“Well, sir, this is a pleasure,” Brice Mack said, pulling up a white metal chair to the bedside and sitting down. “I didn’t expect to be let in.”
A nurse arrived to take the thermometer out of Hancock’s mouth and to register its reading on a chart at the head of the bed. Before leaving, she carefully checked the tubes and wires attached to his body and critically studied the TV monitors.
Hancock sighed. “That’s better.”
His voice was strong, resonant and, as always for Brice Mack, a pleasure to listen to. For a long space of time they sat in silence, smiling at each other, and then the lawyer saw a look of sorrow come over the hard, bony face and a mistiness cloud his eyes.
“I must apologize to you, Brice, and to Mr. Hoover, for my“—the flicker of a smile returned—“my unscheduled truancy.”
The lawyer grinned and made a demurring gesture with his hand.
“Tell me,” Hancock continued, “how is the case going for him?”
“It’s going.” The lawyer shrugged. “It’ll be all right.” He laughed rather nervously. “Once we get you up there, we’ve got it made.”
Hancock nodded sagely and reached for a slim book which was on the bed a few inches away from his right hand.
“I’m boning up for my part.” He smiled and ran his thumb along the side of the pages. “Louis Fiquier. French philosopher. Makes a good case for reincarnation. Good for our case.” His smile broadened. “Convince the skeptics.” His fingers opened the book at a page marked by a tiny folded corner. “Read here, Brice,” he said, and pushed the book slightly toward the lawyer.
Mack rose and, reaching out for the book, found his hand suddenly enclosed by Hancock’s in a strong grip. Startled, he raised his eyes to Hancock’s eyes and found a twinkling mischief in them.
“Maybe even convince the most stubborn of skeptics,” Hancock said pointedly.
Brice returned his smile and gently disengaged his hand from Hancock’s. Sitting back in his chair, he opened the book, which was entitled The Tomorrow of Death, to the indicated page and began to read. After a moment of silence, Hancock’s deep voice ordered, “Aloud, please.”
Brice Mack cleared his throat and, in a voice soft enough so as not to disturb nearby patients but loud enough to be heard above the cacophony of beeps and squeaks of the heart machines and pacemakers, read.
“ ‘Some men are endowed with all the benefits of mind; others, on the contrary, are devoid of intelligence, penetration and memory. They stumble at every step in their rough life-paths. They can succeed in nothing, and Fate seems to have chosen them for the constant objects of its most deadly blows. Why are they here on earth? God would be unjust and wicked if He imposed so miserable an existence upon beings who had done nothing to incur it, and have not asked for it. But God is not unjust or wicked; the opposite qualities belong to his perfect essence. Therefore the unequal distribution of evil on our globe must remain unexplained, unless we admit the plurality of human existences and reincarnation—that is, the passage of the same soul through several bodies—then all is made wonderfully clear. We have a soul that we must purify, improve, and ennoble during our stay on earth, or, having already completed an imperfect and wicked life, we are compelled to begin a new one, and thus strive to rise to the level of those who have passed on to higher planes.…’”
When Brice Mack looked up, he was certain that Hancock had fallen asleep. His eyes were closed; a soft, peaceful stillness was upon his face. About to rise and leave, the lawyer was stopped by Hancock’s voice.
“You see, Brice,” he said in the quietly modulated, wandering way of a person on the edge of sleep, “without the doctrine of reincarnation, it is not possible to justify the ways of God.”
His voice trailed off, and again be seemed to drift off into a drowse. Mack remained seated, waiting to see if sleep had indeed overcome him. His eyes flickered down to his wristwatch. It was one ten. Apparently, even this slightest movement alerted Hancock, for his eyes fluttered open and remained watchful, seeking the intruder who had disturbed his slumber. There ensued a passage of time—no more than a few seconds—during which the old man re-formed his senses, reestablishing the time and place of the space he occupied, and, finding it, relaxed again in the security of its knowledge.
“It’s all right,” he whispered scarcely audibly. “We all experience levels of dying in our daily lives.… We’re just so used to life and death being opposites … that we don’t allow ourselves to have these thoughts.…”
His speech was so low that Brice Mack could hardly distinguish his words.
“And yet just drifting off into sleep, that twilight hour, is a different level of consciousness and very much … what part of death … is like.…”
Hancock’s eyes suddenly snapped open. He seemed at first to be staring at Mack, then through Mack, and beyond him, beyond the walls of the room, into some vast ethereal infinity beyond the spatial confines of the known world, wherein was revealed to him a vision which brought a radiance to his face, a surprised and wondrous look of utter joy and longing and needing and finally, at the end, an expression of bliss so intensive and absorbing as to cause his whole body to vibrate in its divine totality. His mouth opened, and in his last gurgling breath, he choked out the words “Oh, my!”
What happened in the next minutes—the perfunctory, professional reaction to the beeper’s strident warning signals, drawing nurses and doctors from all parts of the room like a swarm of locusts around a crust of bread, and their concerted attempts to restore Hancock to life, their quick, definitive moves with hypodermics, oxygen equipment, and finally their very fists pounding on his chest as one would pound on a door, hoping to encourage the sleeper to awaken—was scarcely apprehended by Brice Mack. His gaze remained firmly fixed on Hancock’s face, on the eyes casually closed, the mouth that was smiling, the nostrils flared, the sense of peace, of perfected joy, suffusing the noble countenance.
“He’s dead,” somebody murmured, and gradually the group retreated, in stages, first the doctors, then the nurses, all but one nurse, who stayed behind to disconnect the tubes and wires, roll down the mattress, and gently pull the sheet over the still-strong and energetic face.
For a very long time Brice Mack remained rooted, gazing entranced at the draped quiescent form on the bed, till he became aware that tears were running down his face. Their wetness snapped him back to awareness of the life struggles going on all around him and sent him stumbling from the room in a daze. The nurse in the anteroom said something to him which he didn’t quite get but which sounded like an expression of sympathy as he plowed through the double doors and into the corridor leading to the exit doors.
It was a little after two o’clock when he left the hospital and began to walk eastward on Fifty-seventh Street, across the entire width of the island, until he came to the East River. The night was dark and freezing, and a sharp wind at his back propelled him forward on his aimless course.
At Sutton Terrace he leaned over the railing and gazed into the stirring waters. The rumbling of speeding traffic coursing up and down the East Side Drive made the pavement quiver beneath his feet.
For a time, his mind remained void of thought, caught in the hums and vibrations of the surrounding night, until the very quality of the sounds became blurred and distorted, taking on the gurgling sound of speech, of words, “Oh, my!,” the parting words of Hancock, “Oh, my!,” while in the middle of the dark, swirling waters, his eyes found the fragmented image of the dead man’s face, reflected in a thousand flickering lights.