Wittgenstein Jr (9 page)

His brother spoke of the
danger
of the dons, Wittgenstein says. Of the
threat
of the dons. Dons were more dangerous than they seemed, his brother said. Dons could
go for the throat
, his brother was sure of that.

His brother had heard of scenes of savagery among the dons. Scenes of
violence
. Whole packs of dons would go out to hunt, in the guest lectures and seminar series of Oxford. Donpacks, out to bring back meat to feast upon.

He’d seen them in his mind’s eye, his brother said: great dons, like lions, chewing on bones; lesser dons, like hyenas, sucking on the bones left by other dons; still lesser dons, like birds of prey, flapping round the corpse …

Of course, dons could be
gentle
, too, his brother acknowledged. Dons could be tender, even
kind
. When they first scented spring in the air, dons would become dreamy and sentimental. When the first spring breezes ruffled their hair, dons would close their eyes and
sigh
 …

In the high summer, dons would sit out on the grass like resting lions, his brother said. They’d picnic on the lawn, like kings at peace. They’d recline in their deckchairs, laying their Loeb editions facedown on the grass.

Autumn lent the dons a
valedictory
air, his brother said. In autumn, when the first leaves were falling from the trees, the dons would know a gentle melancholy. Sometimes a tear would appear in the eye of a melancholic don. Sometimes a don would let out a great sigh, as he sat in his leather armchair by the fire.

In winter, the dons were inert, eyes glazed over, his brother said. Drowsy, like a winter wasp. Half hibernating by the fire, a glass of sherry in the hand …

But he should never be fooled, his brother told him. He should never let down his guard.

The mood of the dons could change quickly, his brother said. Like a bushfire that suddenly changes direction. You couldn’t predict them. You couldn’t anticipate them. Their moods were unstable. They were easy to stir, easy to panic. They were susceptible to rumour, to gossip. They were as sensitive as antelopes. A sudden movement, and they’d bolt—a herd of dons leaping over the savannah.

Above all, he should never show
fear
to a don, his brother
said. He might be afraid of them, but he should never show his fear. That’s what his brother had learnt. The best thing would be for the dons to take him as one of their own. As a kind of
honorary
don, an honorary fellow. He should try, as best he could, to
mirror
the dons. His brother advised him to ape their gestures, their turns of phrase. To mimic their body language. Their
dress
. To try to
blend in
with the dons—they’d appreciate that.

Of course, not for one moment would they take him for a don—they would not be so easily fooled, his brother said. Not for one moment would they take him for one of their kind. But they’d appreciate the
gesture
of his would-be donnishness. They’d smile when they witnessed his no-doubt inept attempts at becoming a don. It would be as though he were a child, playing at dressing up, his brother said. And the dons, despite everything, are fond of children …

Doyle’s rooms. A soirée.

Tonight’s performance: the madness of Nietzsche.

Guthrie, the star, is unconscious. Doyle smears mustard under his nostrils. No response. Doyle squirts wasabi through his lips. Still nothing. Titmuss volunteers for the part, and sellotapes a moustache under his nose.

Titmuss/Nietzsche’s last moments of sanity, watching a horse (Benedict Kirwin) being beaten in the Turin marketplace. Titmuss/Nietzsche, flinging his arms round the horse, and weeping.

TITMUSS/NIETZSCHE:
You must have chaos inside you, if you are to give birth to a dancing star. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you
.

Titmuss/Nietzsche slumps. Applause from the audience.

Change of scene.

The demented Nietzsche never regained consciousness, Doyle says. Everyone ponders Guthrie.

EDE: He’s actually drooling.

MULBERRY: You go, Guthrie! Give an Oscar to droolio!

Guthrie has something, we agree. Presence. He’s like an Olivier of the immobile. Even his inertia is profound. As though he bore all the weight of existence! All the burden of being!

DOYLE (playing Nietzsche’s sister): Friedrich! Friedrich! Wake up!

Guthrie half snores. Sniffs.

DOYLE/NIETZSCHE’S SISTER: Friedrich! Herr Hitler has come to see you!

