W. remembers my work phase, he says. How long did it last? For a while, it was all activity with me. For a while, a flood of writings, it was incredible. I used to send him some of them; he was impressed – not at the content of what I wrote, of course, but the fact that I was writing; that I could write at all.
There was something independent about me he admired, he said at the time. Something untouched by the great disasters overtaking the world. – 'You stuck at it in your corner', he said. 'Working away'.
For a time, he even took dietary advice from me, W. remembers. I told him to eat oily fish – mackerel, sardines – and to restrict his caffeine intake. And he took life coaching advice. I told him never to work at night and to get a good night's sleep, W. remembers.
I told him to write everything up, and never to begin writing without a clear aim in view. I told him to rationalise and organise his workspace; to keep a separate drawer for every work in progress. Because there was to be nothing other than works in progress; no idle notetaking, no leafing through books in languages he half understands.
And he followed my advice, W. says. He did exactly what I told him. He even began to publish. He wrote for publication; he sent things out, inspired by my example. Not by what I wrote, W. says, but the fact that I wrote. Not what I published, which he never read, but that I published, and ceaselessly.
But when W. finally read what I wrote, when he read it, line by line … The shock was immense, W. remembers. Suddenly it was clear to him: he knew who I was. His own private Mephistopheles, W. says. His last temptation.
I was the mirage that there was a kind of shortcut to thinking. That to think meant to publish and nothing other. That thinking was only a working for publication, and the mania of writing for publication.
He immediately gave up eating oily fish, W. said. And he immediately began drinking more coffee. He let his office to fall back into a mess, and emptied the drawers of his filing cabinet. Why did he listen to me? Why did he ever listen?
And now he waits, every morning, looking out over Stonehouse roofs, naked but for his dressing gown. Now he waits, the lone watchman, knowing that I've long since stopped getting up as early as him, or going to bed early, for the thought that he dreams is crossing the sky to find him.
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