THE LITTLE DEATH
By Barry Pain
There was once (but it must have happened a long time ago and in some very distant island) a race of people who never slept. Occasionally they became tired and lay down, but they never closed their eyes and never lost consciousness. They had never heard of sleep. They had never learned it. And in consequence they did a great deal of work, but they died very young. They were quite happy about it of course, because one never misses what one has never had. There may be something quite as sweet as sleep which we ourselves do not miss, only because we do not know about it.
One day a shipwrecked man was cast up on the shore. These were hospitable people, and they took him up to the King’s palace and entertained him. And when night came, after he had feasted and drunk, the King said: “And now what pleasure can we offer you? Would you like to hear music, or to see the dancing-girls, or to ride out in the moonlight?”
The man laughed. “None of these things, sir,” he said. “The day has been long, and a feeling of weariness overcomes me. I should now like to sleep.”
“That is some new game?” asked the King, intelligently.
“Sleep?” said the Princess Melissa. “We do not know that. What is this sleep?”
The man explained it as best he could, and his account was received with the greatest interest. Many questions were put to him.
“I perceive,” said the King at last, “that this sleep is really a little death. For the time being you are dead. Take my advice, therefore, O stranger, and give it up. It is an awful risk, thus voluntarily to enter into the place of death. Suppose that one day you find something there that keeps you, and you cannot come back again.”
The stranger explained that, so far was this from being the case, that every time when he went to sleep he was more afraid that something would wake him, than that he would never wake at all.
“I fear,” said the King, “that this shows that you have not thought about the matter profoundly.”
“Possibly not,” said the stranger. “But I am as I am constructed. I sleep because I must sleep. Had I but a couch to lie upon, I could be asleep now in five minutes.”
“How exciting,” said the Princess Melissa.
“May we all see it? May we watch you when you are dead of the little death?”
“Most certainly,” said the stranger politely. “I am so tired that I am likely to sleep very soundly, but all the same noise or bright light would wake me again, and that would make me very angry. I must beg, therefore, that when you come to look upon me in my sleep, the light may be subdued and no sound may be made.”
And to this condition they agreed.
A room was prepared for the stranger in the palace. It was thickly carpeted, so that no footfall could sound. It had a curtained entrance, that the stranger might not be disturbed by the sound of the door opening and shutting when people entered to see the show. The room was dimly lit by the flame of a small lamp. In five minutes the stranger was asleep.
One by one they entered the room—the King, the Princess, and all the people of the court—to see this new and awful phenomenon of a man who was dead of his own volition and would yet come to life again. Three ladies of the court fainted on leaving the apartment. The King became terribly anxious. “This is a dangerous game,” he said, “and must be stopped at once. We do not wish to have the death of this stranger on our conscience. Bring, therefore, bright lights and make a loud noise——”
But here the Princess Melissa intervened. “No,” she said; “he is not really dead, for he still breathes. I watched him most carefully and am sure of it. It is an experiment which he has often made. He tells me that he has had this sleep every night of his life.”
“Doubtless,” said the King, “he wished to make an impression; we are not bound to believe that.”
But the King was bound to admit, though he did so grudgingly, that a man who breathed was not a dead man.
All the night through they watched outside the sleeping-chamber, and about the middle of the night they heard a terrific sound.
“That,” said the King, “is the cry of his death agony. I know it. I am sure of it. We have done wrong.”
As a matter of fact, the sound was the first snore which had ever been heard in that island. It made even the Princess Melissa nervous. But she investigated the phenomenon and reported that no interference seemed to be required. The man was not only breathing, he was breathing more strenuously than he did when he was awake.
Nevertheless a great weight was taken from the King’s mind when his guest came back to life again in the morning. It was noted that the man was none the worse for his strange experience. He seemed even better for it. He was more active and alert. His eye was brighter. He was instantly ready to undertake the fatigue of swimming for a long distance in the sea.
That morning, as he conversed with the Princess Melissa, he tried to explain to her something even more strange than sleep—the dreams that come to one in sleep. The two walked alone through the forest together.
“Tell me,” said the Princess, “do you think that I also could sleep and have a dream? I know it is bizarre and morbid, but I long passionately and above all things to have this strange experience.”
