Lars Iyer - Spurious

• Название: Spurious
• Автор: Lars Iyer
• Издательство: Melville House
• Жанр: Современная проза
• Год: 2011

In a raucous debut that summons up Britain's fabled Goon Squad comedies, writer and philosopher Lars Iyer tells the story of someone very like himself with a "slightly more successful" friend and their journeys in search of more palatable literary conferences and better gin. One reason for their journeys: the narrator's home is slowly being taken over by a fungus that no one seems to know what to do about.

Before it completely swallows his house, the narrator feels compelled to solve some major philosophical questions (such as "Why?") and the meaning of his urge to write, as well as the source of the fungus… before it is too late. Or, he has to move.

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W. remembers the elasticated trousers of the American professors he’s met. There was a whole herd of them, he says, like walruses on a beach, all with elasticated trousers. That’s what you’ll be wearing soon, says W., great billowing trousers with trouser legs like circus tents.

Food is a sacrament, W. has always believed, which is another reason he thinks I am so disgusting. I have no sense of food, he says, I could be eating anything. For a long time, he remembers, I lived only on discounted sandwiches from Boots, 75p a packet.

He remembers me telling him of my circumambulations of town in search of discounted sandwiches. My great circumambulations, W. says, taking in every possible shop that sold stale, discounted sandwiches.

For a long time, W. remembers, I ate only gingerbread men, five a day. I would buy a packet of five stale gingerbread men from the discount bakery and a fourpack of own-branded supermarket lager from Kwik Save, the very worst.

‘No wonder you were always ill’, W. says. ‘No wonder you were always complaining about your stomach’. Of course, I was poor then, W. concedes, but that was no excuse.

Gluttony has always appalled W., who has a small and delicate appetite. He always undertakes special measures when I come to visit him, to make sure there’s enough food in the house. It was part of the reason he bought his new fridge, W, says. — ‘You’re greedy, greedy!’

When I text from the airport to tell him I’ve arrived, he opens a bottle of Chablis or Cava and puts the glasses on the table, and then unwraps a block of Emmenthal and brings out his sliced meats, along with olive oil and relishes. He’ll offer bread, which he will have made himself, and slices of smoked salmon.

‘Only the best!’, says W. ‘Only the best for my friends!’ Food’s a gift, W. says, the greatest of gifts, which I desecrate every time I visit him.

A little later. — ‘Food is for the other’, W. announces. ‘It’s a gift’. He lays out slices of Emmenthal and cold meat. — ‘You’re the other’, he says, ‘so I have to feed you’. From your own mouth? — ‘That’s what Levinas says’. W. opens his mouth. — ‘Do you want some? Do you?’

Sometimes, I remind him, W. likes to explain things about me to other people like an indulgent mother. — ‘The thing about Lars is …’, he’ll begin. Or: ‘What you have to understand about Lars is …’ And best of all, when he’s feeling very tender, ‘What I love about Lars is …’ Is that it, then? I ask W., do you love me? — ‘Yes, I love you’, says W. ‘You see, I can talk about love. I can express my feelings. Not like you’.

I keep a mental list of W.’s favourite questions, which he constantly asks me so as to ask himself. — ‘At what point did you realise that you would amount to nothing?’; ‘When was it that you first became aware you would be nothing but a failure?’; ‘When you look back at your life, what do you see?’; ‘How is it that you know what greatness is, and that you will never, ever reach it?’

‘What does it mean to you that your life has amounted to nothing? W. asks me with great seriousness. And then, ‘Why have your friends never made you greater?’ This is W.’s great fantasy, he admits: a group of friends who could make one another think. Do I make him think? I ask him. — ‘No! The opposite! You’re an idiot!’

Then: ‘What do you consider to be your greatest weakness?’ W. answers for me: ‘Never having come to terms with your lack of ability. Because you haven’t, have you? Have you?’

I ask him what is most distorted about his understanding of the world. — ‘I have this fantasy of being part of a community, and this prevents my individual action’. And then, dolefully, ‘I don’t work hard enough’. But he works night and day, I tell him. — ‘Oh compared to you, I work. Compared to you, we’re all busy’.

‘What time did you get up to work this morning?’, says W. Five. — ‘I was up at four. At four!’, W. says. But he laments the fact that he watches television in the evenings. He used to work in the evenings, he says. In fact, he worked all the time. A room with a bed and a desk and his books, that’s all. — ‘That was my peak’, he says. ‘When are you going to peak? Are you peaking now? Is this it?’

