Dogma (5 page)

Hope. What is it that keeps us going?, W. wonders. Why do we bother, in spite of it all, in the face of it all?

That we know our limitations is our strength, we’re agreed on that. We know we fall short, desperately short. We know our task is too great for us, but at least we have a sense of it, its greatness. At least we know it passes above us, like migratory birds in the autumn sky.

We’re
landfill thinkers
, W. says.
Landfill philosophers
. But he doesn’t mind. He has the sense of edging forward in the darkness, he says. He has the sense of digging his burrow, of pushing on in dark times.

And what kind of burrow am I digging?, W. wonders. What kind of tunnel can a mole make that is without claws, a mole that’s gone mad underground?

In the end, I excel at only three things, W. says: smut, chimp noises and made-up German. That’s all my scholarship has amounted to.

And isn’t it the same with him? Ah, what does he really
know? Of what is he really certain? Biblical Hebrew, of course … The classical guitar … The history of philosophy in the German tradition, in the French tradition … Something of the ancient Greeks, and the language of the ancient Greeks … But it’s nothing, nothing, W. says. He knows nothing at all.

If he’s cruel to me, it is the same cruelty to which he subjects himself, W. says. If he’s cruel, it’s out of love, W. says. It is meant as a sign that he expects better. Would that
he
had a similar tutor! Would that he had someone to list
his
betrayals and half-measures!

The pelican of mythology feeds its young by tearing strips of its own flesh from its breast, W. says. And isn’t that how he’s fed me: by tearing strips of flesh from his own breast?

How generous he’s been! How unselfish! But in the end, it’s left him even more alone, his generosity. In the end, a great, overfed chick is no company.

The bus back to Nashville. Sounds of screaming. A roaring two-stroke engine. The passenger in front of us is playing
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
on his laptop.

W. yearns for his study, he says. He yearns for his bookshelves. He yearns for the tranquillity of his mornings, when he leaves a sleeping Sal in bed so that he can do a few hours of work before breakfast.

I understand nothing of the
rhythms
of scholarship, W. says, I know nothing of its
seasons
: of the time of sowing, of tending and caring, and of the harvest, the gathering in of the crops of thought.

Isn’t it that of which he dreams, at the beginning of the summer: of the coming autumn, which will see his thought-crops ripe and ready, bowing in the breeze? Of carrying back the harvest of his ideas, so carefully tended, in his sun-browned arms?

There must be a process of thought-threshing, too, W. says. Of thought-winnowing! The wheat must be separated from the chaff. And there will be chaff, he says. Even the
greatest of thinkers cannot avoid chaff. But there is still wheat. Still the evidence of a year’s long labour …

But what would he know of this? His crops have failed, W. says, as they have always failed, and he stands in the empty field, weeping.

Ah, when will we discover the rhythm that will let us work, really work?, W. wonders. When, that steady pressure that will make every day a work day, every day launched with a forward push from the day before …

Momentum: to be thrown by thought, loosed, like a stone from thought’s sling … And work, then, will not be mundane, but celestial. We will work as the stars work, as the planets turn in their orbits. Our work will be as one with the slow turning of galaxies, and the steady expansion of the universe out into the infinite … Our work will be indistinguishable from inactivity, from the resting of a God.

Perhaps it is really a kind of Sabbath that we’re looking for, W. says. A time to close our eyes; but not only to rest, to recuperate.
We need to contemplate our labours from without and not just from within
: who was it who said that?, he wonders. We need to let ourselves be touched by a greater work, by a divine labour. Isn’t it only then that we’ll truly begin to work, as though drawn by a hidden current into the centre of our channel?

We must work until we bleed, W. says. We must write until our eyes turn red, and blood runs from our nostrils. Because that’s what’s going to happen to us when we find
our idea: blood will flow from our nostrils. Drops of blood, splashing onto the pages on which we are writing …

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood
. Nietzsche wrote that. With blood, but not
our
blood. We’ll write with
God
’s blood, says W., mystically. It will be the
blood of God
that runs from our nostrils.

