That I write on Western philosophy is really the destruction of Western philosophy, W. says. That I write on religious ideas is really the destruction of all religious ideas. And that I pretend to think is really the destruction of thought, affecting all thinkers, everywhere.
Schelling, Feuerbach … no one’s safe when I begin to think. Maimon, Nicholas of Cusa … Is there anyone who might be saved?
A rumbling through the heavens: Lars is writing one of his commentaries! Angels’ cries: Lars is defiling Rosenzweig! And Weil! And Kierkegaard — what’s Lars going to do with him?
No one reads a line he writes, W. says. What he writes is of no significance at all. But when I write — when I publish my reflections, if he can call it publishing, if he can call them reflections — he wants to clasp the entire oeuvres of Bataille, Weil and Kierkegaard to his breast, W. says. He wants to build a big wall around the library and all libraries, posting sentries to shoot me on sight. But he knows, like the Red Death of Poe’s story, that I’m in there already, that my reading is eating away at those oeuvres like cancer.
Twickenham. Putney. And Clapham Junction, where the track braids together with a myriad of others, and trains like ours run a parallel course.
My life in Manchester, in old Manchester, before the regeneration. What was I reading in my bedsit by the curry house extractor fans? W. wonders. What, as cold air poured into my room from the crack in the wall? Kafka, of course. Kafka, spuriously.
W. read Kafka as he travelled through Europe, as he surveyed the European scene from his train window. He read about the Austro-Hungarian empire and its collapse, as the train passed through Freiburg, and about the generation of German Jews in its final hour, as he arrived in Strasbourg.
As his train crossed the Alps, W. read about Benjamin and Scholem who, making constant reference to Kafka, discussed the fine line between religion and nihilism in their letters. In a café in Berne, W. read of their attempt to develop, each in their own way, a kind of anarcho-messianism, an apocalyptic antipolitics, and their discussion about whether the coming of the Messiah meant the dissolution of the Law or its fulfilment.
And me — what was I reading to contextualise my Kafka studies? What, as I wandered through the university library? But I had no idea of Kafka’s milieu. To me, Kafka was only a meteor who had arrived from nowhere.
It was Kafka who led me from the south to the north, W. knows that. It was Kafka who led me into the university. Before Kafka, there was my warehouse life. My life as a finder of UTLs, unable-to-locates, searching up and down the warehouse aisles.
I stumbled when I tried to convey it to W., when I tried to explain what Kafka revealed to me in my warehouse years. I spoke of the castle hill, veiled in mist and darkness, and of the buzzing and whistling on the telephone line. I spoke of the illusory emptiness into which K. looked up as he crossed the wooden bridge, and of his weariness, which made him collapse on the way to settle his business with the authorities. What was I getting at? W. wonders. What was I trying to say?
The world around me was unreal, I told W. that. The warehouse was unreal. The suburbs in which I had grown up, and on which the warehouse had been built, were likewise unreal. Despair reveals the truth of the world: isn’t that what was shown to me by Kafka? Suffering reveals the nullity of things.
I had a vision, I told W., he remembers. I saw the workers around me like rats in a rat-run. I saw the pristine buildings around me like rat-pens, like rat-mazes. Absurdity was doing experiments on us: that’s what I saw, wasn’t it? Madness had us caged in the suburbs like laboratory rats …
My soul was a UTL: isn’t that what I saw? Life was an unable-to-locate, although no one seemed to know it but me.
The Castle made my life quiver like a compass needle. Things pointed in one direction: north! Out of the warehouse! Out of the south! North: to where dereliction, like The Castle, revealed things in their truth! North: to where the destruction of the created order had worn through! To where reality had worn through!
Where have the homeless gone, who used to sleep under the bridge at Waterloo? W. wonders. Doubtless, they were blasted awake by hoses at three or four in the morning. Doubtless they were moved on by the new security guards, the private police of Capital …
We’ve seen them, in our home cities, of course: the Business Improvement Officers, in their fluorescent vests, walkie-talkies squawking. We’ve seen them patrolling the Newcastle streets in teams, ensuring a clean and safe trading environment by moving undesirables away. We’ve seen them safeguarding the marketing and branding of the area by breaking up groups of teenagers and moving on the homeless in Plymouth shopping malls.
There’s to be no loitering in the privatised city centre (but there’s nowhere to loiter). No sitting down (but there are no benches on which to sit down). There are to be no non-consumers in the new imperium. That’s why the Business Improvement Officers are out with their hoses in the early hours of the morning. That’s why they’re keeping watch through CCTV for any non-consumerist behaviour.
Waterloo Bridge. The mighty Thames.
Bridges are offensive to the gods, W.’s read. They’re the symbol of hubris, of over-striving. Who would think themselves stronger than the currents and tides?
The gods of the river need to be appeased, W. says. The Greeks used to suspend animals over the river and then cut their throats. They used to throw live horses into the waters, or sacrifice them on the banks. The pagans had the tradition of sacrificing children to appease the river. W. shudders.
The Thames is full of all kinds of offerings: jewellery and figurines, spear-heads and battle axes, mutilated pagan deities, crucifixes with the head of Jesus removed, lying perfectly preserved in river-bottom silt …
Should we throw ourselves in? we wonder, looking down at the restless, heaving water. Ah, but the river wouldn’t want us. We would appease the wrath of no god, we who are neither innocent, like children, nor full of life, like horses. We’d be pulled up from the waves, the polluted water pumped from our stomachs. They’d slap us round the face. Wake up! Wake up! And W.’s eyes would open and see me. And he’d retch up the black river water from the bottom of his lungs.
Somerset House. The vast courtyard. Pavilions and porticos. Posh people eating lunch in the sun. He knows I didn’t want to come here, W. says. He can see that I am uncomfortable in such grand surroundings. The working class are only happy in squalor. But W. wouldn’t be deterred from going to Somerset House. He wanted to see the fountain, he says. He wanted to see the jets of water rising and falling. And he wanted to see me caper among those jets like an idiot child.
The bottle of wine that we ordered arrives, with two glasses. — ‘To us!’, toasts W. To idiocy! I toast. How do I think our lecture tour is going? W. asks. Are we coming through with our reputations intact? Our dignity? Have we gained in stature in the eyes of our contemporaries? Ah, there’s no need to answer.
This is our last tour, W. says. He feels that strongly. Something’s going to happen. Something’s about to happen … Why does he feel such a sense of dread?