dark armies of damp are moving towards the fresh, dry plaster of the living room. When will it breach the door frame and come through? When will it meet with the damp that’s already coming from the other room?
I’m stranded in space between the armies of damp, I tell him. Stranded, as between two high walls of the sea, parted as Moses parted them. On a strip as wide as this room, the living room, still dry, still an island in a sea of damp. And on two sides of the island, the waves are lapping. Soon they will lap over this island too, and it will have sunk beneath the ocean’s smooth surface. Or is it the two lips of a mouth that have opened, and I am the word it is trying to say? I think it’s speaking through me, a word of damp from within, in my frosty, spore-filled breath and in every line I write.
‘So what are you working on?’, says W., knowing the answer. ‘Nothing, as usual … it’s enough for you just to survive from day to day, isn’t it?’ I’m not like him, W. says, I don’t expect much from life, or from myself.—‘How do you think you’ll be remembered? What’ll they put on your gravestone?’
‘What’s that name Hollywood directors use when they want to disclaim involvement with a film?’, W. asks me. Alan Smithee, I say.—‘That’s how you should sign your work’, says W. ‘You’re Alan Smithee! Nothing turned out like it should, but it wasn’t your fault! It was everyone else’s fault! It was the system’s fault, for allowing you to write!’
I like to present myself as a victim, W. observes. I want a reason to whine night and day. Is W. a victim?, I ask him. No, not really, he says. He doesn’t have the victim mentality that I’ve perfected.—‘You love feeling like a victim. You like nothing better than to be persecuted’. But, I tell him, he must admit I have been a little persecuted.—‘How?’, says W., ‘give me examples’, and when I do, he says, ‘you’re no more persecuted than I am! You’re not in the least persecuted!’
Why do I like to feel persecuted?, W. muses. It’s because of my general hysteria. I’m an hysteric, W. notes, ceaselessly whining, but he likes me because of this. There’s something magnificent about my whining, he says. Sometimes it reaches a magnificent purity.—‘You attain whining itself’, says W., ‘the pure “to whine” ’.
W. is a seer, and I am a whiner, he says. It takes a seer to discover what is eternal in my whining.—‘It’s magnificent’, he says, ‘go on, do some whining. Whine, fat boy. Tell your story’.
Last year, on the banks of the river Tamar (—‘ah, the mighty Tamar’), W. held forth at length on the question of finding your own voice . He thinks he might have found his quite recently, he says. He’s noticed quite a change in his writing.
And what about me?, W. reflects. My voice, he says to me, is like a transcendental whining. It’s amazing, he notes, just how much I whine, and how much I give myself to it.—‘It absorbs everything you are’, said W. In many ways, he admires it, says W. He thinks it’s why he’s drawn to me.
No one should drink as quickly as I do, says W. Or as much.—‘You drink too much!’, W exclaims. Of course, W. remembers when I barely drank at all. I wasn’t a drinker then, W. says. I lived with monks at the time, which explains a great deal.
For his part, W. is a steady drinker—a heavy drinker, but a steady one. He paces himself—he learned it from Polish drinkers, who begin slowly and continue slowly, but drink through the whole night. Visiting Poland taught W. a great lesson about drinking.
‘There comes a stage in your life when you have to drink’, W. says. ‘There’s nothing for it. The world is shit, life’s shit, and if you thought for a moment, really thought, you’d kill yourself’. W. went through a period of drinking every day, he says, just as I went through one. He had to, he says, it had all become too much for him.
I’m stranded in space between the armies of damp, I tell him. Stranded, as between two high walls of the sea, parted as Moses parted them. On a strip as wide as this room, the living room, still dry, still an island in a sea of damp. And on two sides of the island, the waves are lapping. Soon they will lap over this island too, and it will have sunk beneath the ocean’s smooth surface. Or is it the two lips of a mouth that have opened, and I am the word it is trying to say? I think it’s speaking through me, a word of damp from within, in my frosty, spore-filled breath and in every line I write.
‘So what are you working on?’, says W., knowing the answer. ‘Nothing, as usual … it’s enough for you just to survive from day to day, isn’t it?’ I’m not like him, W. says, I don’t expect much from life, or from myself.—‘How do you think you’ll be remembered? What’ll they put on your gravestone?’
‘What’s that name Hollywood directors use when they want to disclaim involvement with a film?’, W. asks me. Alan Smithee, I say.—‘That’s how you should sign your work’, says W. ‘You’re Alan Smithee! Nothing turned out like it should, but it wasn’t your fault! It was everyone else’s fault! It was the system’s fault, for allowing you to write!’
I like to present myself as a victim, W. observes. I want a reason to whine night and day. Is W. a victim?, I ask him. No, not really, he says. He doesn’t have the victim mentality that I’ve perfected.—‘You love feeling like a victim. You like nothing better than to be persecuted’. But, I tell him, he must admit I have been a little persecuted.—‘How?’, says W., ‘give me examples’, and when I do, he says, ‘you’re no more persecuted than I am! You’re not in the least persecuted!’
Why do I like to feel persecuted?, W. muses. It’s because of my general hysteria. I’m an hysteric, W. notes, ceaselessly whining, but he likes me because of this. There’s something magnificent about my whining, he says. Sometimes it reaches a magnificent purity.—‘You attain whining itself’, says W., ‘the pure “to whine” ’.
W. is a seer, and I am a whiner, he says. It takes a seer to discover what is eternal in my whining.—‘It’s magnificent’, he says, ‘go on, do some whining. Whine, fat boy. Tell your story’.
Last year, on the banks of the river Tamar (—‘ah, the mighty Tamar’), W. held forth at length on the question of finding your own voice . He thinks he might have found his quite recently, he says. He’s noticed quite a change in his writing.
And what about me?, W. reflects. My voice, he says to me, is like a transcendental whining. It’s amazing, he notes, just how much I whine, and how much I give myself to it.—‘It absorbs everything you are’, said W. In many ways, he admires it, says W. He thinks it’s why he’s drawn to me.
No one should drink as quickly as I do, says W. Or as much.—‘You drink too much!’, W exclaims. Of course, W. remembers when I barely drank at all. I wasn’t a drinker then, W. says. I lived with monks at the time, which explains a great deal.
For his part, W. is a steady drinker—a heavy drinker, but a steady one. He paces himself—he learned it from Polish drinkers, who begin slowly and continue slowly, but drink through the whole night. Visiting Poland taught W. a great lesson about drinking.
‘There comes a stage in your life when you have to drink’, W. says. ‘There’s nothing for it. The world is shit, life’s shit, and if you thought for a moment, really thought, you’d kill yourself’. W. went through a period of drinking every day, he says, just as I went through one. He had to, he says, it had all become too much for him.
Similar Books