W. admires my adamantine apocalypticism, he says. It’s very cold and pure, he says, like the sky on a winter morning. — ‘Your sense of the apocalypse is absolute’, he says, ‘you’re sure of it’. He’s not sure of it, he says. He still believes something could save us, though he also knows nothing will save us. He knows nothing will save us, but he feels something will save us, that’s the thing.

That’s his messianism, W. says. But there’s no messianism in me whatsoever, W. acknowledges. I’m far beyond that. Some process has completed itself in me, he says. Something, a whole history has been brought to an end.

How long has he been reading Rosenzweig? W wonders. It’s like rain hitting a tin roof, he says. Nothing goes in. It makes no impression. But at least he does read; at least there is the steady rhythm of his non-understanding as it beats against his intelligence. He knows his limits, W. says, because they are constantly tested. He has a sense of what he does not know.

What’s he working on, and why is he bothering? W. asks himself. What does it matter? Why does he read these books that are too hard for him? Why does he batter himself against the wall of mathematics? What difference does it make? What’s it all for? Who could he possibly influence or persuade?

And finally, who will listen to him but me, who has no idea what he is talking about, and can only regard the work of Rosenzweig and Cohen with the awe of an ape before the thundering power of a waterfall? — ‘What can it possibly mean to you?’, says W. That’s what makes it even worse: the only person paying attention to him, says W., is the one least capable of understanding anything he says.

But then too, W. says, he doesn’t really understand Rosenzweig and Cohen either, and he too can only hoot and point like an ape at their mighty oeuvres.

Yesterday, I tell W., the workmen came and took the ceiling down and fitted new joists next to the old, rotten ones. Then they hammered boards over the joists. But it makes no difference: the walls are still wet.

‘It’s what will happen if you lay plaster on wet brick’, the Loss Adjuster told me, looking at the discoloured walls of the kitchen, deep brown and rich green. — ‘It’s very porous’, she said of the new plaster. ‘That’s why the damp spread so quickly’.

‘Your bathroom’s okay’, she said, ‘but we’ll have to dry out your wall. Everything’ll have to come out. We might have to replace the cupboards, too. And you’ll have to empty them. And we’ll need the washing machine out’. Looking up at the ceiling she said, ‘I’m surprised the washing machine from upstairs hasn’t come right through. The joists are completely rotten’.

She warned me I wouldn’t be able to cook, I tell W. Never mind! I said, and meant it. For months, I said, there was no electricity in the kitchen. Nothing worked; I couldn’t cook, even if I wanted to. For months! Because of the damp! Because the electricity was affected by the damp! In the end, I had to get the kitchen rewired. — ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’, said the electrician. Not even in an old house? — ‘Never’, he said.

W. always flails about when he has to do administrative work. He pings me obscenities and shaky drawings of cocks. He rings me up and asks me how much I’ve eaten. This seems to calm him.

I always exaggerate. I’ve eaten too much, I tell him, far too much! — ‘Go on, tell me, what’ve you eaten?’ I tell him he’s a feeder. — ‘Go on, tell me’, says W., getting excited. ‘How fat are you now?’

All jobs are becoming the same, W. observes. We’re all administrators now, all of us. What do any of us do but administer? We administer and prevaricate about administration. Work time is either administration time or prevaricating about administration time, which occupies an enormous part of W.’s day, he says.

He doesn’t know how I just get on with it, he says. He’s always marvelled at it: my ability to launch myself into administration, to get to work early, to sit at my desk and begin. It’s incredible, W. says, though it also indicates there’s something very wrong with me. There’s something wrong with my soul, he says.

For his part, W’s given to endless prevarication. He can never make a start, no matter how early he gets in. He stares out of the office window instead, W. says. He makes himself some tea, he says, and sips at it amongst the great parcels of books that get sent to him for review.

His life is absurd, says W. It’s a living absurdity, and mine is no better, although I have the strange capacity to just get on with it. Where does it come from? W. wonders. Who am I trying to please?

I always feel the world’s about to end, that’s what W. likes about me, he says. I always think I’m about to be found out and shot. I want to lick the gun I think is pointed towards me, he says, which is why I’m such a good administrator.

But this apocalypticism is the reason I’ve succeeded to the extent that I have, W. reflects. Whereas I’m all apocalypticism, W. says, he’s all messianism: he’s always full of joy and serene indifference to the world. What I suffer, he laughs at as the most extreme folly.

It’s all mad, he says. The world went mad some time ago. — ‘But you take it too seriously’, he says. In the end, I want only to be spoken to gently and soothingly like a wounded animal, a dog run over at the side of the road. — ‘But that’s how they talk when they’re about to shoot you’, W. says. ‘And they are going to shoot you, no matter how much you lick the barrel’.

