Category: W.

In they come, depressive weather systems from the Atlantic, reaching W. first (in the southwest of England) before reaching me (in the northeast of England), bringing grey days with constant rain. The Westerlies are destroying us, we agree. When will it end?, W. asks.

This summer, he tells me, he's become even more stupid than usual. W.'s reading Cohen in German on the infinitesimal calculus. But he barely understands German! He barely understands maths! The English mathematical terms he finds in his dictionary to translate the German ones are equally opaque. What does it all mean?, W. wonders. 

For my part, I tell him, I've been thinking only of admin. It's my only concern, I tell him. It's taken me over. It's all I think about and all I dream about. I'm unable to read. I can't write. I haven't a thought in my head other than an administrative thought. What's happened to me? What am I becoming?

Is this what your mighty oeuvre has shrunk too, says W., writing stupid posts about me? They’re not even accurate, he says. You make me out to be too mean, too much of a nag. And you’re too much of a whiner. I’m an idiot Boswell to an idiot Johnson, I tell him.

How’s it come to this?, W. says. What wrong turn did he make? He was like Dante, he says, lost in a dark forest. And there I was, he says, the idiot in the forest. I was always lost, weren’t you? I didn’t even know I was lost, but I was lost. Or perhaps I was never lost. Perhaps I belonged in the forest, W muses. Perhaps I am I only that forest where W. is wandering, he says, he’s not sure.

I’m dreaming of administration, I tell W. It’s all I dream about, all I think about. It’s permeated me completely. I’m made of administration. Of course, I’m very good at administration, I tell W. I’m perfectly fitted to it. It’s frightening. Did I ever think I would become an administrator?, W. asks. Oh I knew I’d do anything! Anything! It’s your desperation, says W., they can smell it on you. You’re a desperate man, anyone can see that.

It’s all to do with my periods of unemployment, W. says. I fear unemployment more than anything, he notes. In fact, don’t I tell him constantly about my dreams of unemployment? I probably dream more about unemployment than about administration, W. decides. In the end, my dreams of administration are actually a kind of relief from my constant dreams of unemployment.

W. has no great fear of unemployment, he says. We both agree that I began from a lower position than he did. I expected much less. Survival was enough for me. A job – any job – that was halfway tolerable. You were made to be an administrator, W. says. You have the soul for it. The fear. It’s what makes you a good administrator. My administrative proficiency frightens him, W. admits. It’s a sign of complete desperation. In the end, it’s what will always compromise my work, my reading and writing. You always have administration to fall back on, W. says. You never really experience your failure.

With neither a fear of unemployment nor a fearful skill as an administator, W. is alone with his failure, he says. It’s terrible – there’s no alibi, he can’t blame it on anyone. Whose fault is it but his. W. laments his laziness, his indolence. He had every advantage and now – what has he accomplished? What has he done? I can have no understanding of his sense of failure, W. tells me. It’s beyond my understanding. You’re like the dog that licks the hand of his master. You’ll be licking their hand even as they beat you and making little whiny noises. You’re good at that, aren’t you – making whiny noises.

You would think that with my simplicity I would also have a simple love for humankind, says W., but that’s not nearly the case. I’m full of hatred, aren’t I? This as we walk around the cloister at W.’s place of work, colleagues warmly greeting W. and W. warmly greeting his colleagues.

I skulk around my place of work, W. observes, I’ll do anything to avoid human contact. He remembers how I told him of the vastly circuitous routes I take through my building so as to not to say hello to anyone. I don’t know why greetings are so difficult for you, says W. 

W. doesn’t believe its misanthropy, just as he has never believed I am a melancholic. It’s simply a kind of low level awkwardness, he says just as my melancholy is no more than a few bad moods.

More friendly greetings from his colleagues. W.’s place of work is a much happier place than mine, we observe, despite everything. It doesn’t know despair. Everyone helps and supports one another, except for management, and everyone is against management.

That’s not the case where you work, is it?, says W. There’s no help and no support, only brooding hatred and resentment. It’s no wonder I think I’m misanthropic, says W. He would be, under the circumstances. And it’s no wonder I think I’m melancholic, I mean look at my life. Something has gone very badly wrong with me, that much is clear, says W.

W. is impressed by my stammer. You stammer and stutter, says W., and you swallow half your words. What’s wrong with you? Every time I see him, he says, it gets a little worse. The simplest words are beginning to defeat me, W. says. Maybe it’s mini-strokes, W. speculates. That would account for it. You had one just there, didn’t you? 

Perhaps, W. muses, my stammering and stuttering is a sign of shame. W. says he never really thought I was capable of it, shame, but perhaps it is there nonetheless. Something inside you knows you talk rubbish, W. says. Something knows the unending bilge that comes out of your mouth.

W. dreams of serious conversation. Not that it would have serious topics, you understand, he says – that it would be concerned for example with the great topics of the day. Speech itself would be serious, he says with great vehemence. That’s what he’s found with the real thinkers he’s known. Everything they say is serious, they’re incapable of being unserious.

Even I become serious when a real thinker is about., W.’s observed. We remember that afternoon in Greenwich when W. was lost in conversation with one such thinker. I was leaning in, trying to listen; I had a sense of the seriousness of the conversation, W. could see it, he was impressed, for once I wasn’t going to ruin it by talking about blowholes or something.

