The Great Work

1.

Is this it, is this all there is? Is this what you’ve been telling me about? Is this your grand design? I expected more from you, I admit it. I expected more, no doubt I was foolish to do so, but what you’ve done is very little. Is this really what you’ve been working on, is this the fruit of your labours? Is it this, is this all there is? Because it is not much. Because when it comes to it, it’s very little. It’s true I expected more of you. It’s true I always had hopes, I always harboured hopes in you, foolish no doubt, misplaced no doubt but I thought, if anyone can do something, it’s him. Yes, I thought you had it in you, I thought you could be more than the others, did you know that?

Did I betray my hopes to you? Did you have some intimation of them? Did you come to understand what I sought in you? Of course not. You were blind to me and blind to everyone. You were young! If I spoke to you, if I took you aside and spoke to you, it was nothing to you. I spoke; you listened; all was well – how could you know that I had picked you out, that I had selected you and thought: yes, he might be capable of something.

You would not believe how I watched you! True, I was away a good deal, I used to take long business trips. I was away, crossing the country one way and then another, but it was of you I used to think on those trips when I thought of our hometown. If anyone is to succeed, it will be him, I thought. Yes, he is the one in whom I place my hopes. Those were the thoughts which came to me in shabby hotel rooms and roadside cafes. So I consoled myself when I thought of our hometown that at least one of us might achieve something.

But what have you achieved? What is it that you’ve done? Is this it, is this all there is? Perhaps I should blame myself. Perhaps I am to blame, I who, alone among others, had watched out for you. Was it my fault, what you’ve done? I knew your face from the other faces. I thought: he is not one of the others, one of the rats. I thought: he isn’t a rat, he isn’t one of the swarm, one of those bodies that climbs on top of other bodies and sniffs the air. I thought: he isn’t one of them, but something else. No, he’s not one of them, even though he goes amongst them. He is there with the rest, but he will achieve something; he has potential.

2.

Even as a child, you had it, that potential. Always your great schemes! Always grand designs! True, you never finished your projects, true, you began with a great enthusiasm that disappeared almost at once. True, those projects went unfinished, your life was littered with great plans and great projects, but you finished nothing, you fell short of what you set yourself. For a time you gathered others around you, other rats; you inspired them. For a time, yes, the rats would crowd round you, excited by your ambition, they would pause from their crawling and their sniffing and look on.

How great your enthusiasm was! How much you dreamt of achieving! But it was not personal ambition which drove you. It wasn’t to be a rat greater than other rats, quite the contrary. It was enthusiasm, pure and simple. It was inspiration, pure and simple. A gust of wind passed through you; your eyes lit up, your mouth opened a little: what was it you’d seen – the future? What had you seen that the rest of us had not seen? And you set to work on your plans, on your projects, and others, enthused, worked around you.

When was that phase over? When did those plans run aground? Is it because you never finished what you began? Is it because you couldn’t quite bear finishing? The others left you, didn’t they? The others returned to their swarming, rat swarming over rat, rat climbing over other rats and sniffing the air, didn’t they? I saw; I’d looked on. What would you do now? Where would you turn, with your enthusiasm? Did it turn inward? Did it hollow out something inside you? Is that what I saw in the dulling of your eyes? Is that I saw in your distraction?

You were still young, weren’t you? You still had youth on your side, didn’t you? But something had changed, hadn’t it? Your enthusiasm changed direction, hadn’t it? It had changed direction, your enthusiasm, in retreat from the world, hadn’t it? What was happening to you? Could I see it? Could I tell, or was I fooling myself? Could I tell, or was it because I wanted to place hope in hope, in youth, in your youthfulness, in the capacity to begin?

What could I see? What did I want to see by the dulling of your eyes? What did I want to see by way of your retreat? In those days, I began my journeys. In those days, so long ago, I took a job that required I criss-cross the country as a sales representative for my company. It’s true I saw little change in you when I came home after my journeys. No sooner was I home than I set off once again, but still I kept tabs on you, still I welcomed news of you.