“So far as I can judge,” said her companion, “you are constructed precisely as the women of the rest of the world, where sleep is a nightly event. I may be wrong, but I should imagine that if the initial impulse could be given to you, you also would sleep.”
The Princess clasped her hands in ecstasy. “How perfectly splendid!” she said. “But then how am I to get the initial impulse?”
“What,” asked the man, “is that glow of red amid the yellow in the field yonder?”
“That is where poppies grow among ripening corn. But what have they to do with the initial impulse?”
“They are it,” said the stranger; “by means of those poppies I could prepare for you the secret of sleep. But there would be a risk.”
“You told me just now that in a dream it seemed to you that you were sitting in a boat with an elephant, drinking tea, and the elephant had on a small white coat with a rose in its buttonhole. That seemed as real to you in the dream as it seems now that you are walking with me on the edge of the forest?”
“Quite as real, absolutely real.”
“Then for such a miraculous experience as that, who would not run any risk? Come, we will go and gather poppies.”
For the next few days the stranger was shut up in his apartments in the palace, making the sleep-producing drug of which he knew. He had to test it many times, that he might be assured that the Princess ran no risk. And during these days the Princess Melissa gathered dry bracken and carried it to the ruined temple that stood in the heart of the forest. For it was there that she meant to yield to her great adventure.
The man continued to sleep at nights, always before a good audience. For the wonderful story had been bruited abroad, and all the people in the land were eager to see. One night he slept for a charity in which the King was interested. Money was turned away at the doors, and the thing was a great financial success. But one newspaper of the island complained of the morbid character of the exhibition. “We cannot,” wrote the editor, “approve that this poor sufferer should be made to earn money by what is doubtless his disease.”
The time came at last on a hot afternoon in July. The Princess drank the potion that was given her and lay down on the bed of bracken. The stranger watched by her side.
“It is going to fail. I am not asleep,” said the Princess; “I do not see elephants or boats or anything but what is really here.”
“Close your eyes,” said the stranger; “relax your muscles, breathe regularly, and count every breath you take up to ten. Then begin to count again.”
“It is no use,” said the Princess wearily.
But in a few minutes she was fast asleep.
The Princess was young. Two years before she had fallen in love with a man whom she could not marry, and the man had fallen in love with her. There had been no scandal, such was the discretion that they used, but there had been material for a scandal. The matter was all over now, for the man in his wisdom had gone away.
When the Princess awoke, she sighed deeply.
“You have slept?” said the man.
“I have.”
“You have dreamed?”
“I have.”
“Tell me your dream.”
“I cannot tell you my dream, but I have been to Paradise.”
“Les yeux gris vont au Paradis,” quoted the man.
“Now give me more of the poppy juice,” said the Princess.
“No,” said the man, “I have given you as much as you may take safely in one day.”
So the Princess pretended to be meek and obedient, and said it was very well and she would think no more about it, and perhaps now sleep would come to her at nights even if she did not drink the poppy juice. That had broken down the barrier of the garden of sleep, and now she would be able to enter the garden freely when she would.
“Perhaps,” said the man.
But when for many nights she tried and could not sleep, she grew rebellious, and going secretly to his apartments she procured the poppy juice he had prepared. With this treasure in her hand, she went back to the temple and stretched herself again on the bed of bracken. She drank the whole of the poppy juice.
“For,” she said aloud, “if the little death be so sweet, then—then——”
And here she fell asleep.
For ten successive days I had forgotten to buy the weed-killer; therefore on the tenth day, which was a Wednesday, I went out to weed the gravel paths with my own hands. It is not a pleasant operation. It is, I believe, the thing in gardening that I loathe most.
The faint burble of water led me towards my fountain. It was playing joyously, and some careless person had left beside it a garden-chair and the current issue of Punch.
Any man with a sense of duty and a reasonable amount of will-power would have turned off the fountain and got to work.
The sun was shining brightly. The day was warm. I had not seen that number of Punch. And I did not turn off the fountain, I turned off the work.
But the next day I remembered to buy weed-killer. The commonest saying of the Spaniard is not duly appreciated in this country, and is especially useful in the summer-time.