Conversation!, exclaims W., that’s what friendship’s all about, I think even you have a sense of that. It’s why you stammer, says W. it’s why you swallow half of your words.

Overpraise is the key, W. says. We should only speak of each other to others in the loftiest terms, he’s always been insistent on this. These are dark times, after all. No one’s safe. Look what happened to him recently! These are the last days, W.says. No one could think otherwise. It’s all shit, it’s all going to shit. It always will have already been shit, I say, laughing, as I take a photo of him underneath a sign saying ‘end times’.

Overpraise is all we have, says W., that and sticking together. We have to be a pact, a phalanx who are prepared to die for another. I’d die for you, says W., quite serious. What about me – would you die for me? That’s what friendship demands, says W. Of course, I would never say I would die for him, says W. He knows me. I’m incapable of that kind of sincerity. Or love. I’m incapable of love, W.’s always been insistent on that.

In a moment, I would break the phalanx and be off somewhere else. I’d betray him in a moment, W. says. Whereas he’s always been very careful to overpraise me to others, he says. You have to. There are enemies everywhere, he says. I have enemies and so does he. And then there’s the whole system, says W., which creates enemies instead of friends and enemies of friends. Betrayal is his greatest fear, says W.

With other people about, W. is a surprisingly motherly presence. He’s protective and nuturing, and proud of his charge. Does he think of me as his protege?, I ask W. Am I his ward, as Robin is to Batman? Sometimes, W. exhibits what can only be called a clucky pride. 

Does he see himself as my mother? W.’s not sure. He feels the need to nag me, he says. He is a nagger. Why don’t you read?, he likes to ask with grat insistence. Why don’t you write? Go on, write another book, make it a trilogy.

W. is learning Greek for his next book. It’s on religion, he says. He was going to do a book on time, but he decided against that. Religion, he says, and for that he needs Greek. And maths. If he’s going to write about Cohen and God, he’ll have to understand the infinitesimal calculus. What’s it all about?, W. wonders. He’d asked his dad to teach him several years ago, but it was no use. He bought a book called Numbers, but only got through the first chapter, What is a Number?

Greek! Mathematics! W.’s not like me, who will just dash off a book regardless. Still, he says, the second book wasn’t bad. ‘Wasn’t bad’, that’s his phrase. Religion, though, that’s what W.’s thinking about. What am I thinking about?, he asks me. Your clucky pride, I say.

What have you done today?, W. asks me. How do you actually spend your time? Weeks and months and years pass, but I seem to do nothing, W. says. What have you read? What have you written, and why haven’t you sent me any of it?

Friends should send each other what they write, W. says. He sends me everything – everything, and I barely even read it. He doesn’t know why he thanked me in the acknowledgements of his new book, he says. I tell him I was surprised to find myself thanked as part of a long list of friends and colleagues. Didn’t I always acknowledge his help with very special thanks?

W. says I didn’t even read the chapters he sent to him, he could tell, my remarks were too general. I did read them, I tell him, well nearly all of them. You didn’t read chapter five, says W., with the dog. He was very proud of his pages on his dog, even though he doesn’t own a dog. You should always include a dog in your books, says W.

It’s a bit like his imaginary children in his previous book, W. says. Do you remember the passages on children? Even W. wept. He weeps now to think of them. He’s very moved by his own imaginary examples, he says. He wants to work a nun into his next book, he says. An imaginary nun.

You’ve only been wearing it for a few months, and already it’s disgusting, says W. of my leather jacket. Look at it, it’s green. Who would wear a green leather jacket? I point out I bought it because he complained about my last jacket, my velvet one. It was shapeless and made you look obese, said W., whereas this one just makes you look cheap.

Until recently, W. always carried a suit with him on our foreign visits. He didn’t want to insult our hosts. I never had any concern about insulting our hosts, W. says, going on about blowholes and wearing one of my disgusting jackets. I point out that his suit makes him look like Gary Glitter, which W. finds very amusing. Then, laughing, he remembers seeing my interview suit, with the tapered trousers. They were parachute pants, W. says, like M.C. Hammer’s.

Recently, W. left his suit behind at a busstop, the whole thing, in its carry case. He was reading, he says. Cohen probably. Anyway, he’s already got another one, as I should. Think of our foreign hosts! In truth, W. would rather not care what our foreign hosts think of us. It’s a weakness of his, he says, though other people would regard it as a strength. Of course, W. knows I don’t care what our foreign hosts think of us, that’s very clear. Perhaps that’s a kind of stength, though, says W., though other people would regard it as a weakness.

Doesn’t it bother you that your jacket’s turned green and you’ve stains down your trousers? You never take enough pairs of trousers with you, do you? Just one pair! Do you think it’s enough? W. never thinks it’s enough. You should take two pairs of trousers, plus your suit, he says. How many pairs of underpants should I take?, I ask him. One for each day, says W.,and one extra in case you soil yourself. You’re prone to accidents, aren’t you? He reminds me of the Emergency Scheisse Bar in Freiburg, as we called it. What you hadn’t have found it?, W. asks. What then?

