Lars Iyer - Exodus

But haven’t I always had enough? Aren’t I always demanding to leave? He’s heard my whining in dozens of seminars, W. says. He’s heard my mewling at every conference we’ve attended. I am, first of all, a man of the outside , W. says. A man who yearns to return to what lies beyond the walls …

The train northwest, heading to Manchester.

Hours pass. We’re beginning to forget our pre-train lives. We’re beginning to forget who we once were, out there, on the other side of the glass. But were we anything other than eternal voyagers? Were we anything other than children on a journey, amusing ourselves with our nonsense?

Trees in full leaf. Fields spreading out on all sides … The countryside is very lush, very beautiful, but W.’s in no mood to appreciate it. ‘ Nature is a corpse ’, he quotes from Schelling. ‘ A veil of sadness is spread over all nature, a deep unappeasable melancholy ’.

Sometimes, he thinks it’s time to get hold of his melancholy, W. says. To seize it by the scruff of its neck, and look at it in the face. But it’s only my face, squirming and indolent, that would look back at him, W. says.

Is his melancholy deeper than his philosophy? W. wonders; or is his philosophy deeper than his melancholy? He’s never quite sure.

He’s sure I bought my pink notebook just to annoy him, W. says. A pink notebook, with a pink ribbon as a bookmark, in which I write with a violet pen in violet ink, like a Japanese schoolgirl.

What have I been writing? W. wonders, snatching it from my hands. Notes of our conversations? Stories of our adventures?

Ah, I’ve been drawing , W. says. He turns the page sideways. A kind of goat with wings and a star on its forehead. A goat with breasts , W. says. And what’s this: a head with three faces?

Pages of minute writing, almost too small for the eye to see. It’s a bit like Walser’s Microscripts , W. says. It’s a bit like the work of one of those outsider writers , which is discovered in mouldering piles in a flat somewhere. Ten thousand manuscript pages full of florid ravings, full of wild new mythologies …

‘You really are the snack king, aren’t you?’, W. says, going through my rucksack. Is there any kind of snack I haven’t brought with me? He admires me for it. There’s something very true about my hunger, he says. Something telling.

W. picks up a pork scratching. Doesn’t it look a bit like Jesus? he says. Actually, he thinks it looks a bit like me, being almost entirely made up of fat and gristle.

Ah, Hello! magazine, W. says, continuing his rummage. A special photospread of the Queen at Sandringham.

My attitude towards royalty is very surprising for a man of the left , W. says. Haven’t I something of an obsession with the Queen? In airport queues and on long train journeys, he’s heard me endlessly consider the question of whether I would accept an invitation to a royal garden party. Would I RSVP positively to an invitation signed in the Queen’s hand? Of course I would, I decide on some occasions. Of course I wouldn’t, on others.

W. puts aside my rucksack. — ‘What are all these straps for? These zips?’ Look at his man bag, he says. ‘Do you see straps? Do you see zips? Do you see Hello! magazine?’

His man bag is an ark, W. says. He’s carrying the most important ideas of Old Europe through the desert of Britain. But my rucksack is a trough, W. says. My rucksack is a bucket of swill .

W. flicks through his New Scientist special on climate change. The end of the world, spelt out in cold detail! He can’t help but see the coming catastrophe in Biblical terms, W. says.

On the first day, God shaped heaven and earth from chaos, W. says, from that state which the Hebrew Bible calls the tohu vavohu — and darkness lay on the face of the deep. On the second day, dry land appeared, and put forth vegetation, the plants yielding seed, and the trees bearing fruit in which there was seed.

On the third day, the stars were born, and then the sun and the moon, each set in the firmament of the heavens to give light to the earth. On the fourth day, the waters brought forth swarms of living creatures, and birds flew across the sky.

On the fifth day, the beasts of the earth appeared, and then, on the sixth day, the first human being, made in the image of God. Be fruitful and multiply, was God’s command. Fill the earth, and subdue it.

And on the seventh day, God rested from all his work which he had done, and saw that it was good. He saw the sleeping animals in their burrows, and the heads of corn bowing in the wind. He saw the grain elevators of the Canadian prairies, and the cattle of Newcastle Town Moor, grazing on the hills.

And was the Creation over then? The Creation was over, but the Destruction began.

On the eighth day, ‘You appeared’, W. says, ‘scratching your head’. On the ninth day, I published my first book, and the heavens wept. And on the tenth day, I published my second book, and the stars fell from the sky.

On the eleventh day, our day, there are the storms of financial collapse, which are destroying the lives of the poor.

On the twelfth day, the rivers will dry up, and deserts will spread over the fields. The trees will wither, and the plants will no longer yield seed. The beasts of the earth will crawl, starving, on their bellies. The oceans of the world will toxify, and the very air will burn. The creatures of the waters will float in the waves, and the creatures of the air will flare from the skies.

On the thirteenth day, hurricanes will twist across the burning earth. The sea will darken, and turn black. The last human beings will gasp for breath. The earth will fall through darkness like a fireball.

On the fourteenth day, God will hang himself in heaven, despairing of his creation.

The plain of Manchester. That’s how W. always thinks of it, the vista that opens as you come close to the city. As a great plain, stretching out in all directions. A plain that stretches us out. That leaves us prone beneath the enormous sky. Isn’t that why Ian Curtis hanged himself: because he was stretched out beneath the enormous sky?

We are men of small cities, W. says. Cities you can cross in a day. Manchester is a massive city. An obscenely big city.

How did I put up with Manchester for all those years? W. wonders. How come the city didn’t get to me, destroy me? ‘ I wandered through that part of myself called Spain ’, wrote Genet in Thief’s Journal . I wandered through that part of myself called Manchester: isn’t that how I thought of it? W. says. Manchester is part of me , and not I a part of it : isn’t that what I said to myself?

I had my bedsit, W. says. I drew the city around me like a cloak. And when I graduated, I stayed on the plain of Manchester, lost on that plain, a man without ambition, a man without significance. What did I think I was going to do? I was dreaming of internal exile , W. knows that. I was dreaming of going inside, and never coming out.

At Manchester Piccadilly, I’m bent over in agony. Too many snacks. My stomach …

‘Your stomach is trying to save you’, W. says. ‘Don’t you understand?’ Only my viscera are honest, W. says. Only there, deep inside my body, buried under layers of fat, is there anything like honesty. In a way, it’s comforting, W. says, the fact that there’s a kind of internal limit to my idiocy, although it doesn’t make me any easier to be around.

You’re not going to get away with it , that’s what my stomach says. I’m not going to let you get away with it . My stomach is my curse, W. says, and my judgement.