Dialogues of the Dead

“Absolutely right, sir,” said Hat. “I’m sorry. It was a daft thing to say.”

“Not daft, just above and beyond the call of duty. Forget the Wordman. Like I say, just relax and enjoy the preview.”

13

the fourth dialogue

Preview.

Now there’s a word to make a ghost laugh!

It amused me too. First thing I noticed as I wandered round the gallery was that nobody actually seemed to be viewing anything other than the wine glasses in their hands and the people they were talking to over them.

And as the crowded gathering seemed to comprise all the great and the good of Mid-Yorkshire who presumably had viewed each other many times before, it was hard to see where the actual previewing came in.

The only exhibit which attracted instant attention was a sort of priapic totem pole, six foot high, carved in oak with a chainsaw. But even that, after an initial lewd comment or two, was generally ignored except by those who used its rough-hewed ledges to rest their glasses on, though I did hear as I passed the art critic from the Gazette saying to his epicene companion, “Yes, it does have a certain, how shall I put it? a certain aura.”

Aura.

Now there’s another word.

From the Greek αυρα meaning breath or breeze.

But in medicine it is used to describe the symptoms which presage the onset of an epileptic fit.

Remember old Aggie who suffered from epilepsy?

That’s the one. Her aura consisted not of the usual facial twitchings or muscular spasms, but a sudden euphoria. Knowing what it presaged, she would cry, “Oh God, I feel so happy!” in a tone of such despair that strangers would be thrown into greater confusion by the oxymoronic clash of manner and meaning than by the subsequent fit.

Later when my burgeoning interest in the arcana of our existence made me aware that the old medicines interpreted fits as the reaction of weak human flesh to the invasion of divine energy when used as a channel for prophetic utterance, I thought of Aggie but I couldn’t bring to mind anything of significance in the sounds she made during her attacks. Might be worth asking her if you see her.

Please yourself. Anyway, now I’ve got personal experience to confirm what the old priest-doctors diagnosed.

For I too experience an aura, a divine breath blowing through me, though my aura might as easily be cognate with Latin aurum, meaning gold, as with the Greek. For the beginning of a new Dialogue is like a summer day’s dawning in me. I feel my whole being suffused in an aureole of joy and certainty which spreads further and further, stilling time for all who are included in its golden limits.