There is something entirely lacking in you, W. says, although he’s not quite sure what it is. Something which, for all his shortcomings, W. nevertheless possesses. But what is it? Shame – is that the word?, W. muses. A sense of shame? Anyone else would have stopped doing what I do. All that writing on the web! It’s incredible, for W., who would never do such a thing and can’t comprehend anyone who would.

It’s endless, he says, it just goes on and on. And the same thing over and over again, he says. There’s something missing in you, isn’t there? What do you suppose it is? Is it shame?, W.’s not sure. Perhaps it’s a more fundamental monomania, a kind of overpowering obsessiveness. You don’t stop, do you? On and on it goes. How can anyone be interested? Even you aren’t interested, not really, are you?

Perhaps it’s a kind of reflex, W. muses. Some kind of automatic behaviour, of the kind exhibited by those insects who continue to mate even when you cut their heads off. Because there’s no intelligence to it, W. says, there’s only a conditioned reflex, that’s all. Why don’t you stop? No, really, why don’t you?

Don’t you have anything better to do? Couldn’t you occupy your time otherwise? I tell it takes up barely any time at all. But even that time, says W., couldn’t you find something else to do? In the end, W. says, it’s because I crave adoration, that’s his theory, though even he doesn’t find that very persuasive. You need to be loved, he says, he’s always said that.

Then, still musing as we walk up the hill into the town centre, he reminds me of my great hopes for the internet. A new Athens, wasn’t that it? A new Jena?, he asks, laughing, knowing I said nothing about Athens or Jena. Ah, what’s it all about?, W wonders rhetorically. Why am I so deluded? Why won’t I listen to sense?

There’s a short Kafka story, W. reminds me where a man in a great hurry gets lost on the way to the station and asks a policeman the way. Gibt sie auf!, says the policeman, give it up! That’s what you should do, says W.: give it up!

In Waterstones Plymouth, looking for something to read. The Spire, has W. read that? Golding? Oh yes, W.’s read it. He’s read all of Golding. It was part of his great reading phase, W. says. He read everything, everything! Piles and piles of literature! That was in the evening, after reading and writing on philosophy. The day reading philosophy and writing philosophy and the evening reading literature, author after author. Those were his golden years, says W. He was in his heyday! He doesn’t read anything now, says W. with great melancholy. Or very little. It happens in your late 30s, says W., you can’t read as much anymore. You can’t read and write for a whole day, and then read in the evening as well.

Of course other things get in the way, too. He hardly worked in those days. His job was virtually part-time. How things have changed? What time does W. have now for reading? Now and again, W. says, he goes to the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe to read Kafka. Off he goes, a fifteen minute walk through Stonehouse up to the Naval Dockyards and then the ferry across the Tamar – a friendly river, says W., he always thinks of it as that. And then a short walk the other side to the tulip garden, where W. gets out his Kafka. Although he loves Kafka, loves him more than anyone and always did,. in some sense Kafka crushes him. How can a human being write anything this great?, he asks himself, and then thinks ruefully of his own work. Where did it all go wrong?, W says.

I’ve never gone through that, have I?, W. says. I’ve never really experienced failure. In fact I hardly regard myself as a failure at all, W. is sure of that. All that writing on the net, for example. would Kafka ever write on the net? Of course not. W. doubts I’ve ever really read Kafka. If I had, then doubtless I wouldn’t be writing on the net. You want to be loved, says W., that’s your weakness. The net is your delusion. If I had really known my own failure, I would know that. W. has been to the bottom, he says, but he doubts I have. In truth, I’ve never really known failure, despite everything I write, says W. It’s all play-acting.

Once, W. too thought of himself as a writer, a literary writer. He filled notebook after notebook. It was in his early twenties. Everyone wants to be a literary writer in their early 20s, says W. Of course no one ever is. W. realised it pretty quickly. I knew I was no Kafka, says W. That’s what you don’t know yet – you don’t know you’re not Kafka. You don’t have a sense of yourself as a failure, which is ironic because you are a failure.  

How much time do we have left? Not long, W. says. We’re not the sort who live long lives. Look at us! He hasn’t felt himself for 20 years, says W., and I’ve long since run to fat and bleary eyed alcoholism. But I am more of a whiner than he is, W. says. There’s always something wrong with me, isn’t there? One day it’s a nosebleed, the next nausea, the next some indeterminate fever … And my stomach, whatever is wrong with my stomach?

W. never used to believe me about my stomach. He thought I was a hypocondriac. But once he saw my face turn green – green! – he understood. You looked appalling, he said. Everyone was horrified, everyone at the table. And then, for a terrible morning when he was visiting me, W. was taken ill. It’s my stomach! My God!, he cried. He decided it was my lifestyle. All that drinking! All that eating! One night, he saw me pass out from overeating. My head fell back … he was worried, but then he heard me snoring.

How can you live like this?, said W. exasperated beyond belief. How? This is my five year hole, I told W. Everyone should be allowed one of those. Deleuze had one, didn’t he? An eight year hole, that’s what he called it, in which he wrote nothing? But Deleuze was working, says W., and you don’t do any work, do you? What happened to you? How did you get like this? Why don’t you read anymore? Why don’t you write?

