quote:
…but what happened to Leonides Manuel Molygruber? Did he go out like a light which has suddenly been switched off? Did he expire (utånde)like a blown out match? No! Not at all.
Molygruber lying in his hospital bed feeling sick enough to die, was thoroughly upset by that priest. (a hospitalpriest had visited him).He thought how unpriestlike it was for the man to turn redder and redder in the face, and from his position lying in the bed it was very clear that the priest intended to jump at him and choke him, so Molygruber sat up suddenly in an attempt to protect himself while perhaps he could scream for help.
He sat up suddenly with a supreme effort and drew the biggest breath that he could under the circumstances. Immediately he felt a terrible rasping, wracking pain across his chest. His heart raced like the engine of a car, the gas pedal of, which has been pushed hard to the floor while the car was standing in neutral. His heart raced -and stopped.
The old man felt instant panic. What was to happen to him? What was the end? Now, he thought, I am going to be snuffed out like the candle I used to snuff out as a boy at home, in the only home he had known as an orphan(foreldreløs). The panic was terrible, he felt every nerve was on fire, he felt as if someone was trying to turn him inside out just like he imagined a rabbit must feel - if a dead rabbit could feel when its skin is being pulled off preparatory to putting the rabbit's body in a pot for cooking.
Suddenly there was the most violent earthquake, or such is what he thought it was, and old Molygruber found everything swirling. The world seemed to be composed of dots like blinding dust, like a cyclone whirling around and round. Then it felt as if someone had grabbed him and put him through a wringer or through a sausage machine. He felt just too terrible for words.
Everything grew dark. The walls of the room, or 'something', seemed to close in around him. He felt as if he were enclosed in a clammy slimy rubber tube and he was trying to wriggle his way out to safety.
Everything grew darker, blacker. He seemed to be in a long, long tube, a tube of utter blackness. But then far away in the distance in what undoubtedly was the end of the tube he saw a light, or was it a light? It was something red, something changing to bright orange like the fluorescent lifejacket he wore when street cleaning. Frantically, fighting every inch of the way, he struggled along forcing his way up the tube. He stopped for a moment to draw breath and found that he was not breathing. He listened and listened, then he couldn't hear his heart beating but there was a queer noise going on outside like the rushing of a mighty wind. Then while he remained without movement of his own volition, he seemed to be pushed up the tube and gradually he reached the top. For a time he was just stuck there, held in the end of the tube, and then there was a violent 'pop' and he was flung out of the tube like a pea out of a peashooter (pusterør). He spun around sideways and end over end, and there was nothing, no red light, no orange light either. There was not even any blackness. There was - NOTHING!
Thoroughly frightened and feeling in a most peculiar condition he reached out with his arms, but nothing moved. It was just as if he had no arms. Panic set in once again, so he tried to kick out, kick out hard with his legs, trying to touch something. But again there was nothing, nothing at all. He could not feel any legs. He made a supreme effort to have his hands touch a part of his body but so far as he could tell he hadn't any hands, he hadn't any arms, and he couldn't sense his body. He just 'was' and that is all. A fragment of something he had heard long before came back into his consciousness. It was something referring to a disembodied spirit, a ghost without form, without shape, without being, but existing somehow, somewhere. He seemed to be in violent motion, but at the same time he seemed not to be moving at all. He felt strange pressures, then of a sudden he felt that he was in tar, hot tar.
Long ago, almost beyond the edge of his memory, he had as a small boy been hanging around while some men had been tarring a road. One of the men, perhaps not having very good sight or perhaps in a spirit of mischief, had tipped a barrow of tar from the open top of the barrel and it had fallen all over the small boy. He had been stuck, hardly able to move, and that was how it felt to him now. He felt hot, then he felt cold with fright, then he felt hot again, and all the time there was the sense of motion which wasn't motion at all because he was still, he was still with - he thought - the stillness of death.
