Lars Iyer - Wittgenstein Jr

We’re drowsy, some of us hungover. Audible sighs. Guthrie, snoring. Mulberry, wearing a FUCK ME T-shirt. Benwell, gouging out an obscenity in his desk with a compass point. The Kirwin twins, Alexander and Benedict, in sweatbands and shorts, fresh from rowing. Doyle, in velvet, looking theatrical. Ede, in a sports jacket, refinedly attentive. Titmuss, with his dreads and his pointless wispy beard. Chakrabarti, with his Cambridge University sweatshirt. Scroggins, half high as usual, mouth agape. Okulu, listening to Brahms on his oversize headphones.

A whiteboard full of logical symbols. Who does he think we are, that we could follow him? Who does he take us to be?

• • •

Wittgenstein fixes his eyes on the parquet floor.

He tells us about the vistas of logic. About logic’s austerity .

Logic makes you lose the world, he says. Logic drives you away from the world, into the eternal ice and snow.

You could say he’s only sat at his desk for a few idle hours, he says. You could say he’s only opened and closed a few books. You could say he’s risked nothing more than paper cuts.

But there are dangers to logic, he says. There’s its difficulty —the arduous training necessary in philosophy, in mathematics. And there’s its purity —its reflections on thinking itself. Logic can cut you off from the world, he says. You can lose yourself in logic’s hall of mirrors.

He’s inclined to think of logic as a sickness , he says. As a fever on the brow of thought. As the demented smile of a madman.

Logic is only for those who cannot leave it alone, he says.

He seems upset. His voice trembles.

What nonsense he has said, he murmurs. What nonsense we have made him say.

Eating in class. Mulberry, chewing gum. Titmuss, sucking mints. Doyle, eating a packet of crisps and regretting it: the crackling! the rustling! the grease! Doyle, closing the packet when Wittgenstein glares at him.

Drinking in class. Guthrie’s water bottle, full of gin. Mulberry’s juice carton, squeaking as he sucks. Titmuss’s energy drink, fizzing over when he pulls it open. Titmuss, blushing bright red, wiping up the mess with his sweater sleeve as Wittgenstein stares at him in disgust.

Toilet breaks. Who dares ask permission to go? Who dares interrupt him? Who dares break into his tense, tortured silences? Scroggins, one afternoon, all but ran out of class, knocking over an empty seat as he passed. Wittgenstein looked up, midsentence, but said nothing. Titmuss left three times during one session, pleading Delhi belly .

WITTGENSTEIN: Haven’t you got any self-discipline ?

The view from the classroom window. Trees losing their leaves. The football pitch, with its churned-up grass, and its thick white lines, newly applied, and its goalposts, newly painted. It looks cold outside. But we are inside, taking notes, understanding almost nothing.

Down by the river, watching the Kirwins in their wetsuits waiting for rowing practice.

They’re so tall! You get so much Kirwin for your money! And there’s two of them, of course. There’ll always be a spare Kirwin.

They’re like great prize bulls, we agree. Like a pair of twenty-two-hand Shire horses. The Kirwins must be for something. They must have some purpose. It’s impossible to imagine the Kirwins without a Destiny . They’re like Greek heroes. Like something out of Homer.

Mulberry speaks of his desire to fuck a Kirwin. To lick a Kirwin. What are the chances of that?

EDE: What about Wittgenstein? Would you like to lick him, Mulberry?

MULBERRY: Not my type. He’s gay, though. I can tell. He’s a virgin gay. A bit like you, Peters.

ME: I’m not a virgin gay!

MULBERRY: You have a thing for Wittgenstein, anyone can see that. You want to be fucked by genius. Well, perhaps you’ll have your chance.

EDE: The real Wittgenstein was gay, of course.

MULBERRY: He was another of them: a virgin gay. He never fucked anyone.

EDE: I thought he had boyfriends.

MULBERRY: Oh, he had boyfriends, but they didn’t have sex. It wasn’t physical.

EDE: Then they weren’t boyfriends. They were just romantically coloured friendships.

MULBERRY: Just like you and Peters.

EDE: I, as it happens, am as straight as a die. As for Peters, I cannot say.

A Wittgenstein sighting.

The high street on a warm Saturday. Walking home with our groceries. Then, there he is: Wittgenstein, with his groceries. Wittgenstein with his shopping bags, walking towards us through the other shoppers.

Will he acknowledge us? Will he nod his head? Does he even know who we are?

He nods, murmurs a greeting, passes by.

We walk home in the sun.

EDE: So, genius shops at Sainsbury’s . Did you see what was in his bags?

ME: Scones, so far as I could see.

EDE: So, genius eats scones.

ME: I think the scones are for us, for our visits.

Wittgenstein has said we are to visit him in his rooms, one by one.

Late night in the Maypole , sitting outside in the cold.

Where does Wittgenstein come from? we wonder. He sounds German, but his English is perfect.

EDE: Perhaps he was educated over here. We had Germans at my school. Actually, we had all kinds of people. Oligarchs’ offspring, dictators’ sons, sent to acquire some English polish …

MULBERRY: Do they still beat pupils at Eton? Are there still fags ?

EDE: Oh, that’s long gone. It’s all counselling and bullying workshops now.

It was the same at his school, Mulberry says. He would have liked being beaten.

SCROGGINS: What’s it like being really posh , Ede? Do you have manservants?

Mulberry says he wishes he had a manservant.

DOYLE: Do you call your father Pater , Ede?

SCROGGINS: Have you met the Queen, Ede?

TITMUSS: What about Prince Charles?

DOYLE: Aren’t you sixth in line for the throne, or something?

Ede is from one of the really ancient families, he says. There’s a long line of Edes stretching back before the Conqueror — a whole dynasty , with painted portraits hung up and down their stairs, and coats of arms emblazoned over their chimneypieces.

Edes played at being knights at court, serving the monarch in council and government, Ede says. Edes starred in court masques, and kept their heads down after the execution of the king. Come the Restoration, Edes commissioned new country houses, celebrating the beauty of order , with Doric colonnades and winged griffins and tripod urns. Edes waved at the natives from the backs of caparisoned elephants in the colonies.

And when the new century came, modern Edes died in blood and fire alongside common folk in the trenches, and married the daughters of the new tycoons of America and South Africa to finance their country estates. Edes kept up the old ways, selling off chunks of their land, hiring out their old halls as wedding venues, and heading to the House of Lords once a week to exercise their ancient privileges.

There were failures in Ede’s family, to be sure. Insane Edes, driven mad from inbreeding, hidden in attics … Failed-suicide Edes, wheeled around in darkened houses … But in every generation, an Ede steps up. Cometh the hour, cometh the Ede who will pull it all together: the Ede who will become a man of the City, with a pied-à-terre in Richmond, and who will keep the family investments going; the Ede who will see to it that the family fortune grows and grows, and the country estate continues to stand; the Ede who will visit the old pile on the weekends, pulling on his Wellingtons and striding about the ancient grounds …