The World as I Found It (45 page)
And then Moore thought,
What if Dorothy is pregnant?
Think of it: beyond these forests, across a sea, an effect of which he was the cause might be taking root in the womb of a woman curled on her side, asleep. In all the proofs of his ponderous
Prolegomena
, he wondered, why had he never considered this? Amid all that grunting and rooting, in all that sweaty pumping with his face buried in her neck, why had he failed to see all the priapic Good he might be sparking?
Creeping inside later, Moore found Wittgenstein fast asleep. So odd to watch another person sleeping, to see a man bereft of his waking power and stature â just a vulnerable animal craving rest, with his fingers stuffed in his mouth. Up here this man could sleep. Up here a man could lie dead for weeks, with no one the wiser. For a moment as he stood there, Moore had the feeling of them both living in a vacuum, two dimming candles, the last two souls on earth. Staring down at Wittgenstein, Moore wondered what, with none to remember this man, kept his heart beating and caused his lungs to expand? Looking down then, Moore felt the uncanniness with which one life form eyes another, not knowing what it is or how it makes its way in the world, wherein it has carved its little niche. What would ever become of him? Moore wondered. How did Wittgenstein bear this Arctic loneliness? With a chill, Moore realized then that he did not know this man. He did not know him at all.
Two days later, when Wittgenstein returned from cutting wood, the atmosphere broke. Moore had been reading Chesterton while he aired the bedding, and it got drenched in a downpour. Then, trying to dry it, he had trimmed the stove wrong and filled the hut with smoke. Wittgenstein lost his temper.
How can you be such a bloody idiot! Complain, complain, then this!
Damn you! yelped Moore.
Be quiet! Please
be quiet!
Moore jumped up from the table, throwing down his fists. He felt his head was in a tourniquet. He gulped to say something more, choked; and then to his surprise, he burst into tears, stumbling as he lunged out the door.
Moore was staring down at the fjord when the humbled Wittgenstein approached a few minutes later. Touching Moore's shoulder, Wittgenstein said, I am sorry. I know I have been a beast. It is my fault. I am not used to people anymore.
Moore pinched his eyes, then said, It's not a matter of fault. I want to leave tomorrow, and not because of this. I miss my wife. All day long I've been thinking of her.
I
T
WAS
FORTUNATE
that Pinsent arrived in Bergen a day early â otherwise he would have missed Moore in the cottager's lather to get back home. Instead, Pinsent and Moore spent a long evening together, over which Moore spun the whole sorry saga of his days trapped in the wilds with Wittgenstein.
When Pinsent set off on the
Sweimfoss
two days later, Moore's apprehensions were still with him, but over the next days they steadily diminished as Pinsent found the trip to be more what Wittgenstein promised and less the bilious, buggy ordeal that Moore had described. But then Pinsent was younger and more resilient than Moore, and he wasn't leaving a wife â he was fleeing a mother.
Wittgenstein knew all about Pinsent's difficulties. Several weeks before, Flo had even sent him a plea, writing in a scrolling hand that veered sharply up the page:
My Dear Mr. Wittgenstein,
Despite what David says, I am glad he will be visiting you. If I were younger & if David didn't so mind I would visit you both. I know
you
wouldn't mind, would you?
I am very most grateful for the money you have bestowed on us you are a Prince even if you do have pots of it; â but Sir, I still worry David will not return to university, & it would be a purple shame for such a bright boy to make his way knocking on doors selling Sheffield cutlery. Don't you agree?
It would be very good, Sir, if you would kindly tell him this. But PLEASE do not say
I
wrote you, as he wd. be furious. Even as a boy he was always running away from me, such a red-haired gnat, I said; â & you know how
they
are.
Secondly, Mr. Wittgenstein, you ought to be aware that David is frightfully allergic to bees; â & do be
most
careful walking as I've read a rock or snowball in that part of the world can cause a most unfortunate avalanche! The fourth I forget.
I do not expect such a busy young man as yourself wd. write to me with the long winter only months away. But if so, do; â but if you can't, don't. I will certainly understand in either case.
Gratefully yours, Florence Pinsent
Pinsent arrived in Høyanger in the second week of July. In his journal, he wrote:
10.VII.14
⦠W. meets me at the dock. Surprised at my moustache; also at my physique, as I admit to lifting dumbbells to prepare myself for the rigours of mountain life. We keep smiling at each other. He is tanned & vigorous looking from physical labour & building his hut.
