Wittgenstein Jr (2 page)

Wittgenstein is fervent today. He seems to blaze before us.

Written on the board in capital letters, and underlined three times:
LOGIC
.

We all know what logic is, he says. It is the study of the laws of thought. Of all the forms of reasoning and thinking. The trouble is, we do not know what logic
means
, he says. What reason
means
.

WITTGENSTEIN: If the laws of logic are not followed correctly, then reason is impossible. If reason is impossible, then what is said has no validity. If what is said has no validity, then what ought to be done remains undone. If what ought to be done remains undone, morals and art are corrupted. If morals and art are corrupted, justice goes astray. If justice goes astray, chaos and evil run amuck.

We’re drowsy, some of us hungover. Audible sighs. Guthrie, snoring. Mulberry, wearing a
FUCK ME
T-shirt. Benwell, gouging out an obscenity in his desk with a compass point. The Kirwin twins, Alexander and Benedict, in sweatbands and shorts, fresh from rowing. Doyle, in velvet, looking theatrical. Ede, in a sports jacket, refinedly attentive. Titmuss, with his dreads and his pointless wispy beard. Chakrabarti, with his Cambridge University sweatshirt. Scroggins, half high as usual, mouth agape. Okulu, listening to Brahms on his oversize headphones.

A whiteboard full of logical symbols. Who does he think we are, that we could follow him? Who does he take us to be?

• • •

Wittgenstein fixes his eyes on the parquet floor.

He tells us about the
vistas
of logic. About logic’s
austerity
.

Logic makes you
lose
the world, he says. Logic drives you away from the world, into the eternal ice and snow.

You could say he’s only sat at his desk for a few idle hours, he says. You could say he’s only opened and closed a few books. You could say he’s risked nothing more than paper cuts.

But there are
dangers
to logic, he says. There’s its
difficulty
—the arduous training necessary in philosophy, in mathematics. And there’s its
purity
—its reflections on thinking itself. Logic can cut you off from the world, he says. You can lose yourself in logic’s hall of mirrors.

He’s inclined to think of logic as a
sickness
, he says. As a fever on the brow of thought. As the demented smile of a madman.

Logic is only for those who cannot leave it alone, he says.

He seems upset. His voice trembles.

What nonsense he has said, he murmurs. What nonsense we have
made him
say.

Eating in class. Mulberry, chewing gum. Titmuss, sucking mints. Doyle, eating a packet of crisps and regretting it: the crackling! the rustling! the grease! Doyle, closing the packet when Wittgenstein glares at him.

Drinking in class. Guthrie’s water bottle, full of gin. Mulberry’s juice carton, squeaking as he sucks. Titmuss’s energy drink, fizzing over when he pulls it open. Titmuss, blushing bright red, wiping up the mess with his sweater sleeve as Wittgenstein stares at him in disgust.

Toilet breaks. Who dares ask permission to go? Who dares interrupt him? Who dares break into his tense, tortured silences? Scroggins, one afternoon, all but
ran
out of class, knocking over an empty seat as he passed. Wittgenstein looked up, midsentence, but said nothing. Titmuss left three times during one session, pleading
Delhi belly
.

WITTGENSTEIN: Haven’t you got any
self-discipline
?

The view from the classroom window. Trees losing their leaves. The football pitch, with its churned-up grass, and its thick white lines, newly applied, and its goalposts, newly painted. It looks cold outside. But we are inside, taking notes, understanding almost nothing.

Down by the river, watching the Kirwins in their wetsuits waiting for rowing practice.

They’re so tall! You get so much Kirwin for your money! And there’s two of them, of course. There’ll always be a spare Kirwin.

They’re like great prize bulls, we agree. Like a pair of twenty-two-hand Shire horses. The Kirwins must be
for
something. They must have some purpose. It’s impossible to imagine the Kirwins without a
Destiny
. They’re like Greek heroes. Like something out of Homer.

Mulberry speaks of his desire to fuck a Kirwin. To
lick
a Kirwin. What are the chances of that?

EDE: What about Wittgenstein? Would you like to lick him, Mulberry?

MULBERRY: Not my type. He’s gay, though. I can tell. He’s a
virgin
gay. A bit like you, Peters.

