The Good Apprentice Read Free Page A

coats. All cravings were mean now, since he himself was utterly without identity or value. Only occasionally when he woke from sleep did he for seconds recover his lost self, his happy self who did not know that his life was irrevocably smashed and over. Waking perhaps from a happy dream he would exist for seconds as that old self, the lively self that could anticipate a happy busy significant day. Then black memory would come, the blackness that covered everything, blinding his eyes and annihilating space and time. Thus did day bring back his night.
    It was not quite true to say that he hated everyone. One person remained to him, the only one he needed, the only one he loved, Mark Wilsden, his friend, his beloved. Talking aloud to himself Edward would repeat again and again, as the rhythmical moan with which the agonised sufferer tries to soothe unbearable pain, ‘Oh my dear, oh my darling, my poor lost one, my poor dead one, come to me, forgive me, I’m sorry, oh my love, my love, I’m so sorry, help me, help me, help me.’ So he prayed to Mark. A language he would never have used to Mark alive now seemed the only way to speak to Mark dead, to Mark’s image or ghost which was now permanently present, a part of every thought, in the chamber of his mind. Sometimes when he was alone he even pictured that ghost as an unhappy strengthless wraith, crying outside his door, begging to be given back his life; and the transformation of Edward’s grief into pity seemed so likely to kill him on the spot that he had to run out gasping into the street where the alien hostile faces of strangers forced him to control himself and survive. Vain love for Mark grew in him cancer-like and was spewed forth in a black private eloquence often accompanied by tears. Only Edward could not cry properly, not as he had seen girls cry in gushing pouring streams. His tears came forth painfully as a small and healthless dew.
    Sometimes he tried to think simply that he had committed a sin, was feeling guilty, and should repent; but these familiar ideas seemed abstract and flimsy, unable to take any hold upon the devastation of his life. One moment of absolute treachery had proved everything against him, his guilt was a huge pain which blotted out ideas, and he lived in it like a fish at the bottom of a dark lake. If only he could have, somehow, somewhere, a clean pain, a vital pain, not a death pain, a pain of purgatory by which in time he could work it all away, as a stain which could be patiently worked upon and cleansed and made to vanish. But there was no time, he had destroyed time. This was hell, where there was no time. If only he had been accused of some definite outrage and sent to prison. The idea of being for a definite period, however long, in prison occasionally seemed attractive in a world where all natural desire had ended. He even considered committing some ordinary crime in order to get to prison. But the will was lacking. He could not invent anything, not even, at present, his own death.
    Like Cain I have killed my brother whom I loved. Perhaps I killed him purposely, out of envy, like someone said, how can I know? Oh forgive me, will not someone forgive me? If Mark were alive in a wheelchair would he forgive me? Surely he would. But he is not alive, and I killed him. Edward heard these thoughts, endlessly repeated, ringing in his head, ringing out as if everyone could hear them, and sometimes he found himself, even when he was not alone, starting to recite them aloud as a mechanical litany, and weirdly smiling when the agony was worst. Oh for any other pain except this one, a merciful pain that would wipe away the deed itself, perhaps in a million years, but sometime. I left him alone, the final eternally unpardonable moral failure, the ultimate dereliction of duty. If only the telephone hadn’t rung, if only I had not gone away, if only I had left the door unlocked, if only I had come back twenty minutes sooner, ten minutes, one