How I have wept, the long night through, over the poor women of the past, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms have opened for the kiss, and who are dead! The kiss — it is immortal! It passes from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age. Men gather it, give it back, and die.
It was interminable night. Carefully I moved my foot to hers and felt her ankle. She never stirred. Yes, she was asleep and leaning on my shoulder.
Presently she sighed, tried to readjust her head upon the pillow, then gave it up as a bad job, opening her eyes.
‘Put your pillow on my knees.’
She did. ‘Better now.’ She closed her eyes. I looked at my watch. It was past 3 a.m. All were sleeping. Then Harry, who had been sleeping with his head on Berthe’s lap, woke up. He muttered: ‘Yesterday the train went; today it’s stopped.’
‘Sleep, my little one,’ Berthe whispered, ‘sleep, my darling. You’ve woken in the middle of the night. The train went yesterday and today too; it has only stopped for a few minutes and will go on directly. Sleep, my darling.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Sleep, my little one. There.’
He shut his eyes, but opened them again after awhile with the remark, ‘Where’s Nora’s monkey?’
Berthe tucked the cloth monkey in the front of his coat; he shut his eyes. But soon afterwards he woke again, announcing his intention to hang the monkey.
This roused the rest of us, and no one any longer tried to sleep. I raised the window-screen. The grey dawn, showing feebly through the rain-stained window, mocked at the electric light. The air in the coupé was heavy. Uncle Emmanuel yawned into his hand and opened the door into the corridor. It was chilly. The ladies bucked up. Powder-puffs, hand-mirrors, and the like came into play; hands and eyes got busy; coiffure and complexion was remedied; scent poured out galore. And not a drop of water all the time. Water was not mentioned. Water was not thought of! Sylvia had a tiny orange-coloured crêpe-de-Chine ‘hanky’—that was all she used by way of toilet. It seemed to me touching. But had she used a bath-towel or nothing at all, it would have appeared to me — for such is the nature of love — equally touching.
The train raced towards Changchu. Another train hove in sight, and the two trains raced side by side: now one was ahead, now the other; till their ways took them asunder and the other train raced away out of sight.
At ten o’clock in the morning the train, exhausted, pulled up at Changchu. I looked out. Silence. Dusty foliage. Chinks squatting on the ground and staring at the train. Lemonade and oranges on sale on the platform. Sunshine. What a country! Peace. Relaxation. It goes on in that benevolent, watching, smiling sunshine. We got out and repaired to the hotel for lunch.
Before lunch Aunt Teresa drank a cocktail with a cherry on a matchstick. It was a lovely day in spring. We sat on the open veranda and talked.
‘Now do we live after death?’ asked my aunt.
‘The answer,’ said I, ‘is in the affirmative.’
‘How can we know?’ Captain Negodyaev interjected. ‘We have so little to go upon.’
‘A plain reason for not going upon it. Seeing that, when all is said, life is a miracle, it would be a miracle indeed if the miraculous never occurred.’
‘But you seem certain.’
‘There are umpteen ways of being alive, but there is only one way of being dead. It follows than the chances of life after death are umpteen to one.’
‘When you come to think,’ chimed in Captain Negodyaev, ‘what can we know! If I trust my inspired moments I say, yes, death is not the end. If I trust my stock moods, I say, probably it is.’
‘And you, George?’ asked my aunt. ‘How do you really feel about it?’
I sighed.
‘As George Hamlet Alexander Diabologh, author, I shall bow my adieux and never emerge after death; but as rightful shareholder in Life I am immutable, and will go on till the Universe perish with me. Perhaps as one on the board of directors of Cosmos, Unlimited. Perhaps — since I’m a holder of preference shares — as some sort of joint chairman with God. But perish I shall not: since, like any another, I am a holder of shares in the cosmic concern.’
Aunt Teresa sighed with relief. ‘Ah, if it were so!’
‘It is so. You may take my word for it, ma tante.’
‘No death?’
‘Never.’
Captain Negodyaev shook his head.
My aunt looked at him. ‘Why should we live so little,’ she asked, ‘and be dead such a time? Why?’
‘No reason at all,’ said my uncle.
‘So perhaps Anatole is alive.’
‘You bet he is! More alive than before.’
‘But does he remember? Does he remember me?’
‘He doesn’t remember a damned thing.’
‘Oh!’
‘We are but vessels of past memories,’ said Captain Negodyaev. ‘When I think of the living things around me which are to me as something that has never been, I am conscious of the nature of obliteration, of the seeds of death I already carry in me. A little more — and death will be complete.’
‘So you think,’ I said. ‘Unthinkingly. It is not the memory that lives on in you, it’s that little voice, that little lamp which is immortal. You may lose your memory forthwith and be none the worse for it; you would still go on feeling your I to be you and none else, as you do through every dream and nightmare: because this I is lit at the immortal altar of all life, and so remains immortal, may it immerse in whatever worlds, it is you, a world in itself and for ever.’