W. speaks mournfully about my intellectual decline. Of course it’s not my decline he laments, but that of his own judgement, and his own phantasmic hopes: how was it that he placed his hopes in me? why does he need to place them in anyone at all? I tell him at once I only appeared intelligent, but in fact it was a sham.
I’m very sensitive to caffeine, I tell him, and when I drink a cup of coffee, it’s true I really can appear intelligent. But it’s only an appearance. I make no great claims to intelligence, I tell him, in fact, quite the contrary: I’ve always been very open: I don’t think I’m particularly intelligent.
At times I worked quite hard, I tell him, but those times are gone. There was a time – many years ago – when it was necessary to cultivate the appearance of intelligence, but I knew, then and now, that it was a sham. A necessary sham, mind you, but still a sham. I have no nostalgia for my own intelligence, I tell W., unlike you. That’s your weakness, I tell W., and he always agrees, the idea that because there are two of us, because we work together, something might result. W. agrees, mournfully.
Yes, I was never intelligent, he knows that now. It was all caffeine, he admits, and now I drink far less coffee, it’s become clear, he says: I was never intelligent, or no more than ordinarily intelligent. I used to read a few things, I tell him, but that time has passed. Yes, for a time, but only a short time, I liked to read, and even read a great deal. But it’s over – I don’t make time, not anymore.
I used to make time, but I used to have time. Even when I have time nowadays I don’t make time. There are other things to do, I tell him. And it’s true I rather like these other things, because they give me an alibi. I can say, I can’t think because I’m busy, whereas in truth, I can’t think because I don’t read, and I don’t make time to read.
My sense of shame is underdeveloped, I tell W. I feel insufficiently shameful. We are, I tell W., supposedly experts in a particular intellectual field. There are things we should know, I tell him, and I should feel shameful for not knowing them. But I have my alibis and excuses I tell him. There’s always a story to tell, always an excuse, I tell W.
It’s because there’s no intellectual culture over here, I tell him, that’s one of my excuses. It’s because of global capitalism, that’s another, I tell him. There’s a whole range of excuses, and what it comes down to is that they are all excuses, I tell him. I’m losing interest in everything but my own ineptness, I tell him. I’m interested only in my inability, I tell him. It fascinates me, I admit that. It’s all around me like a cloud. Like damp, I tell him, the damp that follows me around like a dog.
I think it’s my own stupidity that follows me, I tell him. My own incompetence. Of which, wrongly, I am not ashamed, I tell him. I think that’s what I lack, and what you envy, I tell W. Isn’t that what you always tell me: that I’m your id, that my very presence around you makes you lose all sense of decorum?
You find my very presence permissive, I tell W. When I first met you, I tell W., you sat at the high table, talking with the others very seriously. But latterly, we sit at the low table, talking rubbish. At the low table, the disastrous table, I tell him. And away from the others, and in the pub, I tell him.
It’s an ongoing disaster, I tell him, that is permitted by my shamelessness. It’s as if shamelessness has leapt across to you, I tell him, and my range of excuses. So we can talk happily of global capitalism and a lack of intellectual culture and of general decay, I tell him, when what we are really speaking of is our own incompetence.
In truth, I tell him, it fascinates us, and is the only thing that fascinates us. It is like a mirror for all our interests. The source of our interest lies in the way it is reflected in our incompetence. It’s from that it all begins, that is its source: our incompetence. Of which we are far from ashamed, I tell him. Or at least I am not ashamed, not really, and you, increasingly, are unashamed.
I think that’s what my company permits you, I tell him. I think it’s my great gift to you. My incompetence has become our incompetence, I tell him. We’re hypnotised by it, I tell him. We speak of nothing else and think of nothing else. It’s like the damp in my flat, I tell him, which hypnotises me. It’s like my six foot by six foot by six foot kitchen which is completely saturated with damp, I tell him. A little cube of damp, and where the brick is so wet it’s eroding, I tell him.
The brick is being eaten from the inside out as by acid, I tell him. And it fascinates me, I tell him, because it’s the perfect figure for my own stupidity, which follows me like a dog. In truth, we are the kings of damp, I tell him, you and me. Me, because, after all, I am literally and metaphorically surrounded by damp, and you because you are metaphorically surrounded by damp.
Damp is cosmological, I tell him, remembering Bela Tarr. Cosmological and ontological. Everything is damp, and there is only damp descending everywhere and over everything. The pages of the books will stick together, and a thin film of damp will form over our lips. And the great names of the European intelligentsia will be smeared in damp, their books rotting.
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