Every conversation can be driven towards the apocalyptic, W. says, the shared sense that it's all at an end, it's all finished. He loves nothing better than conversations of this kind, W. says, when everything's at stake, when everything that could be said is said.
That's when Messianism begins, W. says. You have to wear out speech, to run it down. And then? And then, W. says, inanity begins, reckless inanity. The whole night opens up. You have to drink a great deal to get there. It's an art. The Poles have it, W. says. They understand what it is to drink through the whole night. And that's what the Hungarians are doing in the bars in Bela Tarr films, W. says. Steadily, patiently, they're drinking their way through the night.
All drunks have something of the Messiah about them, W. says. They speak a lot, for one thing. They feel they're on the verge of something, some great truth. He does when he speaks, W. says. Once he starts drinking, says W., he can never stop, it's quite impossible. It's because of the faith it gives him, says W. It's because of what drinking opens: the whole night, the apocalypse, but also the patience to get through the apocalypse, to dream of the twenty-second century, or the twenty-third, when things might get better again.
You can't be alone to experience the Messiah, W. says. Not really. And you can't be sober. The Messiah is drunk, says W. Or he's what drunkenness allows. He's what you become when you're drunk and what I become. Anyone can be the Messiah when he's drunk, W. says. But of course, it all depends on a relation, W. says, a kind of reaching out. He's not the Messiah for himself, W. says, just as I am not the Messiah for myself. He's the Messiah for me, and I'm the Messiah for him. Do you think of me as the Messiah?, W. asks. Well, you should.
We have to live two lives, says W., one turned to the world and to the horror of the world, and one turned to our friends. Two lives! One turned to the apocalypse and the other to the Messiah, which is another name for the friend, but only the drunken friend, only the one with whom the night opens and the future opens even beyond the twenty-second century or the twenty-third ...
Eternity in time, that's the Messiah, W. says. Have you any idea what that means? Sometimes W. does, he says. When he's very, very drunk and just about to pass out. Of course, by then it's too late, much too late ...