We’re on the electric bus, which W. notes, only serves middle class people, and very few of them, not working class ones. There’s never anyone on this bus!, he claims. Except for us, today when it’s absolutely necessary. We’re in a hurry. We’re looking for a toilet. There’s the toilet in my office, thank God, and it’s 10 minutes away by bus. If we had to walk, my God!, says W., imagining the horror. This is your life, isn’t it? This is how you live!, he says. Drunk and then ill, drunk and then ill …

W. is ill and I am ill, as always. W. blames me. It’s your lifestyle! What can you expect? What do you do all day? Later, he wonders whether I ever worked at all. Was there ever a time when you read?, he asks. W. reads every day, rising at dawn, and putting in three hours before he does anything else. I don’t wash, I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t even have a cup of tea, W. says. His German isn’t very good, so it takes him forever to read anything. Rosenzweig took him a year, and he didn’t understand a word of it. Not a word!

Now it’s Cohen. W. eats and breathes Cohen, he says, but he doesn’t really understand Cohen either. You have to know maths, says W., and he was never very good at maths. Additionally, W. is learning Greek for the umpteenth time. Greek! It’s the aorist that defeats him every time. Still, he’s begun again, he’s reading, he’s writing – not for publication, says W., publication doesn’t matter at all. And what am I doing? What have I read lately?

I’ve achieved a new kind of surliness, W. observes. I make even less effort in conversation than I used to, and I was never a great conversationalist, says W., I never had any wit. But now I sit like some great surly ape making no effort whatsoever. He, on the hand, is a great maker of conversation, we both agree. He asks questions of everyone. He engages with them, it’s quite remarkable.

It must be something to do with guilt, W. reckons. His Catholicism, perhaps, or perhaps his Judaism. He is turned towards others, we agree, whereas I’m turned away from them. I tell him of the great lengths I will go to to avoid people, how I walk up unknown stairwells and through unknown corridors to avoid saying hello to a single person. What a torture it is to say hello, I tell W., who notes for his part that I never look at anyone in the face when I talk to them. You always look away, he says, like some great surly ape.

My apishness has always amused W., who likes to do impressions of me taking notes. The way you hold your pen is just like an ape, he says. And your massive arms, well they used to be massive, what’s happened to them now? It was worst in my vest phase, W. remembers, shuddering. Those vests! How many of them did you buy! 30? 40? And all of them from Primark, made by child labour, says W.

30 vests! I remind him my washing machine had broken down. It was a dark time, I say. What’s your problem with people, W. wanders. You’re a bit autistic, aren’t you? Your monomania, for example. Your obsessions. They’re a sign of autism, W. proclaims. For his part, W. is a more well-rounded person. He has a life, he says, though he notes that I have a life as well. But you’re only pretending to live, W. says, it’s not real. I have an autistic heart, W. decided long ago, and am incapable of love.

Who else would buy 30 vests?, he wonders. Or was it 40. 40 vests!, my God, says W. Of course W. has always been concerned with being a better person, an idea that must be completely alien to me, W. decides. I’m getting worse, not better, he points out. He’s even impressed. You don’t bother at all anymore, he says, it’s amazing.

We’ve always needed a leader, W. and I agree. When we did we first decide that? Around the turn of the millennium. We were in Poland, in a big public square and it became very clear to us: we needed a leader, someone to inspire us and force us to work more. Someone to make us capable of more than we could accomplish on our own.

For his part, W. has always dreamt of being part of a pack. Friendship is very important to W.: you are to work together, to strive together, to force each other on. Friendship involves a lot of nagging, W. explains, which is why he’s so merciless with me. It’s a sign of love, he says, my nagging. But a leader, that’s what we really need, he says.

In truth, we have found several leaders. The first, far cleverer than us, far more serious, wrote a book we admired. We spoke alongside him once and were the dull panels of a tiptych. We were there only to make him shine, we agreed. It was enough to be close to our leader. But then the disaster happened, W. remembers. We told him, didn’t we?, we told him he was our leader. I remember it too. It was in a pub in Greenwich. That’s where it all went wrong. We scared him off. After that, we resolved never to tell our leaders they were our leaders, but we could never help it.

It was on another occasion in Greenwich, at another Greenwich pub that the same thing happened with our second leader. Which one of us blurted it out?, W. asks, you or me? Regardless, the spell was broken. We panicked our second would-be leader who found us worrying. He was a modest man, I remember. Greatly modest, says W., and with a deep seriousness we entirely lack. We scared him off, we agree.

And then the third leader. Ah, the third leader!, W. exclaims, the greatest one of all. We brought him half way round the world!, I say. We thought we’d justified our lives, that this was it, our high point. And what happened?, W. asks, knowing what happened. We told him all we wanted was a leader and to be led, I remember. We told him about our first leader and our second leader, and our desertion by our first leader and our second leader. Our third would-be leader was not as easily scared. But I think he wanted peers, not disciplines. Where is he now?, says W. On the other side of the world, far away from us, sensible man.

It’s my last visit to the Southwest in an official capacity, and I’ve left the place in ruins. Do you always have this effect?, W. asks, but I tell him it’s his fault, that if anyone wrecked everything, it was his fault. In truth, it’s the fault of people much more powerful than either of us, great wreckers, idiots who float to the top like scum and spoil it all for everyone. Why is the world run by such people?

