Skating

Somerset House, London. They put up an ice rink here at Christmas, W. says. We should come here to skate. It would be like Kafka and Brod on the frozen lakes of Prague. He can see them in his mind's eye, W. says: skating together, two friends, talking literature, talking writing. Skating and with arms linked with Oskar Baum, their blind friend, out with them on the frozen lake to feel the wind on his face …

And now W. imagines Blanchot and Levinas, out skating in some Strasbourg lake, talking philosophy, talking Heidegger, arms linked … And, better still, Blanchot and Bataille, out skating in the winter of 1940, just after they they met. Blanchot and Bataille skating, scarves round their throats, talking politics, talking community in an occupied France … 

But Blanchot would never skate of course. He was too ill! He'd be out of breath. And Bataille, too, with his tuberculosis: he'd be out of breath, puffing on the ice. How unwell they were, the thinkers we admire!