The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

by Max Ehrlich

  The man went back to his newspaper. Peter found an empty bench and sat down. He felt faint, giddy. His heart was pounding violently. He thought, All right, let’s try to put it together now. Let’s try to put it all together.

  This is where I lived before I died. Riverside, Massachusetts.

  But who was I?

  Except that a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.

  —CHRIST

  God generates beings, and then sends them back, over and over again, till they return to him.

  —THE KORAN

  After all, it is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once. Everything in Nature is resurrection.

  —VOLTAIRE

  Death is but a sleep and a forgetting. If death is not a prelude to another life, the intermediate period is a cruel mockery.

  —GANDHI

  Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: “It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing. And that his present birth is his first entrance into life.”

  —SCHOPENHAUER

  My doctrine is: Live, so that thou mayest desire to live again—that is thy duty. For in any case, thou wilt live again.

  —NIETZSCHE

  Chapter 16

  He had no idea how long he had been sitting there.

  But after a while his head stopped spinning. The buildings surrounding the square came out of the blur and into focus, etched sharply against a darkening sky. The wind had sharpened, and he felt cold. Gradually he became conscious of the noise of traffic on the streets bordering the square. The old man had left his nearby bench. The newspaper he had been reading lay forlornly on the wooden slats, the wind whipping its pages. The noise of traffic was heavy now; horns were blowing. He had the impression that it was the rush hour. A flock of pigeons settled at his feet, waiting hopefully.

  And again, the questions came pounding through his brain, tormenting him.

  Who was I? What was my name? How did I come to live here? What kind of man was I? And who was Marcia? Wife? Lover? What kind of woman was she? A murderess, yes, but before that? Why did she cut off my life while I was still young? Did they ever find out her crime and convict her for it? Perhaps not. Perhaps they never even found out that she murdered me. Is she dead? Perhaps. But the chances were good that she was still alive. She would be somewhere in her fifties now. It was possible that she still lived here.

  And if she did, he would find her. No matter what it took, or how long it took, he would find her.

  It was possible that at this very moment, as he sat in the square, his murderess might be walking along the streets, or shopping in one of the stores, or driving one of those cars he saw. Perhaps he and Marcia had even passed each other on the sidewalk as he came out of the bank, drove down the street and into the square. Perhaps they had looked each other in the eye and gone on, without recognition. She would not know him, of course; he was sure he bore no resemblance to his previous incarnation, to X. He was a different body, with a different face and a different name. His soul was the same, but you could not see a soul. You could not describe it. A soul had no face and no fingerprints. And after all, the man she knew was dead. She had killed him herself.

  He wondered whether he would recognize her. He knew the chances were against it. After all, in his dream world she was a young woman. Now she would be much older—some thirty years older. She could be ugly now. Fat. Her youth obliterated by time. He might pass her on the street and never know her. He shivered at the thought.

  Funny. He was confused about his own identity now. Sometimes he thought of X as an entirely different person, and at other times he thought of X as himself. It depends on how you look at it, he thought. If you saw it in purely physical terms, X’s body had died years ago in the slime and weeds at the bottom of that lake. And my body, the body of Peter Proud, is very much alive. Yet we have the same souls. In that sense, we are one and the same. And perhaps that is the most important sense.

  The wind became sharper. What he had to do now was check in at a hotel somewhere. He remembered there had been one near the bank.

  He rose and started to walk out of the square. Then something caught his attention-a large rock, or boulder, the top of which had been flattened out. On the flat area a bronze plate had been riveted. He read the inscription:

  HERE STOOD THE PARSON’S TAVERN WHERE

  GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS ENTERTAINED, JUNE 30, 1775,

  TRAVELING IN THE SADDLE FROM PHILADELPHIA TO

  CAMBRIDGE TO TAKE COMMAND OF THE AMERICAN FORCES,

  AND ON OCTOBER 21, 1789, RIDING IN HIS COACH THROUGH

  THE NEW ENGLAND STATES AS PRESIDENT.

  ERECTED BY THE GEORGE WASHINGTON CHAPTER, SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1914.

  He read the inscription on the boulder a second time. George Washington drank here. He wondered whether Washington was alive now in some other incarnation. It was entirely possible. The Father of Our Country might still live, in some other body, some other house of flesh, somewhere in the world. In his reading, he had learned that many men had claimed they had been George Washington in some previous incarnation. Or Napoleon, or John the Baptist, or Caesar. Most of them, he presumed, were in insane asylums. But the idea was no longer ridiculous to him.

  He himself was the living proof of that.

  The hotel was called the Riverside.

  Vaguely, Peter recalled it from one of his dream fragments, although in the hallucination it looked much newer than it did now. It was an old building, perhaps fifty years old now, and it seemed out of place amidst the new shops along Main Street. It was perhaps ten stories high and built of the time-darkened granite that apparently was indigenous to the region. Under its roofs and cornices were fancy flutings and small gargoyles of what appeared to be dirty marble.