Time went on, or did it? He did not know, all he knew was that he was there in the centre of nothingness. There was nothing around him, there was nothing to his body, no arms, no legs, and he supposed he must have a body other - wise how could he exist at all? But without hands he could not feel the body. He strained his eyes, peering, peering, peering, but there was nothing to see. It was not even dark, it was not darkness at all, it was nothingness. Again a fragment of thought came into his mind referring in some way to the deepest recesses of the seas of space where nothing is. He idly wondered where he had got that from, but no more thoughts on it came to him.
He existed alone in nothingness. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, nothing to touch, and even had there been something to touch it would not have helped him because he had nothing with which to touch.
Time wore on, or did it? He had no idea how long he stayed there. Time had no meaning. Nothing had meaning any more. He was just 'there', wherever 'there' was. He seemed to be a mote suspended in nothingness like a fly caught on a spider's web, but yet not like a fly for a fly is held by the spider's web. Old Molygruber was caught on nothingness, which reduced him to a state of nothingness. His mind, or whatever was in place of a mind, reeled. He would have felt faint, he thought, but there was nothing there with which to feel faint.
He just 'was' a something or possibly even a nothing surrounded by nothingness. His mind, or his consciousness, or whatever it was that now remained to him, ticked over, tried to formulate thoughts, tried to originate something in place of the awful nothingness which was there. He had the thought coming to him, 'I am nothing but a nothing existing in nothingness.'
A sudden thought occurred to him like a match shining in a moonless night; some time ago he had been asked to do a little extra job for pay, a man had wanted his garage cleaned out. Old Molygruber had gone there, fished around and found a wheelbarrow and a few garden tools, and then he opened the garage door as the man had given him the key the day before. He opened the garage door and inside there was the weirdest conglomeration of rubbish old Molygruber had ever seen - a broken sofa with the springs coming out, a chair with two legs broken and moths fluttering out of the upholstery. Hung on a wall was the frame and front wheel of a bicycle. Stacked around were a number of tyres, snow tyres and worn out tyres. Then there were tools rusted out and useless. There was garbage which only very thrifty people can ever accumulate - a kerosene lamp with a cracked shade, and a venetian blind, and then in the far corner one of those stuffed forms on a wooden stand which women used to use for making dresses. He pulled it all out and carted it down to a bit of waste land, and piled it ready for a garbage collection the next day. Then he went back to the garage.
An old bath fixed in tightly beneath a tattered kitchen table lit his curiosity so he pulled at it but could not move it. Then he decided he would pull the table off the top first; he pulled and the centre drawer fell out. It contained a few coins. Well, old Molygruber thought, it's a pity to throw them, away they could buy a hot dog or two, so he put them away in his pocket for safekeeping. A bit further back in the drawer he found an envelope with some assorted paper money of different countries. Yes, he thought, I can raise a bit on these, a money changer will soon deal with that for me. But back again to the bath. He lifted off the table and pushed it outside the garage doors, then he found a whole load of rotten awnings on top of the bath, and then a broken deck chair came to life. He pulled them all out, threw them all out of the door, and then he could pull the bath into the centre of the garage.
That old galvanised bath contained loads of books, weird books some of them were too. But Molygruber dug down until he got all the books out and piled on the floor. Then he found some paperbacks, which excited something in his mind - Rampa, books by Rampa. Idly he flicked over a page or two. 'Ah,' he said to himself, 'this fellow must be a load of dromedary's droppings, he believes that life goes on and on forever. Pah!' He dropped the books on the pile and then fished out some more books. This fellow Rampa seemes to have written an awful lot of books. Molygruber counted them and was so astonished at the number that he started all over again and recounted. Some of the books had been ruined because obviously a bottle of ink had upset and trickled over a lot of books. There was one book with a beautiful leather binding. Molygruber sighed as he picked it up, ink had soaked right into the binding, marring the leather. What a pity, he thought, he could have got a few bucks for that book just on the worth of the binding alone. But - no point in crying over spilt … - the book was tossed out to join the others.
Right at the bottom of the bath there was another book resting in solitary splendour, saved from dirt, saved from dust, saved from paint and ink by being in a thick plastic wallet. Molygruber bent down and picked it up, pulling it out of the plastic wallet. 'You - Forever' he read. He flipped over the pages, saw there were some illustrations inside.
