A free man should walk slowly, that’s what the Greeks thought, says W. The slave hurries, but the free man can take all day. — ‘Slow down!’, he tells me, as we wander out through the meadows to The Trout. I know nothing of the art of the stroll, W. has always said. I know nothing of the pleasures of the flâneur.
W.’s always had a messianic faith in the walker. No one is more annoyed than he by the channelling that forces the pedestrian through a predetermined route. For this reason, W. has always hated airports. There’s only ever one direction in an airport, he says. And if you’re allowed to wander away, it is only to tempt you to buy things from the innumerable shops.
Doesn’t Newcastle airport channel every traveller through a shop floor? It scandalises him, W. says. He wants to knock every bottle of perfume from the rack. He wants to smash every overpriced bottle of wine. But here, today, in the meadows? Every direction is open to us, he notes. We can walk wherever we like and as slowly as we please.
We remember Mandelstam’s great walks through the streets of St Petersburg, before he was imprisoned for his poem about Stalin, and murdered in the Gulag. He composed poems in his head as he walked. He wrote them in his head, as he walked along, and then went home to write them out. And when he was betrayed, and his manuscripts destroyed, his wife stowed them in her head. A precious cargo.
W. knew I was a would-be man of culture when he saw her memoir Hope Against Hope on my bookshelf. It didn’t matter to W. whether I’d read it or not, or whether I had any real idea of what it contained. The title itself must have excited me: that was enough for W. The title, and the myth of Mandelstam, exiled from his city and murdered in the Gulag: I had a feeling for that; what else could W. ask for in a collaborator, in these fallen times?
Celan, in the midst of his walks, would phone his wife with the poems he had written in his head, W. remembers. And didn’t Celan claim to have seen God under the door of his hotel room? He saw God as a ray of light under his hotel door, W. says, it’s very moving.
Ah, but what sense can we have of Mandelstam, of Celan? What can we understand of poetry, in the Age of Shit? In the end, we love only the myth of poetry, the myth of the world-historical importance of poetry, and the myth of ourselves as readers of poetry …
We love poetry because we have no idea about poetry, W. says. We love religion because we have no idea about religion. We love God because we have no idea of God …
There’s Walser, too, the patron saint of walkers, W. says. Walser, walking in the Swiss Alps. Walser, who’d long since devoted his time to being mad, rather than writing: he knew his priorities. He was mad, and the mad walked. And one day — fifty years ago, nearly to the day — they found him dead in the snow. He’d walked his way to death. Which is to say, says W., he’d met death on his own terms, far from his mental asylum. And that’s exactly his point, W. says. The walker meets the world on his own terms. The walker — the slow walker — meets the world according to his measure, W. says.
Ah, if only we were as wise as Walser, that is to say, as mad as Walser. If only we understood that our duty is to walk, not to write, merely to walk and not to think. To give up thinking! To give up writing! To give up our reading, which is really only the shadow of reading, the search for the world-historical importance that reading once had. But we go on, don’t we? We collect our books. We surround ourselves with them, the names of Old Europe, when we should have been walking, just that, all along.
It’s time for his nap, W. says as we head back to town. Time to go back to his room for his power nap, as he calls it. He learned about power naps from a public lecture at the university. Sleep for twenty minutes, and you fool the mind into thinking you’ve been asleep for much longer. Twenty minutes! That’s all he needs to regain his composure, W. says.
But I never let him nap, W. says. In fact, I scorn his desire to nap and even the very notion of a nap. I keep him up all night with my inanities, W. says, and then I keep him awake all day with more inanities.
Of course, he’s the one who insists that we stay up later than anyone else, that we follow the night through all the way until dawn, W. says. How many nights have ended for us just as dawn was brightening the sky, and the first birds were starting to sing? How many nights, with Stroszek on the TV and The Star of Redemption open on the desk?
W. is a man who wants to see the night through he says. But the afternoon … that’s my time, W. concedes. That’s when I come into my own. When everyone around me is tired and can put up no defence. When everyone’s too tired to make me shut up, that’s Lars-time, W. says. — ‘That’s when you pounce’. The afternoon: it’s when I’m at my strongest and he’s at his weakest, W. says. It’s when I can really get going. It’s when I wear everyone out.
But it’s also when I’m most afraid, of course, that’s what I’ve told him, W. says. He’s always been struck by that: for him, the afternoon is a time of repose, for the gathering of strength, but for me, it’s a time of fear.
It must be my years of unemployment, W. says. Didn’t I tell him my afternoons used to sag like a drooping washing line? Didn’t I complain of the eternullity of those afternoons, of their infinite wearing away? It was post-Neighbours time, the afternoon, that’s what I told him. Post This Morning, post Kilroy, and deep into the time of American cop-show repeats.
Columbo-time, W. says, I could never bear that, could I? Instead I’d go out for walk, that’s what I told him. Instead, it was time for a bike ride. Anything to be active! Anything to have something to do! I’d head up to Tesco for discounted sandwiches, wasn’t that it? I’d head into the library for another video, all the time full of fear, all the time anxious about — what? How did I put it? The infinite wearing away, I said, quoting Blanchot. Eternullity, I said, quoting Lefebvre.
It’s no wonder I’m no night-owl, W. says. No wonder that I’m always worn out by dinnertime. I always revive myself, when I visit him, with a slab of Stella and some pork scratchings. That’s my pre-dinner snack.
W., meanwhile, would have been refreshed from his nap, if I’d allowed him to sleep. He would have come downstairs, a man refreshed, reborn, having had a power-nap, he says. But instead, I insist on conversation, W. says. I insist on wearing him out: he lying on the sofa; I, sitting up at the table. I insist we make some wild plan or other, W. says.
For me, the afternoon’s always planning-time, world-conquest-time, as W. calls it. I have to pretend to some kind of hold on the future, W. has noticed. It’s like a climber throwing up a grappling hook, or Spiderman swinging by his squirted webs. I’m never happy in the moment, W. says. I’m never happy in the belly of the afternoon.