Category: W.

Death, death. It's time for the kill. We're upside down, hanging from butcher's hooks, our throats bared. Death is sharpening its razor. Death is going to slash our throats wide.

Two explosions of blood. Two strangled cries, blood on the walls. It's all Lars's fault, W. tries to say, but no words come out. It was him all along: a bubble of blood and nothing else.

You've heard of suicide by cop, of course, W. says, but what of suicide by philosophy? What of the attempt to incite murder through the extent of one's stupidity? Because that's the only way he can account for them, the shortcomings of my book. It's the only way he can account for my persistent attempt to think.

If there were a window in his office he'd doing a running jump through it. If there were a window in his office, and he was five flights up, he'd jump right out of it. But there is no window, only a wall. And he's not five flights up, he's on the ground floor.

W. doesn't believe I actually read books. – 'They're like totems to you', says W. 'They contain what you lack. You surround yourself with them, but you don't understand them'.

My office is actually filled with books, that's the paradox, W. says. I get a childlike excitement from them, from the fact of them, with their heady titles and colourful spines.

Of course, the real reader has no need to surround himself with books, W. says. The real reader gives them away to others, lending them without a thought of them being returned. What need has he for a library of books? He would prefer to be alone with only the most essential books, like Beckett with his Dante in his room at the old folks home. Beckett with his Dante, and cricket on the TV.

His own incapacity: it's with that that W. is always left. His incapacity: that's what remains to him after lights out. He lies in the dark with it, it dreams beside him: who is more intimate with his own incapacity than W.?

No one knows it better. And he will know nothing else; he will be pushed to think nothing else. The capacity to think only leads him to the thought of his incapacity; he begins only to end straightaway. Why do his powers desert him? Why do they seem always to have left him in advance?

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?

I came from outside, and I brought the outside with me, W. says. I came from the everyday and had to stamp the everyday from my boots. – 'How long had you been unemployed?' Years, I tell him. Years! W. can't imagine it. – 'And for how long before that did you work in your warehouse?' Years again. – 'Years!', W. exclaims, impressed. Of course, there was also my time with the monks. That's my wild card, W. says, my monk years. Who would have known from looking at me?

But there you were, and who had seen anything like it? – 'You were like a one man horde, a Tartar'. There was spittle on my lips and drool in my beard. Had I ever heard of a footnote? Did I know what an appendix was, or what op. cit. might mean? Scholarly standards were an irrelevance to me; scholarly apparatus an imposition I could completely ignore, it was quite impressive.

'Your book!' W.'s still amazed. A book without scholarship, without ideas. Without the usual concern to explain or to clarify. A book almost entirely lacking in merit. And yet! He saw something there, although no one else did. He saw it, and not in spite of its many typos and printing errors … It was there because of them. It was inextricable from them. A kind of massive, looming incompetence. A cloud of stupidity that covered the sun. But more than that: didn't it belong like a shadow of the sun, and of its burning? Didn't it belong to the clarity of the day as its cloud and blind opacity?

It was demonic, W. says. It was as forceful as a demi-urge. That's when he became aware of it as a vast Gnosticism, as a division of light within light, of life within life. Who could have written anything so bad? Who, who ruined the temple of scholarship and revealed it to have been always ruined? He saw it, W. says, even if no one else did. And it was his role to look after me.

How is it that our idiocy still surprises us?, W. wonders. Is it that we still harbour the hope of overcoming our idiocy?

Who allowed it? Who raised our aspirations to the sky? We want to blame someone. It must be someone else's fault. Our horizons were opened too widely. We saw too much … But who let us see? Who left the doorway open?

Has our time come?, I ask W. – 'Ages ago', he says. Then what's keeping them? 'The judgement came too late', says W. 'There are no hangmen, no firing squad. The army have all deserted their posts. The very institutions of the law are deserted, their doors swinging open, files blowing about in the wind'.

Then who will pass sentence? – 'There's no one to pass sentence'. Who will lead us to our cells? – 'There's no one to lead us to our cells'. Then are we to strangle ourselves? – 'I'll strangle you, and you strangle me, and we'll see where that gets us', says W.

'They'll shoot you like a dog', W. says. 'Actually, that's too good for you. They'll crush you like an insect. No, even that's too good. They'll simply let you live, a living humiliation, humiliating yourself and us all to a degree you'll never understand'.

