War Letters from the Living Dead Man (9 page)

I advise you to avoid for some years at least the actual scenes of these battles. You can go to Switzerland or to the more southern regions of France, but do not stay long in Northern France or Belgium, or in any other place that may be thus affected. The thought world of England is just now troubled, but the layer of astral matter immediately above the earth is not full of the awful emanations of death. Astral forms go there from the more terrible region, but in order to go they must have themselves broken away from the immediate scene of their worst suffering. It is easier to protect oneself from sad thought—forms than from the distracted astral entities and the “boiling” astral matter that lie above those battlefields.

Why, even the field of Waterloo before this war was not a pleasant place to spend the night. After a lapse of time you may briefly visit the scenes of these recent battles, for the sake of the practical experience; but do not go there just yet. The best place in Europe for a long period will be the mountains of Switzerland. You should spend much time there. Do you remember telling me how, when a child, you used to see the forms of American Indians on the hills and in the valleys of your native State? They were those who many years before had walked those hills and valleys in the sunlight, and who were still held in the tenuous matter above that region. The eyes of childhood are sometimes very clear. Above those battlefields of Europe the sensitive eye may see for many years the forms of those who will not be able to make their escape. And I do not mean
akashic
records. War is hell, and the hell does not end with the signing of peace papers.

That is one reason why we want you, and those others who believe in brotherhood, to carry that spirit of brotherhood among the nations that have been at war. You have no conception of the power of a quiet faith in a great and true idea. The man who really loves his fellows has a wider influence than his own immediate circle of friends. The atmosphere around him is permeated with that brotherly love, and sensitive souls can feel it. Some day sail up the Rhine with that sentiment in your heart.

April 12

Letter 21

A Soul in Purgatory

Dare I talk to you of the purgatory to which the rage of battle conducts so many souls that only a little while before walked the earth as men, and went their daily round from house to office, loving their wives and children and exchanging worldly commonplaces in the intervals of work, all unmindful that they were hourly drifting toward the Great Event? Yes, I dare. We will follow one soul that I myself followed. His story I can reconstruct from memory, for every act of it is stamped upon my mind. No, I do not need brain cells to remember with. Neither will you—when you have escaped the prison of your brain cells. The man was an officer in an English regiment and he was a bachelor. Outwardly he was much like other men, but his consciousness was different. He lived in a world of his own, for he was a reader and a thinker. He was not a very good man. Not all Englishmen are good even now when England is at war, you who bristle at any criticism of your beloved maternal island—you who write for me!

This man was not very good because there was so little love in his heart. He was not incapable of love, yet he was unable to awaken love in others, and so was soul-starved. But sometimes he was conscious of a great yearning, and when the yearning came he was impatient, and took a drink, or cursed his servant, or both. Sometimes when he was most impatient with the world and with himself, he went on a “spree.” The war began. His natural impatience found something congenial in the hurry and noise of the expedition. He was glad to go. He had known a German in London and had disliked him thoroughly. The German talked too much, and his loud tones jarred on the sensitive ears of the refined officer. As he led his men into battle he thought of this German. He felt that he was battling with him at last face to face, and the feeling gave him a thrill of satisfaction. Hate had become an almost sensual luxury. The German had fascinated by his blustering personality a woman of rather coarse type to whom the officer had been impatiently attracted. He hated himself for the attraction, and he hated the German for frustrating it. We always hate those who frustrate the emotions we hate. The officer was killed by a German bullet, in the early days of the war. Where? Oh, no matter where! There are those who might recognize the man, and I am not a betrayer of unwilling confidences. When I listen at the keyhole of life I never report too much of what I hear. I use my discretion. I shall call this man my friend, for I was so much his friend that I have a right to claim him. Before the battle in which my friend met death I had lingered near him, with a desire to soften the hard feelings in his heart. Those feelings are not usual among the soldiers of a particular section of the northern battle line. To them fighting is a sort of glorified sport—or it was so last September.

