Part 10

It’s terminuses all the way down, I said then. It’s what? said Elda. Nothing, I said, where are we anyway? Elda took her phone out, swiped and then pressed at the screen. On the outskirts of Slough, she said. No way, I said. Way, she said. Fuck, okay, well, we might as well make the most of it now that we’re here, I said. Okay, said Elda in an unsure voice that reminded me, immediately and starkly, of how she used to respond to Ludwig whenever he proposed something that she was unsure of, viz. intransigently opposed to, something that I happened to know aggrieved Ludwig greatly, even though he took great care not to reveal this fact to Elda, who he believed, rightly in my opinion, would only have been emboldened to dig her recalcitrant heels in more overtly, hence why he kept his annoyance to himself, hence why I too kept my annoyance to myself, even though I knew, of course, that it would be virtually impossible to make the most of Slough, Slough being a particularly insalubrious and charmless conurbation, a classic example of the atrophied state of so-called modern Britain, a totem of an eviscerated national culture, a representation of all that could go wrong and had gone wrong in a nation of doom-mongers and sanctimonious hypocrites, nonetheless I had committed us to making the most of Slough, so I was determined to at least go through the motions of making the most of Slough, even though I had no idea what that might entail and was uncertain as to whether it was even possible, I was resolved to do so. After driving around Slough for a while, however, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be possible to make the most of Slough, even to simulate making the most of Slough, and rather than continue with the farce of pretending that it would be possible, I confessed to Elda that, alas, I had decided it would be best, for reasons that I took as obvious, if we left Slough immediately. Elda nodded, said she agreed that it would be, but that before we did so, could we please pull over into the McDonald’s drive-through up ahead. Of course, I said. As we queued in the interminably long queue, inching forwards at the pace of an opiated sloth, I espied a group of young black men, hoods up, slouched against a wall, immediately I felt a frisson of fear and immediately after that a pang of guilt, the guilt of a closet racist; everyone is a racist, I told myself (mollifyingly), some people are explicitly racist, while others are implicitly racist, I myself am implicitly racist, but my uncle, for example, is an explicit racist, the most overt kind of explicit racist in fact; I pretend to myself that I am not a racist, that I abhor, am implacably opposed to racism, but in fact I am hopelessly racist, that is to say incorrigibly so, albeit implicitly. It is, in fact, I thought, far worse to be implicitly racist than explicitly racist, implicit racism hides behind the negation of racism and is therefore an abject and cowardly form of racism, since it is ashamed of its racism, it seeks to hide its racism from view and effectively disown its racism, whereas explicit racism is open and honest from the start, it does not deny what it is, in fact openly flaunts what it is to all and sundry and is therefore quite prepared (although perhaps ill-equipped) to suffer the condemnation of those who would have no truck with racism, essentially the condemnation of the implicit racists, who believe, more than likely sincerely, that they have disavowed their racism, if they even accept they were racist to begin with, which they frequently deny, of course. Suddenly, I became aware of the irate driver in the car behind me, who was tooting his horn belligerently and, from what I could see in the rear-view mirror, if my lipreading ability could be relied upon, swearing profusely. I held a hand up in a (half-hearted) gesture of apology and lurched forwards into the gap that had apparently opened up in front of me as I’d opined on the whole implicit-versus-explicit racism thing, a train of thought, I recalled, that had been set in motion by my observing the young black men, who I now saw were bantering in what seemed like a good-natured fashion, their hoods were down, their eyes were smiling with humour and warmth, and I saw clearly that these young black men were no threat whatsoever, that I had been wrong to be frightened of them, not just because it was morally wrong to have racially stereotyped them, but because they clearly harboured no ill will to anyone and were merely hanging out, as they say, as youngsters are wont to do and as I myself used to do when I was young, although it is true that at times I had harboured ill will, but these black youths clearly did not and therefore I had quite erroneously ascribed to them a malevolent intent that was entirely absent, imagined, projected and so forth. Finally, we were at the ordering point. I wound down the window. Yes, please, said a crackly voice over the intercom, what would you like to order today? It was a fair question, one that I had failed to prepare for even though I had had ample time to prepare for it, so I turned to Elda and asked her what it was she wanted and she turned to me and said a Filet-O-Fish, large fries, apple pie, no drink, and I turned to where the