The First Experience

It was the first time he was dying and he decided to enjoy it to the fullest measure just as he had enjoyed every new experience in life. Von Bodendorf had never feared death, and it was as welcome to him as a visit from a fellow philosopher. The year was 1851, and Klaus von Bodendorf was lying under a blanket with two waxed candles burning on a small table next to his bed.

He had been the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.

Consumption was taking his body, but his thoughts would live on.

“Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic,” von Bodendorf had marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment.

I, who had been privileged to be a friend of the great man, was now holding vigil at the foot of his bed with another comrade.

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything.

When the old iconoclast visited a noisy tavern as he often did, he would sit in the midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking and tearing to pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a jungle beast tears with one bite of his teeth the smaller animals with which he plays.

My comrade whispered.

“I think we are keeping vigil for the devil.” His voice was low and he sounded frightened.

I felt myself more than ever in the presence of a genius as I watched his face, expecting his lips to pucker in that familiar way of his. His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now he was dying. A feeling of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.

In hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like jets of flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown Life.

Then, my comrade suggested we should go into the adjoining room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.

I took one of the wax candles which burned on the stand, and I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end of the adjoining apartment, in such a position that we could see the bed and the dying man, revealed by the light.

But he still held possession of us. One would have said his immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, would still flit around us.

At that moment, a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound, came from his chamber. When we fixed our glances on him, we thought we saw, yes, we saw both of us, a dark shadow pass across the bed, fall on the carpet, and vanish.

We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything, distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed hard enough to have raised the clothing on our chests. I was the first to speak:

“Did you see?”

“Yes, I saw.”

“Can it be that he is not dead?”

 “Why, when the body is left behind?”

“What are we to do?”

My companion said in a hesitating tone: “We must go and look.”

I took our wax candle and entered first, glancing into all the dark corners in the large apartment. Nothing was moving now, and I approached the bed. But I stood transfixed with stupor and fright: von Bodendorf was no longer laughing! He was grinning, with his lips pressed together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out: “He is not dead!”

And I no longer moved, but kept staring at him with concentration, terrified as if in the presence of an apparition.

Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward. Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word.

“And was that his soul leaving?” I asked in a hoarse voice. “If it was, his soul is dark.”

“He is...was...is...the devil,” breathed my companion. “We have to see.”

Without a word we closed the distance to von Bodendorf’s bed. I took out my small pocket mirror and held it in front of his lips.

“Was,” I said. “von Bodendorf is dead.”

My companion and I stared at each other for a moment, and then both of us sank to our knees. I saw my companion mutter something inaudible.

We knelt on the hard floor for a protracted minute, got up and went into the adjoining apartment

“No last words,” my companion said with disappointment.

“Yesterday he said that clear soup is far more important than a clear conscience,” I answered him.

“Let those be his last words then. It is a pity he can’t describe his last experience,” my comrade reflected. “Did he savour his participation in this extraordinary event?”

“It was not his last,” I replied. “It was his first. He was looking forward to Crossing the Bar because, while he had done all other things in life, this final event was a first for him.”