The Great Divorce

Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be, in the end, a very distinct place. I think Earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell, and Earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been, from the beginning, a part of Heaven itself. There are only two things more to be said about this small book. Firstly, I must acknowledge my debt to a writer whose name I have forgotten, and whom I read several years ago in a highly coloured American magazine of what they call scientific fiction. The unbendable and unbreakable quality of my heavenly matter was suggested to me by him, though he used the fancy for a different and most ingenious purpose. This hero travelled into the past, and there, very properly, found raindrops that would pierce him like bullets, and sandwiches that no strength could bite, because, of course, nothing in the past can be altered. I, with less originality, but, I hope, equal propriety, have transferred this to the Eternal. If the writer of that story ever reads these lines, I ask him to accept my grateful acknowledgement. The second thing is this. I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has, of course, or I intended it to have, a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal. They are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the Afterworld. C.S. Lewis, April, 1945 1. I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in, and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain, and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up, and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town. However far I went, I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags, windowless warehouses, goods stations without trains, and bookshops of the sort that sell The Works of Aristotle. I never met anyone. But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty. I think that was why I attached myself to the queue. I had a stroke of luck right away, for just as I took my stand, a little waspish woman, who would have been ahead of me, snapped out at a man who seemed to be with her. Very well, then, I won't go at all, so there, and left the queue. Pray don't imagine, said the man in a very dignified voice, that I care about going in the least. I've only been trying to please you for peace's sake. My own feelings are of course a matter of no importance, I quite understand that. And suiting the action to the word, he also walked away. Come, thought I, that's two places gained. I was now next to a very short man with a scowl, who glanced at me with an expression of extreme disfavour, and observed, rather unnecessarily loudly, to the man beyond him. This sort of thing really makes one think twice about going at all. That sort of thing, growled the other, a big, beefy person. Well, said the short man, this is hardly the sort of society I'm used to, as a matter of fact. Huh, said the big man, and then added with a glance at me, don't you stand any source from him, mister. You're not afraid of him, are you? Then, seeing I made no move, he rounded suddenly on the short man, and said, not good enough for you, aren't we? Like your lip. Next moment he had fetched the short man, one on the side of the face, that sent him sprawling into the gutter. Let him lay, let him lay, said the big man, to no one in particular. I'm a plain man, that's what I am, and I've got to have my rights, same as anyone else, see.