Fantastics and other Fancies/L'Amour Après La Mort
L' AMOUR APRÈS LA MORT[1]
No rest he knew because of her. Even in the night his heart was ever startled from slumber as by the echo of her footfall; and dreams mocked him with tepid fancies of her lips; and when he sought forgetfulness in strange kisses her memory ever came shadowing between. . . . So that, weary of his life, he yielded it up at last in the fevered summer of a tropical city,—dying with her name upon his lips. And his face was no more seen in the palm-shadowed streets;—but the sun rose and sank even as before.
And that vague Something which lingers a
little while within the tomb where the body
moulders, lingered and dreamed within the
long dark resting-place where they had laid
him with the pious hope—Que en paz descanse!
Yet so weary of his life had the Wanderer been that the repose of the dead was not for him. And while the body shrank and sank into dust, the phantom man found no rest in the darkness, and thought dimly to himself: "I am even too weary to find peace!"
There was a thin crevice in the ancient wall of the tomb. And through it, and through the meshes of a web that a spider had woven athwart it, the dead looked and beheld the amethystine blaze of the summer sky,—and pliant pahns bending in the warm wind,—and the opaline glow of the horizon, and fair pools bearing images of cypresses inverted,—and the birds that flitted from tomb to tomb and sang,—and flowers in the shadow of the sepulchres. . . . And the vast bright world seemed to him not so hateful as before.
Likewise the sounds of life assailed the faint senses of the dead through the thin crevice in the wall of the tomb:—always the far-off, drowsy murmur made by the toiling of the city's heart; sometimes sounds of passing converse and of steps,—echoes of music and of laughter,—chanting and chattering of children at play,—and the liquid babble of beautiful brown women.
. . . So that the dead man dreamed of life and strength and joy, and the litheness of limbs to be loved: also of that which had been, and of that which might have been, and of that which now could never be. And he longed at last to live again—seeing that there was no rest in the tomb.
But the gold-born days died in golden fire; and blue nights unnumbered filled the land with indigo-shadows; and the perfume of the summer passed like a breath of incense—and the dead within the sepulchre could not wholly die.
Stars in their courses peered down through the crevices of the tomb, and twinkled, and passed on; winds of the sea shrieked to him through the widening crannies of the tomb; birds sang above him and flew to other lands; the bright lizards that ran noiselessly over his bed of stone, as noiselessly departed; the spider at last ceased to repair her web of elfin silk; years came and went with lentor inexpressible; but for the dead there was no rest!
And after many tropical moons had waxed and waned, and the summer was deepening in the land, filling the golden air with tender drowsiness and passional perfume, it strangely came to pass that She, whose name had been murmured by his lips when the Shadow of Death fell upon him, came to that city of palms, and even unto the ancient place of sepulture, and unto the tomb that was nameless. And he knew the whisper of her raiment—knew the sweetness of her presence—and the pallid hearts of the blossoms of a plant whose blind roots had found food within the crevice of the tomb, changed and flushed, and flamed incarnadine. . . .
But She—perceiving it not—passed by; and the sound of her footstep died away forever.
- ↑ Times-Democrat, April 6, 1884. Hearn's own title. Signed. Almost identical with the Item "Fantastic" of October 21, 1879.