How much time do we have left? Not long, W. says. We’re not the sort who live long lives. Look at us! He hasn’t felt himself for 20 years, says W., and I’ve long since run to fat and bleary eyed alcoholism. But I am more of a whiner than he is, W. says. There’s always something wrong with me, isn’t there? One day it’s a nosebleed, the next nausea, the next some indeterminate fever … And my stomach, whatever is wrong with my stomach?
W. never used to believe me about my stomach. He thought I was a hypocondriac. But once he saw my face turn green – green! – he understood. You looked appalling, he said. Everyone was horrified, everyone at the table. And then, for a terrible morning when he was visiting me, W. was taken ill. It’s my stomach! My God!, he cried. He decided it was my lifestyle. All that drinking! All that eating! One night, he saw me pass out from overeating. My head fell back … he was worried, but then he heard me snoring.
How can you live like this?, said W. exasperated beyond belief. How? This is my five year hole, I told W. Everyone should be allowed one of those. Deleuze had one, didn’t he? An eight year hole, that’s what he called it, in which he wrote nothing? But Deleuze was working, says W., and you don’t do any work, do you? What happened to you? How did you get like this? Why don’t you read anymore? Why don’t you write?
We’re on the electric bus, which W. notes, only serves middle class people, and very few of them, not working class ones. There’s never anyone on this bus!, he claims. Except for us, today when it’s absolutely necessary. We’re in a hurry. We’re looking for a toilet. There’s the toilet in my office, thank God, and it’s 10 minutes away by bus. If we had to walk, my God!, says W., imagining the horror. This is your life, isn’t it? This is how you live!, he says. Drunk and then ill, drunk and then ill …
W. is ill and I am ill, as always. W. blames me. It’s your lifestyle! What can you expect? What do you do all day? Later, he wonders whether I ever worked at all. Was there ever a time when you read?, he asks. W. reads every day, rising at dawn, and putting in three hours before he does anything else. I don’t wash, I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t even have a cup of tea, W. says. His German isn’t very good, so it takes him forever to read anything. Rosenzweig took him a year, and he didn’t understand a word of it. Not a word!
Now it’s Cohen. W. eats and breathes Cohen, he says, but he doesn’t really understand Cohen either. You have to know maths, says W., and he was never very good at maths. Additionally, W. is learning Greek for the umpteenth time. Greek! It’s the aorist that defeats him every time. Still, he’s begun again, he’s reading, he’s writing – not for publication, says W., publication doesn’t matter at all. And what am I doing? What have I read lately?
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