The Philosopher's Pupil (80 page)

The philosopher was snoring more quietly now with a faint bubbling sound. This time he had left his teeth in, and his mouth and chin had not collapsed, but his sleeping face looked to George huge and senseless, a pile of flabby layers of soft folded skin, pitted and porous, old, like the remains of something which had failed to be cooked, or a collapsed heap of blanched dead plants deprived of light. The eyes had vanished into hooded wrinkled holes. It was not like a face but a chaotic mess of flesh spread out where a face might have been. The skin was coarse and patchily discoloured, dirtied by a grey growth of beard. George moved his gaze to where the open neck of the starchily clean shirt revealed a rising slice of pink hairless chest. The genitals were covered, the knobbly knees visible, red and smooth and curiously touching as if they had not aged and were still the knees of a boy. Beneath them the legs were a livid white, with prominent blue veins, and sparsely covered with extremely long black hairs. The philosopher's feet were covered by a towel. George returned to the bathroom. The bath was now full and discharging itself evenly into the overflow pipe.

George pressed his hand hard to his breast, regulating his breathing. He unbuttoned the neck of his shirt. One of the bathroom doors had half closed. He propped it wide open with a chair. He looked at the problem he had set himself and through the solution of which he had so often run in his mind. The bed, one of the original beds of the Rooms, was of tubular steel, designed to move easily on casters over the sleek carpet, and standing against the pale oak headboard which was fixed to the wall. George put his hand on the foot of the bed and pulled slightly. The bed moved silently as if of its own accord. George caught his breath in a sort of swallowed sigh or sob. Now that he was at last so close to
it
he felt a need to pause. He began looking about the room, moving his eyes in an odd mechanical way as if seeing were a new and special activity. He looked at the carving on the oak panel of a faun among spear-shaped leaves. He looked at one of the orange-and-white plates imported from Sweden which had been placed on a chair near the door. He looked at the books on the table and saw that some of them were dusty. John Robert must have told the maids not to touch his work. George looked at the window catches, also steel originals, eloquent of their date. He felt an impulse to go and touch them, or to draw his finger across the nearest book. He looked at John Robert again and his heart was seared as if with a radiantly hot iron. From here the face made sense for a moment, the lips protruding as George had so often seen them do when his teacher was listening to an argument. There was something so alert and wakeful about this gesture of the lips that George had to peer closely, for John Robert had ceased to snore, to be sure that the eyes were not awake and glaring.

George began to push the foot of the bed round. He did this simply by leaning his thigh against it, and again the bed silently and obligingly moved. The head of the bed was now swinging in the direction of the bathroom. George was overcome by a kind of faintness which was also a fever of haste. His breath came in a little audible stream of ‘oh, oh, oh.' He no longer seemed to care whether John Robert woke up or not. The mechanics of the operation, the absolute necessity of the task, absorbed him completely. His legs felt weak, his knees dissolving as with sexual desire. He propelled the bed head first through the double doors of the bathroom.

In his imagination of this scene George had pushed the bed quietly and cautiously and had paused to be sure that the head of it was directly above the brimming bath before he completed his task. But now this sickening fearful haste had taken hold of his body, and as soon as the end of the bed entered the bathroom he pushed so violently that the front legs ran quickly over the tiles and would have jolted down into the water had they not been checked by the raised rim of the bath. George, now in the doorway, stopped pushing, took a deep breath, and bending down seized the two back legs near to the floor and began to lift. John Robert's weight was mainly at the top end of the bed and it was not very difficult to raise the foot. George saw the round steel legs of the bed rising up, his hands clawed round them, his knuckles white with strain. His feet apart, his body braced, he stared at what was closest. Then suddenly there was a great lumpish crashing sound and the bed was relieved of its weight and leapt out of George's grasp, swinging sideways, into one of the louvred doors. George gave a little yelping cry, and now scrabbled in desperate haste to get himself past the obstructing bed. Already he could see he had botched it all. John Robert had not fallen head first into the water. He lay in a great whale-like bulk poised upon the very edge of the bath. George thought, he's stunned, he has
hurt himself
in the fall,
he can't get up.
Moaning, he ran forward and with his foot propelled the philosopher over the edge into the noisy steamy cauldron of very hot bubbling water.