  When he entered the lobby, he knew he had been there before. It was all vaguely familiar: the green carpets, the palms, the dark mahogany reception desk, the heavy leather furniture, the doors to the restaurant and the rest rooms, their upper halves made of Tiffany glass. He even seemed to recall the oaken grandfather clock standing at the entrance to the dining room.

  Clearly, the place was doing very little business. There was nobody in the lobby. Probably on its last legs, he thought. They’d tear it down any day and build another new and sterile high-rise office building in its place, or maybe another bank.

  The eerie feeling persisted that he, in the form of X, had frequented this place. Back in the forties, it must have been quite fashionable. It was possible that X had taken Marcia here for a drink and dinner many times. Certainly he could afford it. In the dreams he seemed prosperous enough.

  There was no one at the reception desk. He punched the bell on the counter. A clerk came out, a man of about sixty, white-haired, with a seamed face.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d like a room.”

  “For how long, sir?”

  “Oh, about two days.”

  “I think we can accommodate you. We’ve got a big room high up and at the front, for eighteen dollars. And a smaller room at the rear, for fifteen.”

  “The room at the front will be fine.”

  He signed the registration card. Peter stared at the elderly clerk. Then he asked, “How long have you been with this hotel?”

  The man was startled by the sudden question. He stared at Peter.

  “Why do you ask, sir?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Why, let me see. Came here in 1940. Been here thirty-five years.”

  “I see,” Peter looked around. “Must have been quite a place back then.”

  “Yes, sir. It was.”

  He had been here long enough then. Long enough to have met X. He must have known what X looked like. Known him by name—and Marcia. Suddenly he had a desperate desire to say to the man, I am someone you used to know. A long time ago. Someone who probably came in
to this hotel. With a woman named Marcia. But I don’t know my name. Can you tell me who I am?

  Crazy. The man would think he was crazy, and with good reason. Yet he almost blurted it out.

  The clerk, still looking at him curiously, rang for a bellboy.

  He lay on the bed, drained of all energy, his nervous system still in shock.

  He remembered the clairvoyant, Verna Bird, lying on her chaise longue in her long flowing red housecoat, frozen in her trance. And Elva Carlsen, her secretary, sitting rigidly with folded hands, acting as conduit to the beyond. “We have a soul here.” Yes, I see the soul. “And we have a body which houses the soul.” I see the body. “Do you see others before this?” I see others. The bodies are different, and they live at different times. They live and die, according to God’s will. And the old soul passes from one to the other. And himself, listening, fascinated, as he peered at Verna Bird through that ridiculous altar.

  Ever since his visit to the house on Laurel Canyon, he had been confused about Verna Bird. Was she just an aging female charlatan conducting a little mumbo jumbo for fat fees? Or did she have genuine insight, the kind that transcended logic itself? She had told him he had lived a number of lives before, back through the centuries. Chalaf, the Hittite slave, the Japanese outcast, and so on. But this was pretty safe ground. Who could call her a liar? Who could possibly prove her wrong or right? It was significant that she had stopped short of any reincarnation that might possibly be documented as true or false. She had claimed she knew nothing about X.

  Yet, curiously, all his previous lives had come to an end by drowning, in one way or another. So, too, had his last life. But he had told Verna Bird nothing of the dream. It was strange. And frightening.

  Then he recalled what she had said in her Spiritual Healing reading, about his becoming some kind of prophet. He had instantly dismissed it as pure nonsense. But now, in view of what had just happened?

  He shivered a little. It’s crazy, he thought. Death was not the end of everything, it was just the beginning. In effect, nobody died. Death was a long sleep from which you always awakened. A man didn’t live just one life; he lived many lives.

  The body, of course, was mortal, a temporal covering. It was also changeable. The flesh we began with when we were born wore out and was continually replaced by new flesh. New tissues replaced the worn-out ones. In a sense, your body was reincarnated even during the same lifetime. It underwent birth and rebirth in its material form. He recalled reading that the cells in a human body change completely every seven years. When you were a child you were in one body. When you became a teenager, you were still you, but your body had changed completely. When you became a man, you had a whole new body. But inside of all these bodies, there was still the original you. When the body got too old to function anymore, you simply shed it. The flesh decayed and became dust.

  But the soul goes on. To another body, newly born. And after that, still another. And so on, according to some divine design. There is no end to it. And the principle is immutable: I will be tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday—or some previous day.

  He, Peter Proud, knew this now, knew it for sure. But nobody else did.

  He wondered what would happen if he ran out onto the street and proclaimed what he knew. Don’t be afraid to die, good people. Because you’ll live again.

  He imagined the incredulous faces, the jeering laughter, the names: kook, nut, weirdo, crazy. In earlier times, he would have suffered the fate of other prophets. The mob would have torn him apart or stoned him to death. Today they’d probably call the police, judge him insane, and lock him up.

