The Guillotine

He blames me, W. says. Somehow this is all my fault. You're dragging me down, W. says, everybody says so.

Some part of him simultaneously wants to be dragged down, W. has to concede that. But I am dragging him down even more quickly than he would want to be dragged down, he says. It's cataclysmic. How could he have guessed at the humiliations that lay before him? How could he have known?

But then, too, he must have wanted to humilitate himself in some sense, even as he was drawn to me as the means of that humiliation. What crime has he committed? Why did he want to place himself on trial? His immense sensation of guilt is mysterious, W. says, but it led him straight to me, his judge, his guillotine.