George stood for a moment, dazed by the sudden
disappearance.
Water splashed up over his feet and steam blinded his eyes. Then he saw below him, in the long wide cavity of the bath, something blue and dark floating and agitating upon the surface. It was the blue nightshirt. George thought, I ought to have taken that off. But of course I couldn't have done earlier. He knelt beside the bath and pressed down upon the blue shirt, feeling the fat humpy shoulders of his victim. He pressed and pressed, using both hands, pressing hard down on anything which rose above the surface. He went on doing this for many minutes, with the movements of someone washing clothes. And as he held the great head down below the water and wondered how much longer he needed to do it he had the strange feeling that he had performed this ritual before, perhaps many times. He thought, it's just like the dead babies. Well, the babies weren't dead, it was just that he had wanted to make them dead like
this,
and like
this,
and like
this.

At last he felt that it was not necessary to continue. There was something huge and bulky, with rounded wet surfaces, floating there, bobbing, moving, in the disturbed water. George thought, I ought to take the shirt off. No clothes. I worked that out before. I can't remember why. He pulled a little at the dark blue material. But it was too difficult now to get it off and too awful. He rose on one knee, then slowly to his feet, and walked back into the bedroom, squeezing past the bed. He stood for a moment looking at the room which looked so odd and different with the bed gone from the centre. He moved to the window and looked at the window catches and now reached out to touch one of them. How strange, that the last time he had looked at that catch the entire universe had been different. The radiant searing burn touched his heart again, this time with the touch of the most terrible fear he had ever felt, fear for his future, fear at his continued existence. He picked up one of the notebooks from the table. He thought, I'll drown the book too. He went back, squeezing past the bed, and saw with a kind of surprise the big hippopotamus floating in the bath. He dropped the notebook into the water at the far end of the bath. He saw John Robert's writing upon the pages. Then he thought, I'd better go, get away. He went back into the bedroom and made for the door. Glancing behind him he realized that he had left the bed jammed into the bathroom doorway. He returned and pulled it out and propelled it to its original position. The head of the bed was splashed with water and the pillow was gone. Feebly and automatically George mopped the legs of the bed and the bedclothes with the towel which had covered John Robert's feet and which had not accompanied him in his fall. He looked for the pillow and found it lying very wet on the edge of the bath. He tried to wring it out, then left it on the floor near the bed. There was a lot of water on the carpet which he made out to be his own footprints. He took a clean towel from the bathroom rail and dried his arms and dabbed at his shoes. Then tried to obliterate the wet marks. He saw his jacket lying in the corner and put it on. He went and carefully closed the doors into the bathroom. He looked about the room. It was more silent now, and looked much as usual except that it was vastly cosmically empty. George stood for a moment breathing deeply and then let himself out of the door into the corridor. He closed the bedroom door, and the sound of the waters subsided to a distant hum. He began to walk away along the empty corridor.

Do not disturb.

As George had almost reached the swing doors they began to rotate. Father Bernard came in, turned to free his cassock, and came face to face with George. The priest began to say something, then swallowed it on seeing George's face. George passed by and out into the sunlight.

Father Bernard had had a lot of worries of his own lately, private worries such as belong to the inner life. It had been coming into his heart and his spirit that he could not for very much longer go on wearing a dog collar and a cassock. He would have to
move on.
This conclusion caused real pain, not the sort which can be played with. He decided, after some hesitations and reluctances, that he should discuss the matter with Rozanov, whose candour on the subject had perhaps brought on, had certainly accelerated this distressing spiritual crisis. He went first to Hare Lane where there was no answer to the bell and nothing to be observed except an upset milk bottle outside the door (knocked over in the course of Tom's abduction of Hattie). He then went to the Ennistone Rooms.