ME: I’m not a virgin gay!

MULBERRY: You have a thing for Wittgenstein, anyone can see that. You want to be fucked by genius. Well, perhaps you’ll have your chance.

EDE: The real Wittgenstein was gay, of course.

MULBERRY: He was another of them: a virgin gay. He never fucked anyone.

EDE: I thought he had boyfriends.

MULBERRY: Oh, he had boyfriends, but they didn’t have sex. It wasn’t physical.

EDE: Then they weren’t boyfriends. They were just romantically coloured friendships.

MULBERRY: Just like you and Peters.

EDE: I, as it happens, am as straight as a die. As for Peters, I cannot say.

A Wittgenstein sighting.

The high street on a warm Saturday. Walking home with our groceries. Then, there he is: Wittgenstein, with his groceries. Wittgenstein with his shopping bags, walking towards us through the other shoppers.

Will he acknowledge us? Will he nod his head? Does he even know who we are?

He nods, murmurs a greeting, passes by.

We walk home in the sun.

EDE: So, genius shops at
Sainsbury’s
. Did you see what was in his bags?

ME: Scones, so far as I could see.

EDE: So, genius eats scones.

ME: I think the scones are for us, for our visits.

Wittgenstein has said we are to visit him in his rooms, one by one.

Late night in the
Maypole
, sitting outside in the cold.

Where does Wittgenstein come from?, we wonder. He sounds German, but his English is perfect.

EDE: Perhaps he was educated over here. We had Germans at my school. Actually, we had all kinds of people. Oligarchs’ offspring, dictators’ sons, sent to acquire some
English polish
 …

MULBERRY: Do they still
beat
pupils at Eton? Are there still
fags
?

EDE: Oh, that’s long gone. It’s all counselling and bullying workshops now.

It was the same at his school, Mulberry says. He would have liked being beaten.

SCROGGINS: What’s it like being
really posh
, Ede? Do you have manservants?

Mulberry says he wishes
he
had a manservant.

DOYLE: Do you call your father
Pater
, Ede?

SCROGGINS: Have you met the Queen, Ede?

TITMUSS: What about Prince Charles?

DOYLE: Aren’t you sixth in line for the throne, or something?

Ede is from one of the really ancient families, he says. There’s a long line of Edes stretching back before the Conqueror—a whole
dynasty
, with painted portraits hung up and down their stairs, and coats of arms emblazoned over their chimneypieces.

Edes played at being knights at court, serving the monarch in council and government, Ede says. Edes starred in court masques, and kept their heads down after the execution of the king. Come the Restoration, Edes commissioned new country houses, celebrating the
beauty of order
, with Doric colonnades and winged griffins and tripod urns. Edes waved at the natives from the backs of caparisoned elephants in the colonies.

And when the new century came, modern Edes died in blood and fire alongside common folk in the trenches, and married the daughters of the new tycoons of America and South Africa to finance their country estates. Edes kept up the old ways, selling off chunks of their land, hiring out their old halls as wedding venues, and heading to the House of Lords once a week to exercise their ancient privileges.

There were failures in Ede’s family, to be sure. Insane Edes,
driven mad from inbreeding, hidden in attics … Failed-suicide Edes, wheeled around in darkened houses … But in every generation, an Ede steps up. Cometh the hour, cometh the Ede who will pull it all together: the Ede who will become a man of the City, with a pied-à-terre in Richmond, and who will keep the family investments going; the Ede who will see to it that the family fortune grows and grows, and the country estate continues to stand; the Ede who will visit the old pile on the weekends, pulling on his Wellingtons and striding about the ancient grounds …

DOYLE: And you’re that Ede, I suppose?

EDE: I am that Ede.

Half of the class have paid their visits to Wittgenstein’s rooms. A pattern has emerged. He directs questions at you, and you reply, as best as you can. He asks about your parents, about your siblings. About the place you grew up.

Scroggins reports on the
austerity
of Wittgenstein’s rooms. Their white walls. The two wooden chairs, one for the host, one for the guest, and the card table between them, for the tea tray. He thinks he did poorly, he says. He’s not sure why.

Alexander Kirwin describes the buttered scones that Wittgenstein served on a dish; Benedict Kirwin, the metal teapot and two enamel cups, brought in on a tray.

