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might.
    MULBERRY: Surely you either believe in God or you don’t.
    WITTGENSTEIN: Perhaps it is not a question of belief. Perhaps the concept of God is not the kind of thing in which one can believe or disbelieve.
    DOYLE: You mean religion is a
cultural
thing? That it’s all about belonging to a tradition?
    Silence.
    WITTGENSTEIN: A despairing man cries,
O God
, and rolls his eyes up to heaven. It is on that basis we should understand both the words
God
and
heaven
. A despairing man cries,
I am damned
, and falls, weeping, to the ground. It is on that basis we should understand both the words
damnation
and
Hell
.
    The concept of God is used to express an
extremity of wretchedness, suffering, and doubt
, he says. Really, religion is only for the wretched. That’s why we, who know nothing of wretchedness, know nothing of religion. And that’s why we, who never feel ourselves to be wretched, know nothing of philosophy, either.
    A painting of St Michael, weighing souls in his scales. Of St Christopher, crossing a great river with the infant Christ on his shoulder.
    Titmuss’s phone goes off (who else would have a
Govinda Jaya Jaya
ringtone?). He fumbles through his pockets.
    Come, let’s go, Wittgenstein says. We shouldn’t wake the church. The church is dreaming. The church is falling through the centuries. The church doesn’t want to be woken up. It doesn’t want us here.
    Trumpington Street. A sudden shower. Rain, falling heavily. We shelter in the museum porch, watching the water splash from the gutters.
    TITMUSS: It’s like an Indian monsoon. The weather’s gone weird.
    EDE: The world’s ending.
    MULBERRY: And Cambridge will be the first to go under. Cambridge and Cambridgeshire and East Anglia … The North Sea will reclaim it all.
    EDE: You seem pleased.
    MULBERRY: Oh, I can’t
wait
for the world to end!
    Rain pours from the mouths of the gargoyles. Chained monkeys … A drowning monk … A faceless figure with a snake in its mouth …
    WITTGENSTEIN: Do you know why God sent the Flood? Men spilled their seed on trees and stones. They copulated with beasts. And the greater beasts copulated with lesser beasts—the dog, with the rat; the cock, with the peahen. (A pause.) So God
reversed
the act of creation, unleashing the sea he had once sealed up, allowing the waters of the deep to sweep over the land.
    TITMUSS (quietly): Far out, man.
    MULBERRY (quieter still): You’re a fucking hippie, Titmuss.
    • • •
    Inside the Fitzwilliam, sheltering from the rain.
    His brother thought of himself as a kind of
Noah
, Wittgenstein says, as we wander among the exhibits.
    Logic is what guards against the Flood, his brother said. Against the annulment of order. Against the destruction of goodness.
    Noah sought a sanctuary on the face of the abyss
, his brother wrote in his notebooks.
And isn’t that what I am seeking: a sanctuary on the face of the abyss?
    As love is stronger than death, so is logic stronger than chaos
, his brother wrote in his notebooks.
In the storm of the world, the ark of my thought will anchor on the mountain of certainty
.
    Guy Fawkes’. Midnight, after the pubs close. Mulberry’s annual
derangement of the senses
house party.
    Coats in the front room. DJ in the living room. Dealer in the dining room, showing his wares: MDMA, ‘Miaow Miaow’, and a mystery powder he can’t identify. An
amusebouche
, he says—a free snort for anyone who buys …
    The kitchen. Dozens of cans of beer, wine. A jam-tub full of punch, with floating cherries and slices of banana. Stacks of plastic cups wrapped in cellophane.
    The first bedroom upstairs. Very grand, with sanded floorboards and tall sash windows looking out onto the street. The marijuana zone. Posters: Che in his beret, Bob Marley in Rasta colours. We join the smoking circle.
    Conversation is dopey, making Ede impatient. Where are the Clare College girls Mulberry promised? Ede needs girls!
    EDE: Have you ever been in love, Peters? I