Spurious (2 page)

Kafka was always our model, we agree. How is it possible that a human being could write like that?, W. says, again and again. It’s always at the end of the night when he says this, after we’ve drunk a great deal and the sky opens above us, and it is possible to speak of what is most important.

At the same time, we have Kafka to blame for everything. Our lives each took a wrong turn when we opened
The Castle
. It was quite fatal: there was literature itself! We were finished. What could we do, simple apes, but exhaust ourselves in imitation? We had been struck by something we could not understand. It was above us, beyond us, and we were not of its order.

Literature softened our brains, says W.—‘We should have been doing maths. If we knew maths, we might amount to something. As it is, we’ll amount to nothing’.

There’s nothing wrong with literature per se, says W., who cannot go a day without speaking of Kafka, but it’s had a bad effect on us. Besides, he says, he bets Kafka was good at maths. He was good at law, after all, which is probably a bit like maths. Perhaps we should drop out and become lawyers. Perhaps that would be the making of us.

Literature destroyed us: we’ve always been agreed on that. The
literary temptation
was fatal. Of course, it would be different if we read literature alongside philosophy, W. says, but literature, for us, could not help infecting our philosophy.

But doesn’t W. admire the fact that we
feel
something about literature? Doesn’t he think it’s what saves us? W. is not persuaded.—‘It makes us vague and full of pathos. That’s all we have—pathos’.

Once, W. thought of himself as a writer, a literary writer. He filled notebook after notebook. It was in his early twenties. Everyone wants to be a literary writer in their early twenties, W. says. Of course no one ever is. W. realised it pretty quickly. He knew he was no Kafka, he says. That’s what I don’t know yet—I don’t know I’m not Kafka. I don’t have a sense of myself as a failure, which is ironic because I
am
a failure.

It would be different if either of us had literary talent, W. says. Do I think I have literary talent?, he asks me. W.
knows
he doesn’t have literary talent, he says. But he doesn’t think
I
know. Admittedly, I never said I had literary talent. But I don’t deny it enough. Anyway, it’s very clear: I don’t have literary talent, W. says. And just so I know, I haven’t got any philosophical talent either, he says. Does he have any philosophical talent? He has more than I do, he says. Just a little bit more, but that’s already something.

His IQ’s higher than mine, W. says. Just a little bit, but that’s what separates us, man from ape. And he’s from a higher class than me, W. says.—‘I have manners. You have no manners. And you’re continually touching yourself. Look at you: you’re doing it now!’ I take my hand out of my shirt.—‘Why do you like touching your chest so much? Does it arouse you? Keep your hands on the table where I can see them. Read your book’.

For a long time, W. thought he might
become
Kafka. He was all W. read. Constantly, again and again, everything by him and everything about him, and he speaks lovingly of discovering the brightly coloured Schocken editions of Kafka.

It was one of those old Victorian libraries, he says, such as could be found in the towns and cities of the West Midlands. He probably hadn’t read all the books in the children’s section, he says, but there was nothing left that seemed worth reading. He asked a librarian for a ticket for the adult section of the library and, even though he was relatively young (he imagines himself being twelve or thirteen, but he was probably older), they allowed him one.

It was the brightness of the dust jackets that drew him in, W. says. They were fluorescent orange, he said, a bright and baffling colour. And when he opened the book, it was as if he had crossed over a threshold, as though there were another light streaming from its pages, a splendour that has fascinated him ever since.

For a long time, W. says, he saw little difference between Kafka and himself. Imagine it—a boy from Wolverhampton who thought he was a Jew from Prague! How is it possible for a human being to write like that?: yes, that was always W.’s question before Kafka.

How was it possible? W. stopped writing after his undergraduate years. He’d write all the time, but he realised he would never be Kafka. W. gave his notebooks and writings to a girlfriend.—‘I didn’t keep a scrap’, he says, as German teenagers gather round us in the Augustinerplatz, playing early Depeche Mode on a ghetto blaster.

In the shops in Freiburg, they wipe the door handles after we leave and rearrange the books we looked at. What is it about us? Are we that disgusting?