His English has deteriorated a bit, as Moore said, but he is not nearly as “wild,” as Moore joked. No acclimatising for me in hotel as he did for M. We go directly on horseback 15 km., arriving near 10 p.m. W. highly pleased; he says I have fared much better than M. So far, so good â¦
W.'s hut overlooks the fjord, just as he described it. Mosquitoes bad, but not so bad as M. said. We smear ourselves with this evil local tallow &, donning headnets, venture out into the midnight dawn colours, wch. hang like smoke in the cool air.
Slap! Slap!
Through even thick wool they pierce, these little bloodsuckers. Here one pays for the sublime.
Later, sitting inside by the smoking fire, W. has a good laugh at my kit, esp. the Scout manual Mother sent, wch. actually looks somewhat helpful. Knowing that I have just seen M. in Bergen, W. asks if M. is angry. M.
was
badly hurt â hurt more badly than he even let on, I think â but I say little. W. knows I am holding back & adds ominously, “You will tell me if I am being unreasonable.” I promise to tell him, then take out a cigarette & light it. W. very much annoyed. Grimacing. “Why do you start this? Such a filthy habit â and so unnecessary.” Smiling, I say, “You told me to warn you if you become unreasonable.” “Yes, yes. You are right.” Watching me light & exhale, he sees I will warn him again too.
11.VII.14
Today we are still on our best behaviour ⦠Supper of eggs & milk, canned peas & fish. Make bannock bread over the fire as Mother's surpringly useful Scout manual sets forth. Wittgenstein's eyes darken when I say I long for something sweet. “Not from you also. All I heard from Moore was food. We are not here to eat.” “And why not?” I ask. “We aren't in a monastery.”
W. is silent. For him we are, I think.
13.VII.14
When I ask to take W.'s photograph with my new camera, he grows uncomfortable. “No, I am not ready to be photographed. I am still too unapparent, like a larva. Once I become a full human being & man of spirit â then you can photograph me.” He smiles. “As it stands, you may develop your film & find no image whatsoever.”
A week later, they were fairly settled, though still there were periodic rumblings.
21.VII.14
⦠By now, we are getting fairly used to each other, but W. still has quirks wch. I do not understand. For instance, I ask why he has located the latrine such a distance from the hut. “It is more aesthetic,” he replies. “Perhaps so,” I say, “but you don't venture out at night into the cold & mosquitoes to relieve yourself!” “Why don't you use an empty tin?” he suggests. “That would not bother you?” “Why should it?” he asks. “I don't know,” I say. “I suppose because it's so unaesthetic!”
Tolerance, Pinsent! But why must he brush his teeth for five minutes at a time? Also, his prudishness.
Will not
dress in front of me. Averts his eyes when I dress. Also his preoccupation with cleanliness. Surgical procedures with dishes. After supper, we haul up buckets of water & this doesn't count all the wood necessary to heat it. “But surely,” I plead, “one bucket will do.” So he sullenly hauls a third & fourth & burns a whole pile of wood to boil our plates, laying them in the grass to dry in the 10 p.m. dawn.
Despite these small frictions, they got along exceptionally well. Handy, hardy, and self-sufficient, Pinsent liked the small daily pleasures of mountain life, the routine of keeping the rough wooden floor swept, the pots scoured, the knives and axes whetted, the woodpile stocked and the tins lined in the larder he built. In reaction to his mother's chronic sloppiness, Pinsent was meticulously orderly, a quality Wittgenstein much valued, especially in such close quarters. Freed from many of these chores, Wittgenstein was again working steadily. Yet this, in turn, evoked Pinsent's own ambivalent feelings of competition â an evanescent sense of drift. To their mutual discomfort, Pinsent even made several desultory comments about being Wittgenstein's “servant” and “wife.” Then one afternoon Pinsent saw something hanging on the clothesline.
23.VII.14
⦠W. is on the hillside, reading in the sun, when I see it, black & flaccid, like a corset, with layered webs of rubber. I am still looking when I hear Wittgenstein call over harshly, “It's a rupture belt.” Gratuitously, he adds, “In the spring I ruptured myself â since you are so
curious
.”
His voice is daring me â I know he wants to hear nothing more of it, but I say, “Is it wise, all the lifting and heavy work you do? Won't this make it worse?” “I'll be concerned with that!” he retorts. He snatches up the belt & goes inside.
