The World as I Found It (42 page)

As he had expected, Gretl's initial request was quietly and firmly rebuffed. But Gretl wouldn't be brushed off like a fly. Insolently, she repeated her request, whereupon Karl Wittgenstein took his first swipe at her, saying, Such concern, my daughter. When your poor brother was alive, you could hardly bear the sight of him. But now you want to pick his bones, don't you.

Gretl knew his strategy: he would infuriate her, then dismiss her as a hysterical woman. Calmly she replied, He was my brother. I've a right to see his belongings.

At this Karl Wittgenstein switched tack, adopting a more fatherly tone. Believe me, he reasoned, you don't want to see these things. Your brother was confused.

I realize that, she said. Still, I would like to better understand what happened to him.

And I'm telling you, he said, his voice rising a notch, you won't understand. Believe me, this business will do you no good.

I can be the judge of that, she insisted.

No! he countered, smacking his hand on the end table.
I'll
be the judge of that, and I'll not stand here palavering with you any longer! You haven't the least concern for your brother. You're merely doing this to provoke me! Just as you've done all your life!

Thus began his tirade, his voice booming through the wall to the room where his son stood cowering. For a minute father and daughter traded accusations, and then there came a crash as Karl Wittgenstein knocked down a china lamp, raging,
Get out! Get out!

Thinking he heard his father coming then, the boy panicked and ran into the closet. Oh, that oozing greasiness in his skin! That shameful, hissing sissiness. Hiding like a moth among these musty old clothes! Like hammer blows came his father's threats. And obstinately, insanely, came Gretl's squealing accusations. Who do you think Hans was — your
property?
Because you
fathered
him? Is that it? And the boy feeling he would pass out then, pinching his thigh in compensation because it was so blackly, murderously good.

But if he was going to ask, Wittgenstein knew he would have to ask soon. Like a fire the cancer was running through the old man. One day the cello was too much, and then it was too excruciating to be moved to a chair, let alone down the stairs to supper. His weight dropped, his skin loosened, his cheeks caved in and his eyes darkened, taking on that glassy, half-expectant look of death. Then came morphine injections, and then the day Wittgenstein heard his father scream, the cancer having so eroded his bones that he had to be moved an inch at a time so they wouldn't crumble.

And then, finally, Wittgenstein did ask, but by then it was too late. He knew it was unfair — perhaps even cowardly — to weigh his father down with such questions, but his anxiety was too strong. He had to know.

Please, he asked suddenly one morning, in no apparent context. Just tell me. If it were up to you, what would you have me do with my life?

Gazing up at him, the old man wheezed, What can you possibly mean, asking me this?

I mean with my life. I want to know finally. If it were up to you, what would you have me do with it?

His father looked one hundred. He looked vaguely like a monkey, a ravaged snow monkey. The old man stared up, uncomprehending.

Can you just answer me that? prompted the son in that cheery, overly loud voice with which people address children and convalescents. Obviously, you have some idea. I just wanted to know. The son waited, then said almost beseechingly,
I need to know
.

The father still had all his faculties, but this was not sinking in, or not as the son intended. His breath faintly popped and whistled through his clogged nostrils, filling the room with a fetor that clung to one's clothes. Feeling frantic, Wittgenstein wished then that he hadn't asked, realizing his utter stupidity as he croaked:

That was all. What would you have me
do
? That's all I'm asking.

Tears sprang up in his father's eyes and ran down his cheeks. Not kindly tears. Tears of rage. With a pop of phlegm, he erupted into a rasping gargle, a drowning, underwater voice:

I … don't …
know!
— Why do you even ask? — And after ignoring me for years! What do you expect, you jackass — my
blessing
?

It was all out then. With a jolt of pain, the old man irrationally demanded, What are you doing here?
What?

I'm not doing anything, the son protested. I merely — and he stopped, suppressing a hiccupping breath. Trying again, he said, I only came to ask, to
ask
! But then he stopped again, staring at his father before he added with another hiccup, About what I ought to do …

Do?
His father's lower lip was jutting out with simian rage. He spat acid, demanding in that gargling voice, But
why ask me
? You're a
philoooosopher
, aren't you?

