Brod and Brod

‘Which one of us is Kafka and which Brod?’, I ask W. during his recent visit. ‘We’re both Brod’, says W. He is leaving for the South; the audit is over. To keep me amused in long meetings, he imitates me. ‘You look like an ape’, he says, ‘and you hold your pen strangely’.

W., as always, is intruiged by my eating habits. He asks to put his hand on my belly. I had made him do the same when we went to see Plymouth Argylle play. ‘It’s bigger than at All Tomorrow’s Parties’, he said then. ‘It’s even bigger now’, he told me over the weekend. ‘That’s because I’ve let myself off the gym whilst I am doing the book’, I said. W. marvelled. ‘This is just the start. You’re going to get really fat’.

We remember J. C.’s elasticated trousers. ‘Now he really is fat’, I said, and remind W. of eating breakfast with M. N. ‘He had five breakfasts’, said W, ‘he ate everything on the menu’. ‘Levinas was chubby’, W. reminds me, ‘I like chubby men’. We remember the fat singers we admire, drinking wine out of bottles on stage. Fat, angry men. ‘He’s angry because they’re fat’, I said of the singer of Modest Mouse to an American. ‘No, he was always angry, then he got fat’, he said. ‘Do you think he minds being fat?’ I asked. ‘He has other issues’.

Kafka was thin, W. reminds me. ‘Yes, but he was ill’. ‘Blanchot was thin’, says W. ‘But he was ill as well’. ‘I bet Brod was fat’, says W. ‘Definitely’. ‘That’s why we’ll get fat’, W. says. ‘Why?’ – ‘Drinking’. – ‘Why do you think Brod drank?’ – ‘Because he knew he was stupid.’

W. and I have drunk too much. We eat at the Sardinian restaurant. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’, I ask him. – ‘Literature. We should have done maths. Have you noticed everyone clever did maths?’ A few names are mentioned. ‘You’re right’, I say.

W. has grown fond of telling me my tank is nearly empty. ‘You have to read more’, he tells me. ‘You were okay for a while, you got by on your personality, but now you’re tank is nearly empty. The needle’s going …’ and he waggles his finger like a needle waggling. I promise to read Spinoza properly. ‘In Latin’, W. demands.