No more Messianism, no more!, I wail to W. I've had enough, I'm finished ... Ah, but it's only then that the Messiah might arrive, W. says, when all hope is lost and you've run out of will and patience and you can't work anymore. 'Which means, in your case, almost at once.
'You've no patience, have you? You've no capacity for the long haul. You think you're going to be caught out at any moment; that it's about to come to an end. But it continues nevertheless, doesn't it? It goes on, and on and on. Did you ever think you'd get this far? That you wouldn't be found out?' W. is a scholar of much greater patience and forebearance, he says, which means the Messiah might come later for him than for me, which seems unfair.
W. reminds me of the old story of the Messiah who remains hidden with the lepers and beggars at the gate of Rome. There he was all along; but is he there? When the Rabbi stands before him to ask when he will come, what does he say? Today, if you will hear my voice. Today! Then the Messiah is here! But he is not here. There are conditions to his coming, and the leper-Messiah, who binds his wounds alongside the beggars at the gates of Rome, is not here yet.
There's a great lesson in this, W. says, but he's not sure what it is. When's the Messiah going to come? Today? Tomorrow? The tomorrow-in-today? He's not sure, W. says, but it's only when you've exhausted everything, when there's no more hope that the Messiah might appear.
Of course, I've always worn him out, W. says. He's exhausted by my apparent exhaustion; he's long since given up all hope for me. I'm hopeless, he says. I'm unredeemable. Why does he talk to me? Why does he continue with our collaboration?
Perhaps he hopes for something nonetheless, W. reflects. And perhaps it's only when he gives it up that the Messiah will arrive. Which would make me some kind of antichrist, W. surmises. A kind of living embodiment of the apocalypse.
But then, too, might he be an antichrist for me? Doesn't he listen to my wailing like an indulgent mother? Doesn't he put up with me and my parody of good faith and scholarship for year after year? We're sons of perdition, W. decides as we wonder through the shopping mall, each for the other.