Wittgenstein just stood there stupidly. Then one of the nurses burst in, and he whirled around on her.

Get out!

But Herr Wittgenstein —

I said
get out
!

Something tore loose in him then. Turning back to the bed, he peered down at his father. Is this the best answer you can give? he said. An
insult
? A sincere question, and
this
is your response?

His father was trembling. No words were left, only squeaks. And then came rage-hot tears as the old man gasped,
I … don't … know!
Is that what you want to hear? Huu-it isn't e-nough to die — I must, I must tell my children what they want to …
huu-hear
. So I can be hug-nored,
God
! — His voice broke off, and Wittgenstein could almost hear the crack of bone as he began again.
Huu-I … don't … care
. Do-you-hear-that,
philosopher
? Then came another crack of bone, a squirt of tears.
Don't care
… and
don't know!

Why? asked the son, bending down. It was a whiff of a word. Before him then his father's face crumbled like a fire into ashes. Gone was the imploring boy. Wittgenstein stared clear down into his father's squirty eyes as he asked again:

Why?

And the old man, sucking air, said,
Huu-I … told … you
…

Wittgenstein did not know himself then, as he hung over his father's smelly bed or bier. In that ravaged face, he then saw quite clearly his stolen nose, that phantom appendage that had been dangled before his eyes all these years. Nodding, the son said softly, You just now spoke the truth, didn't you? Not only don't you know but you never did, did you? Thank you. In spite of yourself, you have answered my question.

And without another word, he left.

Karl Wittgenstein died four days later.

There were no confessions or tearful good-byes, no parting tales or hortatory advice, no last requests. For Wittgenstein, there was nothing more to say. Looking down at his dying father, he was reminded of a scuttled ship glugging down into the oily, smothering darkness, swallowing up its own confounded history. His father's leviathan of a life was sucking down its own perished past and even taking theirs with it, leaving only bubbles, empty, evanescent and unreadable.

It began as a sloppy, ambiguous death, with no good prospects but an end to suffering. What was the dying man to say? He had had his private partings with Mining and his wife. Wittgenstein, too, had kissed his father good-bye. And later, quite unexpectedly, in his bath, the son found himself crying like a little boy as the warm water gurgled out the tap, sobbing for his cold words to his father, which would stand like the stars.

There was nothing to do then but wait. It was wearying and boring, it dragged on and on. In the aftermath of their quarrel, Wittgenstein had given up fighting his anger and was filled with a bitterness sour as hell fumes. His limbs ached with his own poison. Throughout the night, his father hung on obstinately, from spite or habit, refusing to be dislodged. And finally Wittgenstein reached that point just short of sleep in which he was not thinking, judging or wishing. For all he saw now, his dying father might have been a fly on the wall. His father's face was the very face of Nature, which is always abrading into being, forever unfolding like a slender gasp of flame. Yet within that unfolding, his father's ashen face slowly began to change. Gradually Wittgenstein began to discern a slow transformation in his father's expression. It was the grip of pleasure, a fatal, vivid pleasure that the dying man hugged to himself like the ample curve of his cello. He was not a father anymore. He was released from this life and this family, severed from his frailties and failures, pried loose from the vise of this life and free now to be nothing.
There
, Wittgenstein told him in his mind.
It is enough. It is all right now. It is time. Go. You are forgiven. Please, for God's sake, go now while it's all right
…

But the old man only hung on, he hung on and on. Just when the family would think he was gone, he would half open his eyes, asking for a little water as if he had forgotten to take enough for where he was going. Why this delaying? His father did not need water or air, or earth or family. He was ready to take leave of them and they of him, yet he hung on, and grimly they hung on, obstinate in their obligation, not wanting to miss his end. But he wouldn't quit. Relentlessly, he wore them down, and by five in the morning he had them beaten, as ache and restlessness set in and heads began to droop.

