My passivity. Every story I recount is in the passive, W. says. – 'You're never the agent in your anecdotes. You're always acted upon, never acting.'
Of course, I always tell him it's all about the middle voice. It's in the middle voice, I tell him of my anecdotes, or rather, my approximation of the middle voice, which, after all, is lost in modern European languages. I never say, It happened to me. There was a Schiessen, I tell him. There was a soiling. There was a faecal emergency, I tell him.
I like to make great claims for the middle voice, although I have no real idea what it is, W. say. I make it into a mystical thing. It's a matter of things befalling me, of my undergoing or downgoing, W. says. It's never my fault! It's part of the movement of things! It's part of fate, of being happening to itself!
I'm Der Untergeher, as in Bernhard's novel, I always tell him. – 'You're Der Idiot', W. always tells me.
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