Guthrie seems to stir. His eyes half open. Then his head slumps onto his chest.

More applause. Doyle bows. A triumph! Bravo!

Black Zombies all round.

TITMUSS: Do you reckon you have to be
mad
to really think?

MULBERRY: Wittgenstein’s mad. Quite clearly.

EDE: Wittgenstein’s brother
went
mad. Then killed himself.

DOYLE: It must run in the family.

EDE: I had a mad uncle.

MULBERRY: Mad uncle Ede—must be from all that inbreeding. Did
he really think
?

EDE: I don’t know. He really thought he was a parrot. Or a squirrel, depending on the day.

Another round of Zombies.

Spin the bottle.

The usual questions: Ever done it out-of-doors? Anally? With a member of the same sex? The opposite sex? Favourite sexual fantasies?: the secretary (Chakrabarti) … the nurse (Titmuss) … the dominant woman (Alexander Kirwin) … the virgin flower, atremble in your arms (Benedict Kirwin), the threesome (Benedict Kirwin again), the
foursome
(Benedict Kirwin yet again), a
Roman orgy
of women (Benedict Kirwin has a lot of fantasies) …

MULBERRY: No prizes for guessing
your
fantasy, Peters.

EDE: Yeah. Germanic genius all dressed up in
leder
.

The Kirwins are quizzed about their brief encounters at the
derangement of the senses
party. Mulberry is quizzed about the ethics of
riding bareback
. About the sex/death relationship. We explore the topics of fisting, of auto-erotic asphyxiation. We discuss the effects of various drugs on sexual performance. On methods of relaxing the anal sphincter (Mulberry). Of engorging the reluctant cock (Doyle).

We rank the company in terms of sexual promiscuity (Mulberry wins). In terms of sexual
prowess
(Titmuss claims to be an expert in the Indian erotic arts. No one believes him). In terms of sexual
attractiveness
, Ede comes top (centuries of breeding). In terms of
sexual repression
.

MULBERRY: You win that one, Peters. Hands down.

Saturday night. Ede texts.
You up? I split with Fee
.

Ede, in the communal kitchen, emptying a tub of mushrooms onto the counter.

EDE: The best I could get. Guaranteed head-fuck.

Fee! Fee! Why must it all be so complicated?, Ede says. We’re cursed. We’re
doomed
.

Beauty seems like a great clue, Ede says. Plato was right. It points somewhere. But to what? There is
this
world, that is all. Beauty makes a sign—but of what? A sign of nothing. Of the absence of signs. Beauty mocks us, Ede says. Beauty says:
The way is barred. There is no path
. Beauty is the door that’s shut.

Fee! Fee! It’s unbearable, Ede says. He can’t stand it! Fee is beautiful, but Fee is witless. Fee and her friends: beautiful but witless, chattering away in their flat. So inane. So depthless.

EDE: Have you noticed how the rahs are all saying
literally
now?
I was like literally exhausted. I was like literally wasted
. But nothing they say actually
means
anything! Literally
or
figuratively! Most of the time, they don’t even finish their sentences.
I was literally so …
They just trail off. They barely
speak
, most of the time.
Mmms
and
ahhs
. Little moans, nothing else.
Oh reeealllly. Lurrrrrvely. Coooool
.

And they use the word
uni
, which is unforgiveable, Ede says.
My uni
 … As if Cambridge were some cuddly toy. As if
they
were all cuddly toys.

He’s known these people all his life, Ede says. He’s supposed to marry one of them! To perpetuate the breed. To join one great house with another, consolidating landed wealth, and so on. Fee would do perfectly, he says. He was led to her, it
is quite clear, by some
innate aristocratic homing device
. Something
Darwinian
. Something quite disgusting …

EDE: We’re puppets, Peters!

Better to ruin himself, Ede says. Better to ruin the whole Ede legacy. To squander its fortune. To wreck its great estates. Better to end the family line. Better to become a cautionary tale to scare young aristocrats, he says.

Ede steeps the mushrooms in warm water, adding a squeeze of lemon juice. We drink the tea.

