Three Continents (55 page)

When it was almost completely dark, Crishi said “What about this?” He indicated the photocopy still lying in my lap. He took it up and looked at it, turning it over back and front although he could hardly have read anything in the dark. “It doesn't look much like Michael's writing, does it? No,” he answered himself, pursing his lips. “What's friend Pritchett and all those clever lawyers of yours going to say when they see it? We can tell them till we're blue in the face that people under stress don't write the same as normal, they still won't believe us. They might even say we forged it, you and I—you know how they are.”

I was hardly up to these considerations, but I think Crishi was deliberately trying to fix my mind on something practical. Usually people get over the immediate shock of loss by thinking about funeral arrangements, but since here all that had been taken care of, he wanted to get me going in some other way. He took out his cigarette lighter and lit the candle in the chimney lamp. He could do this easily since there was no breeze; and the flame hardly flickered within the glass chimney but was as still as in a still room. The light shone through the colored glass and it wasn't very bright, but with good eyesight, which I had, it was possible to write by it. Crishi took a blank sheet of paper out of the file in which Michael's note had been and he gave me his ballpoint to write with.

Michael's handwriting and mine were similar, though not the same. His was bigger and more scrawly, so that was how I tried to make mine now. It wasn't difficult and I almost enjoyed it. It was as though I were entering him, becoming him; and that was what I tried to do with my thoughts—to make them Michael's thoughts; what
he
would have written. I said that I—that is, I, Michael—was going away because there was nothing in this world that was good enough for me; that I had tried everything and had looked in every direction and there was just absolutely nothing that came up to my expectations. I said that if once you have these expectations—that is, of Beauty, Truth, and Justice—then you feel cheated by everything that falls short of them; and everything here—that is, here in this world—does fall short of them. It is all neti, neti. I wrote with ease—I mean, it came easily to me because I knew it was what Michael felt; but at
the same time I was writing I was crying because it wasn't what I—I, Harriet—believed at all; how could I, and especially with Crishi sitting there beside me. At one point he told me to copy the end part of Michael's note and I did so, correcting “apoint” and “inheritence,” for Michael's spelling was always perfect. In order to see to write, I had to bend my head close to the lamp, which made my hair fall over either side of my face like a curtain. Every now and again Crishi lifted the strands on one side to kiss my cheek, murmuring to encourage and comfort me; and to please him and also in gratitude for his concern, I tried to smile, though I was crying too. My tears fell on the paper, and when I wiped them off they smudged the writing, but Crishi said that was all right, for they appeared to be not mine but Michael's tears.