W. is ill and so am I. But W. will never believe I am as ill as he is. I haven’t moved from my sofa in three days; he hasn’t moved from his in a week. I’ve done little but watch DVDs; he hasn’t been able to muster the concentration necessary to watch a DVD. I’ve lost my appetite, but W has forgotten he ever had an appetite. And above all, I’m capable of writing, ‘I’ve lost my appetite’, whereas W. hasn’t touched a keyboard for a week. ‘Even your illnesses are affectations’, says W.
In his illness, W. has been thinking only of his failure. ‘What have you been thinking about?’, he asks me, ‘celebrity gossip?’ Night and day, W. has been pondering why he has accomplished so little. ‘What have you been pondering?’, he asks, ‘what you’re going to make me say on your stupid blog?’ W. has decided I have no real sense of failure. ‘Even your sense of failure is a sham’, he says.
If he were to watch a DVD in his illness, says W., it would undoubtedly be Satantango. ‘Seven and a half hours, all in one sitting.’ I tell him I watched In Her Shoes. ‘It was really good. I like romantic comedies.’ Next up, Hulk. ‘An old favourite.’
W., who is really ill, as opposed to what he calls my fake illness, has been ill continuously over the past few months. For brief periods, his symptoms withdraw, allowing him to go into the office. I, who caught my illness from W. in the first place have also been ill off and on, but it is only intermittent, says W. ‘You’re basically healthy. Robust in your idiocy.’
‘You don’t know what it means to be ill, night and day. Like Kafka. Like Blanchot.’ W.’s illness is grand, mine is petty. His draws him closer to the masters, mine only reveals how far from them I have ever been. ‘What amazes me,’ says W., ‘is how they could ever write a line.’ W., in his illness, can write nothing. He rises early each morning in the hope he might accomplish something, but every day he is confronted by his own inability. Even the small task of writing our abstract is beyond him.
Has he, in his illness, heard the rumbling of bare existence?, I ask W. He says he thinks he hears it night and day, or it might only be me talking about celebrity gossip. Am I his Eckermann, or his Boswell? I ask W. He says I’m his ape, and, remembering Benjamin on Max Brod, that I’m a question mark in the margin of his life. Well, more like an exclamation mark, says W., or a shit stain.
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