Wittgenstein Jr (18 page)

A package for him at the porters’ lodge. He picks up a package. It’s from his aunt, he says.

Stollen and sparkling wine in his rooms.

Wittgenstein, in buoyant mood. He speaks of his childhood. Of his parents. His brother. He speaks of the mountains. Of long horseback rides through the valleys.

He lost his faith early on, he says—or what is usually called faith. He remembers a school trip, when he was still very young. It was dark, and they were walking back home through a forest. Some of the other children were frightened, and began to cry.
You must think about God very hard
, the teacher said.

A few years later, he remembers wanting to fall on his knees, Wittgenstein says. There was a tiny church halfway up a
mountain. Very simple, very beautiful. He wanted to pray, but he couldn’t pray. He wanted to weep, but he couldn’t do that, either. If he’d started to weep, he’d never have stopped, he says. He has the same feeling today.

There was a fairy story his mother used to tell them, he says. A wicked witch placed a splinter of ice in the heart of a boy. The boy forgot his parents and his name. He forgot the land of his birth. The witch carried him to her ice palace in the far north, and gave him a puzzle of ice shards to play with.

But the boy had a brother, who had not forgotten him. The brother found the ice palace, and the blue-lipped boy, lost in his puzzle. The brother embraced the boy, and the boy wept, without knowing why. And that is when the splinter of ice in his heart melted. That’s when he remembered who he was. That’s when he remembered his brother and his parents and the land of his birth …

God is a name for tears—fresh
tears
, Wittgenstein says. God is a name for the act of weeping …

Is it only by weeping,
really
weeping, that he will drive the splinter of philosophy from his heart?, he wonders.

9th December

We walk through the snow, to the American cemetery.

Be ye also ready
, on one headstone.
Seek me and ye shall live
, on another.
Bound together by His love
, on a third.

Some cemeteries have no headstones, he says. Only a single churchyard cross, to mark the resting places of the dead. He finds that moving, he says—relinquishing your worldly name as monks do when they take the names of their saintly forebears.

He and his brother used to pass St Mary’s monastery, near their home. They used to watch the monks working together—digging in the garden and pruning fruit trees. Once, they saw them singing vespers in the fields. How he envied them!

Spiritual poverty!, he says. To renounce possession of your own soul, your own will. To be poor, but to have God as your fortune …

Perhaps the secret of life is not hidden, he says. Perhaps the secret of life is to work with others.
Alongside
others. To work in the fields, in the open air. The simple round of prayer and labour and reading … Day after day … Like a waterwheel in the river of eternity.

He attended services a few times, he says. So early, the stone vaulting was lost in shadows. Monks were scarcely visible in the gloom. And then dawn came, he says … the first
rays shining into the apse. Hope! Living hope! Prefiguring the return of Christ.

He dreams of building his life again from rituals, he says. Of remaking his life, action by action. Of beginning again, simply. Of concentrating on small things. On ordinary things.

10th December

He texts me:
come.—Coming
.

His door is slightly ajar.

He sits on his chair, head back, eyes half closed. Is he working on something? A philosophical problem? A
moral
problem? Has he fallen asleep?

WITTGENSTEIN (imperatively, his eyes still closed): Peters—take dictation. (Without pausing:) The rule must be a thread in the weave of life. The rule must become the exception, and the exception, the rule. (A pause.) Are you getting all this?

He speaks, I write. He doesn’t open his eyes until lunchtime.

Afternoon. He serves coffee and cream, with biscuits. He’s in a good mood after the day’s work.

WITTGENSTEIN: You mustn’t think I’m taking you for granted, Peters. (A pause.) I may be a wicked person (ME: You’re not!), but I have always been a collector of good people.

ME: I’ve always thought you’d find me stupid.

WITTGENSTEIN: You, Peters, are anything but stupid.

How tired he is of Cambridge cleverness!, he says. He would prefer an honest stupidity—a
bright
stupidity, on which light shines from above.

• • •

The
Maypole
, almost empty.

A student at the next table tries to engage us in conversation. Something about Library Whispers. About the May Ball. At last, he leaves.

WITTGENSTEIN: Why did you talk to that fellow, Peters? He was a fool. (A pause.) You should tender yourself more dearly.

An influx of thesps, after some event at the ADC. Foppish cherubs with classical curls; shabby-posh Withnails in worn-shiny velvet; would-be Footlighters in comedy onesies.

Wittgenstein blanches. There is something despicable about theatre, he says.

Still more students. Comprehensive-school types, visibly unhealthy. Indie kids, with pipe-cleaner legs. Empiricist boys, with ruler-straight fringes. Big brainy girls, with glasses and headbands.

WITTGENSTEIN: Socrates’s greatness was that he could talk with ordinary people, and consider such talk worthwhile.
My
greatness should be that I can spend an evening in the
Maypole
and find that evening worthwhile.

He stands. Puts on his coat.

WITTGENSTEIN: I am not great, Peters.

11th December

Busy
, he texts.

12th December

Towards the Backs.

Frozen grass. An ice-covered slide. The words
fuck
and
piss
, written into the snow.

He went to the college Christmas party last night, he says. It was worse than he feared.

The head of the college, circulating. Her husband, circulating. Their grown-up children, circulating. Guests, circulating, circulating, circulating.

It used to be all
Cambridge stuffiness
, he says. All
Cambridge snobbery
. But it’s
all friendliness
now, he says. All
openness
and
affability
. All
first names
. As though everyone were
mates
.

The buildings of Cambridge Riverside. A clutter of balconies. High, blank windows.

He wants an enemy, he says. A betrayer. One to bring the wrath of the university upon him. A Judas, to bring the anger of the
dons
upon his head.

