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understand, and exclamation marks, meaning he’s totally lost.
    ‘So what are you reading, then? Who’s that?’ Jordan, the model, I tell him.—‘Who’s that?’ Peter André.—‘Oh yes, I like them, they’re funny’. He laughs at the pictures of grossly obese women on the next page. ‘That’s you in a few years’, he says. ‘When do you think you’re going to get as fat as that? It’s going to happen, isn’t it, the way you’re going?’
    ‘You need a man bag’, says W., and shows me his. ‘You see? You can fit everything into it. Everything and anything’. His bag sits on his hip, and hangs from a leather strap round his shoulders. He decides we should spend the day before the conference looking for a man bag for me.—‘You need to smarten up’. Rucksacks won’t do. Man bags are the thing.—‘And you should get rid of that jacket’.
    ‘So, what have you got in your rucksack?’, W. asks. ‘Go on, show me, I could do with a laugh’. I take out another gossip magazine, and then another. He gasps in horror.—‘My God, there’s no hope for you’.
    Then some snacks. Nuts, first of all.—‘What kind of nuts are those? Can I have some?’ Then popcorn.—‘Popcorn? No wonder you’re getting fat’. Then pretzels.—‘Where do you think you’re going? Up Everest?’ Then a book.—‘Load of shit! You read too much secondary stuff’. Then my notebook. W. is very pleased with this.—‘Let’s have a look’.
    He flips through the pages. Drawings of cocks, of monkey butlers. He’d taken it from me at a presentation in order to formulate his Hebrew question before he asked it.—‘Ah, my Hebrew question! My finest hour!’ He’d quoted from the book of Genesis from memory, in Hebrew, like a real scholar, we both remember that. Something about the tohu vavohu , wasn’t that it?—‘The tohu vavohu ’, says W., ‘exactly’.
    Then he tosses the notebook aside.—‘So, what thoughts have you had? Tell me. I need entertaining’.
    We read the papers. Our stomachs hurt. A few days in my company, says W., and he feels iller than he’s ever felt.—‘Drunk and then ill. Drunk and then ill … That’s your life, isn’t it? How do you do it? How can you live like this?’
    What has he got in his man bag?, I ask W.—‘I’ll show you’. He places a large notebook on the desk. In the front, he says, he writes the ideas of others in black ink, and in the back, in red ink, he develops his own ideas.
    How many ideas has he had? He opens the notebook for me.—‘Mmm. Quite a few’.—‘Can I copy some out?’ W. says I can. A book must produce more thought than it itself has , I write. The messianic is the conjunction of time and politics , I write. And the best one, It might be better to speak of a negative eschatology. Anticipation of the future as disaster —I copy that out, too.
    Are those ideas?, I ask him. They’re on the way to ideas, W. says. W. asks to see my notes.—‘What’s this drawing of a cock supposed to mean?’
    Next, W. takes out The Star of Redemption.— ‘I don’t understand a word. Not—a—word. I don’t suppose you can help me, either’. Next, he sets down a packet of moisturising wipes. What else?—‘Nothing else. But I’ve got room for everything in my man bag’. I tell W. his man bag is very continental.—‘Oh yes, I’ll bet Rosenzweig had one. And Kafka’.
    Before beginning to give our collaborative presentations, W. and I always dab our wrists and then the skin behind our ears with moisturising wipes. It calms you down, W. says. It prepares you for the task ahead. He takes his wipes everywhere with him.—‘I learned it from Sal. You see—this is what women can teach you’.
    They were handy when we were travelling across Poland. We sat there with flushed faces until W. got his tissues out.—‘Dab your wrists, where women put on perfume, and then behind your ears’, W. told us, giving out tissues. Suddenly a marvellous coolness