We speak of our desire for despair—real despair, Ede and I. For choking despair, visible to all. For chaotic despair, despair of
collapse
, of
ruination
. For the despair of Lucifer, as he fell from heaven …

Our desire for
annulling
despair. For a despair that dissolves the ego; despair indistinguishable from a kind of
death
. For
wild
despair, for heads thrown back, teeth fringing laughing mouths. For
exhilarated
despair, for madness under the moon.

Our desire for despairs of the damned. For
crawling
despairs, like rats, like spiders. For
heavy
despairs, like those on vast planets, which make a teardrop as heavy as lead …

Our desire for the moon to smash into the earth. For the sun to swallow the earth. For the night to devour both the sun and the earth.

We speak of our desire for extinction, for cool mineral silence. For the Big Crunch, for the end of all things. For the Great Dissipation, when electrons leave their atoms …

Our desire for the right to exist to be revoked. For the great lie of life to lose its force. For all to end in the great Beckett-play of the end …

We speak of our desire for the universal wind-down. For our bubble universe to pop on the mouth of God-the-idiot. For the great going-under. For the death of death of death. For the end of the end. For no more time. For no more
mores
 …

He wishes his melancholy would take a
European
turn, Ede says, like Wittgenstein’s.

EDE: Here, drink up! Maybe we can ’shroom our way to the fundament …

A walk on the Backs.

Thought is also about knowing where to stop, Wittgenstein says. Sometimes, the thinker must desist from asking,
Why?
Sometimes, the thinker must let thought rest in peace.

His brother spoke of peace when he set off for Norway, Wittgenstein says. When he embarked for Norway, his brother hoped he would
solve every problem in philosophy
.

Norway would be his trial, his brother said, on the eve of his departure. Norway would be where he’d see if he was worthy of being called a thinker. Norway was where thought would writhe inside him, his brother said.
Through
him. Norway was where thought would flash above him, like the northern lights.

Norway was where he’d think his
severest
thoughts, his brother said. The most
terrible
of thoughts. Where thought would hurl its spear into him. Where thought, merciless, would
run him through
.

Norway would be too cold to let philosophy survive, his brother said. To let
what we know as philosophy
survive. The frozen air of Norway would kill all
philosophical germs
. Norway was death, his brother said. A certain
kind
of death.

By summer, he’d have solved all the fundamental problems of logic, his brother said. He’d have burrowed through the autumn, the winter, the spring. He’d have burrowed all the way to the Norwegian summer, to the never-ending day, when everything would be clear.

The truth, at first, would be unbearable, his brother said.
Hard to get used to. Hard to
endure
. Because truth was also a judgement. Because truth would judge you, and find you wanting.

The truth would know his sins, his brother said. The truth would expose all his darknesses.

There would be no secrets in the Norwegian summer, his brother said. Nothing would be hidden. The truth would know him. God would know him, in the summer light.

The truth would search him, his brother said. It would search through him. He’d breathe the truth down to the bottom of his lungs. He’d inhale and exhale the truth.

His soul would be
light
, his brother said. His soul would
weigh nothing
. He would feel his soul rising in the Norwegian summer. His soul would float into the air like a fire-balloon.

And there would be silence, his brother said. There would be nothing he
needed
to say.

He’d barely sleep, his brother said. There would be no need for sleep in the never-ending day. There would be no need to rest. No need to dream under the never-setting sun.

The stars would dream, above the sky. The planets would dream for him, as they fell through the darkness.

His heart would be bright, his brother said. His heart would pulse like a jellyfish in the sunlit waters. And pale stars would show in the upper heavens. And God’s angels would be there, just above the sky. And God’s throne would stand in the middle of the sky. And God’s face would no longer be hidden. And God would be everywhere, just as light would be everywhere. There would be no corner of darkness where the devil might hide.

In the shadowless summer, he’d live in innocence, his brother said. In lightness. In grace. And his soul would be as
transparent as the wings of summer insects. And he would think as birds flit from branch to branch. As fish nuzzle the surface of the water. The thought of life would be indistinguishable from life. Thought would live. Life would think …