W. finds me strangely silent. Why have I never learned to talk?, he wonders. Why has it always been left to him, when we're in company, to speak for both of us?
For long periods, I'm mute, thinking of God knows what, W. says. I'm like some great block of stupidity. Like some great stupid Easter Island statue …
What does stupidity think about?, W. wonders. Does it ever come into an awareness of its own stupidity? Ah, but stupidity can never uncover its own truth, that's its tragedy. Stupidity can never look itself in the face.
If he has been able to speak of his stupidies, of his idiocies, that's only a sign of the incompleteness of his stupidity, of the partialness of his idiocy. But when I speak of my stupidity? I never quite grasp it, W. says. I never really reach my target.
Sometimes he likes my silence, he says. Sometimes he imagines it to be a kind of integrity- a way of guarding something, some secret. He knows something, W. says to himself, looking across at me. Or, better: something knows itself in him.
One day, they'll decrypt me, W. likes to think to himself. One day, the Rosetta Stone of my stupidity will yield up its secrets. You see!, W. will say. I told you so!, he's say, when they solve the riddle of me. But in the meantime?
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