For his part, W. led a great counterattack, it was like May ’68 all over again, W. said. He made a speech; he was admired, the floodgates opened and everyone spoke. It was like ’68!, says W., but of course it only meant he was singled out for special punishment. It’s madness, sheer madness, says W. Their incompetence! Their dishonesty! Flowcharts and piecharts and powerpoint slides can’t hide it, says W. As soon as you see a bullet point you know you might as well stab yourself in the neck.

Still, he couldn’t stand it any more, and he stoof up and spoke calmly and reasonably, but with great force, says W. He made an excellent case, the manager was worried. And he only opened the floodgates, says W., because, after his ovation, everyone started to speak. It was a great moment, though it meant absolutely nothing in the end, W. says.

We always said it, I point to W., that we succeeded at all was a  monstrous aberration. It was a sign that everything was going wrong. Therefore W.’s elevation could only be the effect of a greater catastrophe. These are the end times, W. and I agree. Still, he got an ovation, says W., that was something. The floodgates opened, he says. Just like in ’68.

We’re at the Mill on the Exe, the sun is shining warmly on our faces. We’re in a beer garden right on the river, close to the weir. The South West! W exclaims. He feels fortunate to live here. the South West is the graveyard of ambition, a colleague warned him upon his arrival from the East. But W. is not ambitious, despite his recent elevation. He reads for three hours a day, he says, and he’s content with that. In reality, he knows it’s not enough. Three hours! Rising at dawn each day!

W. remembers my years of getting up at dawn to read. What happened to you?, says W. Why don’t you do any work? I tell him I’m too busy to work, and too busy for anything. You have to be good to yourself, I tell W., especially if you’re troubled. Are you troubled, then?, says W., laughing. Oh yes, I’m definitely troubled. What are you troubled about?, asks W., still laughing. Everything troubles me. Besides, you don’t have to be troubled by anything in particular. Being troubled finds its objects, I tell W., which it seeks only to make sense of itself, even though, ultimately, there’s no making sense of itself.

W. says he’s troubled too – who isn’t? – , but that we’re not really troubled. I’m more troubled than him, though, I tell W. He says he’s always thought of me as joyful. Drunk in the sun, we offer encomiums to one another. I never make him feel anything other than joyful, says W. I tell him he is able to momentarily make me forget my troubles and that this is his great gift.

W. has several enemies who have, at various points in his life, made his life difficult. He’s not sure what he ever did wrong, but he’s acquired enemies, much more powerful than he is. One is a Dame who sits in the House of Lords. She has a special loathing for him, he says. Another has systematically prevented W. from getting the jobs he wanted, throwing him off shortlists. Off shortlists!, exclaims W. What have I ever done to him! His enemy feels guilty, W. thinks. He thinks guiltily towards him because of his first incursion. And now, because of his guilt, he’s going to see W. fail.

Have you got any enemies?, W. asks. And remembers that I have: several, almost as many as him. W. met one at a high level meeting, he remembers. She said my name with special venom. She really hates you, says W., because of what you did to her son. I did nothing to her son, I tell W. She doesn’t believe that, he says. She says you ruined his life.

I remind W. of an enemy who set up a blog about me and wrote to me constantly. That’s the kind of person you attract, says W. They either hate you or love you. I’ve had several stalkers, I remind W. There was one person who used to speak to me through my bedroom window, when I was lying there at night. That was just your imagination, says W. No, he was quite real, I tell him. He used to tell me about the Isaac Bashevis Singer books he read through the window, I tell W. I have a special appeal for lunatics, W. notes, he’s not sure why.

Have we failed? W. is certain: we are complete failures. For my part, I am never sure. I never wanted as much as you did, I tell W. I didn't expect as much from life. W. says he expected much more from himself and from me. We should be drowned like kittens, he says, for the little we've achieved. But what opportunities did we have?, I ask him. That's always my question, he says. You're always looking for excuses. It's your Hindu fatalism.

For him, says W. my Hinduism emerges most strongly in my Hindu stories. He remembers them very lovingly. They soothe him. When, for example, we were stuck in a queue for the Greyhound in Memphis, he delighted in stories of the elephant god, what was his name? Ganesha, I say, and that guy who ended up with the head of a goat, who was he? Sati's father, I say. We sat on the floor of the Greyhound station and the hours flew by, says W.

Friends, sighs W. should push each further. What do I do for him, apart from tell him Hindu stories?  

How are his studies of Messianism progressing? W. is burrowing back through Rosenzweig and Cohen to Schelling, whose books he can only get hold of in Gothic script. He can't read Gothic script, he says. Nevertheless, he's made some discoveries, says W. It's all to do with infinite judgements, he says. And the infinitesimal calculus.

Messianism's got nothing to do with mysticism, says W. He can't abide mysticism. It's maths, it's all about maths! He can't do maths, W. says. There's some great flaw in him which prevents him really understanding Messianism. But then too it might have something to do with the two kinds of the negative in ancient Greek, W. says. The two kinds of privation, the second of which is not really a kind of privation. It's like the in- of infinite, W. says, which is not simply an absence of the infinite.