On some sudden impulse he slipped the book into an inside pocket before going on with flis work.
Now in his peculiar state of being in nothingness he recalled some of the things in the book. When he had got home that night he had had a can of beer and a big lump of cheese which he had bought from the supermarket. Then he had put his feet up and read here and there from the book 'You - Forever.' Some of the things seemed So fantastic to him that eventually he had just flung it away into a corner of the room. Now, though, he bitterly regretted not reading more because he thought that had he done so he would have had a key to his present dilemma.
Round and round his thoughts swirled like dust motes in a vagrant breeze. What had the book said? What did the author mean when he wrote this or when he wrote that? Wonder what had happened? Molygruber recalled sourly how he had always opposed the thought of life after death.
One of the Rampa books, or was it a letter which he picked up in the garbage, suddenly came to his mind. 'Unless you believe in a thing it cannot exist.' And another, 'If a man from another planet came to this Earth, and if that man was so utterly strange to humans, it is even possible they would not be able to see him because their minds would not be able to believe or accept something which was so far out from their own points of reference.'
Molygruber thought and thought, and then he thought to himself, 'Well, I'm dead, but I'm somewhere, therefore I must exist so there must be something in this life after death business. I wish I knew what it was.' As he thought that the stickiness or the tarriness or the nothingness - the sensations were so peculiar that he could not even think what they could be, but as he thought of the possibility that he might have been wrong then he was sure that there was something near him, something that he could not see, something that he could not touch. But, he wondered, is it because he could now possibly accept that there was life after death?
Then again he had heard some strange things, the fellows up at the depot had been talking one day about some gay in a Toronto hospital. The gay was supposed to have died and got out of his body. Molygruber could not recollect exactly what it was, but it seemed to him as far he could remember, that a man had been very ill and had died, so had got out of his body and seen some astonishing things in another world. Then, to his rage, doctors had revived his dying or dead body and he had come back and told some newspaper reporter all about it. Molygruber suddenly felt elated, he could almost see forms about him.
Suddenly poor Molygruber sat up violently and reached out his hand to stop that confounded alarm clock. The bell was clanging as it had never clanged before - but then he remembered he was not asleep; he remembered that he could not feel his arms or his hands or his legs either, for that matter, and all about him was nothingness, nothing at all except the insistent reverberating clanging which might have been a bell but wasn't. He didn't know what it was. While he was still pondering the problem he felt himself move, move at terrific speed, incredible speed, but then again it wasn't speed at all. He was not educated enough to know about different dimensions, third dimension, fourth dimension and so on, but what was happening was that he was being moved in accordance with ancient occult laws. So he moved. We will call it moved because really it is very difficult to portray fourth dimensional things in three-dimensional terms of reference, so let us say 'he moved.'
Molygruber sped along faster and faster it seemed to him, and then there was 'something' and he looked about him and saw shadowy forms, he saw things as though through smoked glass. A little time before there had been an eclipse of the sun and one of his fellow workers had handed him a piece of smoked glass and said, 'Look through that, Moly, and you'll see what's happening around the sun, but don't drop it.' As he looked the smoke gradually disappeared from the glass and he looked down onto a strange room, looked with horror and increasing fright.
Before him was a large room which had many different tables, they seemed to be like hospital tables with all sorts of adjustments to them, and each table was occupied by a corpse, a naked corpse, male and female, all with the bluish tinge of death. He looked and felt sicker and sicker, horrible things were happening to those corpses, tubes were being stuck in at various points and there was the ugly gargle of fluid. there was also the rattle and chug of pumps. He looked more closely in terrified fascination and saw that some of the bodies were having blood pumped out, others were having some sort of fluid pumped in, and as the fluid went in the body turned from its horrid bluish tinge and became exaggeratedly healthy in colour.
Remorselessly Molygruber was moved on. He passed an annex or cubicle in which a young woman was sitting beside one of the tables making up the face of the female corpse. Molygruber was quite fascinated. He saw how the hair was waved, the eyebrows pencilled, and the cheeks rouged, and then the lips were given a rather too vivid red.
