Relation of My Imprisonment by Russell Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

lost soul, of the type that can no longer save itself but instead must be saved, if at all, by virtue of some will other than its own, which is to say, by the power of grace. I would be saved now only if the dead themselves wished it.
    And so it came about that there was given to me at this time a long dream one night late in the first winter of my imprisonment, in which there spoke to me both my father and his brother my uncle, the man who had taught me my skills as a coffin-maker and who, at my father’s request, had constructed my own coffin, the very one I had passed on to the saintly John Bethel some seven or eight months before. If in life we are to be touched and directed by a will other than our own, it will most likely happen while we are asleep, for sleep is as like unto death as a footrace resembles flight. Thus, in miming death, I was drawn into a passive openness to the dead and the wisdom thereof and the enactment of their will, so that my father and his brother were able to come and speak to me and I was able to hear. The encounter took place in the kitchen of the house where I had been born and raised to the time when I left and went off to live with my uncle, there to learn from him how to make coffins. My father was as he had been during my earliest childhood, very large and looming, with a broad, almost sarcastic smile, and my uncle was as he had been when I had worked with him later, my own size, solemn, bearded, and infinitely patient. We three were seated at the kitchen table, my mother was somehow present in the room but remained silent and out of sight during the interview. My father towered over my uncle and me, though we were all three seated at table as if after a pleasant meal, with dishes and cups and various implements scattered before us. Here follows the sense and direction and much of the tone of the statements given me by these two men:
    Father, in a sarcastic tone signifying disapproval: We hear lately that you have allowed your attention to wander. We suppose that this is a result of some wonderful understanding you have recently come by, an understanding which supercedes our own. Perhaps you believe your new perspective unique, and if not unique, then perhaps you think it valid and ours invalid. For we, after all, are but the dead, and you are the living.
    Uncle: My brother wishes to advise you, he loves you, so do not be afraid or abashed before him, merely give him your attention.
    Father, angrily: He has no choice but to give me his attention! He is asleep and dreaming, and thus we have taken it from him! That is how bad a pass things have come to!
    (Is this what is meant by grace? I wondered.)
    Uncle: Listen to the man, he is your father, you are without wisdom, he is dead. Do not be frightened or abashed, he forgives you, he understands, you do not, he is dead and you are among the living. Fear only the living.
    Father, more calmly: Fear the living, indeed. And fear even more your loss of contact with the dead. Go, return to your coffin, find yourself a gate, a wicket, and pass through it to the ground of faith that makes life endurable because honorable, honorable because honoring the dead. The coffin is your gateway. There is no other possibility for your return to honor. Expect, without it, to disappear utterly, utterly! If you will not honor the dead while you are among the living, you will be without honor yourself when you are among the dead! This is your last chance for redemption. It is your only chance for redemption.
    Uncle, soothingly but with urgency: Believe him, nephew, believe him. Do not resist any longer.
    Whereupon the images spun and twirled about before me, and I came awake in my cell to the glistening light of dawn, and I felt freshened in my heart, and I determined that moment to set about that very day to obtain a coffin to replace the one I had given away. I felt joy in my heart for the first time in months, and I could barely keep myself from leaping about