It's not as if we're a threat. We hold out our hands so we can be arrested, but no one wants to arrest us. We cross our palms and extend our wrists, hoping to be led handcuffed to a holding cell, but no one leads us away. We pack our suitcases and leave them by the door in the hope that the secret police will come, but no one batters down our doors.
He sees it, W. says, like an enormous fact. A great fact, like the wide sky, that says you do not matter. Over the Bodelian, it says: you do not matter. Over the college quadrangles, it says: none of this matters. Over gowned academics, it says: this is all nothing.
No one's going to shoot us, W. says, more's the pity. No one's going to put us up against the wall. We're not going to executed as traitors. We're not going to be sued for our seditious writings. We're not going to Siberia for twenty years. We're not going to live out our lives in exile.
Whose fault is it? Who can we blame? There are no enemies, not really. Only poor souls, like us. Only cynics and opportunists like us, you can see it in their dead, blank eyes. Cynics, opportunists, who've compromised all the way, for whom the only way was compromise.
Because the rules of the game are everywhere. Because it plays us, because a child plays with the universe, as Heraclitus says, only this is not a child, it's an ape, a gigantic drooling ape, the gigantic drooling ape of Capital, W. says. – 'You, in other words', W. says.
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