My friend was an exception, and that is why I choose to write about him, that my assertion of his exceptional qualities may keep the reader from shuddering too much. I should not like my readers to feel that their friends went through a similar experience. You who hang above this page, my friend was not your friend. The experiences of your friends were less terrible. They were all better men than he, because you loved them, and this man was not good because he was not loved enough. He met death by a rifle bullet. Then all became dark before him, and he was unconscious for a time. He was awakened by the noise of a bursting shell. “The battle has begun,” he thought. “Damn that man! He should have awakened me at dawn.” He was among the men of his regiment. They seemed larger than usual, and blurred in outline. He rubbed his eyes. “Hell and damnation! Who have they put in my place?” For he saw a minor officer who commanded where he had commanded.

He turned away, then came back again. He would demand to know! He started toward the place where his superior officer should have been, some distance away, and found himself instantly there. “What is the matter with me?” he thought. “Have I lost my mind?” He saluted the officer, who paid no attention to him. “Am I asleep?” he wondered. He went up to a soldier who was loading a rifle and touched him on the arm. The soldier also paid no attention. He gripped the man’s arm. Still he paid no attention, but raised his rifle and fired. My friend went toward two men who were talking together. “Poor old --------!” he heard one of them say. “Shot through the heart! He was a good officer, though a surly fellow. I’m sorry he’s dead.”

The -------- they spoke of was himself. “Shot through the heart—a good officer—a surly fellow—dead!” He knew. Knowledge sometimes comes more slowly. He was “dead.” “Just my luck!” was his instinctive thought. Another shell burst behind him with a shattering report. Suddenly he saw before him a face that riveted his attention. It was a malignant, an insolent face. Then it changed into the face of his enemy, the German back in England whom he hated. “So it’s you, is it?” he asked. The spectre made no answer, but changed its shape again. This time it was like the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking. “You, too!” he said, impatiently. Again the specter changed countenance. It was like a servant whom my friend had cursed once too often, and who had left him the year before. “Are you, too, dead?” he asked; but the face before him had now resumed its original appearance. It was merely a malignant, insolent face, resembling nobody in particular. “What are you, anyway?” my friend demanded; but still there was no answer.

The eye of the specter interested him—the left eye. As he gazed at it, the eye gradually enlarged until it seemed the size of a target in a shooting gallery. The iris, of a peculiar greenish-blue, was in the very middle of the eye, so that the white showed all round. The black pupil stared at him with its concentrated malice—a pupil large as a saucer. “Why do you do that?” demanded my friend; but the eye still made no answer. Then it vanished. A troop of hateful shades came in its place, ugly shades, some human, some subhuman. Another shell burst nearby, and the shades began to dance. They caught at him and whirled him around with them, around and around until he was dizzy. Then suddenly they stopped, and each and all of them changed into the form of the German back in England whom my friend had hated. Then another group of mad beings mingled with them. They also changed suddenly—there were a dozen duplicates of the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking, and they and the duplicates of his enemy caught one another’s hands and kissed each other.

Sick, revolted, my friend wished himself away, and he was away. He was over among the soldiers of the German army across the plain. He heard the sounds of the language he disliked. “What the devil!” he thought, and the devil stood before him, hoofs, horns and tail complete. “Hadn’t thought of me before, had you?” sneered the evil being. My friend was hurt and bewildered by the appearance, for it looked, with all its unlovely accessories, so like himself. “Will you, too, change form in a moment?” he asked. “Oh, no! I change slowly. I only change as you change.” “What do you mean?” “You only can change me.” “Change, then!” said my friend. But the demon remained as before. “Change!” repeated my friend; but still the figure before him changed not at all. “Then you lied when you said I could change you!” “I said that I change slowly.” “What do you mean?” “I only change as you change.”

