© 2009 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2009 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
His boat was called Edentia. To sail around the world, that was Him’s last dream. To sail from east to west and look for an island bordered by cliffs. “It is on an island bordered by cliffs that you will find a bird,” the young blonde girl dressed in white had told him one day. “This bird is yours and thanks to it, you will be able to fly. You must go looking for it. Before you really discover it, you will first have to climb seven cliffs.” Him had not understood the meaning of these words, but he had the feeling that the difficulty would be as great as picking up a star that had fallen into the sea. However, he knew that the young girl was not lying.
I will always remember the hospital room in which Him lay dying and the disturbing events of which I was the only witness. In general, people delight in phenomena that they call supernatural and which are most of the time, manifestations of their overflowing imagination. I have no particular taste for this kind of thing. However, that day, it seems to me that I was lucky enough to have had a strange interview with one of these invisible personalities, without me being able to qualify it as “supernatural” or “paranormal”. I thought a little later that what Him had experienced on that last day happened quite naturally to each of us on the eve of death, but in a way that was not necessarily identical. I must say that at the time, I had the impression of talking with my friend as usual and not with a being who had emerged from the beyond.
Him and I were childhood friends, and although life sometimes separated us, I was aware of the course of his life, because we used to maintain relations by mail. Four months before, I had received a message from him from Jakarta in which he asked me to put him up. He knew he was sick and wanted to return to France to get treatment. The doctors told me he was lost.
A week before his death, his brain faculties being very diminished, it was decided to admit him to the hospital. He then fell into a coma and remained there for three days. As usual, early in the morning, I went to visit him and inquire about his condition. That morning, the doctor on duty told me: “he opened his eyes, it’s incomprehensible!” I rushed into his room and found Him sitting on his bed.
It had been a long time since I had seen him so cheerful! His face expressed the calmness of before his illness and clearly, I felt that Him was happy to see me and that he had been waiting for my visit. Of course, he recognized me right away, but strangely enough, he spoke in a childish voice and kept joking! He reminded me of many events from our childhood, the pranks we had done, our school and our teachers. A little later, taking on his adult voice again, he said to me: “we are better here than in Lyon, it was freezing cold this morning in Lyon!”, I knew that he had worked in this city. Then, it was the turn of the episodes of his time in Pierrelatte. He mentioned other events that he had experienced, but some of which were incomprehensible to me. The fact that seemed to worry him the most was his trip of a few days to England; I remembered it perfectly and I know that he had made a choice there that shook his conscience a little. Little by little, I was treated to the unfolding of his life, from past to present, in chronological order. Towards the end, he began to speak in Indonesian because Jakarta had been his last stopover. Four years already, since he had founded a family there! Finally, he fell into a coma again. His face turned scarlet. I realized that his brain tumor had just burst a cerebral artery. The room now seemed completely empty to me and I was eager to leave these four walls.
His boat was called Edentia. Him checked the rigging. “Why are people so sad when they see someone embark? Why do most boats stay in port? A boat is made to sail, it’s made to set sail! To hell with the sailboats that circle in the water and that you never meet more than six nautical miles from the coast! I’m casting off! I’m picking up my mooring lines and long live the high seas!” He would set sail for Spain and pass Gibraltar. “May the best wind take us!”
“I feel so tired!” Him wondered. “Since I’ve been traveling, I should now be able to see Minorca, but the island isn’t here yet!” A soft voice whispered to him, no doubt the voice of the young blonde girl dressed in white: “Sleep my beloved, you must sleep now! I’ll take the watch and I’ll bring you to safety!” It was evening, the summer triangle was beginning to shine at its zenith, slightly to port; the sailboat had just set its course for Sagittarius.
Even asleep, Him remained attentive to all the noises of his boat. “I hear the mainsail flapping, someone is shocking the listening. We’ll be docking soon. I must have slept for at least three days.” He looked overboard and recognized the beach of Salines. He knew this place surrounded by cliffs well, but he was surprised to see lateen sails coming to meet him, the same sails that have haunted the seas since antiquity and with which a famous carpenter traveled to Rome: “We are in the Caribbean, not the Mediterranean!” He heard the sound of guitars and thought that his gypsy friends were coming to greet him. In reality Him was still wrong, yes, some of his gypsy friends were there, but there were many other people, members of his family, people he had loved in the past and whom he had almost forgotten. A campfire had been lit on the sand, there was a feast, there was a lot of discussion. The white lady was standing there too. Him began to examine the cliff, it didn’t seem very steep to him, not very difficult to climb. He remembered that he had climbed it in the past. Of course, there were a few passages to overcome, from time to time it was necessary to make one’s way through the cacti, but now the road was all mapped out for him, it no longer frightened him.
The white lady began to laugh: “Here, you have climbed your sixth cliff, the friends you have found are still hesitant to embark on the adventure. Tomorrow, we will say goodbye to them and I will take you to the foot of the seventh cliff”
The sailboat rounded Grand Fond, left the bay of Grand Cul-de-Sac, passed Lorient, the beach of Saint Jean, moved away from the cove of Flamants so as not to be sucked onto the rocks and came to take shelter in the cove of Colombier. The cove was well protected from the wind and the sea currents which remained strong at the foot of the rock. At anchor, the boat would be safe. Him knew this place well. More than ten times perhaps, he had taken the little path which climbs through the thorns and which is populated with lizards, chameleons and tortoises, to the summit where the immense precipice had made him dizzy each time. The white lady smiled at him: "My beloved, the seventh cliff will allow you to cure yourself of vertigo, the last of your animal fears. Vertigo comes from above and not from below: it is the vertigo of Infinity and it is Infinity that you are going to approach. But, this time, don’t take the path of schoolchildren!
Him knew that the white lady would not bring him any undeserved help, he did not implore heaven to spare him this difficult ordeal, because, he said to himself, trials are part of the plan of ascension of mortals.
He threw himself into the water without thinking too much and swam to the foot of the cliff where the waves began to throw him violently against the wall. If he stayed there a moment longer, he told himself, his body would end up completely shredded. He preferred to move a hundred meters offshore to study the topography of the site and develop an approach technique. He took the morphology of the waves and noticed that regularly three of them were stronger than the others and that they hit a rocky overhang on which he could hoist himself and rest for a few minutes. Him used the waves that at first were a handicap, and thus, he was able to cling to the rocky spur. It was then that from this shelter, he saw the bird; it was a frigatebird. He had observed frigatebirds many times; They were always there when something unusual happened at sea. They looked like a motionless black dot in the sky, which was difficult to see, and were often located directly above a marlin, a large wahoo or a school of dolphin fish.
From the overhang, a crack in the rock began, which he decided to follow without ever looking down. He would keep his eye on the bird. He was surprised to find himself an hour later, at the top of the cliff. Finally, he said to himself, the hardest thing is to jump into the water. Then, the wisest thing is to continue the route we have chosen upwards!
Him stood up, feet together, directly above the seventh cliff. He had just conquered his fear of heights. The bird positioned itself two meters above his head, but too far forward for Him to grab it without falling.
The white lady stood next to him and took his hand: “You still have one test to accomplish: to prove your certainty in the transcendence of the finite, which amounts to firmly believing that nothing bad can happen in the presence of the Infinite, and to believing in the perfection of the cosmos in the presence of infinity. So, now, throw yourself into the void and fly!”
Him was not always able to grasp the meaning of the fairy’s words, but he kept absolute confidence in his guide. He dove without hesitation, the bird caught up with him and merged with him. Him immediately became a bird and the bird became a man. Like a young, still clumsy frigate bird, Him had just taken flight into the infinity of the starry sky.
Jean-Claude Romeuf