Spurious (13 page)

In the staff dining room, framed portraits of VCs in their robes all around us, W. confides that he thinks he’s on the brink of an idea. He’s never had an idea before, so he doesn’t quite know what it’s like. But he thinks this is it: he’s on the brink of an idea; a new horizon is opening before him. Have I ever had an idea?, he asks. Of course not, he says, why is he asking? Have I ever thought I was on the
brink
of an idea, and that people would haul me up on their shoulders and carry me around, cheering?

‘Of course you never thought you’d have an idea for a moment, did you?’, W. says. ‘You actually
repel
ideas and intelligent thought’, W. says. ‘Never for a moment would you be capable of thinking’, W. says. ‘Not for one moment!’

When he was young, W. was sure that one day, if he worked hard enough, he’d have an idea. He lodged in an attic room in which there was only a bed and a work table. A bed and a desk, W. emphasises. He rarely left it, his attic room, W. says. He worked night and day. Reading and writing were all that mattered.

What happened? Ah, we know what happened! He’s told me a million times! He’s told everyone! He discovered drinking, says W., and smoking! He came late to both, but when he discovered drinking and smoking that was it! But no doubt he began drinking and smoking from a sense of disappointment, from the knowledge he’d never have an idea and that there was no point in going on, he says. Yes, that’s what happened, W. says: disappointment, and then drinking (and smoking). Then there was the apocalypse, which made things even worse.

Since then, he’s lived in the ruins of his impression of himself as someone capable of having ideas. He’s felt ill for years, says W., which, on top of his drinking and general disappointment may have prevented him from having an idea (until now), or be the result of him not having an idea (until now). But W. thinks he may be at the beginnings of an idea. At its rudiments, he says.

W. points out a strip of trees from the window, which looks towards Plymouth and the sea. It’s ancient woodland, he tells me. That’s all that’s left of it, that strip, he says, which runs right up to Dartmoor. There’s a species of tree, unique to the area, that grows there: the Plym pear, he says. You can’t eat the pears, though, they’re like crabapples.

Why has he brought me up here? Why this vista from the staffroom window all the way towards the glistening sea?—‘Infinite judgement’, he says, mysteriously. ‘That’s my idea. Infinite—judgement. It’s from Cohen’, he says. ‘Well, it’s from Cohen’s reading of Kant’.

W. has been sending me his notes on Cohen for months. He barely understands a word of Cohen, W. has always admitted. In fact, he is singularly unqualified to read Cohen, lacking any understanding of mathematics, which is essential, or any real religious feeling.

Infinite judgement. Whatever does it mean? W.’s not sure, but nevertheless he feels he’s on to something. He’s not sure, he says, whether he has made a genuine breakthrough, or whether it is all nonsense. Is he at the summit of his creativity or the peak of his idiocy?

At the bus-stop by the hospital, W. shows me the dedication of the book he’s recently added to his collection.
To my Rabbi
 … It’s dedicated to his Rabbi, says W., wonderingly. W. has always wished he had a Rabbi to whom to dedicate his books. Or rather, he now knows that that is what he should have wished for all along.

A Rabbi! He would have been part of something. He would have had a sense of belonging. Despite his interest in Jewish topics, W. is not really a Jew. He’s not even a Catholic, not really, W. says. He’s not capable of believing in anything, not anymore. There’s no-one more boring than an atheist, W. sighs.

Of course he looks very Jewish, W. says, especially since he’s grown his hair long. But however Talmudic he appears (and he has looked increasingly Talmudic in recent years, with his beard and long ringlets), there is the terrible reality of his non-belief.

As we cross Mutley Plain, looking out of the window of the bus, W. speaks of his obsession with the great Hungarian plain. Béla Tarr spent six months visiting every house and every pub on the plain, W. notes. He said he discovered mud, rain and the infinite, in that order.
Mud, rain and the infinite:
nothing to W. is more moving than those words.

W. wonders whether we too have discovered the infinite in our own way. Our incessant chatter. Our incessant feeling of utter failure. Perhaps we live on our own version of the plain, W. muses. Am I the plain on which he is lost, or vice versa? But perhaps the plain is the friendship between us on which we are both lost, he says.

modemport's original commercial release April 02 2011