He moved on and shuddered as he saw another body, which apparently had just come in. On the eyes which were closed there were peculiar cone-shaped metal pieces which he surmised correctly were to hold the eyelids down. And then he saw a vicious looking needle being pushed through the bottom gam and up through the top gam. He felt decidedly sick as the man who was doing the work suddenly thrust an instrument into the corpse's left nostril and seized the point of the needle jabbing it straight through the septum, after which the thread was pulled tight to hold the jaws together and to keep the mouth shut. He felt definitely queasy, and if he could have he would have been thoroughly sick.
He moved on and then with great shock he saw a body which, with difficulty, he recognised as his own. He saw the body lying there naked on a table, scrawny, emaciated, and definitely in poor condition. He looked with disapproval at his bowed legs and knobbly knuckles. Near him was a coffin or casket, or, more accurately, just a shell.
The force moved him on, and he went through a short corridor and moved into the room. He was moving without any volition of his own. In the room he was stopped. He recognised four of his fellow workers. They were sitting down talking to a well-dressed smooth young man who had in his mind thoughts all the time of how much money he could get out of this.
'Molygruber was working for the City,' said one of his former colleagues, 'he doesn't have much money; he has a car but that isn't worth more than a hundred dollars. It's a beat up old clunker, I suppose it served him well enough, but that's all he's got. That car which would fetch about a hundred dollars, and he's got a very ancient black and white TV, now that might fetch from twenty to thirty dollars. Apart from that all his other effects - well, I don't suppose they'd fetch ten dollars which doesn't leave much room for paying for a funeral, does it?'
The smooth well-dressed young man pursed his lips and stroked his face, and then he said, 'Well, I should have thought you would raise a collection for one of your colleagaes who died under such peculiar circumstances. We know that he saved a child from drowning, and for that he gave his life. Surely someone, even the City, would pay for a proper funeral?' His colleagues looked at each other, shook their heads and fiddled with their fingers, and then one said, 'Well, I dunno, the City doesn't want to pay for his funeral and set a precedent. We've been told that if anything is paid by the City this alderman and that alderman will rise up on their hind legs and bray out a lot of complaints. No, I don't think the City will help at all.'
The young man was looking impatient and trying to conceal it. After all, he was a businessman, he was used to death, dead bodies, coffins, etc., and he had to get money in order to keep going. Then he said, ostensibly as an afterthought, 'But wouldn't his Union do anything for him?'
The four former colleagaes almost simultaneously shook their heads in negation. 'No,' said one, 'we've approached them but no one wants to pay out. Old Molygruber was just an ordinary sidewalk sweeper and there is no great publicity if people give to his funeral.'
The young man rose to his feet and moved to a side room. He called to the men saying, 'If you come in here I can show you different caskets, but the cheapest we could do an interment would be two hundred and fifty dollars and that would be the very cheapest, just the cheapest wooden shell and the hearse to take it to the burial ground. Could you raise two hundred and fifty dollars?'
The men looked thoroughly embarrassed, and then one said, 'Well, yes, I gaess we could, we could raise two hundred and fifty dollars but we can't give it to you now.'
'Oh no, I am not expecting you to pay now,' said the young man, 'provided you sign this Form gaaranteeing payment. Otherwise, you see, we might be left bearing the expense and that, after all, is not our responsibility.'
The four colleagues looked at each other rather expressively, and then one said, 'Well, okay, I gaess we can spring up to three hundred dollars but we can't go to a cent more. I'll sign the Form for up to that.'
The 'young man produced a pen and handed it to one of them, and he hastily signed his name and put his address. The other three men followed suit.
The young man smiled at them now he had the Guarantee Form, and he said, 'We have to be sure of these things; you know, because this person, Mr. Molygruber, is occupying space which we badly need because we have a very thriving business and we want him removed as quickly as possible, otherwise charges will be incurred.'
