The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [260]
Dear Mr Arrowby,
I have to be the bearer of sad news, I am sorry. I cannot find you in the telephone. But you are at liberty to make telephone to me at the number given on the paper. My sad news is this, your cousin Mr James Arrowby has just died. I am his doctor. He left me a note that you are his cousin and his heir and that I should myself inform you of his decease. So I do this. I want also to tell something to you alone. Mr Arrowby died in much quietness. He telephoned me to come to him and was already dead when I arrived, and he had left the door open. He was sitting in his chair smiling. I must tell you this. By an accident that is no accident I came to him as his doctor. I am Indian, I come from Dehra Dun. When I first met Mr Arrowby I at once recognized him as one who knows many things. Perhaps you will understand. I had some prophetic thought about him, and when I came to him I saw what had been. In northern India I have known such deaths, and I tell it to you so that you need not be sorry too much. Mr Arrowby died in happiness achieving all. I have written for cause of death on the certificate ‘heart failure’, but it was not so. There are some who can freely choose their moment of death and without violence to the body can by simple will power die. It was so with him. I looked upon him with reverence and bowed before him. He has gone quietly and by the force of his own thought was consciousness extinguished. Thus it is good to go. Believe me, Sir, he was an enlightened one.
I will be at your service at the telephone number. With obedient wishes, I am yours truly,
P. R. Tsang.
I read the letter through twice and a terrible cold quietness fell upon me and I sat like a statue motionless for a long time. It did not occur to me to wonder if the strange letter was a hoax or a mistake. I had no doubt that James had gone. He had gone quietly; with just a little gentle pressure of his mind upon his body he had made the restless flickering consciousness cease forever. I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move. And I felt an odd new sensation which it took me a little time to recognize as loneliness. Without James I was at last alone. How very much I had somehow relied upon his presence in the world, almost as if he had been my twin brother and not my cousin.
I saw from my watch that it was nearly midnight. I would indeed go to London tomorrow. And I wondered with helpless sad confusion what had happened, what had they done with him? Was James still sitting there in his chair, dead and smiling his inane smile?
I got up to go to bed and then remembered that I had made my couch out on the rocks. I decided to go to it. Outside the night was warm and had darkened just enough to show a scattering of stars and the faint smudgy arch of the Milky Way. There was a diffused lightness in the sky however, and I recalled that it must be, give or take a day or two, midsummer. I was able to find my way not too dangerously over the rocks which I now knew so well, though at one point my foot slipped into a pool. The water in the pool was warm. I found my hard bed and lay on it in shirt and trousers, just taking off my shoes. I propped my head so that I could look at the horizon which was marked by a dark line and a silver line. The water lapped below me like ripples against a slowly moving boat.
Why had James gone, why had he decided to go now? Was there any immediate reason, such as I could understand, or was it all part of some big wheeling pattern of my cousin’s existence of which I could perceive nothing? All sorts of crazy hypotheses kept coming into my head. Was it something to do with Lizzie? Impossible.