The lice are, in fact, my worst memory of the war…permit me to ask you not to forget them in my case.”
He ignored my appeal to his generosity, however. “It’s incredible than humans, so adept at killing one another, cannot organize themselves against lice! Oh, your science, your genus…!” He shrugged his shoulders, and continued: “To get back to you, the war revealed you by virtue of a successful novel: Forward march!, awarded a prize by the Académie Margoulin. Then, renouncing the Bar, you devoted yourself entirely to literature. You obtained more success with The Underside of Those Women, The Good-Time Girls of the Five-to-Sevens…alluring titles…and a third one which, on the basis of the title, I was curious enough to open: Vice and Virtue. I thought I might find a little morality therein. It’s high time, I thought, that novelists gave us a little help…I was singularly deceived, alas! In the first few pages I discovered that your virtue is the resistance of a wife to her husband, in order to reserve herself exclusively to a third party! Very respectable! Before finishing the first chapter I had thrown the book on the dung-heap...”
I felt a trifle resentful of his intransigence, but dared not manifest it. To be sure, my novel was of the bedroom variety. It dealt with conjugal deceit, the eternal subject of literature—but how much more discreetly than the fare that readers ordinarily employ to tickle their curiosity! And how much better written!
The great administrator of justice continued: “You’ll have observed my disappointment; let’s not talk about it anymore. You then ventured into the theater with a little secretion, A Kiss in the Dark, which obtained a considerable financial success. Is that correct?”
“Quite correct, St. Peter.”
“Good. These various successes led you to look in the direction of the Cupola. And in truth, that’s excusable, for it’s tempting to garnish oneself with laurels, like a stewed rabbit, to buckle the sword of literature about one’s waist, and, parodying Henri IV, to recommend oneself to the crowd with a white plume. A very human ambition.…”
He was scarcely
respectful of our institutions, the good Saint. I would have liked to see him on earth, pen in hand...
“So, you were preparing for the Académie,” he continued, “with an artful and progressive conquest of your future electors, by a complete evolution of your romantic subjects, which became edifying, and for which I would congratulate you if the motive were not ambition. I cite among others your trilogy Probity, Courage and Kindness—works that diminished your print runs but augmented your chances. Still accurate?”
“I agree, St, Peter.”
“Perfect. Let’s pass on now to your marriage. I can concentrate on that, since it’s the origin of your appearance before me. I’ll leave aside the various petty amours of your youth, simple peccadilloes. The Almighty has provided humans with the primal instinct; we excuse those who succumb to it...”
He paused momentarily. Then, this time without the aid of the form—which confirmed that it was only an artifice—in one breath, as if he were reciting, he continued.
“You had been cared for, toward the end of the war—after your third wound, contracted on the Front at the Somme, which caused you to be evacuated to Amiens and committed to a temporary hospital known as the Hôpital Lavalard—by a nurse, Mademoiselle Floriane Pastel, a very young woman recently recruited to that admirable society for the aid of wounded soldiers, the Red Cross.
“Mademoiselle Pastel’s beauty was not belied by the eloquence of her surname. You fell in love with all the impetuousness of a heart that has only been beating for twenty-two years. Her youth and inexperience not permitting her to be entrusted with the dressing of wounds, she had been assigned to the pharmacy, and it was her who furnished the wounded, every morning and evening, with the potions prescribed by the surgeon.
“She was particularly generous to you since, on her own initiative, she diluted the medicaments into numerous bottles, which necessitated her returning several times a day to bring them to your bed. How you swallowed those little doses! And every time, there were long conversations, which had nothing to do with Floriane’s duties, but extended over your families, your relatives, your plans and your tastes—a marked preference on both parts for literature. She furnished you with her books, still closely akin to the Bibliothèque Rose,29 and you submitted to her in exchange the notes that were going to permit you to write your first novel.
The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 23