After seeing George's face, the priest ran along the corridor alert with fear. He knocked perfunctorily on the door of John Robert's room, entered and was relieved to find it empty. The bed was undone, the bathroom doors closed, and the table covered with signs of study. Father Bernard recovered his breath. He assumed that John Robert was briefly away somewhere, perhaps with a doctor. He waited, then with his usual curiosity (but with a cautious eye on the door) began to look at the table. He picked up one of the notebooks and deciphered a page or two of John Robert's spidery writing, feeling the layman's amused gratification of not being able to understand a word. Then he saw, half-concealed under the books, a white sheet of paper laid out, a letter. At the top was written
For the attention of William Eastcote Esq.
(John Robert was unaware that his friend was dead.) Father Bernard leaned over and read as follows.

My dear Bill,

I hope you will forgive me for having taken my life. I know you will disapprove. Only think it, if you can, a happier life for having terminated now. You have always seen me as a stoic, and will perhaps understand. Please look after Hattie. I have named you and Robin Osmore as executors of my will. Goodbye, Bill. You may imagine with what sentiments of cordiality and esteem I sign myself for the last time,

Yours,

John Robert

I have taken a quick and effective mixture concocted for me by an American chemist. Attempts to resuscitate me will be vain.

Father Bernard uttered a wild cry of woe. He looked desperately round, then ran to the bathroom doors and swung them open. At first in the steam he could see nothing. Then he saw the strange huge half-submerged contents of the bath. He knelt down on the slippery wet verge and pulled in helpless revulsion and misery and terror at the slippery bobbing surfaces. At last he found the head and raised it, pulling by the hair. It was plain that John Robert was gone, he was no longer there, there was only something else which slipped from the priest's horrified hands. However, he managed, by some desperate pulling and dragging, to prop the bulky form up at the shallow seated end of the bath away from the taps so that the head lolled back upon the tiled edge. Then he rose and made for the door.

The letter was lying on the carpet where he had dropped it. Instinctively he picked it up and put it in his pocket. He ran out into the corridor shouting for help. As white-coated attendants appeared and hurried into the room Father Bernard ran away down the corridor and out through the swing doors. He began to run, panting and whimpering, in the direction of Diane's flat in Westwold.

When George left the Institute he began to walk fairly fast in the direction of the High Street, but turned into the Botanical Garden. He paused and looked at a tree, a ginkgo, which he had long ago ‘adopted' because he associated it with his childhood at Belmont. He crossed the garden, avoiding the Museum, and began to walk toward the Roman bridge. On the other side of the Enn he found himself turning toward Burkestown with some vague intention of going to 16 Hare Lane, as if he might find there a second and utterly different John Robert. He felt it important to have a goal. He began to walk fast. By the time he reached Burkestown, however, he had decided to make for the Common, by way of the level crossing, and the old railway cutting. He passed the Green Man, which was just opening its doors. Several people saw George pass by on that evening, but his grin of pain did not seem to them an unusual expression. No one approached him.

As George walked along the grassy bottom of the cutting he noticed the flowers growing upon the banks, foxgloves, white comfrey, campion, rambling purple vetch with its tiny stripes. He thought, this is the first day, the first hour, of the new world in which everything will be entirely different. I have undergone a cosmic change, every atom, every particle is changed, I am switched over into a completely new mode of being. And he thought, it had to be, it
had
to be,
it had to be.
I have done what I had to do, I have had the courage, the devotion, to do it. And he thought, how odd, I never did find out how Schlick's pupil killed him. It doesn't matter now. The cutting ended and he began to climb up on to the Common. From here the stones of the Ennistone Ring can be seen upon the horizon, as they are so often represented upon picture postcards. George began to make for the Ring. Behind the stones the brilliant radiant summer evening sky was vibrating with the tingling cloudless blue of a pure happiness. George gave a sob. He felt the pain beginning; it was starting to spread inside him, the crippling awful pain of absolute remorse; and he prayed oh forgive me, oh let me die now, let me die, let me
die.