voice had emanated from and I repeated Elda’s order, then I tacked onto that my order, which I had been thinking about as I was relaying Elda’s order. Will that be all? said the crackly voice. That will be all, I confirmed. In that case, said the crackly voice, please make your way to the serving hatch. I was just about to drive on when the crackly voice said: oh, and have a nice day! I will, I said, or I will try my best to. The driver behind me honked at that point, so I drove on to join the queue for the serving hatch. I ate my McDonald’s driving, Elda thought it was a bad idea, that it wasn’t possible to drive safely and eat a McDonald’s at the same time, but I assured her it was; after all, what is the point of a drive-through, I said, if you subsequently pull over to eat your food? The whole point of a drive-through, I continued, is that you continue driving whilst you eat your food. That, literally, is the whole point! I reiterated. In my peripheral vision I saw that Elda was shrugging in the manner of someone who wasn’t convinced but could see no sense in putting up a counter-argument, which annoyed me, just as this shrugging of hers had frequently annoyed Ludwig I knew all too well. Elda’s shrugging, Ludwig used to say, is a bugbear of mine. Don’t get me wrong, he would say, I shrug as much as the next person and I have nothing against shrugging per se, but Elda’s shrugging isn’t like a normal person’s shrugging. Pathological is how I would describe her shrugging, he would then say, as if I’d asked him to explain what he meant by Elda’s shrugging not being like a normal person’s shrugging, which I hadn’t, not being the slightest bit interested in Elda’s shrugging. Until now, I thought, now I am interested in her shrugging, or rather now I understand what had irked Ludwig about it, not that I could quite say, if I were asked, what it was about her shrugging that I found so perturbing. We returned forthwith to the house in Hindhead and for a week or so I flitted backwards and forwards from Ludwig’s wing to Elda’s until I finally realised that all this flitting was doing myself or Elda no good. I have to decide, I thought, whether to stay in Ludwig’s wing and steel myself to the task of reviewing the notes (again) or to stay in Elda’s wing and steel myself to the task of being her live-in lover. I can either, I thought, dust myself down and get on with the task I came here to carry out, namely the reviewing of Ludwig’s notes and the writing up of those notes into a cogent disquisition, or I can wave the so-called white flag, admit to myself that I am in all likelihood not up to this task and move in with Elda. Since I am in love with Elda it makes sense to move in with her, I reflected, even though we don’t see eye to eye on lots of things and are probably incompatible, nonetheless we are very much infatuated with each other and it therefore makes abundant sense for me to move in with her. Having reviewed the notes already and been found wanting, it also made sense not to subject myself to the horrendous ordeal of reviewing them again. On the other hand, I had come to the house in Hindhead to review Ludwig’s notes, there was no getting away from it. Yes, I had perhaps also secretly entertained the idea that I might perhaps end up sleeping with Elda, but my primary motive all along had been to review Ludwig’s notes and to write them up into a sustained piece of writing, an extended essay at the very least, but hopefully a book-length treatise, something worthy, anyway, of Ludwig’s lifelong labours. I owed it to Ludwig, I reflected, to try again, to slough off my self-defeating attitude vis-à-vis the notes, even if it made sense to shack up with Elda and let the whole business of Ludwig’s notes fall by the wayside. Hence why, by the slenderest of margins, I decided to go back to Ludwig’s wing and stay there. Elda tried to persuade me not to do so, of course. Forget Ludwig’s notes, she said. We both know that they are far too elliptical to be made any sense of. Perhaps, I said, but I owe it to Ludwig to at least try. You don’t owe anything to Ludwig, said Elda, he was a completely selfish and deluded man and would not have done the same for you if the boot were on the other foot. If anything, you owe it to me not to try and review his notes, a thankless task that will more than likely result in your going completely insane. I didn’t bother telling Elda that I was already completely insane and had been for many years. Elda’s staunch opposition to my reviewing Ludwig’s notes had blindsided me. I had expected her to say she wanted me to stay in her wing, but I had not expected her to completely undermine the whole premise of my having come to the house in Hindhead in the first place. It cast a new complexion on things and made me doubt my resolve, but it didn’t fatally undermine it. Much as I wanted to stay with Elda in her wing, I knew that my destiny was in fact to move back into Ludwig’s wing, even if I had no chance in hell, as they say, of making any sense out of Ludwig’s notes, the gnomic nature of which required an intelligence, I had to admit, that way surpassed my own, still I had a duty to try, hence why, I explained to Elda, I had no choice but to move back into Ludwig’s wing and throw myself into