What was it that you were planning? What great plan were you hatching? True, you were still young, but you would not be young forever. True, you were young, you were still young, but that time was coming to an end, the time of youth was coming to an end. And how was it by the thought of this ending that I began to hope? Was it the ending of your youth in which I placed my hope? He is planning something, I thought to myself. Deep in his soul, something is happening; somewhere inside, the Great Work is beginning. Yes, something will happen, and probably at the moment he leaves his youth behind. Something will happen at the threshold, and as he crosses the threshold; then it will begin, and only then. How magnificently he will announce his adulthood! With what greatness will he step forth from youth to adulthood!

It’s true I was away during much of this period, driving on motorways and eating in roadside cafes; it’s true I heard little when I was away, and slept when I returned – but didn’t I hear stories? Didn’t I hear of your concentratedness and your silences? Didn’t I hear of your retreat and your solitude? What was it you were doing? What is it you were you planning?

You cast aside your old friends – was this a sign? You stayed in your room night and day – was this a sign? The world turned; years passed and I heard me you were working. Years passed – what happened to you? The others moved up in the world, and you stayed where you were. Years passed; the others went on to success or failure, but you stayed where you were, where you had always been, in one room or another, in a room that was always the same room. Years passed, and what was happening? The threshold had been crossed and what was happening?

You were old now – there was no question of that. No longer a youth – no question of that. And what had you done? What had you achieved? You were old, the threshold behind you and youth behind you, and even a few years of adulthood behind you, and what had you done? What of the great work that had filled your days and nights? Years passed; I, too was older. I was older; I had aged; that was expected. But you – for you to have aged, what did that mean? For you to have aged without producing the Great Work, what did that mean?

3.

Then, the other day, I ran into you in the street. Did I run into you, or was it you who sought me out? We ran into one another and you, who had never acknowledged me, told me you’d send me something.Yes, I saw you, you had never sought me out, who knew me only as one among others, as a friendly face among other faces, came to me and spoke. I was concerned; I thought: it’s too late, it’s too late in the day, the world has turned, and it’s too late for him to speak to me – for him – for you – to address one to whom he had never spoken. When you spoke and said you’d send me something, I thought: it’s too late for him, it’s too late for me and God knows it’s too late for the world. You spoke to me, you who had never addressed me, who had barely addressed anyone, and I thought: what’s happened? Have we all grown old? Has the world grown old? Is it really over? Has it come to this?

Did we meet by chance? I was crossing from one side of the road and you the other, but when you spoke to me of what you had been doing I thought: it’s too late, it’s already too late, he knows it’s too late and I know it’s too late. When you spoke, I thought: he, too, must know it’s too late; he, too, must know he’s been working without beginning and without a hope of beginning. You spoke and I thought, he must know it’s taken too long, that’s it’s taken too long without anything done, he must know he is too old, too old for one has never begun and is still trying to begin.

I thought: he must know I’ve been watching him and asking after him. He must know I had hopes for him. I thought: at last he has spoken to me, at last he has singled me out from the others just as I singled him out, but it is too late now and that he approached me is a sign of decline. I thought: after all this time, after his long silence and his long concentratedness, that he must look to me now is already a sign of failure. That he should seek me out, that he should address me, when it was I who had hoped to be addressed by way of his work, when I had lived to be so addressed and in the hope of such an address is a sign of failure.

That he should address me is already wrong. He to me, and not I who had been addressed by his work, his great work that would have reached me by other channels, his work that would simply have arrived, while he, on the other side of town was doing he knows what – he to me, and not I, among others, to him, as the triumphant author of the work that would crown this town like a fiery halo! He to me – this is wrong; it means there is no work, that there never was a work, that the Great Work was botched and unbegun – that the work was never brought to the verge of the beginning!

He to me – already disaster, disaster for the first, disaster for him who had spent so many years working without working, and disaster for me, who had waited for his work, not for him, but for his work, for the great work that would write itself with his fingers, I who would have been content merely to pass him in the street, to pass him in the knowledge of what he had achieved! Content merely to pass him, to occupy the same street as him, he who had achieved what the rest of us had failed to achieve, he who was not part of the rats and the swarming of rats, he who had lifted himself from the rats and from our town of rats!

I thought: he knows that to acknowledge me is a sign of his ruin. Look at him now! Look what’s become of him! He is old, like me. We are both old, and this is the tragedy. It’s not our world anymore, and this is the tragedy. He is old and I am old, I thought, and there are other young people now, others in whom we should place our hopes, and that is the tragedy. He knows it and I know it; that he approached me is a sign it’s already over for him and for his generation as it was over for me and for my generation.

