Read Wittgenstein Jr for Free Online Page B

hand over his face. We can’t understand what he’s saying … The overturning of nonsense … Half words, non-words, speech thickening and wandering and failing …
    And then he’s out—cold. Locked into his private hell.
    Ede googles
ketamine. Causes dissociative anaesthesia
, he reads. That means you can’t tell whether you’re dreaming or awake, he says.
Ketamine can make you feel you’ve died and come back to life
, he reads. I’m not sure Scroggins is going to come back to life, I say.
    We wave our hands in front of Scroggins’s eyes. Nothing. And he smells terrible! Has he soiled himself? Yes! Yes, he has! Scroggins is incontinent!
    Mulberry suggests administering MDMA—that’ll pick him up. Ede shakes his head. No. It’s probably best to call the authorities.
    Scroggins is groaning. A deep, abysmal groan. A gurgling in the throat. A kind of living death rattle …
    Paramedics come for Scroggins, lifting him onto a stretcher. Would anyone like to accompany him? No! The ambulance rolls off, lights flashing.
    Ede and I walk off into the night, to let our heads cool off.
    EDE: That girl! That girl! Did you see her?
    I shake my head.
    EDE (swigging from his bottle): How could you miss her, Peters? She was a dead-ringer for that Cressida—Prince Harry’s girl. You know, hippyish. Plaits. Scarf round herhips. Anyway, she’s my future wife … She’s Duchess Ede … (Another swig.) Fuck Scroggins and his emergency. I hope he fucking dies. (A third swig.) Have you ever felt you were
made for something
, Peters? That you had some greater
purpose
? That’s what I feel now: I’m made for something. It’s all becoming clear. It’s to do with that Clare College girl. It’s providence. It’s
fate
. (Fourth swig.) All the light of the world seemed to rest on her face—did you notice that, Peters?
    Ede throws the bottle over a hedge and loses his balance. Ede, flat on his back on the pavement.
    He has a faith he never knew he possessed, Ede says. He has
means
he never knew he had … He feels
taller
than he was.
    EDE (sitting up): Am I really taller, Peters?
    He’s high, he says, as I pull him to his feet. Higher than he’s ever been. And it’s not drugs. It’s life! Life! He’s never going to sleep.
    He has a sense of the future, he says. Of the
real
future, which is nothing like our present. Tomorrow will not be like today, he says. Tomorrow is going to be quite different from today …
    He’s been thrown from the track, Ede says. This is a new direction. He’s at the surf’s edge. The waves’ edge. He won’t be afraid to leave himself behind. To relearn everything. He’s going to fight against everything he does not love …
    Our College. The staircase to my rooms. Ede gives me some Zs—they’ll help you zzz, he says. Zolpidem. Zopiclone. Old friends. I swallow a handful, and stagger upstairs.
    Class in five hours, I remind myself, setting the alarm clock …

2
    Silence in the classroom.
    Mulberry’s asleep behind sunglasses. Ede’s sunk so low, his head is level with the tabletop. Alexander Kirwin looks vacantly out the window. Benedict Kirwin looks vacantly out the window. Titmuss looks vacantly out the window. Guthrie looks vacantly at Wittgenstein. Chakrabarti just looks vacant. Scroggins, usually the most vacant of all: missing.
    The
effort
of thinking. Wittgenstein stands silently in the corner of the room. He grasps his head. He shakes his head. Sweat streams from his face.
    Divine help: that’s what he needs, he says. We cannot think by ourselves, no more than we can create ourselves.
    Wittgenstein asks a general question, and waits for a reply.
    Silence.
    He asks his question again, slightly rephrasing it.
    More silence.
    He asks it for a third time.
    Still more silence.
    Okulu ventures a timorous reply. Wittgenstein waves it aside.
    Doyle says something. Not good enough!, Wittgenstein says.
    Silence, stretching out. Silence, the equivalent in time to Death Valley. To