Wittgenstein Jr (20 page)

There was a sense of
imminence
in their playing, he says.
Of
urgency
, quite detached from concerto-thrills. It was about the present. About the
moment
, thick with promise. You felt that the world was about to change completely …

It frightened him back then, he says: the thought that the world could change completely. But now?

After philosophy
, the revelation will be continuous, he says. Theophany will be continuous. Every moment will be full to bursting.

After philosophy
, every moment will be a Sabbath, and time will be a movement only from Sabbath to Sabbath.

After philosophy
, we will know things as they are, he says. We will
be
as we are.

After philosophy
, everything we say will be true.

Night. We lie together.

We lie together.

We lie together.

Late. Snow-light outside.

Noise from the courtyard. Voices shouting.

Is it Guthrie?, he says.

Guthrie’s gone home, I tell him.

WITTGENSTEIN: You must go home. Tomorrow, when I leave, go home, Peters. Get the train north.

We must all go home, he says. Everyone must go home …

Philosophy is really homesickness
, he quotes.
The desire to be at home everywhere
.

• • •

The early hours. He wakes up shaking.

WITTGENSTEIN: Oh God, it’s here. Madness is here.

His fear that his mind will burst. His
hope
that his mind will burst.

To undo his mind. To
release
it.

What will he become, when he welcomes madness? When he
affirms
madness?

What will he become, when he falls into his madness? When madness
falls through him
?

He knows he is going mad, he says. He knows that these are the last days of his sanity.

He does not want to be alone at the end. He knows he will be alone at the end.

He’s afraid of madness, he says. That madness it will leave something of him left.

He’s afraid that madness
will not obliterate him
.

Dawn.

Still shaking.

His
confession
. He speaks of his life. Of what he has been. Of what he has
done
.

He speaks of his sins. Of the past. He speaks of all those who have been lost.

He says that he, too, will soon be lost.

WITTGENSTEIN: Remember me, Peters.

• • •

After philosophy
, every moment of the past will be remembered, he says. Nothing will be lost.

After philosophy
, the past will be reparable, he says. Reversible.

After philosophy
, death will be transformed into life, he says. Sorrow will be transformed into joy.

After philosophy
, the dead will awaken. The dead will be reborn. His brother, his mother, his father: they will be reborn.

After philosophy
, we will weep without cease. We will laugh without cease.

After philosophy
, the world will open as his homeland. As
our
homeland.

After philosophy
, we will know what it means to live.

Christmas Eve

Morning.

He is pale. Worn.

So he is still sane, he says. Still alive.

We should pray together, he says. We should thank God on our knees. A pause. And then: no, it is not for me to pray.

My youth is already a prayer, for him. My beauty: prayer in the flesh.

Am I his friend?, he asks me. I nod. And he says: yes, I am his friend. God has given him a friend.

Tears spring to his eyes.

WITTGENSTEIN: Do you see? I nearly wept …

I tell him he must stay. That he can’t think of going anywhere, in his condition.

He says he won’t stay. That this can’t be where it all ends. Not here. Not in Cambridge.

The last moments, as we wait for his taxi.

Last night, he dreamt he came back to Cambridge, he says. That he came back to rescue me, and to be rescued in turn.

I didn’t recognise him when he returned, he says. He’d come back in a new guise. He was himself—but he wasn’t himself.

And he didn’t know
me
, not immediately.

In his dream, it took time for us to find our way back to one another. To court one another all over again, and in a new way.

In his dream, everything that has happened happened again, as if for the first time. Everything—his class, our walks on the Backs, our romance, even last night, even the night of sadness before his departure …

In his dream, I found him again, he says. I saw him in someone else’s face. He came towards me with every face but his own. He came
laughing
, he says. He came
weeping
. He came in
innocence
, as pure as a spring breeze.

The taxi draws up. The driver packs Wittgenstein’s cases into the boot.

He will come back to Cambridge as a
judge
, he says. A sword will go out of his mouth to smite his enemies. And I will sit at his right-hand side, and Ede at his left.

The dons will bow their heads in repentance. The porters in their lodges will look up expectantly. The cleaners will pause with their vacuum cleaners and wait for a sign.

He will come back to Cambridge as a
lover
, he says. He will hold me in his arms. My hair will be thick against his mouth. My legs will be entwined with his. My fingers, wrapped round his fingers.

And he will sleep beside me, he says. I will sleep beside him. We will be gathered up in the hand of night. Held together.

He will come back to Cambridge as the
sanest man in the world
, he says. As a man who has passed through madness and survived. As a man remade in the crucible.

He will come as the
last thinker
, he says. As the
last philosopher
. He will wield germinal forces.
Cosmic
forces. He will burn with the great fire of God.

And the first morning of the world will dawn again, he says. The eternal New Year. And he will step with us all into the new world. The coming world.

And there will only be forces and densities, not forms and matters, he says. And there will be but currents and countercurrents, peaks and troughs, and nothing enduring.

And there will be nothing but God, he says. Nothing but divinity, angels torn apart. Nothing but the end, perpetually ending. Nothing but the beginning, eternally recurring.

After philosophy
, we will have no names, he says.

After philosophy
, there will be a name for everything, and not just for every
kind
of thing.

He embraces me. Presses a notebook into my hand.

It’s all there, he says. His path into the pathless. The way out.

WITTGENSTEIN: Remember me, Peters.

He climbs into the taxi, his mackintosh folded over his arm. He’s gone.