If I survive the current cull, as he will not, I shouldn't be proud, W. says. – 'Why do you think they're keeping you around? To laugh at you, to pole you with sticks. Now and again, they'll look through the food slot of my cell to see if I'm eating my own shit. Look at him!, they'll say. He's eating his own shit!'

It's not going well, is it?, says W. it's going badly, I agree. Worse than ever. But why does it surprise us? What did we expect? Some Kant-like resurgence, late in life? Some awakening from our dogmatic slumbers?

It'll be my turn next, W. says. They're coming to get me. The cursor, on someone's monitor, is already hovering over my name.

'You want them to come, don't you?', W. says. I want to be a member of the secret police which will lead me away, or a rifleman in the execution squad who will make me stand blindfolded against the wall.

Only W. listens to me, really listens, he says. Of course, I don't know what I'm saying, not really, says W. I'm not really aware. But in the calmest of conversations, I'm like a witchdoctor whose eyes have rolled backwards in his skull. When I speak of nothing at all, I'm like a pentecostalist writhing on the floor.

But that's when the apocalypse speaks most deeply in me. That's when it resounds, the truth of the end times, of the end of the world.

And who is he, W. – the Pythia to my Oracle? What is our significance, taken together?, W. wonders. Whose sign are we to interpret?

Make it stop!, that's my secret cry, isn't it? Someone make me stop! Of course, he'd commit the act, if he didn't find my predicament so funny.

That's my trouble – something in me wants to inspire outrage and frenzied attack, but all I do is make everyone laugh. It's like a chimp shitting itself, W. says. A chimp sitting in its own shit, with a bemused expression on its face.

I would have been happiest in the period of show trials and autoconfessions, W. says. I would have liked nothing better than to have confessed for imaginary crimes, the greater, the better, signing every confession the police brought to me and admitting my role in the greatest of conspiracies. It would have given me a sense of importance, of epic grandeur. I did it, I would say. I was the worst of all. It was me, it was all my fault: what have I ever wanted to say but that?

There are some thoughts that will be forever beyond us, says W. The thought of our own stupidity for example – even that's beyond us. We'll never understand, really understand, the depths of our stupidity, W. says. Since we've failed, and could do nothing but fail, we can never really understand the extent of our failure, the extent of our stupidity.

Oh he has some sense of it, W. says. More than I have, but then he's more intelligent than I am. But he's not intelligent enough! That's his tragedy, W. says. Mind you, if he were intelligent enough, wouldn't he kill himself out of shame because of his stupidity? Wouldn't he realise just how immeasurably he had failed? Ah, but if he were intelligent enough, he wouldn't be stupid, W. says.

Sometimes, W. feels a terrible sickness, he says. He wants to vomit it all up – and not just everything he's eaten, everything he's drunk. Everything: his whole life, all that he is, his past, his present. To expel it. To get it all out, all that has been, as though he were only a foreign body in his own skin.

Everything – but more still, for doesn't he want to vomit up the world, too, everything that has happened, everything that is happening, the very fact of existence? Somehow, he is responsible for it, the catastrophe of the world. Somehow it all begins with him. – 'With you', he says.

No one finds us funny anymore, W. says. We're like a joke that's been told too many times, and amuses no one. A joke of which everyone is sick and tired.

The audience doesn't laugh anymore, W. says. They grimace, teeth bared, like a chimpanzee about to attack.

He's not going to protect me when they turn. And they're about to turn, don't I see?

What has he learned?, W. muses. What are his four noble truths? He knows only that I am wrong, and that I have always been in the wrong. He's certain of that.

Could he, given such the indubitability of such a starting point, begin to reconstruct his certainty of things, like Descartes? Could he, having reached such a realitatpunkt, begin building everything up again?

But from the realitatpunkt of my stupidity, there's nothing to build, and nothing that can be built. The realitatpunkt is that I continue to destroy everything W. tries to build.

'Your stomach never lies', W. says. 'It's got more integrity than you have'. That's why I'm always in such an appalling state. It's why I always look so bilious and green. – 'Something in you must know', W. says. Something must know my lies and pretension and that, in fact, my life is only a lie and a pretension.

Glee: that's what W. always sees on my face. That I'm still alive, that I can still continue, from moment to moment: that's enough for me, W. says. He supposes it has to be.