the task of reviewing Ludwig’s notes. Fine, but that’s it as far as we are concerned, said Elda. I said that I understood, which I did, Elda had made her position clear enough, it was her or the notes, as far as she was concerned, a dichotomy that I understood perfectly clearly and respected. I regretted my decision as soon as I was back in Ludwig’s wing. What have I done? I thought to myself in a continuous loop as I wandered from room to room, until finally settling on the armchair in the hallway, where I sat and brooded on my decision to leave Elda in her wing and to move back in, full time as it were, to Ludwig’s wing, a decision that had not been taken in haste, but which nonetheless bore all the hallmarks of hastiness, a hastiness, I thought ruefully, I now have all the time in the world to repent. It was obvious I was in no state to review the notes, but with a great effort of will I went to the study and pulled a box from the shelf and retrieved a notebook. I went back to the armchair with the notebook and started reading. After the first page, I was lost. I re-read the first page, still nothing, reread it again, maybe a glimmer of something but basically nothing. It was no good, hopeless. I went back to the study, returned the notebook to the box. It was useless, I thought, I will never be able to review the notes, no matter how hard I try or how many times I read the notes, their meaning will never yield itself to me. The truth is, I thought, I am not worthy of the notes, just as I am not worthy of Elda, my wife, my son or Ludwig’s memory. I wish I were worthy, but I’m just not, even though I have tried to be worthy, I have always singularly failed in this endeavour. It is not enough to wish or try to be worthy, I thought, being worthy is impervious to wishing and trying, is something that either happens of its own accord or doesn’t happen at all. In my case, it hasn’t happened, but in other lives it does happen. At this moment, I remembered that I was addicted to vaping, or to put it another way, I experienced a strong craving for a vape. I took my vape device out of my trouser pocket and sucked on it as if it were a dummy, it wasn’t a great simile, but it just popped into my head, as similes often did, unbidden as it were, and I felt I had to go with it, in the absence of any other similes this one would just have to do. I felt a bit better for having vaped, not much, but enough to contemplate anew the prospect of reviewing Ludwig’s notes. I might not be worthy, or have any capacity to glean the sense, of them, but I was committed now to reviewing them. There was no turning back, as they say, once one starts a task such as the reviewing of Ludwig’s notes, one must keep going, no matter the personal cost, I thought. I got off the armchair and paced up and down the hallway, vaping intermittently. At some point, an idea occurred to me, like all ideas it came from nowhere. Although it felt like I was having an idea, in fact I played no part in its formation, could take no credit for it whatsoever. That was when I started the process of typing up Ludwig’s notes on my laptop. It took me a long time, many days, weeks, possibly months. During that time, I barely ate or slept, although I did vape prodigiously. When I had the last note typed up, I submitted the file to the AI chatbot (or whatever it’s called) with the following instructions: please create a philosophical treatise from these notes. I wasn’t sure if one was supposed to preface a question with ‘please’ when submitting a request to an AI chatbot, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to be polite. Within a matter of seconds, the AI chatbot had generated a treatise entitled ‘Epistemological Uncertainty at the Margins of Reality'. Then I got the AI chatbot to translate the treatise into French and I emailed the French language version of the treatise to several French academic publishers, whereas I emailed the English language version to Elda. Within a matter of minutes, I was in my car, driving aimlessly. I was all too aware that I had failed to review the notes, much less write a treatise, but I had done the next best thing, I thought, the only thing I could realistically have done under the circumstances. I debated with myself whether I should go and see my wife, possibly my son if he was still living at home, but as usual I decided against doing so. In all likelihood, I reflected, I will never see my wife and son again. For a moment, I considered driving back to the house in Hindhead, make my amends with Elda, see if she might not be persuaded to give things another go, but then I realised that that too was a hopeless proposition. Elda had been crystal clear, it was either her or the notes and I had chosen the notes, it had been crazy to choose the notes over Elda, I thought, I was in love with her after all, and when someone is in love with someone, they don’t choose the reviewing of Ludwig’s notes over them, but that is precisely what I had done. I had throughout my life chosen to do the wrong thing in preference to the right thing, even though I had been all too aware that the choice I was making was absolutely the wrong thing to do, all the same I did so and in all likelihood, I would continue doing so, I reflected bitterly.