Perhaps I want to be shot, W. muses. Perhaps that would be the kindest thing that could be done for me. But he has an application to write, that’s why he’s phoning me, he says. He’s applying for a job in Canada, he says. He needs motivation. — ‘Give me a sense of urgency’, he says. ‘Give me a sense the world’s about to end’.

Even now, despite everything, W. dreams of Canada. Everything would be okay if he got there, W. says. He could start again in Canada, begin a new life. Imagine it! W. in Canada, close to the wilderness as everyone in Canada is close to the wilderness, W. peaceable and calm as everyone in Canada is peaceable and calm. He would be a different kind of man, says W., a better one.

Ah, Canada, with its pristine blue lakes and bear-filled wilderness! Of course, W. is Canadian, and his Canada is not a fantasy. It’s based on his own childhood by the great blue lakes and on the edge of the wilderness, and alongside the open-hearted Canadians.

They had a big house, he remembers, and went swimming every day. They were happier then. Once he showed me a photograph: a happy family, by a big house, with pine trees behind, and a big blue lake to swim in. And who are those people? I ask him. Canadians, says W., open-hearted Canadians.

Moving back to England was the disaster, says W. Wolverhampton of all places! England’s bad enough, but Wolverhampton! He shows me pictures of himself in school uniform. It had all gone wrong by then, says W., can’t I see it in his eyes? I can see it. Ever since then, says W., he’s dreamt of getting back to Canada.

It’s not impossible, he says. His sister’s made it. She’s a Canadian now. Or perhaps it’s impossible for him, and for the likes of us. — ‘It would be impossible for you in particular’, he tells me. ‘The Canadians wouldn’t put up with you for a moment’. Canada! It’s a big country, unlike England, says W. And cheap, too — he was there a couple of years ago on holiday, and was amazed. It’s cheap, and the people are open-hearted. — ‘Not like the English’, he says.

Children rap on his windows as we talk. What do they want? — ‘Ignore them! Close the shutters!’, he says, and we sit in darkness with our gin. Are there feral children in Canada? I ask W. He doesn’t think so. It has a good social security system, he says, and an egalitarian attitude. They pay well, too. Salaries are high. Canadians enjoy a high standard of living, with their blue, pure lakes and the great tracts of wilderness.

Would the cold bother him? I ask W, who always moans he’s cold. It’s not a wet cold like over here, says W. It’s a dry cold, completely different. It doesn’t feel anything like as bad. And it’s not as depressing. You don’t get wave after wave of Westerlies coming in from the Atlantic. In England, we’re battered by Westerlies, says W., but in Canada, the weather is as pure and simple as the lakes and the open-hearted people.

What about the bears — wouldn’t they frighten him? I ask W., who is not a brave man. There are ways of dealing with bears, W. assures me. The Canadians issue pamphlets on the matter. They probably keep things in the back of their cars to scare them off. Bear-frightening devices. Wouldn’t he have to learn to drive in Canada? I ask W. It’s a big country after all, and there are miles of wilderness to negotiate. W. admits he might have to. He’d take lessons, he says. That would be part of his new life.

And what if he broke down? I ask W. He’d have to learn some basic car maintenance, W. admits, for the Canadian wilderness. But he’s practical, he says, and would pick it up quickly, not like me. — ‘You wouldn’t last a minute in Canada’, he says.

Every year, I write long and elaborate letters to places of employment in Canada on behalf of W. I write of him as the finest thinker of his generation, or as the thinker surest to mark the age with his name. I take dictation from W., who speaks of his commanding presence and his extreme intelligence. He is a thought-god, says W., no don’t write that down. He is the best of the best of the best, says W., don’t write that down either.

But we hear nothing from the Canadians. They remain silent and distant, as remote as Martians. To console ourselves, we imagine the endless plains of the Yukon. The Canadians are busy in the wilderness, we decide. They’re boating on their many lakes or hiking through their many woods. They’re an outdoor people, we decide, and not given to replying to letters of absurd overpraise.

We’ve never liked crossing roads. Now the bridge by the station has come down, we have to run across the road in a blind fury, me with my rucksack, W. with his man bag, pausing only on the bush-covered verge between the two lanes.

We push our way through the bushes. We’re halfway! But we still have half a dual carriageway to cross. It’s fearsome! We pause for a moment and then run like idiots, heads down and in fear of our lives to the other side of the road.