The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [126]
How could I possibly have thought it right to tell Holmes this? I was empty, dead, the world was filled with a howling wind and the gnashing of teeth. The Dream had escaped my control, my past had freed itself to destroy me and the (yes, I would admit it) love (the thin wail of my mother’s voice as the car went over) I had for this man.
“I went crazy for a while, kept having to be restrained from throw-ing myself off things. I finally came across a very good psychiatrist. She told me that the only way I could make up for it was not to kill myself, but to make myself worth something. In effect, though she didn’t say it so simply, to be my brother’s stand-in. It was an effective piece of therapy, in a way. I no longer tried to jump from high places. But the Dream started that same week.” Holmes cleared his throat.
“How often does it come?”
“Not often now. I haven’t had it since we were in Wales. I thought it was finally gone. It appears not. I’ve never told anyone about it. Ever.” I lay there and thought of the time, just before I left California, that Dr. Ginzberg drove me down to the cliffs, and I had seen the sparkle of glass and the scorch marks below, and how tempting and welcoming and cool the waves looked as they pounded themselves to froth on the rocks far below.
“Russell, I—”
I interrupted him with a desperate rush of words.
“If you’re going to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault and say that I mustn’t feel guilty about it, Holmes, I’d rather you left, because that really would finish us off, truly it would.”
“No, Russ, I wasn’t about to say that. Give me some credit, I beg you. Of course you killed them. It was not murder, or even manslaugh-ter, but you are certainly guilty of provoking a fatal accident. That will remain on your hands.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. I took my arm away and looked at him then, and saw in his face a mirror image of the pain I could feel on my own, only in his case the rawness of it was smoothed over, soothed by wisdom and years.
“I was merely going to say that I hope you realise that guilt is a poor foundation for a life, without other motivations beside it.”
His gentle words shook me, like an earthquake, like the tremor I had felt as the gout of flame came bubbling up over the cliff. I felt my-self falling into a chasm that yawned up within me, and all that held me was a pair of calm grey eyes. Gradually the trembling stopped, the earth subsided, the chasm fell in on itself and closed, and the eyes saw it all, and understood. My guilt, the secret that had gnawed at me day and night for four years, was in the open now, recognised and ac-knowledged, and no longer would it be swept away to grow malig-nantly in the dark. My guilt had been admitted. I had been convicted, had done my penance, and had been given absolution and told to move on; the healing process could begin. For the first time, the very first time since I had awakened surrounded by white coats and the smell of the hospital, a sob tore into my chest. I saw it on the face of the man opposite me, and I closed my eyes, and I wept.
he following morning we resumed our rôles, all signs of the night’s revelations banished. It was bearable now, because that night and each successive night after the lights were turned out I would hear two taps at the door, and Holmes would enter, stay for a few minutes, and leave. We spoke of quiet things, mostly concerning my studies. Twice I lit a candle and read to him from the little Hebrew Bible I had bought in the old bazaar in Jerusalem. Once, after a partic-ularly bitter day of verbal duels and bloodletting, he sat and stroked my hair until I fell asleep. These moments made sanity possible. From the time I rose in the morning until I turned off my light, Holmes was my enemy, and the ship rang with our fury, and the men retreated from the ice that spread from us. At night, however, for a few minutes, battle was suspended and, like the British and German soldiers ex-changing cigarettes and carols across No-Man’s-Land