The men nodded to him, and one said, 'See ya,' and with that they moved out to the car which had brought them. As they drove away they were. very subdued, very quiet and very thoughtful, then one said, 'Guess we shall have to get the money together pretty quick, don't want to think of old Moly stuck in that place.' Another said, 'Just think, poor old devil, he's worked for years sweeping the sid&walks, keeping his barrow in better condition than any of the others, and now he's dead after saving a life and no one wants to accept the responsibility so it's up to us to show a bit of respect for him, he wasn't a bad fellow after all. So let's see how we can get the money together. Do you know what we're going to do about the funeral?'
There was silence. None of them had given much thought to it. In the end one fellow remarked, 'Well, I suppose we shall have to get time off to see him properly put under.
We'd better go and see the foreman and see what he's got to say about it.'
Molygruber drifted along seeing the city that he knew so well. He seemed to be like one of those balloons that some-times flew over Calgary advertising a car firm or other things. He drifted along and seemed to have no control on where he was going. First he seemed to emerge from the roof of the funeral home. He looked down and saw how drab the streets were, how drab the houses were, how much they were in need of a coat of paint, he said 'a lick' of paint. He saw the old cars parked in driveways and at the roadside, and then moved on downtown and felt quite a twinge as he looked down at his old familiar haunt and found a stranger there, a stranger wearing his plastic helmet, pushing his barrow, and probably wearing what had been his fluorescent red safety jacket. He looked down at the man languidly (apatisk) pushing the broom along in the gutters and every so often reaching for the two boards which he had held in his hands to lift up garbage and deposit it in his barrow. His barrow, too, looked rather drab; it was not as well kept as when he had had it, he thought. He drifted on looking down with a critical and condemnatory eye at the litter in the streets. He looked at a new building site and saw the excavated soil being lifted up and driven across the city by strong breezes, which were blowing.
Something impelled him jip to the sanitation Depot. He found himself floating over the city, he found himself dipping down over a sanitation truck which was going to collect the barrows and the men. But he went on, went on to the depot and sank down through the roof. There he found his four former associates talking to the foreman: 'Well, we can't just leave him there,' said one of the men, 'it's a pretty awful thought that he ain't got enough money to get in the ground properly and nobody else is going to do a thing about it.' The foreman said, 'Why don't we take a collection? It's pay day, if we ask each of the men if they'll only give ten dollars each we can get him buried proper with a few flowers and things like that. I've known him since he was a lad, he's never had anything, sometimes I've thought he wasn't quite right in his head but he always did his job although a bit slower than most others. Yes, that's what we'll do, we'll put a notice up above the paying-out booth asking everyone to give at least ten dollars.'
One of the associates said, 'How much will you give?'
The foreman pursed his lips and screwed up his face, and then fumbled in his pocket. He produced his battered old wallet and looked inside. 'There,' he said, 'that's all I have in the world until I get my pay, twenty bucks. I'll give twenty bucks.'
One of the men rummaged around and found amid the 'garbage a suitable box, a cardboard box. He cut a slot in the middle and said, 'There, that's our collection box. We'll put that in front of the paying-out booth together with a notice. We'll go in and get one of the clerks to write a notice for us now before the others get paid.'
Soon the men came in from their rounds. The barrows were unloaded from the trucks, the men parked them in their allotted places and put their brooms in the racks ready for the next day, and then chattering away idly as men and women will when in a throng they moved to the booth to be paid. 'What's this?' asked one.
'Our late colleagne, Molygruber, there isn't enough money to pay for his funeral. How come you gays don't fork out ten dollars each at least? He was one of our own fellows, you know, and he's been on the council staff a long, long time.'
The men grumbled a bit and mumbled a bit, and then the first man moved to get his pay envelope. Every eye was upon him as he took it. He quickly stuffed it in his pocket, then at the glares around him he half-heartedly fished it out and reluctantly opened one end of the envelope. Slowly, slowly he put a finger and thumb inside and at last produced a ten-dollar bill. He looked at it, and looked at it again turning it over in his hands. Then with a great big sigh he shoved it quickly through the slot in the collection box and moved away. Others collected their pay and under the watchful eye of all the men assembled took out a ten dollar bill and put it in the collection box. At last all the men had been paid, all the men save one had given ten dollars, and be had said, 'Gee no, I didn't know the gay, I've only been here s week, I don't see why you expects me to pay for a guy I've never even seen.' With that he pulled his cap more tightly on his head, marched out to his old car and drove off with a roar and a rattle.