We wanted to gaze at the great editions. At the collected works of Schelling, published by Vorlesung. At those of Nietzsche, edited by Colli and Montinari. W. wanted to look for Cohen’s books, which are out of print in several languages. But the shop assistants were suspicious. Our German was deficient. Our questions went awry.

Tired of the city, we catch the train to Titisee and hire a pedallo to paddle out onto the lake. Feet on the dashboard, the blue bowl of the sky above us, we discuss the fate of Max Brod, who spent all his life writing commentaries and exegeses of Kafka’s work, and the fate of Kafka, which seems altogether more dark and mysterious precisely because of Brod’s commentaries and exegeses.

We discuss the inadequacy of political thought in tackling the question of political economy, and the failure of philosophical thought to pose, really pose, the question of
what matters most
 …

Above all, we bewail the fact that the great disasters about to befall us barely leave a trace on the intellectual reflection of our time. It’s as if we were going to live forever, but the real thinker, we agree, knows, without melodrama, that thought is fragile and already touched by death.

Isn’t that what the convalescing Rosenzweig knew as he assembled
The Star of Redemption
in his barracks in Freiburg? It took him seven months, that’s all. Seven months, and he was also writing a letter a day to his beloved …

Freiburg’s a terrible place, we agree at the top of the observation tower on the Schlossberg. It was rebuilt to look exactly like it was before the bombing, that’s the problem, W. decides, and compares it unfavourably to Plymouth, which was rebuilt in an entirely different style.

W. reminds me of Abercrombie’s Plan for Plymouth, published during the war, which saw the city organised in long boulevards, transected by the avenue that runs from the train station to the Hoe. Modernism at its finest, we agree.

But Freiburg’s fake. I remind W. of Warsaw, the central part of which was built in an exact replica of what was there before the bombing—weren’t we at our happiest eating out with our guide in the old square?—‘That’s because it was
obviously
fake’, W. says. And then there was the warmth and conviviality of the Poles.—‘The Freiburgers are cold, cold!’

Last night, we worked our way through all the wines on the menu, glass by glass. In the end, the Polish waiter sat down with us and told us the bar was terrible. He was keen to try his English: ‘My heart, how do you say it? (he makes the gesture, and we say “aches”)
aches
for you. Go somewhere else’.

Where should we go? In moments of crisis, W. always asks himself what Kafka would do. What would Kafka do in our place? What would he make of it all? But that’s the point: Kafka would never find himself in our place; he would never have made the mistakes we’ve made.

Kafka was at least a man of Europe, of old Europe. A Europe in crisis, but Europe nonetheless. And us? What does Europe mean to us? What could it ever mean? We’re lost in Europe, two apes, two fools, though one is infinitely more foolish than the other.

We have to get away. But where to? W. takes the situation in hand.

Strasbourg soothes us. Strolling through the wide boulevards, we grow calm and quiet. So many beautiful buildings, one after another! It’s too much, we’re dwarfed, humbled … and for a time, we’re quiet, really quiet, lost in wonder at old Europe.

The phrase,
old Europe
, is an oxymoron, W. and I decide. The Europeans live in history, as we do not. What can we do but pass across its surface like skaters? Its historical depth is something of which we are only half-aware, we decide. It troubles us, it makes us feel uneasy, but in the end we can have no relationship to it.

What did we say to the European professor who asked a whole circle of us how many languages we spoke, rather than read? We can read a whole bunch of languages …, that’s what we said. That’s not what he asked, he said. Not one of us
spoke
a single language. Most of us hadn’t really been to Europe. None of us thought of ourselves as Europeans …

He was disgusted, of course, W. says. We were disgusted with ourselves. We were mired in self-disgust, our whole circle. We hung our heads. If we could have hung ourselves at that moment, we would have done so.

Strasbourg. Isn’t this where Levinas and Blanchot met for the first time? We remember the photo of them both from Malka’s biography: two students, the one tall and thin, the other cheerful and plump; one dishevelled in a double breasted suit and the other dressed like a dandy with a silver-knobbed cane …

‘Compare our friendship’, says W., ‘to that of Levinas and Blanchot’. Of their correspondence, only a handful of letters survive. Of ours, which take the form of obscenities and drawings of cocks exchanged on Microsoft Messenger, everything survives, though it shouldn’t. Of their near daily exchanges, nothing is known; of our friendship, everything is known, since I, like an idiot, put it all on the internet.