But W.'s studies of ancient Greek are not progressing well, he says. It's the aorist, it defeats him every time. W.'s bumping his head against the ceiling of his intelligence, he says. I often have that feeling, I tell him. No, you're just lazy, W. says. What are your thoughts on Messianism? I tell him I have no thoughts on Messianism.

We should hang ourselves immediately, I tell W., it's the only honorable course of action. We are compromised, utterly compromised. W. feels he has to pull me back from the brink. It's not that bad, he says. We should stab ourselves in the throat, I tell him. I over-react to everything, says W., it's my dramatic nature. I'm an hysteric. He, by contrast, takes the long view. He's more grandly apocalyptic than I am. You have to see it all in terms of the apocalypse, says W. I do have my great apocalyptic moments, W. concedes, but I do not have the sobriety and longness of view required by apocalypticism. You see it's not just you or I, W. says in Birmingham art gallery, it's everyone. I'm calmed by his words. The disaster is everywhere.

How are your wedding plans?, W. asks me, and I tell him just fine. W. said he'd feel intimidated if he were me about my wedding. How will you keep yourself under control? How will you stop yourself going on about monkey butlers and blowholes like you usually do? How will you prevent yourself from telling everyone you have the head of a baby?

I tell him that as an oldest child I have a very developed superego. You're pure id! says W., who often says this. I give him permission to behave badly, he says. No, I tell him, I secretly desire control and tradition. Ah your spurious psychoanalysis, says W. It's like your spurious sociobiology. Anything that will give you an excuse for your behaviour.

W., for his part, is tortured by his behaviour. How can I be a better person?, is his constant question. It torments him. It's what comes of being a Catholic Jew, he says. His father's side were Jews who converted. His mother's side were Catholics. He's full of guilt, says W. He's in constant torment. I'm the opposite, however. I never feel any guilt, do I? I tell him the concept is foreign to me as a Hindu.

W. says my entire worldview is organised so that I never have to take responsibility for anything, even my supposed Hinduism. He looks pleased with himself, he's discovered something. You never have to take responsibility for anything, do you? I laugh and tell him that's what everyone says, but that in fact I'm very responsible. Not when you go on about blowholes and looking like a baby, says W.

People are avoiding us, I tell W. He agrees. They can smell failure, he says.

W. makes it a rule always to include a nun and a dog in his books for purposes of pathos, he says. He has an imaginary dog, whom he uses in tender examples about animals and has had an imaginary encounter with a nun in a hospital. She was selfless, he says, utterly selfless. He got the idea from Raymond Gaita, he says, who has a nun in one of his books and a dog in another. In his book-before-last, W. invented imaginary children in a particular tender example. It made him weep, he says.

His book-before-last is better than him, W. and I agree. What’s it about?, I ask him of a particularly difficult section. He’s got no idea, he says. The book seems to stream splendidly above us both. Neither of us can follow it.

For his part, W.’s mission is to reduce the French poetic style to clear Anglo-Saxon prose. Mine, I tell him is to reduplicate the French poetic style in an Anglo-Saxon poetic style very badly, like an ape.

Things are bad. We should kill ourselves, I tell W. For his part, W. says he’s thought of setting himself on fire before a crowd like Domenico in Nostalghia. ‘Not that it would do any good’, he says.

W.’s hair is very long now. It’s a year since he last had it cut.
Some of it falls in ringlets. It’s his Jewishness, he tells me. He
looks leonine, I tell him, like the lion of Judah.

Why don’t you grow your hair long?, says W. I tell him I’ll never
grow my hair long. I like to be sleek and streamlined like a swimmer.

W.’s street. The houses at the bottom are no longer derelict, he says.
You used to be able to see the faces of children behind the cracked
windows like ghosts, but now developers have moved in. Flats are still
popular in Plymouth, despite the housing slump. Once we toured the new
developments at the Royal William Victualling Yard, where they took us for affluent lovers, we remember. The wide boulevards and the military grey of
the buildings calmed us. W.’s street is all flats now, except for his
house. We stand outside and admire its storeys.

W. and I are supposed to be thinking about Messianism, but our minds are blank.

What are your thoughts on Messianism?, asks W. I don’t have any thoughts on Messianism, I tell him. What about you? W. isn’t able to think about Messianism, he says. He’s not capable of it, and neither am I.

This is how proper people think, says W., his arms held behind his back and his head raised. Do I look as though I’m having lofty thoughts?

He’s reading Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism at the moment, W. says, and there are whole stretches that he doesn’t understand. I don’t know what he’s on about, W. says, but it’s got something to do with maths.

W’s studying differential calculus again. He’s got a textbook and doing an online course. No matter how hard he tries, he only gets as far as the chapter, What is a Number? It’s like parallel lines running to infinity but which never meet, W. comments of his relationship to maths.

Sand beneath an exposed cobblestone. ‘Under the paving stones, the beach’, I say to W., who’s showing me old Plymouth. Not much of the old city survives, W. comments. We pass through a walled medieval garden, with a low maze and a fountain. Alcoholics drink beneath a portico, listening to a radio. There’s no one to move them on, W. says. He approves of that.

These are the end times, we both agree. It’s enough to be left alone like the alcoholics, but our time will come just as their time will come. We’ll be rounded up and shot, W. says.

