The Man Who Died Read Online Free PDF Page A

to that village on the hill ahead of me; already I am tired and
weak, and want to close my eyes to everything."
    Hastening a little with the desire to have finished going, he overtook
two men going slowly, and talking. And being soft–footed, he heard they
were speaking of himself. And he remembered them, for he had known them
in his life, the life of his mission. So he greeted them, but did not
disclose himself in the dusk, and they did not know him. He said to them:
    "What then of him who would be king, and was put to death for it?"
    They answered suspiciously: "Why ask you of him?"
    "I have known him, and thought much about him," he said.
    So they replied: "He has risen."
    "Yea! And where is he, and how does he live?"
    "We know not, for it is not revealed. Yet he is risen, and in a little
while will ascend unto the Father."
    "Yea! And where then is his Father?"
    "Know ye not? You are then of the Gentiles! The Father is in Heaven,
above the cloud and the firmament."
    "Truly? Then how will he ascend?"
    "As Elijah the Prophet, he shall go up in a glory."
    "Even into the sky."
    "Into the sky."
    "Then is he not risen in the flesh?"
    "He is risen in the flesh."
    "And will he take flesh up into the sky?"
    "The Father in Heaven will take him up."
    The man who had died said no more, for his say was over, and words beget
words, even as gnats. But the man asked him: "Why do you carry a cock?"
    "I am a healer," he said, "and the bird hath virtue."
    "You are not a believer?"
    "Yea! I believe the bird is full of life and virtue."
    They walked on in silence after this, and he felt they disliked his
answer. So he smiled to himself, for a dangerous phenomenon in the world
is a man of narrow belief, who denies the right of his neighbour to be
alone. And as they came to the outskirts of the village, the man who had
died stood still in the gloaming and said in his old voice:
    "Know ye me not?"
    And they cried in fear: "Master!"
    "Yea!" he said, laughing softly. And he turned suddenly away, down a side
lane, and was gone under the wall before they knew.
    So he came to an inn where the asses stood in the yard. And he called for
fritters, and they were made for him. So he slept under a shed. But in
the morning he was wakened by a loud crowing, and his cock's voice
ringing in his ears. So he saw the rooster of the inn walking forth to
battle, with his hens, a goodly number, behind him. Then the cock of the
man who had died sprang forth, and a battle began between the birds. The
man of the inn ran to save his rooster, but the man who had died said:
    "If my bird wins I will give him thee. And if he lose, thou shalt eat
him."
    So the birds fought savagely, and the cock of the man who had died killed
the common cock of the yard. Then the man who had died said to his young
cock:
    "Thou at least hast found thy kingdom, and the females to thy body. Thy
aloneness can take on splendour, polished by the lure of thy hens."
    And he left his bird there, and went on deeper into the phenomenal world,
which is a vast complexity of entanglements and allurements. And he asked
himself a last question:
    "From what, and to what, could this infinite whirl be saved?"
    So he went his way, and was alone. But the way of the world was past
belief, as he saw the strange entanglement of passions and circumstance
and compulsion everywhere, but always the dread insomnia of compulsion.
It was fear, the ultimate fear of death, that made men mad. So always he
must move on, for if he stayed, his neighbours wound the strangling of
their fear and bullying round him. There was nothing he could touch, for
all, in a mad assertion of the ego, wanted to put a compulsion on him,
and violate his intrinsic solitude. It was the mania of cities and
societies and hosts, to lay a compulsion upon a man, upon all men. For
men and women alike were mad with the egoistic fear of their own
nothingness. And he thought of his own mission, how he had tried to lay
the compulsion of love on all men. And