The foreman moved to the four men who were chiefly concerned in the matter and said, 'How come you don't go and see the Top Brass? Maybe they's give a bit. - nothing to lose, they can't fire you for it, can they?' So the four men marched into the offices of the senior officials. They were embarrassed, they shifted from foot to foot and mutely one of them held the notice and the collection box in front of one of the managers. He looked at it and sighed, and then took out ten dollars, folded it up and put it in the box. Others followed suit. Ten dollars, no more no less. At last the rounds were done and the four men wes back to the foreman. He said, 'Now, you gays, we'll go in to the accountant and we'll get him to count it up for us and give us a proper statement of how much it is. That lets us off the hook.'
CHAPTER FOUR
Gertie Glubenheimer gazed gloomily around the large room. Bodies everywhere, she thought, bodies to the left of me, bodies to the right of me, bodies in front and bodies behind, what a sick, sick lot they look! She straightened up and looked at the clock at the far end of the room. Twelve thirty, she said to herself, lunch time. So she fished out her lunch pail from beneath the table on which she was working and, turning, she spread a book and her sandwiches on top of the body beside her. Gertie was an embalmer. She did up bodies in the Funeral Home so that they could be gazed at in the display rooms by admiring relatives. 'Oh gee, look at 'im. Don't Uncle Nick look good at last, eh?' people would say. Gertie was very familiar with dead bodies, so much so that she did not even bother to wash her hands before touching her food after messing about with these bodies.
A voice broke in, 'Who was the stupid idiot who left that autopsy case without filling up the chest cavity?' The little man at the end of the room near the door was almost dancing with rage.
'Why boss, what's happened?' asked one man incautiously.
'What happened? I'll tell you what happened! The gay's wife leaned over him to give him a fond kiss of farewell and there was only a piece of newspaper under the sheet, and her elbow went right through into his chest cavity. Now she's having hysterics fit to bust. She's threatening so sue us to our back teeth.'
There was a ssbdued chuckle around the room because things like that were always happening and no one took such cases too seriously. When it got down to brass tacks the relatives would not like it to be known that they had got their elbows inside their dearest just preparatory to interment.
The boss looked up and came trotting towards Gertie:
'Get your lunch pail off his face,' he roared, 'you just bend his nose and we'll never be able to do him up.'
Gertie sniffed and said, 'Okay boss, okay, keep calm, this fellow is a poorly, he's not going on display!'
The boss looked at the number on the table and consulted a list he was carrying saying, 'Oh him, yes, they can't go above three hundred dollars, we'll just box him up and send him off. What are we going to do about clothes?'
The girl looked to where the naked body was beside her and asked, 'What's wrong with the clothes he had on when he came in?'
The boss said, 'They were hardly good enough to put in the garbage can. Anyway, they've shrunk so much after being washed that they won't go on now.'
Gertie said, 'Well, how about those old curtains we took down and we decided they were too faded to put up again, couldn't we wrap him in one of those?'
The boss glowered at her and replied, 'They're worth ten dollars, who's going to pay ten dollars for it? I think the best thing to do is to put some shavings in the casket, dump him in, and put some more shavings on top. That's good enough, nobody's going to see him anyhow. Do that.' He stamped off and Gertie resumed her lunch.
Over it all hovered Molygruber in his astral form, unseen, unheard, but seeing and hearing all. He was sickened at the way his body was being treated but some strange power held him there, he could not move, he could not shift from the spot at all. He watched everything going on, watched some bodies being clothed in absolutely wonderful dresses the women - and men being done up in what seemed to be evening dress or formals, while he, he thought, would be lucky to get a handful or two of shavings.