He wants a
reckoning
, he says. Him versus Cambridge. He wants to
draw Cambridge out
. To be seen to sin against Cambridge. To have transgressed Cambridge. He wants a sense that there are limits. That there are things which are intolerable.

He wants to be handed over to the authorities. He wants to be
a case to be dealt with
.

The river.

Once, there were
disputes
at Cambridge, he says. Once, there were enmities between dons. This one wouldn’t speak to that one; this one would leave the room when that one entered; this one would denounce the theories of that one in his lectures, and have his theories denounced in his turn.

Once, there were schools of thought in continual dispute. Once, there were debates about methodology. About legitimacy. About the very notion of philosophy. Once, there were old rivalries between Cambridge colleges, and between Cambridge and Oxford, and between Cambridge and Oxford and the rest of the world.

But it’s all smiles now, he says.

They think they are kind. But they are not kind. They think they are right. But they are not right. They think that theirs is the only world. But theirs is not the only world. They think their world is the best of all possible worlds. But theirs is not the best of all possible worlds …

The enemy does not understand that it is the enemy, that is the problem, he says. The enemy does not understand that it could be the enemy. The enemy does not grasp its own invidiousness. Its own
horror
. It is the good conscience of the
enemy that makes it the enemy, he says. Its smugness. Its
Who me?
innocence.

Riverside Place. Overblown, glitzy.

He has the sense that he’s on trial, he says. That he’s waiting for a sentence to be handed down. For a judgement. For things to be decided. Only nothing is decided. And no judgement is handed down. That is his punishment.

His torture is the very
absence
of torture, he says. His punishment, the very
absence
of punishment. Which means that no one recognises his pain. That no one can understand his pain.

They would not even call his pain
pain
, he says. They would not allow his suffering to be
suffering
. The
pain
of pain; the
suffering
of suffering: he is denied even them.

In Cambridge, his path would be the right path
even if it were the wrong path
, he says. He would be in the right
even if he were wrong
, and perhaps
especially
if he were wrong.

St Bartholomew’s Court. Toytown.

How he would have loved to have made a speech!, he says. A Christmas party lecture. A yuletide monologue.

We must revive the notion of
sin
, he would have said. Of
shame
. Of
guilt
. We must revive the need for
humiliation
and
mortification
.

We must
declare war on ourselves
, he would have said. We must be
fanatics. Fundamentalists
.

Ruthlessness
, that is what is demanded of us, he would have said.
Cruelty
. And we must be cruel to ourselves first of all. We must be ruthless with ourselves.

It is too late to temper our views, he would have said. Too late to compromise.

They are
thought-investors
, he would have told them.
Thought-speculators. Hedge-fund-thinkers
.

They
belong
to Cambridge, he would have told them. They
deserve
Cambridge.

They are
bollards—human bollards
, he would have told them. The intellectual equivalents of suburban cul-de-sacs and out-of-town retail parks.

But he knows they would only have smiled, he says. He knows they would only have applauded.

A bench, sheltered from the snow. He slumps down, like a wounded man.

Cambridge is throttling him, he says. Cambridge is murdering him.

I put my hand on his back, and then my arm round his shoulders. He leans into me.

13th December

His rooms.

Snow turns to rain outside.

His work is not going well, he says.

He used to have nightmares of waking up in a coffin, he says. Of being buried alive in a coffin, and futilely scratching at the roof of his coffin.

He has woken up in the coffin of philosophy. His thought—his entire philosophical life—has been a futile scratching at the roof of his coffin.

Philosophy is a deluge, he says. Philosophy is rain, constantly falling.

Philosophy, always more philosophy, pouring over the ground already waterlogged with philosophy.

To come
after
something, and
before
nothing: that’s our condition, he says. To have come
too late
, and not really to know it. Not really to understand
what it is that we are too late for
.

Silence.

WITTGENSTEIN: How can my company be interesting for you?

I laugh.

WITTGENSTEIN: Am I not a kind of
monster
?

I laugh again.

WITTGENSTEIN: We are like beauty and the beast. (Silence.) I am more corrupt than anyone I know.

ME: Why are you always so serious!?

WITTGENSTEIN: Life is serious.

A long pause.

WITTGENSTEIN (looking at me): Help me, Peters.

I tell him I don’t know how to help him.

He speaks of his loneliness. Of his isolation. He speaks of his
animal desire for warmth
. Of his human desire for a
friendly face
.

Once, he believed a bell would sound through his loneliness, he says. That the pitch of his loneliness would reach a kind of
purity
 …

But that was when he believed in his work. In his
Logik
. That was when he thought he was on the brink of the great Solution. It’s when he dreamt of a
sanctified
logic. Of a
logic of the temple
. It’s when he dreamt that philosophy itself was calling out for help from him. And now … He shakes his head.

The meaning of life consists in living that life, he says. But how is that possible: to
live life
? How would it be possible
for him
?

Silence. He stares at me for a full minute.

Madness is coming, he says.
His
madness is coming.

Madness will stroke his hair, and whisper in his ear.

Madness will say,
Do not be afraid
.

But he is afraid, he says.

Silence.

WITTGENSTEIN: You are my friend, aren’t you?

ME: I am your friend.

WITTGENSTEIN: Help me, Peters.

14th December

We walk through the streets. I am to talk, he says. He is sick of the sound of his own voice.

I chatter about Ede drinking his way through his father’s wine cellar. About Scroggins, on the waiting list for the world’s first artificial bladder. I tell him of the Kirwins, who are on safari (Ede hopes they’ll get eaten, I say—Wittgenstein smiles). I tell him about boarding school. About my poetry. I tell him about lambing. About buzzards. About boxing hares. I tell him about not knowing what to do with my life.

King’s College Chapel.

The sound of choristers practising for a Christmas concert. He stands, rapt, no longer attending to my prattle. It’s unbelievable, he says. Such beauty!