He should know he’s failed, why does he pretend? Too many years have passed; why does he pretend? He’s crossed the threshold, and there’s nothing between him and death, why does he pretend? His potential is exhausted, he’s out of time. Once I asked questions after him and awaited news about him; once it was I who sought news, and now? I believe he sought me out, that he waited for me; that he waited on the street knowing it was my habit to pass that way in the street. He sought me out, waiting outside on the street just as I would sometimes discreetly follow him. Only he was without discretion. Only he was without shame. Only he addressed me.

It’s over – botched, he never began and now it’s too late to begin. Out of time, having never begun. Out of time and out of it from the first. How could he have begun? How could I ever have thought he might begin? How could I have thought our town could throw up a Creator, a Genius, a Worker of the Great Work, a Dreamer of the Grand Design?

4.

And when I received what you sent me, a few mornings after? When I received a few pages from you, stuffed in an envelope, a few days after? When the envelope came, pressed through my letter box, not a few days later? When it came, the A4 envelope, not thick but thin – when it came, not via the Royal Mail but by your own hand, brought by you on your own legs, brought by one who had walked up my garden path, who had opened the gate and come up my front garden path, when you brought it to my letterbox and slid it through, when, through the letterbox of one whom you had scarcely known and scarcely acknowledged until that time? When I found the envelope on my doormat after a few days away, when I reached down and picked it up and placed it, fearing the worse, among a pile of unopened mail on the desk in my study? When I finally opened it, the envelope, and took out the few sheets of typewritten paper it contained?

I thought, there’s nothing of merit, nothing of value; everything  he’d written was already exhausted. Nothing of merit, nothing done, didn’t he know it? How could you have sent me this? How could he have sought my approval for this? He should have burnt it. Should have thrown it away. Those pages were an affront! An affront to me and to him and to my waiting and to his promise! An affront and embarassment to what he had worked for and what I had waited for! A mockery of my hopes and his hopes and the hopes of our town!

Was this it, I thought? Was this all there was? After all those years? After all those days and nights indoors? After all those days and nights in one room after another, feverishly working? Why hadn’t he given up? Didn’t he know his time had passed? Didn’t he know he’d had his chance? Why hadn’t he settled down like the others? Why hadn’t he settled down into the long afternoon of life like the others?

He needn’t have joined the rats, it is true, I thought – he could have settled down among the others, needn’t have lived with another and bred with another, and from time to time come to the study that he had never had and riffle through a few pages in the draw of the bureau he had never had and typed on the laptop he had never had – could have played for a few idle hours with the accroutements of writing, which he had never had and never needed, which only old men like me have and needed to have. But still he should have given up and put the manuscript aside. Still, years ago, he should have given up and put aside the manuscript. Years ago, and long before now, he should have put aside the manuscript aside as he put his childish things aside, should have put it aside and given up his hopes and placed them in another.

Is this it, I said to myself, is this all there is? Is this how it ends? For something has ended for me, too. Something is over for me, who had lived only to wait. I, too, have finished as my hopes have finished. It is over for me as it is over for him. Over, having never begun. Over, having spun itself from childish dreams and childish delusions. Over, having finally revealed itself in its true guise, which is to say in no guise at all.

Will I see him now, an old man among old men? Will we speak commonplaces as old men among old men, he in whom I’d placed my hopes and he who had destroyed them? Will he speak of his regrets and of what he had given up for a foolish dream? Will he smile over a life lived in a succession of rooms instead of a life with a wife and a life with children? And will we smile together over what we hoped for in spite of our town, of a writing and a waiting in spite of our town and in the face of our town?

But perhaps I was wrong; perhaps I picked the wrong one. And perhaps you, too, picked the wrong one. Perhaps this is the wrong time and the wrong epoch; perhaps we both missed the appointment we wanted to keep – perhaps it missed us both and passed us by. Was it our fault? Was it our failure? Was it the rats swarming over one another, one rat climbing over another and sniffing the air and then another rat coming to sniff the air?

In truth, it was our fault and our failure, and anything else is a lie. In truth, we were the ones who failed, he by writing and I by waiting, and this is what binds us together. Failure, redoubled failure, the failure of one and then the failure of the other: failure and without excuse and without mitigation. No excuse, no extenuating factors, only failure. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances, failure pure and simple.