Tales of the Unexpected

perfectly visible to people whose faculties of perception of superphysical things have undergone the requisite development…’
    She didn’t understand that one at all, but she read on, and soon she came to an interesting passage that told how long a soul usually stayed away from the earth before returning in someone else’s body. The time varied according to type, and Mr Willis gave the following breakdown:
     
Drunkards and the unemployable
40/50
YEARS
Unskilled labourers
60/100
,,
Skilled workers
100/200
,,
The
bourgeoisie
200/300
,,
The upper-middle classes
500
,,
The highest class of gentleman farmers
600/1,000
,,
Those in the Path of Initiation
1,500/2,000
,,
    Quickly she referred to one of the other books, to find out how long Liszt had been dead. It said he died in Bayreuth in 1886. That was sixty-seven years ago. Therefore, according to Mr Willis, he’d have to have been an unskilled labourer to come back so soon. That didn’t seem to fit at all. On the other hand, she didn’t think much of the author’s methods of grading. According to him, ‘the highest class of gentleman farmer’ was just about the most superior being on the earth. Red jackets and stirrup cups and the bloody, sadistic murder of the fox. No, she thought, that isn’t right. It was a pleasure to find herself beginning to doubt Mr Willis.
    Later in the book, she came upon a list of some of the more famous reincarnations. Epictetus, she was told, returned to earth as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cicero came back as Gladstone, Alfred the Great as Queen Victoria, William the Conqueror as Lord Kitchener. Ashoka Vardhana, King of India in 272 B.C ., came back as Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, an esteemed American lawyer. Pythagoras returned as Master Koot Hoomi, the gentleman who founded the Theosophical Society with Mme Blavatsky and Colonel H. S. Olcott (the esteemed American lawyer, alias Ashoka Vardhana, King of India). It didn’t say who Mme Blavatsky had been. But ‘Theodore Roosevelt,’ it said, ‘has for numbers of incarnations played great parts as a leader of men… From him descended the royal line of ancient Chaldea, he having been, about 30,000 B.C ., appointed Governor of Chaldea by the Ego we know as Caesar who was then ruler of Persia… Roosevelt and Caesar have been together time after time as military and administrative leaders; at one time, many thousands of years ago, they were husband and wife…’
    That was enough for Louisa. Mr F. Milton Willis was clearly nothing but a guesser. She was not impressed by his dogmatic assertions. The fellow was probably on the right track, but his pronouncements were extravagant, especially the first one of all, about animals. Soon she hoped to be able to confound the whole Theosophical Society with her proof that man could indeed reappear as a lower animal. Also that he did not have to be an unskilled labourer to come back within a hundred years.
    She now turned to one of the Liszt biographies, and she was glancing through it casually when her husband came in again from the garden.
    ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh – just checking up a little here and there. Listen, my dear, did you know that Theodore Roosevelt once was Caesar’s wife?’
    ‘Louisa,’ he said, ‘look – why don’t we stop this nonsense? I don’t like to see you making a fool of yourself like this. Just give me that goddamn cat and I’ll take it to the police station myself.’
    Louisa didn’t seem to hear him.’ She was staring open-mouthed at a picture of Liszt in the book that lay on her lap. ‘My God!’ she cried. ‘Edward, look!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Look! The warts on his face! I forgot all about them! He had these great warts on his face and it was a famous thing. Even his students used to cultivate little tufts of hair on their own faces in the same spots, just to be like him.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
    ‘Nothing. I mean not the students. But the warts have.’
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ the man said. ‘Oh, Christ God Almighty.’
    ‘The cat has them, too! Look, I’ll show you.’
    She took the animal on to her lap and began examining its face. There! There’s one! And there’s another! Wait a minute! I do believe they’re in the same places! Where’s that picture?’
    It was a famous portrait of the musician in his old age, showing the fine powerful face framed in a mass of long grey hair that covered his ears and came half-way down his neck. On the face itself, each