We drink at the Dolphin, in the old town. ‘You would break the phalanx’: whilst W. is loyal, I am disloyal. ‘Your whole life is a performance’: whilst he is sincere, I am never sincere. ‘You’ve never felt a thing’: whilst he is directly emotional, I am without emotion. ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’ Whilst he is eminently capable of love, I am incapable of love.
Like him, says W., only more so, I do not work hard enough. Like him, only more so, I will be broken by my sense of what is great, and by the fact that whatever I do, I will never be great. Unlike him, I will not have the courage to leave when it will have become clear for the millionth time that I will amount to nothing.
W. says I have a desire to publish everything I write, but the vast majority of W.’s writing remains unpublished. I have a desire to be loved, which is why I publish so much, but he has no desire to be loved (or at least, it does not compromise his work). But above all, I must work earnestly on another book. It’s the only way you experience your inadequacy, W. tells me. In parts of the second book, he says, I was getting somewhere; but now I will get nowhere. For his part, W. thinks he might be getting somewhere. But he also has a pressing sense of his own inadequacy.
What work are you doing? What are you writing? The blog, W. tells me, has become very pretentious, mannered and self-indulgent. You’re good at comedy, he tells me. Write more about your failure, he tells me. I get up at 7.00 to work, but W. gets up at 6.00 to work (and sometimes earlier). What do you do at 7.00?, he asks me. For his part, W. read Rosenzweig in German. Now he’s writing about Rosenzweig. What are you reading?, he asks me.
Still, W. is perpetually, grindingly disappointed with himself. He suspects I am not as disappointed with myself as he is. In fact, I seem rather pleased with myself, he says. But he, W., is not pleased with himself. We get the water taxi across to Mount Batten. W. is impressed by my moment of illumination: over the course of ten minutes, I had several ideas; the clouds parted.
For the most part, says W., of us, there are only clouds, but then sometimes, for one of us, or both of us, the clouds part. And there was a real sunburst: as we walked along the spit, I speculated aloud on this and on that. Write it down, said W. I wrote a few notes. But it’s like Flowers for Algernon, says W., you’ll forget it all.
Up to the tower. It’s locked. W. tells me of his overwhelming sense of shame. We do nothing, he says. We’re parasites. Time for the pub. Through the boatyard. The moment of illumination has passed. What are we to do with our lives, with our non-careers? Appelfeld sometimes let his characters say, after all, man is not an insect. But we’re insects, says W., we put up with too much.
W. speaks of his dream of a community, of a society of friends who would push each other to greatness. We speak of our absent friends over pints of Bass. If only they were closer! Of what would be capable! They would make us great! Perhaps that is his last temptation, says W., the thought that something would make us great.
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