Bored on the bus. W. seizes my notebook. He wants to see how America has advanced my thinking.—‘Ah! Drawings! Who’s that supposed to be?’ Huckleberry Finn, I tell him. There’s the raft.—‘And what’s that in the water next to him?’ It’s Moby Dick, I tell him. And that’s the Pequod. W. admires my
classics of American literature
series.

And what is this? A poem?
Preppies
, it’s called.

Tall / sand in the hair / white teeth / pullovers / deck shoes / white shirts and blouses / yachts with white sails / fuckers

Very perceptive, says W. Here’s another.
Cabin Boys
, it’s called.

Upstairs, on deck / The preppies are dancing / with their caps worn backwards. / We are the cabin boys / scrubbing their things. / We are angry

He likes that, W. says. It’s very terse.

And what are these? More poems?’, W. asks, turning my notebook upside down and squinting. Lyrics, I tell him. They’re lyrics from Jandek.

I don’t care about philosophy / Even if it’s right.
I could always go drinking / and never come back …

Ah, Jandek, W. says. Who else? Sal has thrown away all the Jandek CDs I burned for him.
The Humility of Pain.
—‘That was his forty-fifth LP, wasn’t it?’ His forty-sixth, I tell him.

The Humility of Pain
: now there’s an album title, W. says. Jandek has seen things, experienced things, of which we can have no understanding, he says. He is a man of despair, of complete despair. But he is a man of God, too. Doesn’t Jandek always gather his musicians for a moment of prayer before going on stage? ‘Lord give us strength … Lord protect us’. We’re not capable of God, W. says.

In the end, W. doesn’t understand why people believe in God, or even what they mean by the word. He doesn’t have the insouciance of those who call themselves
atheists
, W. says. He doesn’t know what that word means.

When it comes to God, he keeps feeling he’s come up against something immovable, something through which he cannot pass. It’s not because he thinks there’s some mystical knowledge which he cannot quite reach—on the contrary—but that there is something he cannot think, something he cannot see that is called God, and all because of his personal stupidity.

Sometimes, W. dreams of collaborating with me, on a
book on God. He dreams of a great outpouring of his intellect and passion. He dreams of honouring the legacies of Pascal and Weil, and uncovering the meaning of God in Cohen and Rosenzweig. He dreams of making Kierkegaardian leaps, and of foaming at the mouth in Dostoevskian fervour.

And what would I contribute? What would I bring to the project?—‘You could explain your indifference’, W. says. ‘And then you could draw some cocks’.

A rest break in Jackson, in the early hours. Through the bus window, we admire our fellow passengers, standing about in the open air, their breath frosty. Who are they, our fellow travellers? Where are they heading? We are tired, travel-weary, but they’re fresh, expectant, ready for the world.

Distance means nothing to the American, W. says. Uprooting! The American rolls across the earth like dice, he says. One minute, the American’s married; the next, divorced. Then married again, then divorced again … Then starting a new career. Leaving one job, and beginning another on the other side of the state, on the other side of the continent …

Americans pack up and go! They move from state to state just like that! They think nothing of travelling vast distances, of relocating themselves, of starting new lives!

W. speaks movingly of the first migrants to America, who crossed via the vanished land bridge from Siberia. Of course, they were hunter-gatherers, he says. The
disaster of agriculture
, to which he traces the origins of capitalism, had not yet happened.

The mid-Neolithic: perhaps that’s when it all went wrong, W. muses. Once you have agriculture, you have concentrations of wealth. You have military specialisation! Predation! Man becomes a wolf to man! That’s what he’s learnt from playing
Civilization 4
, W. says.

Maybe we should become foragers, like our early ancestors. Maybe we should just
go forth
, living on berries and roadkill and whatever else we find. We dream for a moment of wandering across America, like the first wave of migrants who crossed the great landbridge. We dream of living on the fruits of America, on American generosity, the land spreading before us in all its bounty and the pair of us like idiot Whitmans in our blousy shirts.

Pigeon Forge. The end is nigh.

