Oh, I abused them, called them sons of toads, hell’s scullions, slime of the pit. For I was above them, beyond them. They were slaves. I was free spirit. My flesh only lay pent there in solitary. I was not pent. I had mastered the flesh, and the spaciousness of time was mine to wander in, while my poor flesh, not even suffering, lay in the little death in the jacket.
Much of my adventures I rapped to my two comrades. Morrell believed, for he had himself tasted the little death. But Oppenheimer, enraptured with my tales, remained a sceptic to the end. His regret was naïve, and at times really pathetic, in that I had devoted my life to the science of agriculture instead of to fiction writing.
“But, man,” I reasoned with him, “what do I know of myself about this Cho-Sen? I am able to identify it with what is to-day called Korea, and that is about all. That is as far as my reading goes. For instance, how possibly, out of my present life’s experience, could I know anything about kimchi? Yet I know kimchi. It is a sort of sauerkraut. When it is spoiled it stinks to heaven. I tell you, when I was Adam Strang, I ate kimchi thousands of times. I know good kimchi, bad kimchi, rotten kimchi. I know the best kimchi is made by the women of Wosan. Now how do I know that? It is not in the content of my mind, Darrell Standing’s mind. It is in the content of Adam Strang’s mind, who, through various births and deaths, bequeathed his experiences to me, Darrell Standing, along with the rest of the experiences of those various other lives that intervened. Don’t you see, Jake? That is how men come to be, to grow, how spirit develops.”
“Aw, come off,” he rapped back with the quick imperative knuckles I knew so well. “Listen to your uncle talk now. I am Jake Oppenheimer. I always have been Jake Oppenheimer. No other guy is in my makings. What I know I know as Jake Oppenheimer. Now what do I know? I’ll tell you one thing. I know kimchi. Kimchi is a sort of sauerkraut made in a country that used to be called Cho-Sen. The women of Wosan make the best kimchi, and when kimchi is spoiled it stinks to heaven. You keep out of this, Ed. Wait till I tie the professor up.
“Now, professor, how do I know all this stuff about kimchi? It is not in the content of my mind.”
“But it is,” I exulted. “I put it there.”
“All right, old boss. Then who put it into your mind?”
“Adam Strang.”
“Not on your tintype. Adam Strang is a pipe-dream. You read it somewhere.”
“Never,” I averred. “The little I read of Korea was the war correspondence at the time of the Japanese-Russian War.”