August 6, 1912    

 

Today, like many others, turned out to be a horrible day. Yesterday, I prayed that I wouldn't wet my bed this night, I prayed for God to prevent me from committing this terrible sin. I ran over it twice in my head and muttered it countless times," Please God, do not let me wet the bed. Oh, please God, do not let me wet the bed." Last night, I prayed with such fervor and passion that even sweat had accumulated on my brow. But like always, my prayers were left unanswered, maybe ignored.   

 

I woke up optimistically this morning, hoping that my prayers had been finally heard. But optimism was brief, for I quickly realised that my prayers last night had made remarkably little difference. The horror struck me - I had committed the sin again. I was still frozen with shock as the matron entered, her grim, imposing figure towering over me. Her thick leather boots boomed its way through the dormitory, and the first bed she checked was mine. I looked on with fear and waited for the dreaded words to be elicited. She roughly pulled the sheets back with a jerk and the words rolled out of her like a peel of thunder," Report yourself to the headmaster after breakfast." 

 

When I entered his office, he knew, of course, the reason of why I had come. Already, he had taken the riding crop of out of the cupboard and was fiddling with its handle. He gave me a short, but pompous lecture then seized me by the scruff of the neck and began to beat me. The beating wasn't unbearable, but it flogged everything out of me. My pride, my soul and lastly, my heart.  

 

I know that bed-wetting is a sin, yet, it is something completely out of my control. So, I have made up my conclusion: It is possible for me to commit a sin without wanting to commit it. Therefore, I am stuck in a reality where I can't do good, for that is a concept out of my reach.  

 

So today night, I will not pray, I will not depend myself on God's will. Praying is only a waste of time, being that it won't stop me from wetting my bed, being that it will not stop me from getting beaten. My future is inevitable as I was born as an unlucky child, a child without the ability to do any good. 

 

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September 23, 1927         

 

I knew this day would soon come, and today it was. I saw a man hanged today. A living man, alive and with enough life left in him to last him a few more decades. Yet, his life was cut short abruptly. 

 

It was a sodden morning of the rains and a sickly light was gleaming itself into the jail yard. He was a puny man with a thick, sprouting moustache who walked clumsily, being that his arms were bound together, but quite steadily. And as he walked, he slightly stepped to one side of the guards in order to avoid stepping on a puddle that had amassed this morning. And curiously, until that moment, I have never fully understood what it means to destroy a healthy man in his right mind. For when I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the moral error, the unspeakable wrongness in cutting a life short when it is in full tide.  

 

This man wasn't a dying weak man. He was alive, just as we were alive. He and we were a party of men, walking together, hearing, seeing and feeling. But in two minutes, one of us would have left this world.  

 

A conscious mind stopped, a world destroyed. To me, a hanging seems worse than a thousand murders. His body hung limp and slowly twirled mid-air; all life had been sucked out of him. And who had done it? We, the Indian Imperial Police. 

 

I cannot go any longer serving an Imperialism. Seen from the outside, the British rule in India may seem benevolent, even necessary. But the truth is that no well-thinking man thinks it is right to invade a foreign country and oppress the population down by force. I am not exactly sure if I was in the correct mind when I joined the police. I hate oppression and force, yet, I had joined the main machine of despotism.  

 

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March 16, 1936 

 

Quite frankly, Sheffield could justly claim to be the ugliest city in the world. Each morning, I am more convinced of this claim, for I am met with the monstrous scenery of slag heaps, foul canals and patches of mud decorated with the prints of clogs. Although it is March currently, the weather has been terribly cold, which has resulted in the prevalence of mounds of blackened snow. As you walk through, you lose yourself in a labyrinth of miserable grey brick houses festering in planless chaos. The interior of these houses are all the same, all with almost the exactly same living room, ten or fifteen feet square. In Sheffield, I can't exactly describe this feeling, but it feels as if you are living amongst a population of troglodytes. 

 

So, this is what industrialism has done for us. Columbus sailed the Atlantic, the first steam engines tottered into motion, the British Square stood firm under the French guns at Waterloo and the one-eyed scoundrels of the 19th century  praised god and filled their pockets. And this is where it has all lead to: twisting and winding slums filled with dejected homes that house sickly aging people creeping round and round like dying cockroaches.  

 

I believe that it is a duty to visit these places once in a while, to experience the sights and the smell, for we should not forget their existence. The average income of an unemployed family is about 30 shillings of week, which enables most to survive at the bare minimum. While we roam around comfortably in our homes, they shiver at the brink of hypothermia. While we eat leisurely, they feed off a few scraps. We should never forget the crushing effects that industrialism has left with us. 

 

Now, I would like to share a particular experience that has still lasted me, which is quite unusual, being that most memories fade away after a few days. At the back of one of the houses was a young woman, kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the waste pipe, which I suppose was blocked. She had on a sagging apron, clumsy clogs and her arms were tinted with red by the cold. She looked up and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. Her face was round and pale, the usual tired face of a slum girl who is twenty five but looks forty on the exterior – the effects of miscarriages and drudgery. And for the slightest moment I saw a look of utter hopelessness, an expression of pure desolation painted on her countenance. And at this moment I realized something: that we are mistaken when we say, "It isn't the same for them as it would be for us." People bred in slums can imagine nothing else but a life in the slums. The proletarians are proletarians and will never be expected to be anything else, neither will they want to become anything else; they are like a frog born in a well. She knew what she was and she knew what was happening to her – she understood how dreadful and horrible a destiny it was to be out in the cold, kneeling on the hard stones of a slum, shoving stick up a drain pipe. This was her life, and she knew it as clearly as I did. 

 

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23 October, 1947  

 

I am still struggling with completing my first draft of my novel because of wretched health. It is my lungs again, of course. Violent fits of coughing seize me frequently and the Corryvrekan whirlpool has definitely  done me no good. I can still remember the sudden coldness and that freezing sensation that spread through me. It really did me ill, especially on my lungs.  

 

However, what I have just realised is that most of my novel is still a dreadful mess and about two-thirds of it will have to be completely retyped. I will have to inform my publisher of this, which will disappoint him greatly, for he is impatient in publishing this novel.  

 

I must say that 'The Last Man in Europe' is killing me. Slowly, I am fading away from the hands of life. Everything is killing me: the tobacco I smoke, not being able to see Richard, Irene's death and the whirlpool's effects. But I know that I must finish this book, because why abandon such a great idea? I am aware that this may be my final book. 

 

It is saddening to write so short today, but I must get along with my novel, for I have no time for leisure.  

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