The World as I Found It (21 page)

In one sense, Wittgenstein grimly understood the impotence of his mother's position, yet in another, deeper sense, her silence and ineffectuality angered him more than perhaps he realized. He knew how pliable she was, just as he knew his father's knack for eliciting her entreaties when his own efforts failed. But because his mother spoke softly and suffered, Wittgenstein could almost never refuse this woman who had never quite recovered from her sons' deaths, this silent figure sitting at the far end of the dinner table, encased in that sticky, stealthy cocoon that grief had slowly secreted over her.

And in a way, Wittgenstein was relieved to be done with it, this stab at independence. Why had he even tried? he wondered. It was bound to fail. Not wanting his mother to suffer another day, he sent her a telegram, saying that he would be home after all.

In her joy and relief, his mother sent him a telegram in return. But then, in her excitement, Frau Wittgenstein unwittingly put another noose around his neck, writing in her next letter:

He replied:

Despite the disguising sunniness at the end, he reviled himself for this nonsense about not wanting to form an attachment. Still, perhaps his mother's meddling was a blessing. Now at least he had something besides his father to dread. Now there was also Fräulein Ketteler.

* * *

One night around this time, Russell was more than taken aback when McTaggart turned to him at supper and said, Well, what about Moore, eh?

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, Russell rested his fork, then asked, What about him?

McTaggart's dark brows beetled above a supercilious smile. Why, about him getting married of course.

Moore?
Russell canted his head, incredulous. I hadn't heard. But Russell made a quick recovery. Peering prankishly down the long, warped table to where Moore was supping, he said, Well, haven't you been cunning. That's right —
you
, Mr. Moore! Beaming as Moore looked around, bland as a cropping beef, Russell said, McTaggart says you're to be married!

With a look of embarrassment, Moore swallowed and said, I was going to tell you. I couldn't think of how to go about announcing it — without making too much of a
thing
about it, I mean.

Well, this is wonderful! exclaimed Russell. And then, looking up and down the Olympian table to better broadcast his happiness, he said it again as Moore began to squirm.

Moore got the full treatment then. Rising from his chair, Russell squeezed along the carved wall, past the other banqueters, and heartily shook his hand, saying, Absolutely delighted for you, Moore, really I am. You'll make a marvelous husband. I mean that, he said, clenching Moore's hand again to make it sure. And do, please, give Miss Ely my best wishes. A long and happy life together. Most happy.

Moore's hand was uncharacteristically limp. Russell could see he was touched; for a moment they both were. And soon Moore was a bubbling brook, saying, It's been so, I don't know,
overwhelming
. Cheeks flushed, Moore reached a big breath, still clearly dazed by his good fortune as he continued, Just asked her the other night. Horribly nervous — really didn't know if I'd be able to go through with it. Awfully glad I did, though. Don't know what I'd have done if I hadn't. Well, I might have lost her! Oh, yes. She was
leaving
, you know …

And as Russell stood there listening to Moore talk happily about his vacation plans, so full with parents and family — as he listened to Moore carry on, hunched like a kangaroo over his blousing belly, Russell felt correspondingly smaller, to behold one still so unspoiled by griefs and disappointments, and hence so open to love. Russell watched Moore with that twisting bafflement which only the dispossessed unhappy can see in the face of happiness, wondering how Monday could possibly have been so good when Tuesday is so bleak. Moore had no notion then of how Russell admired and envied him; in his happiness Moore had no sense of himself whatsoever. Exposed at the cuffs, Moore's plump, white wrists were turned up like an offering amid the dinner clutter. Russell, meanwhile, felt himself wavering like a tree, lost at that point where words and good wishes peter out.

Well, said Russell, capping off this rampant well-wishing. Do give her my very best. And I want to hear more of it. And if you need help of any kind —

Oh! Thank you.

Moore's chair groaned as he stood up, hastily wiping his hands on his napkin. For both of them now, it was quite unexpected, this sudden surfeit of warmth and glad tidings. But it was more than a surge of Yuletide bonhomie, and they both hung there, each wanting to say something further, when Moore, realizing that they had spoken only of him, said suddenly, And you, Bertie? You'll be here for the holidays?

Oh, in and out, you know. Relatives and visits …

Good, said Moore, a little unsure. Good, and he pumped his hand again, wanting, after all, to be glad in return, this being the least a happy man can do.

It would have been too easy for Russell to say that he was glad for Moore and have that be the end of it. After all, Russell didn't want to deny Moore a long-awaited draft from the trough of domestic happiness. But inevitably for Russell there came the sourness of envy, the frustration that Moore's courtship should seemingly end so easily while his dragged on and on, with no good end in sight.

Russell hated feeling like this; it seemed so mean-spirited and Scroogelike. Still, he was happy that Wittgenstein would be there with him over the holiday. Russell had even succeeded in getting him invited to Whitehead's for Christmas dinner, and Wittgenstein had gratefully accepted, saying he would get them some good wine and something else to show a little Viennese
Gastfreundlichkeit
. Russell thought he might suggest the idea of their going together to Scotland. But then four nights before the end of term, Wittgenstein knocked on Russell's door around nine, a little earlier than usual. Russell could see he was agitated, and Wittgenstein came straight to the point:

I will be going home to Vienna, Mr. Russell. I am very sorry, but that is decided. He looked up. I will send to the Whiteheads the wine I was to bring. I will send them also a note for being so kind, to invite me. Thursday morning I leave.