“And I have not changed, then?” “It is my business to keep you from changing.” In company with his devil my friend now went through scenes which I refrain from describing, Goethe in the Walpurgis Night having done it so well before me. Reckless, desperate, he followed his leader until he was weary and exhausted. Days, weeks passed away, like a nightmare. “Can I never get rid of you?” he asked his companion. “Yes, you can get rid of me.” “How?” “By getting rid of yourself.” “That’s easier said than done.” “Yes, that’s easier said than done.”

Often they found themselves on the battlefield in the fighting line, or at the mess of the soldiers. The smell of the coffee and the cooking meats brought temporary satisfaction to my friend. He tried to drink from brandy flasks tilted to the mouths of men who could not see him or protest; he steeped himself in hungers and despairs. His companions were always changing themselves into the forms of the man he hated and the woman he loved. He witnessed their coarse love-making. Sometimes the simulacrum of the woman turned to him with a friendly word. He cursed her, but clung to her hand. But always she vanished when his mouth yearned to hers. Sometimes in a great battle the rage of war awoke in him. He hurled himself at the men of the opposing army, as if he would take revenge upon them for all he was suffering. He struggled to tear the rifles from their hands, and when one of them passed out of the body he tried to awake him from the darkness and the sleep into which he was sinking; but never could he succeed in doing this. Never could he succeed in doing anything. His very existence was failure and futility and discouragement.

One day I came to him and touched him on the forehead. “You are not like these others,” he said, dully. “Where do you come from?” “I came from a distance,” I said. “Would you like to go with me?” “Anywhere away from here,” he assented. “Do you want to be alone?” “No. It is worst when I am alone.” “The worst is over,” I said. “What do you mean?” “I mean that you have exhausted for the time the springs of your lower desires. You are weary and disgusted with the life you have led since you escaped your body.” “That is a strange expression—escaped! It is only now that I long to escape.” “And it is I that will help you to escape from another layer of your prison, another skin of the onion that shuts you in.” “And why do you do this?” “To spare you unnecessary fumbling to break the skin,” I said. “Would you like to go to sleep?” “I should like to rest a little.” While he slept I helped to loosen him further, and when he awoke into another and freer world I was still with him. “What would you like to see?” I asked. “Something beautiful,” he answered, “something beautiful and pure.” “Would you care to witness a dance of elves?” I asked, smiling.

“A dance of elves? Are there really such things?” “The universe contains innumerable forms of life and consciousness,” I said. “And you who believe in devils from experience can surely believe in elves.” They came toward us as I spoke, lithe, tenuous forms, dancing with joy across the flowery spaces of the Elysian Fields. They swayed and circled around us, those beings pure as the air in which they moved, light as the happiness they exhaled, enduring as hope and lovelier than mortal dreams. The shadows had all gone from my friend’s face, and he too seemed to taste joy, he too was light as air, and pure. He joined their dance and circled with them around me. I tell you in a burst of confidence that I also have danced with elves. This companion and friend of the Beautiful Being has swum in the sea of universal life and floated on the wings of irresponsibility. He who knows too much of the world’s sorrow must sometimes lighten the load by knowing nothing but joy. When the sylphs had gone to their more inviolable retreat, another shape came toward us.

“What would you like to see now?” I asked him. “Can I see a person who still lives in England?” he asked, half shyly, yet with the winning confidence of souls who trust their own desires—the higher wisdom which comes with the purification of desire. “Perhaps,” I said. The form that came toward us was unfamiliar to me, but my friend recognized and welcomed it. A woman of intense and vital personality, yet with that purity of atmosphere without which no communion is possible in the region where we then were, was standing beside my friend. “Let us sit together a little,” I said. “It will seem more homelike.” The two beside me seemed happy in each other’s presence. “Sisterly-sweet hand in hand,” they sat together; and though I knew that one of them was only the simulacrum of a living woman, yet she also seemed real to me for the moment, for the kind sentiments of the heart are real, and in the region to which I had conducted my friend all sentiments are kind. No enemies are found there, and the woman he liked also liked him, or she could not have been there.