Z for Zachariah by Robert O'Brian

Author:Robert O'Brian [O'Brian, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0141300310
Publisher: Puffin Books
Published: 1975-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Evening

He is still the same. I do not know what keeps him alive. I do not dare to try to move him; I have the feeling that the least disturbance, even a loud noise, might snap the thread. So I still have not changed the bed, though it is soiled.

When I came back from the church I spoke to him, very softly, I just told him I was there. He did not wake up, or even flicker his eyelids. Yet I had a feeling he heard me, even if unconsciously, and that it was good for him to know someone was there.

In fact I was so convinced of this that I decided to read to him, quietly, sitting by his bed so he would sense where I was. I thought of the Bible, but in the end decided poetry might be more soothing, so I brought an anthology from my room and read Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. It is sad, but I like it. I realized it was about death, but I was sure he could not understand the words at all; I only hoped he might hear the sound.

Again, I am not too sure for whose benefit I was really doing it. Reading the poem certainly made me feel less worried and confused. I thought that later I might also play the piano, something quiet, and using the soft pedal. It is, after all, in the next room, and he did like it when I played before.

After I finished Gray’s “Elegy” I sat in the chair thinking about him and Edward.

I suppose I have to accept the idea that Mr Loomis shot Edward and killed him, and that is a terrible thought, because of what I hoped and because he is the only other human being I am ever likely to know.

But I do not know just how bad it is, or was.

From what he said in his dream, and from the holes in the suit, I cannot help believing he did it. But from what he said, too, I cannot be sure how wrong it was. In a way, it was self-defence. If Edward had taken the suit, and left, and had never come back, he would, in effect, have doomed Mr Loomis to stay in the laboratory—perhaps forever—-probably forever—and there he would eventually have run out of food, or water or air, and died. So in a way Edward was, when he tried to steal the suit, threatening to kill him.

Also, Mr Loomis may have been concerned about more than just staying alive. In his dream he said that the suit was too important to waste. He called it “the last useful thing”. He may have been thinking not just of himself, but of human survival. At that time he surely still believed that there might be groups of people alive in shelters—underground Air Force bases, and so on—and the suit, the only one of its kind, might be the only way to contact them, and eventually for them to contact each other.

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