EDE: Genius uses Aquafresh.
Ede felt like a dolt through it all, he says. He couldn’t express himself. He couldn’t say anything witty. Anything memorable. But then, there wasn’t much space to speak. It’s Wittgenstein’s show, not yours, Ede says. Wittgenstein’s the star, even if he pretends he isn’t.
But his rooms really are different from other dons’, Ede says. There’s no wall of leather-bound books. No clutter of collectibles. No kitsch souvenirs as talking points. No bottles of college sherry, one dry and one sweet. No bottles of beer for undergraduates. No shabbiness—no sagging armchairs, no coffee-stained rugs. It’s very clean, very austere.
EDE: He told me about his hot baths. He boasted about the temperatures he can stand. And he said something about his hatred of carpets. You can’t keep them clean!
There was a flowering plant on Wittgenstein’s windowsill, in a little pot, Ede says. And he heard the sound of a piano being practised, a couple of floors down. And he caught a glimpse of Wittgenstein’s neatly made bed, through a half-open door. And he saw the views from Wittgenstein’s rooms, which look out over the red-tiled roofs, towards the river.
I tell Ede about my visit to Wittgenstein. The same stairs, the grille, the tea, the quiz. Wittgenstein set the tone, and I told him all sorts of silly things. My parents’ farm. My scholarship. My hatred of boarding school. My nostalgia for the hills of Yorkshire, as compared to the flatness of Cambridgeshire. My fruitless search for the so-called Gog Magog Hills in the Cambridgeshire countryside. My poetry …
EDE: Your poetry! What a sensitive young man you are, Peters.
ME: He quoted Blake. And Cowper.
EDE: Yes, yes, but did you get anything interesting out of him?
ME: He said he doesn’t read philosophy any more. If a book doesn’t make you want to throw it aside and think your own thoughts, what use is it?, he said. And another thing: he has a brother.
EDE: Really!?
ME: Yes, he mentioned him in passing. As my brother said of Oxford … Something like that.
EDE: Very interesting.
Ede opens his laptop and googles Oxford, coupled with Wittgenstein’s real surname. A news article: Oxford Don Suicide.
EDE: Very, very interesting — doomed genius. (Then, summarising): The brother was a brilliant young mathematician. A prodigy. Went up to Oxford at fifteen. Finished his doctoral studies at nineteen, when he became a Junior Research Fellow. Took his life at twenty. Well!
How old is Wittgenstein? we wonder. Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Definitely a potential suicide, we agree.
Ede googles logic and suicides, but gets nothing. He googles maths and madness.
EDE: Cantor sent himself mad, when he was investigating infinity, apparently. Gödel, too — he starved himself to death …
The framed picture of Descartes on the classroom wall. (A degenerate, Wittgenstein says.) The framed picture of Leibniz. (A monster of thought, Wittgenstein says.)
The philosopher looks different from other people, Wittgenstein says. The philosopher’s face has secrets. Hiding places. The philosopher is incapable of a simple smile.
There are no signs of philosophy in our faces, he says, looking round the class. Because we know nothing of fate, he says. Nothing of fatality. We do not understand what it means to be destined.
We are parts of things: that’s our luck, he says. The philosopher’s misfortune is to be a part of nothing. To stand apart from everything.
To renounce the pomps and vanity of the world, as St Paul said. I die daily: just think what that would really mean, Wittgenstein says.
The great risk is that we will lose our souls, Wittgenstein says. There are very few people who do not lose their souls. It will happen to us. Not now, perhaps, but eventually. We will be tested. We may gain the whole world, he says — and he’s sure many of us will, with our well-off families and our wealth of connections — but this matters little if we lose our souls.
Okulu’s organ recital.
Dim light. Medieval glass. The fan-vaulted ceiling.
We’re supposed to feel awe, Ede says, looking round the gloom. We’re supposed to feel dwarfed.
EDE: The mysterium tremendum. Transcendence and all that. The depth of history! Of tradition! Of religion! The mystique of old England, and so on. Well, there is no mystery. We’re all out in the open now.
We survey the audience. The Kirwins, in tracksuits. (EDE: You would have thought they’d have made some effort!) Scroggins, half asleep. (EDE: He’s high as a kite. You can see it.)
A spotlight over the organ.
EDE: Oh God—culture! Remind me why we came again?
Okulu, bowing to the audience. Taking his seat.
Rolling waves of Bach in the near-darkness.
The low notes get him right in the gut, Ede says. They’re loosening his bowels.
The bass notes are giving him an erection, Mulberry says.
We notice Wittgenstein below us, hands clasped over his knee. The nape of his neck, smooth and sallow next to the collar of his crisp white shirt.
MULBERRY: Calm yourself, Peters.
ME: Look how moved he is. His eyes are closed. What’s wrong with us, that we don’t feel that way?
EDE: We’re English. There’s no cure for that.
• • •
Walking back. Wittgenstein ahead of us.
He never feels anything you’re supposed to feel, Ede says.
All this art! Music! All these experiences!
I tell him I was moved. Very moved.
EDE: It’s because you want to be overawed, Peters. That’s what culture is for: overawing people like you.
Scroggins and the Kirwins catch up with us.
EDE (quietly): Oh God!
Discussion. Our plans for the Christmas break. A family safari in the heart of Zambia (the Kirwins). Swimming with sharks off the coast of Mauritius (Scroggins). Skiing in the Rockies (Ede — but he’s sick of skiing, he says) …
KIRWIN A: Where are you going, Peters? Yorkshire?
KIRWIN B: How’s the skiing in Yorkshire, Peters?
KIRWIN A: You’re really a bit of a peasant, aren’t you, Peters?
EDE: Just because Peters isn’t an aristo!
KIRWIN B: Well, we’re not aristos, technically speaking.
You have to be in Burke’s book of peerages to be an aristo.
KIRWIN A: Yes, but we’re hardly scholarship boys, are we?
We haven’t known poverty.
KIRWIN B: Alexander thinks that not going skiing constitutes poverty.
Ede asks the Kirwins about performance-enhancing drugs. Do they ever take them?
Vehement denials.
EDE: Oh, of course you do. All athletes do. They’re supposed to shrink your cocks, performance-enhancing drugs, aren’t they? Cock-shrinkage: has that happened to you? Come on, you can tell us.
The Kirwins storm off.
Laughter.
He was just asking, Ede says.
ME (looking ahead): What is Wittgenstein thinking about?
EDE: Death, I should imagine. Our shortcomings. His own shortcomings. His sense of sin.
We run to catch up with him.
Indian summer.