Kasper Hauser

W. remembers how it all began. I came into his care, like Robin to Batman: a ward, a protege. How was he to know what would happen?

He taught me table manners, well, basic table manners. He tried to teach me politeness – to shake hands, to make chit-chat. He stopped me continually touching my skin through my shirt, and tried to quieten my bellowing.

Friendship involves a lot of nagging, W. says. I had to be nagged! I was like a prisoner released blinking into the light. What had I known of life before I met him? How had I survived?

I was a scholarly Kasper Hauser, W. says. What did I know of reading, or note-taking? I could read, that much is true. But only just, only approximately, and with a great deal of pathos, with wild underlinings and illegitimate identifications. – 'You thought every book you read was all about you, didn't you?' That's me!, I would say, pointing to a passage in Leibniz. It's all about me!, I said, pointing to the Science of Logic.

And all along, W. was waiting to see if I was the harbourer of some secret wisdom. All along, if my years of unemployment had taught me some great and unguessable insight. He took me out into the scholarly world. People were impressed at first then frightened. Why is he covered in his own spittle?, they asked. Why is he covering us with his spittle?

I made audiences flinch. Professors would turn white, or leave to vomit. – 'They couldn't understand what had just happened'. But W. understood. His heart leapt up. 

Hadn't he always sought an outsider scholar? Didn't he dream of intellectual movements that took place outside the university? Of professors of desperation; of the university of alcoholism?