Странник по звездам / The Star-Rover

Лондон Джек

I cried out at sight of one of the photographs and looked at it, first with eagerness, and then with disappointment. It seemed most familiar. Then it seemed strange.

“The Tower of David,” the missionary said to my mother.

“No!” I cried with great positiveness.

“You mean that isn’t its name?” the missionary asked.

I nodded.

“Then what is its name, my boy?”

“Its name is…” I began, then concluded lamely, “I forget.”

“It doesn’t look the same now,” I went on after a pause.

Here the missionary handed to my mother another photograph.

“I was there myself six months ago, Mrs. Standing.” He pointed with his finger. “That is the—”

But here I broke in again, pointing on the left edge of the photograph.

“That name you just spoke,” I said, ”was what the Jews called it. But we called it something else. We called it… I forget.”

“Listen to the youngster,” my father chuckled. “You’d think he’d been there.”

I nodded my head, for in that moment I knew I had been there, though all seemed strangely different. My father laughed, but the missionary handed me another photograph.

“Now, my boy, where is that?” the missionary quizzed.

And the name came to me!

“Samaria [24] ,” I said instantly.

“The boy is right,” the missionary said. “It is a village in Samaria. I passed through it. That is why I bought it. And it seems that the boy has seen similar photographs before.”

This my father and mother denied.

“But it’s different in the picture,” I said, while my memory was busy reconstructing the photograph. The differences I noted aloud and pointed out with my finger.

24

Samaria –

Самария

“The houses were about right here, and there were more trees, lots of trees, and lots of grass, and lots of goats. I can see them now. And right here are lots of men walking behind one man. And over there”—I pointed to where I had placed my village—“lots of tramps. And they’re sick. Their faces, and hands, and legs is all sores.”

“He’s heard the story in church or somewhere—you remember, the healing of the lepers,” the missionary said with a smile of satisfaction. “How many sick tramps are there, my boy?”

I announced:

“Ten. They’re all waving their arms and yelling at the other men.”

“But they don’t come near them?” was the query.

I shook my head.

“They just stand right there and yell like they’re in trouble.”

“Go on,” urged the missionary. “What next? What’s the man doing in the front of the other crowd you said was walking along?”

“They’ve all stopped, and he’s saying something to the sick men. And the boys with the goats have stopped to look. Everybody’s looking.”

“And then?”

“That’s all. The sick men are heading for the houses. They aren’t yelling any more, and they don’t look sick any more.”

At this all three of my listeners broke into laughter.

“And I’m a big man!” I cried out angrily. “And I have a big sword!”

“Christ healed those ten lepers,” the missionary explained to my parents. “The boy has seen some famous paintings.”

But neither father nor mother could remember that I had ever seen famous paintings.

“He will certainly become a good Bible scholar,” the missionary told father and mother after I had kissed them good-night and departed for bed. “Or else, with that imagination, he’ll become a successful fiction-writer.”

Well, back to solitary. By self-hypnosis, which I began successfully to practise, I became able to put my conscious mind to sleep and to awaken and loose my subconscious mind. My method of mechanical hypnosis was simple. Sitting with folded legs on my straw-mattress, I gazed fixedly at a straw which I had attached to the wall of my cell near the door where the most light was. I gazed at the bright point. At the same time I relaxed all my will and gave myself to the swaying dizziness that always eventually came to me. And then I closed my eyes and fell unconscious on the mattress.

And then, for half-an-hour, ten minutes, or as long as an hour or so, I was wandering erratically and foolishly through the stored memories of my eternal recurrence on earth. But that was all. I could never live out completely one full experience. My dreams, if dreams they may be called, were reasonless.

Oh, what a fluttering of luminous images and actions! I have sat in the halls of kings, been a fool and jester, soldier, clerk and monk. I have worn the iron collar about my neck; and I have loved princesses of royal houses. I have been a scholar and recluse. And again, I have been little Darrell Standing, bare-footed on the Minnesota farm, I fed the cattle in their stalls.

Such things are not of Darrell Standing’s experience. Yet I, Darrell Standing, found these things within myself in solitary in San Quentin by means of mechanical self-hypnosis. One cannot make anything out of nothing. These things were in the content of my mind, and in my mind I was just beginning to learn my way about.

Chapter VII

I knew that within myself were memories of other lives, yet I was unable to use them. My bright bit of straw did not allow me to achieve any definiteness of previous personality. I became convinced, through the failure of my experiments, that only through death could I clearly resurrect the memories of my previous selves. But I, Darrell Standing, was so strongly disinclined to die that I refused to let Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie kill me. I was always urged to live, that is why I am still here, eating and sleeping, thinking and dreaming, writing this narrative and awaiting the rope that will finish my existence.

And then came death in life. Ed Morrell taught it me, as you will see. Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie came to me in my dark cell, and they told me plainly that they would jacket me to death. And they assured me that they would do it officially. My death would appear on the prison register as due to natural causes.

Oh, please believe me when I tell you that men are killed in prisons today as they have always been killed since the first prisons were built by men.

I well knew the terror, the agony, and the danger of the jacket. I have seen men, strong men, men so strong that their physical stamina resisted all attacks of prison tuberculosis, after a prolonged bout with the jacket, their resistance broken down, fade away, and die of tuberculosis within six months.