A tour of Plymouth, which was blitzed by the German airforce during the war. We compare the pictures of the city to those from before war in the books on the local history stand at Waterstones. In Germany, they would have rebuilt the city brick by brick, W. observes. That’s what happened in Freiburg. Not here, though.

W. admires modern Plymouth, with its elegant lines and wide streets. We read about Abercrombie’s Plan for Plymouth, published during the war, which saw the city organised in long boulevards, transected by the avenue that runs from the station to the Hoe. The building that houses Watertones was one of the few to survive the Luftwaffe, W. says. It was the quarters for the Plymouth Herald, and journalists went out onto the roof to kick the incendiaries away. Later I take a picture of him pointing to Waterstones, and we go on a ‘pointing tour’ of the buildings that survived the war in the city.

The water taxi to Mountbatten. We’re in choppy water, but we sit out on the exposed part of the deck. Poseidon must be angry, says W. Homerically. W.’s learning Greek again. Is the fifth time he’s begun? the sixth? It’s always the aorist that defeats him, he notes. Every time!

It’s choppy! We should libate the sea, says W. Then he asks me if I know why the sea is salty. I tell him I don’t. It’s because mountains are salty, and the sea is full of broken up rocks, he says. The sea makes him happy, W. says. It’s the ozone. A choppy sea releases ozone into the air, which makes everyone happy. What are your feelings about the sea?, asks W. Oh it makes me happy, I tell him. It’s majestic.

The round, stubby tower at Mountbatten Point. W. seemed rueful the last we were here, two years ago or so, reading the plaque as he does this time. He must have been hungry, W. says. Hunger makes him very depressed. First his nose aches, then his teeth ache then he gets depressed, he says. What do you feel when you’re hungry?, asks W. I never get hungry, I tell him. I’m careful about that. I think it was more than hunger, though, I tell W. That wasn’t why you were rueful. For his part, W. is sure that I was the one who was rueful. I have no memory of that, I tell him. Either way, it would have had nothing to do with my being hungry.

W. cherishes my special love for the town of Turnchapel, near Mountbatten. I become gentler when I’m there, he notes, kinder. He likes my tender side. In another life, I would have lived here, I tell W. We muse wistfully on what I might have been like. A better person, W. thinks. Taller, with some nobility of character. I think I would have been gracious and other-oriented. I’m not other-orientated at all, I tell W. It’s because I’m a troubled person. W. finds this very amusing. What are you troubled about? – Oh everything, life in general. – Well, you wouldn’t have been troubled if you’d lived in Turnchapel, W. says.

At Jennycliff, high on the promotory, we find concrete sockets sunk into the ground, besides an abandoned bunker. There were guns here once, pointing out to sea from Plymouth Sound. We remember similar unoccupied sockets at Tynemouth Priory. W., who has a keen interest in military history, is intrigued. He thinks they date from World War One. The tower at Mountbatten was itself a Tudor fortification, W. remembers from the plaque. Then there was the construction of the Royal Citadel after the Civil War, which we can see from the promotory, with its cannon pointing both out to sea and into town, to remind its citizens not to rebel against the crown, W. says, Plymouth being a Parliamentarian city. Then the forts built in the early nineteenth century to defend the country against Napoleon, W. says, and notes that Napoleon himself spent two weeks in the city in the HMS Bellerophon before being shipped to St Helena. Now of course the forts are being converted into flats and leisure complexes, says W.

On our way back to the city, W. finds a plaque near Jennycliff which explains that the Sound is a flooded estuary or rea. 10,000 years, after the last ice age, the water must have broken in. Drake’s Island was once a hillock, and the breakwater must have been built atop an existing ridge, to keep ships from running aground, we muse. Rea means estuary in Spanish, W. tells me.

The new world! We didn’t think we’d make it, but here we are, dirty
and dishevelled in the airport. We can’t find an exit. Up the stairs
and down the stairs. We sit in the rocking chairs and ask Sal to find
the way out.

There’s a lot of queuing in the new world, we decide. First of all,
the security lines at the airport, which go on forever, and which
everyone endures with great patience. Americans are a patient people, we decide. For his part, W. copes badly with queuing. He’s visibly vexed. Sal is worse. She wants to punch someone, she says. W. notes that I don’t seem to mind queuing. It’s because you’re a Hindu, he says. Hindus are a stoical people, he says.

In the Greyhound bus station, our bus is delayed for many hours. No one tells us over the tannoy. We’re left to find this out for ourselves. Our fellow passengers don’t care. They’ve seen it all. Nothing surprises them. They’ve always been treated like shit and it’s likely they’ll go on being treated like shit. A policeman with a gun in his holster stands behind a counter watching us all. Meanwhile a TV on Weather Channel blares out a documentary on plane crashes.

Sal offers everyone Gummi Bears. W. and I sit on the floor and eat barbeque flavour popcorn and he asks for Hindu stories. I tell him about Sati and Shiva, and how her father came back to life with the head of a goat. Then I tell him about Ganesha, and how it came about that he had the head of an elephant. The queue isn’t moving. Nothing’s happening. We Hindus are used to such things, I tell W.

