Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

you a Leo?”
    “No.”
    “I asked you because I’m an Aries. An Aries can usually recognize a Leo. Those signs are sympathetic ones to each other.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I thought you looked like you would be an interesting person to talk to.”
    I go and shut myself into my roomette and read my magazine, down to the ads for liquor and men’s shoes. But I feel sorry. Probably he meant nothing more than he said. I am an interesting person to talk to. The reason is that I will listen to anything. It may be because of those articles in magazines I used to read as a teen-ager (when any title with the word popularity in it could both chill and compel me), urging the development of this receptive social art. I don’t mean to do it. But face to face with anyone who has a conviction, a delusion—which most people have—or only a long procession of dim experiences to share, I feel something like amazement, enough to paralyze me. You ought to get up and walk away, Hugh says, that’s what I would do.

    “Asking you were you a Leo, that was just for something to say. What I wanted to ask you was different but I didn’t know how to put it. As soon as I saw you I knew I’d seen you before.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think you have.”
    “I believe that we lead more than one life.”
    Diverse experiences, many lives in one, is that what he means? Perhaps he is about to justify unfaithfulness to his wife, if he has a wife.
    “I believe it. I have been born before and I have died before. It’s true.”
    You see? I say to Hugh, already starting a story for him, about this man, in my mind. They always find me .
    “Did you ever hear of the Rosicrucians?”
    “Are they the ones who advertise about the mastery of life?”
    Irony may be wasted but he can detect flippancy. The boring reproachfulness of the convert hardens his tone.
    “Six years ago I saw one of those ads. I was in a bad way. My marriage had broke up. I was drinking more than was good for me. But that wasn’t all the trouble. You know? That wasn’t the real trouble. I just used to sit and think, why am I here anyway. Like religion—I’d given all that up. I couldn’t tell if there was such a thing as a soul. But if not, what the hell? You know what I mean?
    “Then I wrote in and got some of their literature and started going to their meetings. First time I went, I was scared it was going to be a bunch of nuts. I didn’t know what to expect, you know? What a shock I got when I saw the kind of people there. Influential people. Wealthy people. Professional people. All cultured and educated top-drawer people. This is not crackpot stuff. It is known, scientifically proven.”
    I don’t dispute.
    “One hundred and forty-four years. That is the span from the start of one life to the next. So if you or I dies at, say, seventy, that’s what—seventy-four years, seventy-four years to the start of the next life when our soul is born again.”
    “Do you remember?”
    “From the one life to the next, you mean? Well, you know yourself, the ordinary person doesn’t remember a thing. But once your mind is opened up, once you know what is going on, why, then you start to remember. Only one life I myself know about for sure. In Spain and in Mexico. I was one of the conquistadors. You know the conquistadors?”
    “Yes.”
    “A funny thing. I always knew I could ride horseback. I never did, you know, city kid, we never had any money. Never was on a horse. Just the same I knew. Then at a meeting couple of years ago, Rosicrucian conference in the Hotel Vancouver, a fellow came up to me, older man, he was from California, and he says, You were there. You were one of them , he says. I didn’t know what he was talking about. In Spain , he says. We were together . He said I was one of the ones that went out to Mexico and he was one of the ones that stayed behind. He knew my face. And you want to know the strangest thing of all? Just as he was bending over to speak to me, I had got the impression that he was wearing a hat. Which he wasn’t. You know the plumed kind of hat. And I got the impression his hair was dark and long, instead of gray and short. All before he ever said a word of this to me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing?”
    Yes. A remarkable thing. But I have heard things before. I have heard from people who regularly see astral bodies floating around just under the ceiling, people who rule all their days by astrology, who have changed