THE OTHER SIDE OF SLEEPING

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 10 (Supplement)

THE OTHER SIDE OF SLEEPING

(By K. M. KNIGHT.)

ROBERTS was sitting in front of a fire in the library, smoking. Out-

side a wintry gale was howling. He was thinking about life, and about death, and how quiet the house was when his wife was out. He hoped she was enjoying herself—dear Elsa, gone to the Browns' for the evening; all wrapped up in a fur coat, and just her little golden head shining over the collar. Always so happy, so full of life, yet so much a woman; so full of warmth and comfort, like a fire on a cold evening, a patch of sunlight on a dreary road.

The clock was ticking loudly on the mantlepiece. The wind was blowing gusts of smoke out into the room. Sometimes a flame would die. down, smoke would rise, and then suddenly flame would come again into the smoke, leaping across the distance. Roberts watched it and watched it, and listened to the wind blowing. The warmth of the room seemed more than ever desirable in contrast to the wind and the rain. The familiar leather-seated chairs, the rows of low shelves loaded with books, their red and blue and brown covers shining in the light, the big chesterfield and its cushions—aft seemed very dear and very near to him. And some day, he thought suddenly for no reason at all, I shall have to leave all this, and die, and lie out in the rain, down six feet in the cold earth, where not a wisp of sunlight will ever filter, and no wind sing.

The idea filled him with horror in a way that it had never done before. He had always thought of death as something that happened to strangers; not as something that would happen to him, and to Elsa, and to those others nearest and dearest to him. He remembered a talk he and old Saunders had once had. Saunders was a kind of psychic—got strange feelings, and saw visions, and silly things like that—and he once told him that he knew what death was like, because it had come to him suddenly as a flash of light one day when he was walking alone through the wind and rain. It was just a waking up on the other side of sleep—becoming conscious, living and taking up one's body—on the dark side of sleeping. Saunders' face had become quite red with his sincerity, his desire to make Roberts see what he had seen.

"You know, Boh, it's just as if one stepped out of bed on the other side. You know the line there is between being awake and being asleep? Well, imagine becoming really yourself, and not just dreaming on the "other side of the line. That is what death is like. I know that now. I shall never be afraid when it comes." Roberts said he wasn't afraid, either. "Perhaps you haven't thought about it, old man. People don't. But it will come for you, one day. And then you will know what it is like." Yes, thought Roberts, it would come. Like a cold shadow, across the warm [ room, it seemed to come to him now. j He shuddered, and bent to poke up the fire. He heard the door open, and there stood Saunders, smiling at him. "Well, of all the strange things! I was thinking about you." Roberts rose to meet him. "How did you get in? Elsa is out. I didn't hear you coming." Roberts drew up another chair and pushed his own a little to one side of the fire. "Sit down. You must be frozen. Are you wet?" "No, I'm not wet. I took a taxi. The door was open, so I just walked in." Saunders smiled again. "So you were thinking about me, were you?" "Yes. Funny thing. I was remembering the time you and I were out fishing, and we talked of death? Remember?" "I remember. I told you it was like waking up on the other side of sleeping, didn't I?" "You did." "So it is, too. The old body is left like a <oat one has finished with, and there is a brand new one, lighter and more finely woven, waiting to take its place. That is the only difference.* One wakes' up, is wholly oneself, and everything is as it was, except that one's dreaming seems to have been done while on the earth." Roberts laughed. "Funny old Saunders," he said. "You were- always so sure about the things that other people dare not even guess at. It is just like you to sit there and tell me about it. What kind of lives do the Martians live ?" "Ask them.! I'm not a Martian." "Have a cigarette?" "No thanks." "Not given up smoking?" "Yes. The flavour is lost to me now. My tastes are changing a little. Must be getting old." "You? You look younger than ever. I'm glad you dropped in to-night. I had the jitters. Elsa out, the wind howling, the familiarity and warmth of the room —they all made me feel sad, somehow. It was like listening to sweet music that one has not heard for a long time, but a tune that is associated with some sorrowful story, or part of one's life. You know?" Saunders nodded. "And then I got to thinking of you, and the walks and talks we used to have before I was married. And I felt that life was going; that it was passing.me, and I *loved everything so terribly, and couldn't bear to let it go from me." "It won't go from you," Saunders said slowly. "Nothing that is, is ever lost. There is an essence in every lovely thing that is permanent. The manifestation may change, but the essence—never." Roberts turned his chair towards his friend's. His face was serious, and his eyes shone. "Saunders:—l'm so in love with life. Looking round this room, I felt I loved every stick of inanimate furniture, every flickering shadow, every picture, every book in it. I've lived all my life like that—so much in "love with everything. Life with Elsa is like music. We sit here at night together and just being i together and watching the fire makes a song out of life. I don't want to leave it and step out into darkness, and have to forget it all—or worse still—remember it." Saunders smiled the strange, wise smile he had greeted Roberts with. "You Won't have to leave it." He looked into the fire. His face was clear to Roberts shining in the light of the flames. The strong, firm mouth, the wide set eyes, the straight nose, the look of calm and poise about him. "Why worry about it? I tell you that in reality, no thing that ever was can be lost. * You have known joy—lots of it. Witli Efea vou have peace and you share beautv. " In the old days you had me—why fear that you must lose them?"

