Fog descends as we head back to the campus. It's as thick as the cloud on Mount Sinai, when Moses went up to meet God. He descended with the Tablets of Law, but what will bring back with us?
We're lost, hopelessly lost. Our kidnapped speaker's worried. What about the conference meal? He's supposed to be sitting at the high table. – 'Never mind the high table!', W. says. Of course, the speaker's too full of sausage and mash to be able to eat anything else. – 'You had a real appetite!', W. said to him, impressed.
Where are we going? It's a very verdant campus, we agree. Very lush. The Thames Valley's known for its humidity, I tell them. It's very bad for asthmatics. I developed asthma when my family moved out here. And eczema. And lice, says W.
In the thick darkness: that's where God was waiting for Moses, W. says. That's how God appears to the mystic, Gregory of Nyssa said. The mystic receives a dark vision of God. But what do we see? Not God, at any rate. Barely even each other! It's a real pea-souper, we agree, speaking like the commoners in Brief Encounter. Gor blimey, guv'nor.
We ask our kidnapped plenary speaker about his ideas. Where are they taking him? What's to be his next project? But he seems distracted. He's very full up, he says, and now he's got to and have another dinner.
It's our duty to talk, we know that. We need to settle his nerves, our kidnapped plenary speaker. We need to settle his stomach! So we tell him of our Kierkegaard project, of our collaborative paper, for which we are constructing an elaborate dossier. We tell him about the intimate link we expect to discover between Kierkegaard and contemporary capitalism, about the Danish philosopher's despair and our despair.
Our speaker's feeling really ill now, he says. What will we do? The fog's thickening. We need to stay close! To keep a head count! And it's darkening, too. Are we really going to meet God? Do you think we'll receive the Tablets of Law? - 'Go on, say something profound', W. says to our kidnapped speaker.
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