W. thinks constantly of Canada. It’s his new line of flight, he admits, to get to Canada. Since I haven’t had any lines of flight for a while, it’s his turn, he says, and getting to Canada, with its pristine blue lakes and bear-filled wilderness is his line of flight. Of course, W. is Canadian, and his Canada is not a fantasy. It’s based on his own childhood by the great blue lakes and on the edge of the wilderness, and alongside the open-hearted Canadians.

We had a big house, he remembers, and went swimming every day. We were happier then. Sometimes he shows me pictures: a happy family, by a big house, with pine trees behind, and a big blue lake to swim in. And who are those people, I ask him? Canadians, says W., open-hearted Canadians.

Moving back to England was the disaster, says W. Wolverhampton of all places! England’s bad enough, but Wolverhampton! He shows me pictures of himself in school uniform. It had all gone wrong by then, says W., can’t you see it in my eyes? I can see it. Ever since then, says W., he’s dreamt of getting back to Canada.

It’s not impossible, he says. His sister’s made it. She’s a Canadian now. Or perhaps it’s impossible for him, he says, and for the likes of us. It would be impossible for you in particular, he tells me. The Canadians wouldn’t put up with you for a moment. Canada! It’s a big country, unlike England, says W. And cheap, too – he was there a couple of years ago on holiday, and was amazed. It’s cheap, and the people are open-hearted. Not like the English, he says.

Feral children rap on his windows as we talk. What do they want?, I ask him. He’s got no idea. Close the shutters!, he says, and we sit in darkness with our gin. Are there feral children in Canada?, I ask W. He thinks not. It has a good social security system, he says, and an egalitarian attitude. They pay well, too. Salaries are high. Canadians enjoy a high standard of living, with their blue, pure lakes and the great tracts of wilderness.

Would the cold bother him?, I ask W, who always moans he’s cold. It’s not wet cold like over here, says W. It’s dry cold, completely different. It doesn’t feel anything like as bad. And it’s not as depressing. You don’t get wave after wave of Westerlies coming in from the Atlantic. In England, we’re battered by Westerlies, says W., but in Canada, the weather is as pure and simple as the lakes and the open-hearted people.

What about the bears – wouldn’t they frighten him?, I ask W., who is not a brave man. They are ways of dealing with bears, W. assures me. The Canadians issue pamphlets on the matter. They probably keep things in the back of their cars to alarm them. Bear-frighening devices. Wouldn’t he have to learn to drive in Canada?, I ask W. It’s a big country after all, and there are miles of wilderness to negotiate. W. admits he might have to. He’d take lessons, he says. That would be part of his new life.

And what if he broke down?, I ask W. He’d have to learn some basic car maintenance, W. admits, for the Canadian wilderness. But he’s practical, he says, and would pick it up quickly, not like me. You wouldn’t last a minute in Canada, he says.

I am an expert at inanity, everyone knows that. It’s my great talent, says W., to be able to generate nonsense and to do so with others. Hours can pass, days, and there’s still more inanity to be tapped. How is it possible?, asks W. How do you do it? Whenever he’s in my company, says W., he longs for nothing other than to read Spinoza. Spinoza, he says, is your opposite. He longs for nothing else than to pore over Spinoza. All the answers are there he says.

Inanity – how do we do it?, W. wonders. For W. has a part in it too. W. is also an expert inanist. We ask each other questions, ‘Would you call yourself a corruptible man?’, or ‘Do you consider yourself to be a man of emotion?’ which permit of infinite permutations and infinitely stupid answers. W. is a great expert at question asking. When there’s silence for a moment, W. is ready with a question. I admit it, I’ve learned from him the great art of arbitrary question asking.

W.’s questions often have a melancholic tinge. ‘What do you consider your greatest failure?’; ‘When you look back over your life, how do you excuse it?’; ‘Why do you think things turned out so badly for you?’; ‘Do you think you will ever come up with a single idea?’; ‘What do you regret most about your life?’: these are all classic W. questions, which begin with a presumption of a failure that is utter and complete.

‘That’s what draws us together’, says W., ‘our sense of having failed’. I always tell him that I lack such a sense, and that things have turned out quite well, considering. I tell him his love of failure is a nostalgia for success. ‘In your heart, you measure yourself against success’. I tell him I recognise no such idols. ‘We were doomed from the start, everyone’s doomed …’

We’re on the North Devon coast, in Minehead, looking for cider. You’d think you could find it here, this is Somerset. A morning cider! Bright and glinting in our pint glasses! It’s a bright, warm day and we are after nothing other than cider, Somerset cider, though there’s none to be found. So we climb the hill instead, to enjoy the views. Up we go, our chatter filling the morning air.

We’re on particularly good form. Chatter pours forth in joyous profusion. Have we ever been happier? Have we ever achieved such inanity? Secretly, we both know we’ve reached our high point. It must be the morning air, the brightness, the sunlight on the waves below. There’s no cider in us, no alcohol, but it must be the air growing thinner as we climb. We feel purified. Light pours down upon us. We twitter like birds. We laugh and twitter.

How funny we are! But to none but ourselves. How inane! But who would appreciate it but us? At the summit of the hill, we can see the town spreading out on one side of us, and the sea on the other in the morning brightness. This is it, we’ve done it: it’s our ascent into the thinnest, most rarefied of inanities. But who would know it but us? Who would appreciate us but us?