'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, really listens, he says. 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. But that's when the apocalypse speaks most deeply in me. That's when it resounds, the truth of the end times, of the end of the world.
And who is he, W. – the Pythia to my Oracle? Who is he, for whom I am a sign to interpret?
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