Afterlife by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online

called
me
, as if the coat were the body, as if the body were the soul! What a horrid thing is that body — deadly pale, with a yellowish-bluecolour, holding a cigar in its mouth and a match in its two burned fingers. Well, I hope that you shall never smoke again, dirty rag! Ah! if only I had a hand and scissors to cut the thread which ties me still to it! When my companions return they will look at that and exclaim, “The Professor is dead.” Poor young friends! They do not know that I never was as alive as I am, and the proof is that I see the guide going up rather by the right, when he promised me to go by the left; W— was to be the last one on the rope, and he is neither the first nor the last, but alone, away from the rope. Now the guide thinks that I do not see him because he hides himself behind the young men whilst drinking at my bottle of Madeira. Well, go on, poor man, I hope that my body will never drink of it again. Ah! there he is stealing a leg of chicken. Go on, old fellow, eat the whole of the chicken if you choose, for I hope that my miserable corpse will never eat or drink again.’ I felt neither surprise nor vexation; I simply stated the facts with indifference. ‘Hullo!’ said I, ‘there is my wife going to Lucerne, and she told me that she would not leave before tomorrow, or after tomorrow … They are five before the hotel at Lungern. Well, wife, I am a dead man. Goodbye.’ … My only regret was that I could not cut the string. In vain I travelled through so beautiful worlds that earth became insignificant. I had only two wishes: the certitude of not returning to earth, and the discovery of my next glorious body, without which I felt powerless. I could not be happy because the thread, though thinner than ever, was not cut, and the wished-for body was still invisible to my searching looks.
    Suddenly a shock stopped my ascension, and I felt that somebody was pulling and pulling the balloon down. My grief was measureless. The fact was that … our guide had discovered and administered to my body the well-known remedy, rubbing with snow … Here is for me an obscurity. I remember only that all seemed to me confusion and chaos, and I felt disdain for the guide who, expecting a good reward, tried to make me understand that he had done wonders … I never felt a more violent irritation. At last I could say to my poor guide, ‘Because you are a fool you take me for a fool, whilst my body alone is sick. Ah! if you had simply cut the string.’
    ‘The string? What string? You were nearly dead.’
    ‘Dead! I was less dead than you are now, and the proof is that I saw you going up the Titlis by the right, whilst you promised me to go by the left.’
    The man staggered before replying, ‘Because the snow was soft and there was no danger of slipping.’
    ‘You say that because you thought me far away. You went up by the right, and allowed two young men to put aside the rope. Who is a fool? You — not I. Now show me my bottle of Madeira and we will see if it is full.’
    ‘The blow was such that his hands left my body and he fell down, saying, evidently to himself, ‘Did he follow us? No, we should have seen him. Could he see through the mountain? Is his body dead, and does his ghost reproach me for what I did?’
    ‘Oh’, said I brutally, ‘you may fall down and stare at me as much as you please, and give your poor explanations, but you cannot prove that my chicken has two legs because you stole one.’
    This was too much for the good man. He got up, emptied his knapsack while muttering a kind of confession, and then fled.
    The Rev. Bertrand’s observation that his wife had gone to Lucerne a day earlier than intended also proved to be correct.
    In a case like this, we have not only the corroboration of the other people concerned, but also the Rev. Bertrand’s apparently ‘impossible’ knowledge of what the guide had been doing while his back was turned. If he was mistaken to believe