He was like a mayfly of thought, W. says. A single day, that's all he had. A single day – the whole of his life – in the sun. He spread his wings, rode the thermals upwards, felt the rush of the whole landscape beneath him – all thought, all thinkers … And now it's at an end? Now his life has a thinker has passed into oblivion?
I will have to remember, W. says, that's my task. He has granted me the great task of memory, of memorialising. I'm to write the introduction to his collected works; I'm to assemble them from his extant notes, his drafts, his marginalia. I'm to leave a record of his table-talk. Because he's heading out now, into the ice, W. says. He may be some time, he says, borrowing the words of Captain Oates.
What was it all for? What sense did it make? And what sense did he make of it, his life of the mind?, W. says. And what was my role in all of this, a Brod to his Kafka? Alas, he'll never know, he says. The ice-crystals are already forming on his beard. He feels cold, slightly weepy, and wants to sink down into the snow to die …
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