'What you reading, Bert?' somebody called out. A young man with a paperback book in one hand and a hamburger in the other looked up suddenly and waved the book at the questioner: 'I Believe,' he answered. 'It's a darn good book, I'm telling you, it's by that fellow Rampa who lives in the city. I've read all his books and one thing's stuck in my mind ever since. It is that you've got to believe something because if you don't believe in anything you're stuck good and fast in the wilderness. Look at that fellow there,' he gestured towards the body of old Molygruber lying cold, still and naked on the table, 'that fellow is a complete atheist. Wonder what he's doing now? Can't be in heaven because he doesn't believe in it, can't be in hell because he doesn't believe in that either.'Must be stuck between worlds. This fellow Rampa always says that you don't have to believe what he says but believe in something, or at least keep an open mind because if you don't keep an open mind then helpers, or whatever they are on the Other Side, can't keep in touch with you, can't help you. And Somewhere in one of his books he says that when you pass over you get stuck in nothingness.' He laughed, and then went on, 'He also says that when people get to the sage just out of the body they see what they expect to see. That must be a sight, to see all the angels fluttering about!'
A man moved across and looked at the cover on the book. 'Funny looking gay, ain't he? Wonder what that picture's meant to be?'
'Dunno,' said the book's owner. 'That's one of the things about these books, you get covers and blow me you never know what the covers mean. Never mind, it's the words inside that I buy them for.'
Old Molygruber hovered closer. Through no effort of his own he seemed to be gaided to places, as the men wse talking about the book he was sent to hover right over em, and it stuck in his mind, 'If you don't believe in a thing then as far as you are concerned it doesn't exist. And then what are you going to do?'
picture: the astral body hovering over - but for the actual person we read here - the cord was now broken. The other person here should normally not be able to see the astral body over as here - if he was not clairvoyant.
The lunch hour wore on. Some people were reading with books propped up against corpses, and Gertie had her lunch spread out on old Molygruber's body just as though he were a spare table for her convenience. At last the bell went and lunch break was over. The people cleared up the remnants of their food, balled up the paper and put it in the garbage bin. Gertie picked up a brush and brushed the crumbs off Molygruber's body. He looked down in disgust at her uncaring, unfeeling actions.
'Hey, you gays there, get that body ready immediately, toss some shavings in that shell number forty-nine and toss that fellow in on top of the shavings. Then put some more shavings on top. He shouldn't leak any, but we've got to make sure that everything is mopped up.' The boss man again. He danced in to the big room with a sheaf of papers in his hand, and then he said, 'They want the funeral to be at two-thirty this afternoon which is rushing it a bit. I must go and get changed.' He turned tail and fled.
Gertie and one of the men rolled Molygruber's body on to one side and passed loops beneath him and then moved him to the other side so they could get at the loops. Little hooks were pulled up to engage in eyelets, and then the body was swung up on to what seemed to be a little railway running on rods. They pushed Molygruber's body to a side of the room where what they called a shell, which was numbered 49 in chalk, was standing ready with the lid off. The san assistant went to a big bin and took out a lot of sawdust, which he poured liberally into the casket until there was about six inches of sawdust. Then Molygruber's body was lowered into the casket. The girl said, 'There, I think he should be all right, I don't think he'll leak any. I've got him tied off all right down there, and of course I've got him plugged everywhere, too. I don't think he'll leak but let's put in more sawdust instead of shavings, the old man won't know.' So they got another load of sawdust and poured it onto the body until Molygruber was covered. Then together they lifted up the lid and put it on with a slam. The man reached for a pneumatically-powered screw-driver and turned down the screws as the woman put them in the holes with her fingers. She reached out and picked up a damp rag, then carefully wiped off the number in chalk. The casket or shell was hoisted up from the trestles and moved sideways onto a wheeled trolley. A purple pall was placed over it, and the whole affair was wheeled out of the workroom into the showroom and display rooms.
