The damp and I are companions in the quiet flat. Little happens here; the damp does its work as moisture is drawn through the filters of the dehumidifier into its transparent collection tray, and I try to do mine. When I am away, I tell W., I think the damp plunges forward like a dark wave; I can smell it, very thick in the air, when I open the door. Damp in a wave, welcoming me home, thick and brown and wet in the air.
Sometimes I sponge down the walls with a mixture of water and bleach. It needs to be done in the bathroom, too, where black spores of mould are forming. And the wallpaper in the bedroom, too. But these are only symptoms. I touch a cool sponge to the wall as to a fevered brow. Be calm, be still, do not toss and turn. And now I imagine the damp is a dream of the wall, that it is lost in itself somehow, and that if the wall were only to open its eyes and see me, then all would be well. But the wall seems to fall into itself. It’s lost in damp, or damp is what rises up when the wall disappears into its coma.
Sometimes, I tell W., I like to imagine that I could pick the walls up like a Chinese screen and turn them to the sun to dry. To lift up the ceiling and the flat above and let the sun find the wall, and dry it. That would let it live. That would awaken it. As it is, the wall is hunched upon itself and hidden from the sun. It weeps in a corner.
But how long for? I think warmer days are approaching, I tell W., though it was freezing today, and there were a few snowflakes in the air. Warmer days, and the simple honesty of the sun, which will bake everything dry. And if I cannot pick up the wall to turn it around, inner to outer, so there are no secrets anymore, nothing hidden, there is still the slow penetration of the sun, slow, and over the whole outer wall, rendered and unrendered. And one day it will be summer, too, in my kitchen.
The disaster has already happened, said W. during our presentation. That’s what we’re committed to, he said, meaning him and me. It’s already happened! It’s all finished! Can’t you see that it’s finished? But no one agreed with us. We’re quite alone, we agreed afterwards, walking to the train.
Alone with the apocalypse! The only thing for it is to drink. Luckily we have a bottle of Plymouth Gin in our bag. We are sober men, terribly sober, we agree. It’s only those who are the most sober of all who have to drink, and then to the point when they can no longer pronounce the word apocalypse. It’s only then, drunk as lords, that they will know God’s plan, which they will immediately forget.
Are we capable of religious belief? Of course not. We’re not capable of anything, that’s the trouble. We’re up against the apocalypse with no means to fight it. The disaster has already happened. We were born, for one thing. We’re going to die, that’s another. And the oceans will boil and the skies burn away into the outer darkness …
It’s all over, it’s all finished. This is the interregnum. A little reprieve, an Indian summer. But we’re deep into autumn, and winter is coming — or should that be the other way round? Deep into spring — a new kind of spring, a boiling spring — and a summer will come that will burn away everything.
Maybe it will come later, after we’re dead. Maybe sooner — tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. But in another sense, it’s already come; it’s spread its cloak around us. We’re men of the End, of the Very End. We’re men of the Disaster, which no one else knows but us. Which no one else feels. Drink, drink, we have to drink. We unscrew the top of our gin bottle as the train rolls out of the station …
These are the End Times, but who knows it but us? No one. We’re quite alone with our knowledge, which is really a kind of feeling. We’re on our own, we decide. That’s what we have in common: a sense of the apocalypse. A sense that the time has come, and these are the days of our Judgement.
We’ll be found wanting, we know that. We two above all — we’re terribly guilty. What’s to become of us — of us in particular? No one believes in us. No one listens. We’re out on a limb — terribly far — and we’re sawing it off. We’ll fall off the edge of the world. We are falling — who believes us? Who believes in us?
These are our thoughts on the train that rushes through the night. We’re drinking gin with great determination. We have to drink! drink! until we can no longer say the word, Messiah. That’s our punishment, and we must be punished. This is what it has come to, here in the dark, rushing forward …
What place do we have in the world? None. Where’s it all going? To perdition. To desolation, and to the abomination of desolation. And are we going with it? All the way! That’s where we’re heading now with our gin and our apocalypticism, full speed into the night.
Messianism has driven us mad, or half mad, we decide. What else have we been thinking about? What else has driven us through our reading and writing? We’ll be glad when it’s over: but when will it be over? There’s no sign yet. Messianism hasn’t finished with us.
We’re fated in some way. We’re circling round and round what we cannot possibly understand. And isn’t that why we’re drawn to it? Isn’t that the lure? You cannot understand this idea. You’ll never understand it, not today, not tomorrow. But the day after that? we ask. The day after tomorrow?
That’s our faith: it’s not faith in the Messiah, but that we might be brought into the vicinity of the idea of the Messiah; that a little of its light might reach us. The Messiah: isn’t he forever beyond us, just beyond? We’ve always just missed him. We missed the appointment …
Wasn’t he supposed to arrive here, now? Not today, and not even tomorrow. But the idea of the Messiah: might we reach that? Is there something left of his passing, some trace — some sign? The day after tomorrow: that’s when it will reach us, if it does: the idea of the Messiah.
But won’t it have been too late? Won’t the page have already been turned? But perhaps that’s what it means: the idea can burn only for those who cannot see it, who have already gone under. It’s on the other side of the mirror, although all they can see are their own stupid faces.
And what do we see, in the reflective surface of the train windows? Whose faces are those behind the glass? — ‘My God, look at us’, says W. ‘Look what we’ve become’.
The water taxi to Mount Batten. We’re in choppy water, but sit out nevertheless on the exposed part of the deck. — ‘Poseidon must be angry’, says W. as the surf splashes over us. W.’s learning Greek again. Is it the fifth time he’s begun? The sixth? It’s the aorist that defeats him, he says. Every time.
It’s choppy! — ‘We should libate the sea’, says W. Then he asks me if I know why the sea is salty. It’s because the mountains are salty and the sea is full of broken up mountains, he says.
It’s also full of ozone, of course. That’s what cheers you up when you’re near the sea, W. says, the ozone that choppy water releases into the air.
Have we failed? W. is certain: we are complete failures. We should be drowned like kittens, he says, for the little we’ve achieved. But what chance did we have? I ask him. What could we have done, under the circumstances? That’s always my question, W. says. — ‘You’re always looking for excuses. It’s your Hindu fatalism’.
W. says my entire worldview is organised so that I never have to take responsibility for anything, even my supposed Hinduism. W. was brought up with the idea of eternal damnation, he says, and the thought of it still makes him shiver. Hindus are immune, W. says. I should try living as a Catholic and then I’d see (W.’s family were converts, of course). And as a Jew (W. is Jewish by bloodline). — ‘It’s the guilt that’s worst’, says W. ‘The sense you can never measure up’.