Wittgenstein likes his tea very
weak
, Mulberry testifies; he poured a cup for himself almost as soon as he filled the teapot. And he brought a pan and brush from the kitchen to sweep the crumbs from the table.

Titmuss talked India, he says. His gap year. Wittgenstein seemed interested (EDE: Believe me, Wittgenstein wasn’t interested). Okulu took note of the bookshelves—Augustine in Latin. Freud’s book on dreams. Marcus’s
Meditations
. Unknown volumes in Cyrillic. In ancient Greek.

Memorable things Wittgenstein said. To Scroggins:
It is never difficult to think. It is either easy or impossible
. To Okulu:
What stands between us and good philosophy is the will, not the intellect
. And then,
We must refine the will
. To Titmuss:
You must know who you are, in order to think without deceit
. To Chakrabarti, he said that he was looking for a just word. For a
new language of creation
. To Doyle:
We are latecomers. Disinherited children
. And then:
We are without tradition. Without belief
.

The
unity
of his teaching. That’s what he wants us to perceive, he says. His teaching depends on its
cumulative
effect.

The recurrence of certain topics, and the disappearance of others. Are we beginning to sense a pattern?

The
rhythm
of his lecturing. The long pauses he leaves between remarks: is it intended as a kind of punctuation? Of
syncopation
?

Sometimes he pauses in his teaching to pose questions, and reacts to our replies.

When one of us says something helpful, he raises his eyebrows, and says,
Go on
. But when he hears something he finds
un
helpful, his eyebrows fall again.

Helpful: Ede’s remark about indiscernibles. Doyle’s remark about syllogistic form.

Unhelpful: Okulu’s remark about deduction. Alexander Kirwin’s reply about induction.

Altogether irrelevant: Chakrabarti’s remark about subduction. Scroggins’s remark about production.

Entirely facetious: Benwell’s sotto voce remark about alien
ab
duction.

Competition in class: Who can hold their breath the longest? Guthrie tries, holding his breath for a few minutes, before gasping loudly. Mulberry tries, and collapses, blue-faced, on the floor.

WITTGENSTEIN (vexed): What’s the matter with you, man?

Notes passed in class. Mulberry to Doyle:
You’re a whiny little bitch
. Doyle to Mulberry:
You have a micro-penis
. Mulberry to Doyle:
You have a nano-penis
. Doyle to Mulberry:
You have a quantum penis. It’s both there and not there
.

Fights
in class. Mulberry punches Doyle, giving him a dead arm. Doyle
pinches
Mulberry, making him squeal out loud.

Wittgenstein, quoting:
Anything a man knows, anything he has not merely heard rumbling and roaring, can be said in three words. He
hears only rumbling and roaring, he says.
Our
rumbling and roaring.

The view from the window. Heavy gulls, though we’re far from the sea. The wind tearing the last leaves from the tree. The groundskeeper, with a roller, flattening the turf.

How cold it is out there! And how
dark
it’s getting, even though it’s only mid-afternoon!

One more year of study before we have to go outside. Actually, it’s only four-fifths of a year now, before the wind will whip around us …

Will we really have to go out there? Will we have to make our way in the world? Not now. Not yet. We’re not ready …

Standing in the corridor, waiting for the previous class to finish. It’s five minutes past the hour.

Wittgenstein, staring at the door, leather satchel under his arm. Wittgenstein, rocking on his toes. Wittgenstein, knocking loudly. Opening the door …

WITTGENSTEIN (severely): Excuse me, would you mind …

Students file out, and then the lecturer, to whom Wittgenstein bows slightly.

A PowerPoint presentation on the whiteboard. Bullet points. Pictures. Leftover handouts on the desks. Photocopied excerpts from an introductory book.

Where is
our
list of
key concepts
? Where are
our aims and objectives
? Where are the learning outcomes for
our
lectures? Where is
our virtual learning environment
?

His classes are just a series of remarks, separated by silences. Ideas, in haiku-like sentences, full of delicate beauty and concision.

Each remark concentrates in itself all of his teaching, he says. Each remark crouches like a wolf ready to pounce, for the one who can hear what he is saying.