Blanchot was above all discreet, but I am indiscretion itself; Levinas barely spoke of his friend, but I am gossip and idle talk itself. Whereas both men were immensely modest, and weighed everything they said with great consideration, I am immensely
im
modest, and weigh nothing I say or write with any consideration at all. Whereas both wrote with great care and forethought, I write with neither care nor forethought, being seemingly proud of my immense idiocy.

Suddenly, we are weary. Old Europe is immeasurably greater than us, we know that. Who hasn’t walked in these streets? What hasn’t happened here? European history flows through the city like a great river. And what of us, carried along like two turds in that river?

We sit down in a bistro and drink Alsatian wine from tumblers. W. speaks his bad French softly, and we dream, for a moment, that we are real European intellectuals.

In they come, depressive weather systems from the Atlantic, reaching W. first (in the southwest of England) before reaching me (in the northeast of England), bringing grey days with constant rain. The Westerlies are destroying us, we agree. When will it end?

This summer, W. tells me on the phone, he’s become even more stupid than usual. He’s reading Cohen in German on the infinitesimal calculus. But he barely understands German! He barely understands maths! The English mathematical terms he finds in his dictionary to translate the German ones are just as opaque. What does it all mean?, W. wonders.

I’ve been thinking only of administration, I tell him. It’s my only concern, I tell him. It’s taken me over. It’s all to do with my periods of unemployment, W. thinks. It’s what I most fear, unemployment.—‘You could only have become an administrator’, W. says. ‘You developed the soul for it. The fear’.

My administrative zeal frightens him, W. admits. It’s a sign of complete desperation. In the end, it’s what will always compromise my real work, my reading and writing.—‘You always have administration to fall back on’, W. says. ‘You never really experience your failure’.

With neither a fear of unemployment nor a fearful skill as an administrator, W. is alone with his failure, he says. It’s terrible—there’s no alibi, he can’t blame it on anyone. Whose fault is it but his? W. laments his laziness, his indolence. He had every advantage and now—what has he accomplished? What has he done?

I can have no understanding of his sense of failure, W. tells me. None. It’s beyond me.—‘You’re like the dog that licks the hand of its master. You’ll be licking their hand even as they beat you, and making little whiny noises. You’re good at that, aren’t you—making whiny noises?’

He sees me in his mind’s eye, W. says. I pause from my ceaseless administrative work, look up for a moment … Of what am I thinking?, W. says. What’s struck me? But he knows I’m only full of administrative anxieties, and my pause is only a slackening of the same relentless movement.

And what of him, when he looks up from his labours? What does he see? Of what is he dreaming? Of thought, W. says. Of a single thought, from which something might begin. Of a single thought that might justify his existence.

Absurdly grateful
—that’s the phrase that sums it up, W. says. Take my life, the misery of my life—take what little I’ve achieved, what little chance I had, and what little I’ve accomplished despite that lack of opportunity—and still, I’m
absurdly grateful
.

I’m grateful for my flat, for the squalor in which I live. I’m grateful for the damp that streams down the walls and the rats that crawl over one another in my back yard. And with my solitude, my misery, the fact I speak to no one, the fact that no one speaks to me—it’s exactly the same: I’m
absurdly grateful
.

‘You’re surprised even to have got this far’, W. says, that’s what horrifies him. This far—but how far have I got? If anything, I’ve gone
backwards;
I’ve ended up with less than I had before. I’ve subtracted something from the world. Haven’t I taken from W.? Haven’t I deprived him of some important part of his own ability?

I’ll thank them as they kick me in the teeth, W. says. But I’ll thank them, too, when they kick W. in the teeth. A friend of mine deserves nothing else, that’s how I think of it, isn’t it? Down we fall, further and yet further. Down—another step, and down again—W. didn’t know there were any more steps—and thanking them all the way …