There came shouting and the boss, now done up as a conventional Funeral Director in very formal clothing, black jacket, silk hat, and striped trousers, moved onto the scene. 'Push him out there, get a move on will you,' he shouted, 'the hearse is out there, the door's opened and everyone's waiting. Get a move on!' Gertie and the 'male assistant 'got a move on' and pushed the casketsalong to a ramp where there was a special loading device. It consisted of a lot of rollers in a frame extending from the ramp right on to the back of the hearse.' They put the casket on the rollers and easily pushed it straight into the hearse. The driver got out of his seat and said, 'Okay doke? Okay, off we go!' The Director got in beside him, and slowly the garage doors were rolled up and the hearse moved out.
There was only one car waiting outside, a car with Molygniber's four associates in it. They were done up in their best Sunday clothes, probably clothes which had been redeemed especially from the pawnbroker. Some of these men had the bright idea that when they were not using thelr Sunday clothes they would leave them with the pawnbroker because then they would have money to spend until the end of the week when they were paid, and in addition the pawnbroker always cleaned the clothes and had them neatly pressed before putting them in the 'Hold' room.
Poor Molygruber seemed to be attached to his body by invisible cords. As the casket was being pushed along, poor old Molygruber in his astral form was being dragged along, and he had no say in the matter at all. Instead he was kept about ten feet above the body, and he found himself ploughing invisibly through walls, floors and ceilings. Then at last he was moved out into the hearse, and the hearse moved out into the open. The Funeral Director leaned 'out of the hearse and said to the four men, 'Okay? All right then, let's go.' The hearse moved out of the Funeral Home parking lot, and the four mourners in the one car followed on behind. They had their headlights on to show that this was a funeral, and on the side of the following car there was a little triangalar flag fixed from the top' of the window reading 'funeral' That meant that it could go across traffic lights and the police would not do a thing about it They moved on and on, through the busy streets, past children playing in school yards, and came to the long climb up to the cemetery. There the Funeral Director stopped, got out and went to the car following. 'Keep close to us,' he said, 'because at the next intersection there is always somebody trying to cut in-between and we don't want to delay things too long, and you may lose the way. We have to take third on the right and first on the left. Okay?' The man driving the other car nodded so the Funeral Director went back to the hearse. They took off again with the following car really tail-gating.
Soon they reached the gates of the cemetery. The hearse and the following car moved in and up a driveway. At the top and off to the side there was a newly dug grave with a frame over it and the pulleys on the side. The hearse moved up, turned, and backed. Two men waiting by the graveside moved toward the hearse. The driver and the Funeral Director got out, and the four of them opened the back of the hearse pulling out the coffin. They turned it and moved to the grave. The four mourners followed. 'This man was an atheist,' said the Funeral Director, 'and so there will be no service, that will save you certain expense, we will just lower him and cover him up.' The other men nodded and the coffin was eased over the top of the rollers and special web straps were put under, then slowly the coffin was loweress into the ground. The four men moved up to the open grave as one, looked down, and were quite upset, quite sad. One said, 'Poor old Molygruber, nobody in the world to care about him.' Another said, 'Well, I hope he's got somebody where he's going or where he's gone.' With that they went back to their car, backed it, turned, and slowly drove off out of the cemetery. The two men beside the Funeral Director tipped a board and a whole load of earth fell into the casket with a hollow, sickening sound. The Director said, 'Ah well, cover him up, that's that,' and moved to the hearse. The driver got in and they drove off.
Molygruber hovered above powerless to do anything, powerless to move, and he looked down and thought, 'So this is the end of life, eh? What now? Where do I go from here? I've always believed there was nothing after death, but I'm dead and there's my body and I'm here, so what am I and where am I?' With that there seemed to be a loud thrumming sound like the sound of the wind through taut telephone lines on a high hillside, and Molygruber found himself speeding into nothingness. There was nothing before him, nothing behind him, nothing at either side, neither at the front nor at the back, and he sped on unto nothingness.
Silence! Silence, nothing but silence, not a sound. He listened very, very carefully but there was no sound of a heartbeat, no sound of breathing. He held his breath, or thought he did, and then it came to him with a shock that his heart was not beating, and his lungs were not working either.