It's empty time that I fear, W. remembers my telling him, it's always struck him. Empty time, he says - he's rarely heard me speak so movingly on any topic. Of course, it's all to do with my fear of unemployment, he knows that. That's always been my real fear, W. says, which goes back, no doubt, to my warehouse years.
W. has often talked of using my account of my warehouse years as an example in one of his philosophical essays. He's often urged me to write it up, to present it to him as a text he might use in some way. Whenever he thinks about the great questions of philosophy, W. says, he always has my warehouse years in the back of his mind. He knows they are relevant in some way, but how? He hasn't worked that out yet, W. says.
W. has always admired my working class credentials, he says, which are far better than his. When he thinks of me leaving school and working in the warehouse, he is invariably moved and feels the great urge to protect and encourage me. How long were you there?, he asks me, and when I tell him, he gasps. That long! And what did you do there?, he asks, and when I tell him he's amazed.
Best of all, he says, are my accounts of reading in the warehouse: of the flight of stairs that led up to the roof and no one ever used, and where I went as I began to read my way through the library, W. says. What was the book I started with?, he asks. Oh yes: The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, he could never forget that. I began with The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, W. says, and read my way up to Kafka: how was that possible?
W. began with Kafka, of course, he says. He remembers it very clearly, his first encounter with the Schocken editions of Kafka in his school library ('we had a school library', he says, 'unlike you'). They had yellow dustcovers, W. says. Why was he attracted by that colour, he'll never know. But there it was: The Castle. The gates of literature opened to enclose him.
The Castle, W. says. He didn't have to mouth those letters to himself to understand them, W. says. He could actually read, unlike me. He didn't have to wrinkle his brow and mouth the letters out loud.
Ah, his intellectual awakening! Sometimes, W. thinks The Castle took him on an entirely wrong turn. The fatal lure of literature: wasn't that where it began to go wrong?
Of course, he immediately wanted to become a writer, which was a disaster. But then he could form letters, W. says, unlike me. He could actually write a coherent sentence, a task of which I am still incapable, W. says. It was worse, much worse in my case, W. says. It led to all my hopes and dreams, and the perpetual dashing of my hopes and dreams.
But still, says W., he remains infinitely moved by the mental image of my sitting on the stairs that led up to the roof, The Mammoth Book of Fantasy already long behind me. He remains immeasurably moved by the image of the ape-child who sat on the stairs, mouthing the letters T-H-E C-A-S-T-L-E to himself.