The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  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 h
is 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.

  As he came up on to the top level of the Common there were a few people about, but not near him. He began to walk through the long grass in the direction of the Ring. The electrical vibration of the blue zenith beyond the stones was hurting his eyes, and he turned his head away toward where the sun, descending in the sky, was hazed by a little cloud against a gentler less vivid blue. Only the sun, blazing through the misty light, had changed or was changing. It was no longer round but was becoming shaped like a star with long jagged mobile points which kept flowing in and out, and each time they flowed they became of a dazzling burning intensity. The star was very near, too near. It went on flaming and burning, a vast catastrophic conflagration in the evening sky, emitting its long jets of flame. And as it burnt with dazzling pointed rays a dark circle began to grow in its centre, making the star look like a sunflower. George thought, I’ll look at the dark part, then I shall be all right. As he watched, the dark part was growing so that now it almost covered the central orb of the sun, leaving only the long burning petals of flame which were darting out on every side. The dark part was black, black, and the petals were a painful shimmering electric gold. The thing shone and shuddered and seemed to be getting closer, while at the same time it gave less and less light and the sky was darkening. It’s killing me, thought George, it is a death thing, this is my death that I prayed for. Oh God, if I can only look away, or my eyes will be destroyed in my head. He turned, wrenching his head round. He caught a glimpse of the Ennistone Ring, quite close and bathed in an odd vivid crepuscular light. Then from beyond the Ring and coming toward him, there appeared a brilliant silver saucer-shaped space-ship, flying low down over the Common. It came toward George flying quite slowly, and as it came it emitted a ray which entered into his eyes, and a black utter darkness came upon him and he fell to his knees and lay stretched out senseless in the long grass.

  And here some time later Father Bernard found him. The priest had first visited Diane, and had found her spreading out upon the bed all the frilly flowery summer clothes she had bought for going to Spain. He managed to conceal his agitation from Diane, and went on to Druidsdale where he found Stella. Stella realized at once that something was very wrong, but the priest told her nothing except that he urgently wanted to see George. It had already occurred to Father Bernard that George might have run up on to the Common and if he did so would be likely to go toward the Ring. Here Father Bernard stumbled about in vain in the long grasses, almost weeping with tiredness and distress, falling over courting couples whom the grass, uncut, was long enough to conceal, beginning to mistrust his intuition and increasingly to fear that, wherever George was, he would not be discovered alive. When at last he glimpsed, in the green sea into which the sun was now laying down long shadows, the familiar colour of George’s grey jacket, and saw his dark hair, he fell down beside him with a cry of thankfulness.

  George was lying on his face and seemed at first to be unconscious or asleep, as the priest laid his arm across the humped shoulders.

  ‘George, George, it’s me, Father Bernard, I’ve come to find you, wake up.’

  George stirred, rolled on his side, opened his eyes, blinked a little, then closed them again.

  ‘George - don’t worry - it’s me - I’ll help you.’

  George reached out and found a piece of the cassock and held it. He said, ‘I killed John Robert. I drowned him. He’s dead.’

  ‘I know,’ said the priest. He had read this, or something like it, in George’s face as they met in the corridor. ‘Only you didn’t kill him, you didn’t.’

  ‘You mean he’s still alive?’

  ‘No, no, but you didn’t kill him. Look, I’ll show you.’

  ‘He’s still alive, thank God, it’s a miracle - oh thank God.’

  ‘George, George,’ he cried, ‘he is dead, but not by your hand, he took his own life - look at this — ’

  But George, hiding his face in the grass, just went on saying, ‘Oh thank God - oh forgive me - oh thank God.’

  ‘Look at this, look at this, look at his letter.’

  George, turning on his side again, said, ‘I can’t see anything. I have become blind. I open my eyes and there is nothing, it is all dark, black. Was there an eclipse of the sun?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I remember now. It was the flying saucer. It sent out a beam at me. It took my sight away.’

  ‘George, my dear, get up, can you, I’ll take you home. I’ll explain - John Robert’s dead - but you didn’t kill him, you’re not a murderer, you’re not.’

  Very slowly with the priest’s help George rose to his feet. It was evident that he could not see. He swayed, holding out his hands. Together they stumbled as far as the path. It was late evening now, darkening to a clear greenish sunset sky.

  As they began to walk slowly arm in arm along the path together Father Bernard asked, ‘Where shall I take you to?’

  ‘Take me home to Druidsdale. Stella is there.’

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS

  The inquest brought in a verdict of ‘accidental death’ upon the decease of John Robert Rozanov, philosopher. George McCaffrey’s name was never mentioned or thought of in this connection. No one had seen him either enter or leave the Institute.

  When Father Bernard got back there after leading George home to Druidsdale he found the whole matter of the ‘accident’ completely set up. What had happened was clear. Rozanov had been standing on the edge of the bath looking at his notebook and had slipped and stunned himself in falling. The circumstances of the death seemed to preclude suicide, and the only other theory which circulated (hushed up by the Director, Vernon Chalmers) was that the philosopher had been killed by a sudden inrush of scalding water which had rendered him unconscious. Father Bernard gave evidence a
t the inquest. He prayed for long hours to his inmost soul for guidance about whether or not he should produce the suicide note. In the end he was still uncertain about his duty but had become afraid of getting into trouble for concealing evidence. The inquest had been hustled on by Chalmers, who was afraid of talk and adverse publicity, and the funeral, a cremation in accordance with wishes expressed in the will, followed promptly. The national press had taken due notice of John Robert’s death, and various outsiders turned up at the brief ceremony (which was organized by Robin Osmore) including John Robert’s pupil Steve Glatz who happened to be in Oxford at the time, and a mysterious American woman who cried a lot.

  George’s hysterical blindness left him after about a fortnight, and after that the priest took Rozanov’s letter round to show to him. George nodded his head, but did not utter any words after reading the note. Father Bernard brought it again on two occasions until he was satisfied that George had really understood it, although he still said nothing about it. Later on Father Bernard showed the note to me.

  I think the priest’s intuition was probably right in guiding him not to reveal that Rozanov had intended to kill himself. Hattie Meynell, who felt enough guilt about it all in any case, was thereby spared the anguish of knowing that John Robert had proceeded almost directly from his conversation with her into the extremity of such an act. My own view is that John Robert had long been preparing his decision to die; this is certainly suggested by his possession of a specially compounded drug. And Hattie had perhaps not been mistaken in thinking that he was in a state of destructive despair about what he felt to be the failure of his philosophical work.