  But there was someone he could tell it to: Hall Bentley. He reached for the phone, and stopped. He decided that he might as well wait a little while. Possibly in the two days he had before he left, he might accumulate more information. He might as well give it all to Bentley at once.

  He rose and went to the window. It was a moonless night, and the city of Riverside was ablaze with light. He could see the traffic moving along the cloverleafs and the parkways on the other side of the river, like a series of jeweled snakes, and the myriad of lights blinking in the suburbs of the city. He thought about Marcia again, wondering whether she was living down there somewhere among those lights.

  He decided the chances were very much against it. Thirty-five years, give or take a few, was a long, long time. People died, or they moved away, or they got lost. Yet, in a very real sense, she was the only clue to his own identity. Find her, and he’d know who he was.

  That, he thought, was going to be some trick.

  He undressed slowly, and finally he fell asleep. His sleep was plagued by the dreams. He had them all, except for four: The City Dream, the Tower Dream, the Cotton Mather Dream, and the Prison Dream.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning he had breakfast in his room. Then, unable to think of anywhere else to start, he began to go through the telephone directory.

  In the short time he had been here, he realized that Riverside was a fairly sizable city, its population perhaps two hundred thousand. The phone book itself included not only the subscribers of Riverside itself, but those of many of the outlying districts and towns.

  He began on three assumptions. First, that Marcia had never been convicted of his murder. Second, that she was still alive. And third, that she still lived in Riverside. He started to check off every Marcia listed in the phone book. Vaguely, he hoped that one of the surnames might hit a memory nerve somewhere, might open some tiny hidden compartment.

  By the time he got through the letter F, he had checked off some twenty names beginning with the name Marcia. None of the last names conjured up anything. Besides, there could be fifty or a hundred more Marcias in Riverside whose identities would be hidden because only their husbands’ names were listed in the phone book. He closed the directory in disgust and threw it on the bed. He was reaching for nowhere.

  Still, the key was Marcia. If he found out who she was, he would find out who he himself was.

  He went downstairs. The elderly clerk was on duty at the reception desk. He smiled as Peter approached.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for a lake somewhere in the area.”

  “Yes? What lake?”

  “I don’t remember the name. I used to live around here as a small boy, and my folks used to have a cottage there …”

  The clerk looked at him dubiously. “Well, we have a lot of lakes around here …”

  “I realize that. But I do remember something about this one. There was a big hotel on it, called Puritan. Puritan House, Puritan Inn, something like that….”

  “Oh, you probably mean Lake Nipmuck.”

  “Nipmuck?”

  “Yes, sir. There used to be a Puritan Hotel on the north shore. But when they built the new parkway near the lake about five years ago and got all that traffic going through, they tore it down and put up a Holiday Inn there.”

  “I see. Where can I find it?”

  “Here,” said the clerk. “Let me show you on the map,” He picked up a folder on the desk. “It’s about twenty miles from here. But once you get on the Miles Morgan Parkway, it’ll take you no time at all.”

  Nipmuck. The name was familiar enough. The tribal word itself meant “fresh water fishing place.” The Nipmucks were one of the inland tribes of central Massachusetts. They had followed the hostile tribes at the outbreak of King Philip’s War and later fled to Canada or westward to the Mohicans and other tribes on the Hudson. Nipmuck. One for the book, the one he would finish someday—maybe.

  He drove down Main Street. The arrows indicated that there was an entry to the Miles Morgan Parkway on the other side of Court Square. He drove past the Municipal Building and then stopped the car for a moment near the curb. A sign on a separate section of the building caught his eye: Riverside P
olice Department.

  It struck him suddenly that the answer might be in there. Maybe part of the answer, maybe the whole answer. If the girl in his dreams had been caught and convicted of her crime, they would surely have some kind of record. Even if it went back thirty-five years.

  He started to circle the square, looking for a parking place. Through his windshield the traffic was a moving blur. Sweat soaked his collar. It was very simple—just go in there and ask.

  Then he thought about it. It wasn’t simple at all. In fact, it could get pretty damned complicated. He began to write a scenario in his mind. The red-faced police sergeant sitting behind the desk stared at him:

  “What can I do for you, mister?”

  “I wonder if you could give me some information, sergeant.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Do you have any record of a murder committed at Lake Nipmuck, sometime in the forties?”

  He pictured the sergeant, hard blue eyes suddenly alert, watching him now with interest.

  “In the 1940s, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long time ago. We’d have to look it up. What kind of homicide was it?”

  “Well, it probably looked like an accident. But it was a murder. The victim was a naked man. They probably dragged the lake for him, or found his body floating …”

  “What was the name of this victim?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “You remember the name of the killer?”

  “I don’t know that, either. But it was a woman.”

  “I see. A woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know a woman murdered a naked man, but you don’t know her name.”

  “I told you, I don’t. I don’t even know whether the police ever found out about her or not. If they did, it’d be in your records.”

  It was easy to imagine the way the sergeant would stare at him now as though he were dealing with some kind of kook. But more than that: the hard eyes would become suspicious.