If I realised for one moment … If I had any real awareness … But it would be too much, W. says I couldn't know what I was and continue as I am. I couldn't come into any real self-awareness.

'That's what saves you', W. says. 'Your stupidity'. If only he knew … That's what everyone thinks when they see me, W. says. That's what he thinks.

Meanwhile, it's left to him to bear the terrible fact of my existence, W. says. It's his problem, not mine as it should be, W. says. Everyone blames him for me. What's he doing here?, they ask. Why did you bring him? But he had to, W. knows. He has all the excuses. He's sorry in my place. I'm his responsibility.

'What keeps you going?', W. asks. 'What, from moment to moment?' If he had my life, he says, he'd kill himself straightaway. It's a disaster, a travesty. – 'How do you go on? How -really?' W.'s never been sure. He has enough trouble with his life, he says. It's already too much. But mine – mine!

He shakes his head. – 'If you had any decency …' But I don't, do I? I'm still alive! I do it just to annoy him, don't I? It's my little victory, from moment to moment … It's It's why I always look so gleeful. It's why I always look as though I've pulled one over on him, which in fact I have.

I'll die with froth on my lips, W. says. He knows it. I'll die like some rabid animal with wild eyes and dirt under my nails. I'll have tried to dig my way out. I'll have gone mad from confinement, and they'll have shot me out of disgust like a dog.

What do I think's going to happen to me at the end?, W. asks me. – 'They'll round you up', says W. Everyone will expect it. Children will point at my door. – 'Him, him', they'll cry. And I'll be dragged out and shot and I'll fall down in the mud.

Has it really come to this?, W. wonders. It has. Is it going to get any worse? Much worse. This is only the beginning. He feels like a Marie Antoinette being led out to the chopping-block, he says. He feels like Joan of Arc being bound to the stake.

When's the blow going to come? When are the flames going to leap up and surround him? It'll be a relief after everything that's happened, W. says. The horror of uncertainty will come to an end. The horror of not knowing how much further down I will lead him.

For where are we going? Downwards, that much is obvious. Down – and out – that, too is obvious. We've long since left all friendly terrain. We've long since left the last human house. We're in the wilderness now, W. says, mapless and unsure.

Why does he listen to me?, W. says. But he knows why. There'd be sense in keeping people around to inspire him, W. says. But not to destroy him. Unless it's his death-drive, W. says. Unless I'm his death-drive, for how else could he account for it?

Ostracism, that's what I've brought him, W. says. Derision. Every door that was open to him is now closed. The shutters have been slammed on the windows, and W.'s out in the cold, stamping his feet for warmth, and there I am beside him.

What do I want from him?, W. asks. What does he want for himself? Ah, there's no way of telling. He'll simply have to follow where I lead, and listen to what I say. We're heading out, out into the wilderness, he knows that. Out beneath the flashing stars and the silvery pines to where nothing can live.

'Have you ever had an honest thought? Have you ever been true to anything?', W. says. The answer is no, he says. It's always been no. A great no should be roaring in the sky. The no should deafen me, W. says, and deafen anyone who speaks to me. No!, he cries. No!

It's our fault, it's all our fault, we should at least admit that, W. says. It's our fault and particularly mine. My fault, W. says, because my existence couldn't help but contaminate his. And his fault, somewhat at least, because he continues to allow his existence to be contaminated by mine.

But what can we do about it? To whom should we apologise? Each other? I should certainly apologise to him, W. says. I owe him a lifetime of apologies. But doesn't he owe me an apology, too? Doesn't he, by his continual presence in my life, perpetuate the disaster?

He gives me license, W. says. He gives me encouragement – but why? In the end, perhaps I'm only a figment of his imagination, a kind of nightmare, he says. Can't you see I'm burning?, I ask him in his dream. But in the end, he is the one who's burning, W. says. He's the one who set himself on fire.

Do I understand, really understand, the reality of my situation?, W. says. Of course not; it would be quite impossible. I'm not really aware of myself, says W., which is my saving grace. Because if I were …

It's enough that W. knows. It's enough that he's aware of the the reality of my situation. He tells others about it, but they scarcely believe him; they have to blot it out. Screen memories replace real ones.

They remember only owls, W. says. When he tells them about me, about the reality of my situation, it's only owls they see, owls with outspread wings swooping through the night.