The dying man had his way in the end. Poldy said she must have some air, and Mining followed her out. Then Kurt looked at Paul, suggestively tapping his cigarette case. Then they were gone and, with a sigh, Gretl left as well, sneaking out as from a play that had begun to bore her. What possessed him to remain? Wittgenstein would wonder later. Why did he not tell them of this sense he had that they were going to miss the end?

For perhaps a minute Wittgenstein had been staring at his father when the eyes half opened and gave a squirt. And then as his own eyes welled over, Wittgenstein knew why he had lingered there in wonder, sorrow and homage. Neither he nor his father moved. For a long moment they looked at each other, both asking and granting forgiveness — the simple grace to leave. And then without any sign from his father, Wittgenstein instinctively knew it was time: the old man wanted him to leave the room so he could die. Not a word was spoken, not a word was necessary. Without a look back, Wittgenstein stepped outside and shut the door. He waited only a minute, and he was not wrong. Peering up at the ceiling, he knew precisely when his father died. Up, as through his own head, swept his father's soul. Up in one hot gust it went, like a flame sucked up a flue.

* * *

Wittgenstein sometimes thought he must be deluded, to believe that his vile old self had died with his father. He thought he must be doubly deluded to imagine that this condition could be permanent. Yet even now, over a month later, he felt no different. His old fear of open space? Over his head hundreds of miles and below perhaps as many fathoms. What need had he of boat or shelter? Sound body. Watertight soul. Sufficient mind.
Red light. Red cow. Red Wittgenstein
.

And staring down at the red water of Sognefjord, his mind said,
Look down into it, into the uncertain depths of the world
. He saw the blood-red surface of the water and upon the water were golden flecks of fire.
But look down deeper
, he told himself, and to his fear he saw that he could. But to look deeper still, he saw he must jettison fear also. And he told himself then that if he truly had no fear he would take off his clothes, and he did. And he told himself he could dive in and the undersky would not be too wide, nor the red water too deep or cold or salty. And there would be no one to see him naked, and what did he care anyway, if he was pure and intent only on this, and this only? And thinking of his father's passing, he saw his new life dangling like a shadow in the water, sliding beneath the fire and depths, saying,
Come merge with me. You cannot walk on the water, man, but you can dive, and dive deep
. And then he was standing shivering and naked on the side of the
Sweimfoss
, smirking because for all the solemnity of this moment, it was so infernally silly and —

Whoosh
—

Down he dove with open eyes, down into the cold depths that were red with fire, then black with throbbing pressure. And as his ears popped, he struggled still deeper into the pressure and silence of that aorta, the pulsing heart of the world, hot with the blood of new life and sorrows aching to be dislodged into being. And then the same voice said,
Enough
, and he floated up, his lungs burning and his legs faintly fluttering, watching his own flattened bubbles wobble up toward the surface, where he saw a dull pearl of moon or sun.

With a gasp, he broke the surface. Splashing in the air and red light, he was back again, and
it was cold
! And what a holy ass he was as he shinnied up the rope, grasped the raspy wooden sides and bellied over the gunwale. Splattering water and jibbering then, he saw the cow's broad, inquisitive face. Watching over her nest of hay, she seemed to say,
You are daft, Wittgenstein
, but in his mind he laughingly replied,
But you misunderstand. I am just very, very happy
.

A
YEAR LATER
, in late June of 1914, Wittgenstein was waiting on the pier in Høyanger, a town on Sognefjord where he had spent the winter, when Moore arrived on the
Sweimfoss
.

Dressed in a checked flannel shirt, heavy hiking boots and a brown Mountie's hat, Moore looked, after a year of marriage, softer and heavier, as full and plumb as a ripe apple. The brim of his hat left a red crease above his sunburned brow when he pushed it back to get a better view of Wittgenstein, who, after a year of semi-solitude, was himself a changed, if not semi-estranged creature, vaguely feral in the eyes. Gone were the shined shoes and tie, the aesthetical reserve. Tanned and smiling, wearing rough moleskin pants, an ill-fitting woolen workshirt and lumber boots, he looked a bit wild, his wiry hair as shaggy as a roan bull who'd been butting his head against a fence post.