PRIZE-WINNING SHORT STORY.

"Just a silly fear." "Then put it away. In life there is no place tor fear. There is no room for negations." "I wish I didn't feel this desperate sadness." "Just a growing pain. I shall never feci sorrow again. I have looked in the eyes of such glory, Bob. . . ." His voice trailed off. Roberts waited for hun to go on. There seemed to be something electrical in the air. It was like the old days, when they sat in the boat fishing, and Saunders grew philosophical. They seemed to get very near to great truths, and a silence would come about them, and Roberts would feel that they were on the verge of a discovery that would give meaning to life. "There are things I can't tell you, but you will know them soon enough But other things I can tell you. I can tell you that life is bigger, more grand and more beautiful than you have any conception of. Never fear it, Bob.* Not any of it—not even death. When you see mourning, black drapery, long faces and wet eyes—laugh at them. When you hear a black-robed figure with a book in its hand mxirmuring 'Dear friends, we are gathered here to'pay our last respects,' etc., etc., laugh loudly. Man is no miserable sinner born as the grass that flourisheth, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. Remember—in those funny visions I used to have, and that you used to laugh at—l once asked a man who had died what it was like. He told me it amused him vastly. He came to his own funeral, and stood over the crowd gathered round his bodv. I saw him standing there. I asked" him what it was like, being dead, and he told me it was just like being alive, except that where we could see only the living, he could mingle with the dead and the living too. He was more free, fear seemed to have left him entirely, and there was an incredible amount of sunshine everywhere. His face was alight with laughter when I saw him there. It made me laugh, too, to see the difference in the 'poor, dead boy,' and the living. I know who was most alive."

Roberts listened, feeling in his mind for words as one feels in the dark for a familiar object.

"But Saunders—the singing of the birds; the sunshine on green fields; the blue of the sea in mid ocean; the swaying of high masts against the stare; my books and the firelight on this room; Elsa; the coming and going of the seasons—falling leaves and budding branches; frost in the evening sky; the morning star—Saundens, to leave them all would break my heart." "They are the manifestation. They are not the essence. They die, are destroyed, change, and are lost. But the essence remains the same, from ever- ; lasting to everlasting. It is that which is real, Bob. It is the eternal pattern, and the things you know and love are just copies—beautiful enough in themselves, but never lasting. I have seen face to face the other. I know." There was silence. The fire flickered. Roberts said, finding words difficult. "You were always so sure, and I so full of love, so full of fear. The more I love, the more I fear loss." He stooped to poke the fire that was, dying into embers. Saunders got up and moved about the room. Roberts heard him open the door and pass out into the hall. "Looking for a drink?" he called after him. "I'll come and get you one." He stood Tip. He heard Elsa come hurrying into the house. She ha:d discarded her heavy coat. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed. "Bobbie, my dear . . ." She put her arms Tound him. He stroked her golden curls. "Can you bear a frightful shock? Something terrible has happened to Bill!" Roberts was bewildered. "Did he fall over the cat and break his neck?" "Darling, don't joke. This afternoon. Just outside Brown's. He was killed in a motor smash. He was frightfully mutilated. I have seen him. Oh, Bobbie . . ." Roberts looked straight into the fire. "Darling, I came straight back to tell you. I Pknew you would not want to hear it from anyone else. You were such wonderful friends. They brought him into Brown's. He was conscious when they carried him in, and he said something about you. To tell you something. They wouldn't hear what it was. And then he died."

Roberts sat down in the chair and took his wife on to his knee. He drew her head into the curve of his neck, and rested his face against her hair. He said no word. Looking up, Elea saw him smiling into the fire. And there was something in his smile that she could not understand.

Entries for the next monthly short story competition close on May 2o. —Ed.