With every mini-golf course or water ride we pass, W. sinks lower. With every giant golden cross on a hilltop, every novelty motel and advert for apocalyptically-themed shows for all the family (
Revelations: the Musical
;
The Seven Seals On Ice
…), W.’s cries grow louder.
Kroger’s
,
The Old Time Country Shop
, more huge crosses looming over nowhere …

They’ve made a theme park of the End of Times!, W. says. They’ve made a
Disneyland
of Armageddon!

W. hears laughter, but he doesn’t know from where. He hears laughter filling the air. Are they laughing at him, the Americans? They laughed at Mr Scheitz, and his mad ideas, W. says. They put him in jail. Is that where W.’s going to end up: in jail? And they laughed at Bruno, until he shot himself. Is that what I’m going to do, shoot myself?, W. wonders.—‘Don’t do it, fat boy!’

Night falls and we’re lost in the Smokies, looking for our cabin. Precipices to the left and the right. Our driver-host is edgy. The car’s too heavy! We passengers get out and
walk—there’s ice everywhere, and the road’s too steep for the car.

The mountains tower above us. Starlight glitters on the icy road. Are we going to survive? Will we be lost forever in the wilderness? Doesn’t Dolly Parton live round here somewhere?

Then we see it: the cabin. It’s almost too late for W. He’s raving. What’s he doing here? How did he end up here? He can’t go another mile! He’s a non-passenger! A non-traveller! Not another mile!

Later, W. collapses on the balcony, still wet from the hot tub: a dying swan, half wrapped in his towels. What’s this country doing to him?, he says. How did he end up here? We talk softly to him, over our Plymouth Gins cut with tapwater.

When he recovers, W. speaks movingly of the early blues players. Such short lives! But life is short! There’s not much time!

What need was there to come to America?, W. asks. He’s learnt nothing here. His thought hasn’t advanced. Not one new idea! … The United States of
Thought-Robbery
, that’s what they should call it, W. says. The United States of
Vastation and Waste
 …

Newcastle.—‘There’s no sight finer’, W. says of the Tyne Bridge, which skims the roofs of the buildings in the gorge. You could touch its green underside from the highest of the roof-gardens. The streetlamps, painted the same dark green, jut upwards from the bridge sides, one hundred and fifty feet in the air. And the great arch of the bridge rises a hundred feet higher …

‘You need a project’, says W. ‘You need something to occupy you’. W. has his scholarly tasks, of course. He’s even deigned to collaborate with me. But I’ve never taken it seriously, our collaboration, not really. I’ve never risen to the heights he envisaged for me.

Hadn’t W. always wanted us to soar together in thought? Hadn’t he pictured us in his mind as two larks, looping and darting in flight—two larks, wings outstretched, flights interlaced, interwoven, together and apart; or as two never-resting swifts, following parallel channels in the air …

We were never to rest. We’d live on the wing, one exploring this, one that, but always reuniting, always coming together in flight, in the onrush of flight, calling out to one another across the heavens …

To think like a javelin launched into space. To think like
two javelins, launched in the same direction, arching through the air. To think as a body would fall, as two bodies would fall—tumbling through space. Thinking would be as inevitable as falling under gravity. Thought would be our law, our fate … But we’d fall
upwards
into the sky … 
upwards
into the heights of thought …

And instead? There is no flight: not mine, not W.’s. I am his cage, W. says. I am his aviary. What he could have been, if he’d left me behind! What skies he could have explored! But he knows that this, too, is an illusion, an excuse. He can blame me for everything.
It’s my fault
, he can say, even as he knows that nothing would have happened if he were free of me.

‘Take me to the sea!’, W. cries every time he visits. He has to see the sea! My North Sea is very different from his Atlantic, he says. It even
looks
colder, he says, as it comes into view behind the Priory.

Sometimes we pay to enter the Priory, so W. can see the weathered gravestones, whose inscriptions are no longer legible, and inspect what’s left of the bunkers, which are a kind of cousin to those at Jennycliff, with empty sockets where there were once gun placements. But today we’re on a mission. W. has to get air into his lungs, he says. And he needs a drink!