Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer Read Free Book Online

the Russian steppe. To the surface of the moon … Oh God, someone say something!
    Wittgenstein’s silence, his eyes closed, like a man already dead. How
old
he seems! As though he’d read everything and forgotten everything. As though he’d lived not
one
but
several
lives.
    His silence. He wants to carry us down, as into the depths of the deepest lake. Like the concrete boots that drag down a body. Down he takes us—into the green depths. He wants to drown us in his depths. But we do not want to be drowned … We are too
young
to be drowned …
    A walk on the Backs, Wittgenstein walking ahead.
    We discuss our most recent hangovers. Mulberry lay in bed for three days. Doyle hallucinated giant spiders dropping from the ceiling. Titmuss heard his name being called by the trees and the flowers. Benedict Kirwin caught the clap. Ede says he’s
still
drunk from last weekend. Guthrie’s never had a hangover, he says, since he’s never stopped drinking. (He’s drinking now, sipping from his hip flask.)
    Wittgenstein stops. Turns to us.
    Five years of philosophy: that’s all any of us is good for, he says.
    It was all his brother was good for, he says. And now it is five years since his brother’s death. Since his brother’s
suicide
. Five years in which he, following his brother’s example, has
tried
to think …
    Sometimes he wishes he had never begun his studies in logic. His studies in philosophy! Sometimes, he longs for it all to have been a dream. For his logical studies to have been a kind of
fever
 …
    To wake up, with his mother’s hand on his brow. To wake up, with his brother beside him, in the attic room where they used to sleep—his brother who had likewise never begun his mathematical studies, his
logical
studies; his brother, who had never set out for Oxford, as Wittgenstein had never set out for Cambridge … To wake up, and chatter with his brother about the trees they would climb that day, or the pits they would dig, or the rivers they would ford, or the theatrical sketches they would put on, or the songs they would sing together at the piano, or the dens they would build in the woods, or the birds that would sing above them. To wake up, and speak of anything
but
their studies, anything
but
mathematics, anything
but
logic.
    The
Maypole
, after class.
    DOYLE: Have you heard? They’ve had to remove Scroggins’s bladder.
    EDE: What! Why?
    DOYLE: Ketamine damage. After the party.
    A shocked pause.
    Ede googles
bladder
.
    EDE (reading):
The organ that collects urine excreted by the kidneys before disposal by urination
. Can you live without a bladder, do you think?
    Ede googles
living without a bladder
.
    EDE: They have to find some other way for you to piss. A colostomy bag, or something.
    Miserable, we all agree. A bladder is really something you’d miss.
    A don in our class; one of the older faculty members. Slippers and blazer, and a pipe poking out of his pocket—do people still smoke pipes? Mug of tea in his hand. How cozy he looks!
    Wittgenstein greets him courteously. The don says he’d prefer not to sit on one of the classroom chairs. Doyle goes to get an armchair from the common room, and we move our chairs to make space for it when he returns. The don sits and pulls out a notebook.
    Has the don come to steal ideas? To perform some kind of
sabotage
? Is the don letting Wittgenstein know he is being watched? Is the don an infiltrator? A
spy
? Is he preparing a
Wittgenstein dossier
for the authorities?
    The don takes notes as Wittgenstein speaks. Meticulous notes. And when the lecture finishes, the don stands to leave. Wittgenstein, catching his eye, gives a little bow. The don bows back.
    Afterwards, we walk along the Backs.
    The Cambridge trap is closing around him, Wittgenstein says. Good! Let it close! The noose of Cambridge is being tightened round his neck. Good! Let them kick away the stool!
    The dons are coming for him, he says. Of course they are! They can sense what he is.