The sight of it curdles me, rather. It's like something found in childhood all shut up in a drawer & best so. Must be torture to wear it, all hot & pinching. Perhaps that is the appeal â his hair shirt â¦
But the rupture belt was girding, as it were, another delicate matter: the question of what they each would do. Fall was approaching and with it the beginning of term. Wittgenstein planned to remain the winter, and it was clear to Pinsent that Wittgenstein hoped he would remain there with him. From his side, Wittgenstein felt selfish for this wish, worrying about the effect it would have not only on Pinsent but on Flo as well. Loath as he was to admit it, Wittgenstein saw there was much truth to Flo's fear that David would shortchange himself for his sake.
Pinsent, meanwhile, had an inkling of something else. Wittgenstein had described the experience of his father's death. The postmaster's wife and then Moore had disrupted that easeful, fecund state, but Wittgenstein now said that he was beginning to recapture it. Implied was his secret wish that Pinsent might share this experience, that together they might undergo this spiritual revaluation. Like a pony feeling the accustomed knees of a rider nudging his flanks, Pinsent sensed Wittgenstein's direction. And as he had done all his life, he stoutly resisted.
25.VII.14
W. has intimated this religious “experience” he had, though he is quick to add that it was not religious in the conventional Christian sense; it had, in fact, no Christian trappings whatsoever.
W. does have an ambiguous relationship with religion from wch. he is, I suspect, a fugitive. I recall how he signed a recent letter: “God bless you â if there is such a thing.” It's not the idea of God, he explains â he believes in God (at least as an
a priori
) â it is this “bless” part he discounts â the thought of God going about blessing people strikes him as absurd. (“God has nothing better to do than bless us, or not bless us?”) And yet, W. says, if God vouchsafes one ease after a time of torment, is this not a blessing? Yes, this much he understands.
I am more earthbound. W. bridles when I suggest this state may have been mere relief over the end of a painful & difficult death; contradictory feelings about his father, etc. “Then you don't understand!” he retorts. “Psychological crudities cannot account for religious experience.”
Later I say, “I do not think you could exist within the confines of conventional religion. You could not surrender to another authority. I think you have your own inward religion.” “No,” he insists. “That is only arrogance & self-delusion. You must look
out
from the locus of your life; you must look
out
on the world, not caring who or what you are. That is why I am here. Up here I am nothing, really nothing.” He looks up. “Ask the wind what you are or if it cares. Ask the animals. They take little notice of me, nor should they.”
30.VII.14
My understanding of people is retrospective. If I am quick & perhaps clever in some ways, people may truly tell me anything to my face, esp. in the heat of the moment. They tell me the most atrocious lies, wch. I meekly apprehend with almost gaping mouth. Now I'm thinking of this discussion of W.'s religious sense. Not being religious in the churchly sense, it makes me uncomfortable â I feel W. is directing me in the hope that I shall cultivate a similar sense. Into my hands he puts James's
Varieties of Religious Experience
, commending James for his profound understanding of conversion and the mystic mind.
While regretting my incapacity, I do not feel that I am the least bit susceptible to these mystic states; at least not as I am at present. I suppose one justly fears conversion â the idea that one will feel compelled to shed one's former life like a dirty shirt. But for me it is mostly this fear that W. shall steal my soul & make me a different man, in his image.
As a result of my fears, I feel I must almost arbitrarily make my life in those nooks where W. is not, like the hardy lichen one sees here clinging to the mountain rocks. Well, at least it is kind to the feet. Reindeer also depend on it, I'm told.
2.VIII.14
I am getting more adept at handling our little sailboat. Today, as is often the case, I handle the boat while W. writes. The wind is blowing colder; the water scatters with the wind. When we come about, I call out so W. doesn't get knocked by the boom, since he is utterly unaware of me or the day; or the boat; or of anything. Often he does not hear me. Or remembers, as if just asked, about something he failed to respond to an hour, or a day, ago.
The boat is so smooth in its cutting. The sun comes out & I feel a promise; it goes in, & I feel a chill. Ever since childhood I have felt such â warm sun on my cheek, eyes half shut, feeling the wind & that half-dazed, pleasant sense of foreverness. The sun is out, & it is summer; in it goes & I feel winter gloaming. The farmer's dogs are getting thicker coats, as are our three shaggy horses. My red hair is much too wispy â wrong for this clime. Could I exist the winter here with him? It would be like overstoking the stove. He would drive me out with the heat.