But why? asked Russell. Then, realizing this was the wrong tack, he reversed himself, saying, Excuse me. That is certainly none of my concern.

It is for only my mother I am going, said Wittgenstein irritably. It is really very annoying.

His English was fuzzy now, like a bird molting new feathers. First an “awkwardism,” or “Teutonism,” as Russell joked, then a phrase in fine syntax, with faint British inflections.

Fishing, Russell said, Well, I'm sure you'll make her happy.

It was completely selfish for me to remain here! said Wittgenstein suddenly. Intolerably selfish — Wittgenstein was now pacing, whirling back and forth.

Well, said Russell, perhaps too soothingly. I would not call you
selfish
. That is only something you have imagined about yourself.

Glaring, Wittgenstein retorted, Then you do not know me!
At all!
I
am
selfish. And not only selfish! In fact, I am filled with the pettiest, vilest thoughts!
All the time!
Don't look at me like that — it is true! It is better that I go home. If I cannot do for myself any good, I can at least do for someone else some good.

Russell had no desire to argue with him, but Wittgenstein wouldn't be ignored. In a sudden leap of logic, Wittgenstein demanded, Now, tell me once and for all. Have I
any
talent as a philosopher?

Russell didn't know what he was saying. Fending him off, he replied, Why do you ask?

Because, groaned Wittgenstein. If I do not have any
real
talent — then I will become an aeronaut.

Aeronaut?
Russell felt the blood draining from his head. But then, with a guilty thrill, Russell took a stab, asking, Why? Because an aeroplane would afford you a better chance to kill yourself?

It was a taunt, but Wittgenstein just stared him down with a long and unsentimental look — chilling, as he quietly replied, If I were
whole
or
healthy
, Russell, I would not even
be
a philosopher. Nor you.

Russell did not deny it. And in the oddest way, he felt they had just exchanged the deepest intimacy, each looking at the other, thinking,
So you, too, are this way
.

But with that, there was awkwardness again. Wittgenstein was still waiting for a reply to his question, and Russell, reverting back to his English need to tidy after an upset, was brisk and businesslike as he resumed. Well, in answer to your question, yes, I
do
think you have genuine philosophical talent. But
how much
talent — this, unfortunately, I cannot tell as yet. But if you will write a paper on any logical or philosophical subject that you choose — Russell took a deep breath — I will answer your question as truthfully as I can. But, cautioned Russell, wondering if he dared scatter the crockery again, you will not have your answer in time to see your father.

For two months Russell had been probing this nerve, and now he had found it. Scalded, Wittgenstein shot back, It is not for
him
I ask! Wittgenstein's hands grappled together. Then came that morbid wrist wrenching. And sure enough, Wittgenstein reversed course, saying, Still, it
is
correct for my father to
wonder
— to wish his son to be of some
use
to the world. This much is clear, Mr. Russell: we are not put here to have a good time.

But at the risk of sounding pedantic, labored Russell. If philosophy has no value to your father — well, what does your talent matter? You cannot win.

I told you! railed Wittgenstein.
He
is not the point!

But here was one argument that Wittgenstein could not challenge or refute; to rebut this, he had only silence, angry silence. And it was so odd for Russell to see before him then not the invincible zealot of his dreams but just a bitter, confused young man. Yes, Russell had to remember, he was still a young man, after all. Just a young man.

Soon after this, Wittgenstein left, but outside his door the next morning, Russell found two meticulously wrapped packages containing a tin of expensive tobacco and a quarto edition of Schiller. Attached to it was a note that expressed what Wittgenstein could not have said in Russell's presence:

T
HE FIRST SIGN
was at the symphony.

For Wittgenstein, the symphony was a supreme pleasure, and under normal circumstances this program at the Musikverein featuring a Mozart piano concerto followed by Schubert's monumental Ninth would have propelled him into that state of almost mathematical attention with which he followed music. Yet sitting high above the hall in their family's third-tier box with his sisters Gretl and Mining and his brothers Paul and Kurt — peering down obliquely, he felt he had to pit his feet against the face of the box, had to push back as if to displace space or this dizzying sensation he had of yawning
down
, but ever so slightly, into that volcano blazing with light and music.

Once trained as an engineer, one could never shed that sense of the world as a mechanistic system, a conceptual mesh built out of a given system of axioms that somehow must account for all that pervades the physical sphere, that concatenation of flux, heat, pressure, stress and limits — those snowblind limits that somehow buttress and support piers, pillars and arches, not to mention opera boxes precariously projecting from walls already bearing a vast domed roof and, over that, heavens groaning with the last days of a future mounting like an avalanche. But to try to
see
beneath the incredibly fine mesh of these physical concordats; and truly, to feel this enveloping one's chest, with the heart swelling like an organ fugue, elliptically and ineluctably, into the all-pervading
form
of the world; and to attempt to see all of this
tonight, all at once
and
all of one piece
, as if the world had been built in a single day, and not seven, out of one numinous strand of purest crystal — this was a soul-breaking task. In the tilting salient of the spotlights, Wittgenstein could see dust rising, whole clouds billowing up, cleaved by the crossed lights into conic sections. Terrific layers of heat caused the dust to rise. Looking up, he wondered what tons of air were displaced by the horns alone, not to mention the thermal layer rising from three thousand bodies, stuffed with rich dinners and wine, and all of them vibrating with a sonic, emotive barrage that made him feel as if he were clinging to the stretched outer skin of a dirigible inflated with insupportable expectations, a burgeoning that was rising, in rapid gasps, to the rupture of crescendo …