'What kind of person were you in your warehouse, in your former life?, W. wonders. What did they make of you back there?'
He can see it in his mind's eye, he says: I was everyone's monkey, everyone's jester. I was the everyone's houseboy, the slave who danced in his chains whilst they prodded me with sticks, W. says. I was a dancing bear, a grinning court dwarf …
How I must have loathed it, W. says. How keen I most have been to escape! 'You longed to stand upright. You longed to have your blinkers removed and your iron collar unlocked … And you longed for the bit to be removed from your mouth …'
It's no wonder I am an apocalypticist, W. says, a resenter. It's no wonder I can only speak in great generalisations, in great dark gusts …
'For a long time, you couldn't speak. For a long time, no one would listen to you. And now …'
Only W. listens to me, he says. Only he listens, really listens, to what I have to say. It's like a distracted buzzing in his ears, W. says. It's like a humming on the edge of his awareness. I speak as a solar wind sweeps through empty space.
Of course, I don't know what I'm saying, not really, says W. I'm not really aware. I'm like a witchdoctor whose eyes have rolled backwards in his skull. I'm like a pentecostalist writhing on the floor. And nor can he, W., really understand what I'm saying. It's import. It's secret significance.
Sometimes W. feels as though he is the Pythia to my Oracle. He asks questions of me, but he can't understand the answers. He has to interpret them in his own way, W. says. I am, for him, a sign to interpret.
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