Fog descends as we head back to the campus. It's as thick as the cloud on Mount Sinai, when Moses went up to meet God. He descended with the Tablets of Law, but what will we bring back with us?
We're lost, hopelessly lost. Our kidnapped speaker's worried. What about the conference meal? He's supposed to be sitting at the high table. — 'Never mind the high table!', W. says. Our speaker's too full of sausage and mash to be able to eat anything else, for one thing. — 'You had a real appetite!', W. says to him, impressed.
Where are we going? It's a very verdant campus, we agree. Very lush. The Thames Valley's known for its humidity, I tell them. It's very bad for asthmatics. I developed asthma when my family moved out here. And eczema. – ‘And scrofula’, W. says.
In the thick darkness: that's where God was waiting for Moses, W. says. That's how God appears to the mystic, Gregory of Nyssa said. The mystic receives a dark vision of God. But what do we see? Not God, at any rate. Barely even each other! It's a real pea-souper, we agree, speaking like the commoners in Brief Encounter. Cor blimey, guv’nor.
Our speaker says he feels unwell. He feels unwell! What have we done to him?, we wonder. How can we make reparation?
It's our duty to talk, we know that. We need to settle his nerves, our kidnapped plenary speaker. We need to settle his stomach! So we tell him of our Kierkegaard project, of our collaborative endeavour, for which we are constructing an elaborate dossier. We tell him about the intimate link we expect to discover between Kierkegaard and contemporary capitalism, about the Danish philosopher's despair and our despair.
Despair is everywhere, W. says. – ‘Even monkey boy feels it’, W. says, nodding at me. ‘He’s full of despair, monkey boy, though he doesn’t really understand why’. Still, perhaps our researches will help me grasp my despair for what it is, W. says to our speaker. Perhaps I’ll learn its real cause – which is to say, not simply its proximate cause.
Oh, I feel a great deal, he’ll give me that, W. says to our plenary speaker. – ‘Look at him, monkey boy, full of pathos!’ My eyes are always ready to brim with tears, W. says. But when it comes to thought ... When it comes to thinking from my despair, out of it …
Silence. We’ll need to say something else! Religion! What does our speaker think about religion?, W. wants to know. Does he, like W., have a sense of the urgency of the question of religion? Our speaker says he has no particular thoughts about religion. What about despair, then? What does he think about despair?
Silence again. Do we drink?, our speaker asks us. He drinks, our speaker says. He drinks every night. Do we drink?: we muse, separately considering the speaker’s question. Of course we drink! Whatever can he mean, Do we drink? What kind of question is that? What are we being asked?
We probably have no idea of what drinking means, we think to ourselves. Do we drink?, we wonder. Have we ever drunk? Ah, but what do we know of drinking, and what could we know?, W. and I think to ourselves. And about despair, about religion: what could we know about those topics, either?
Our speaker falls back into silence. All three of us are silent, as the fog grows thicker. – ‘Marx and Kierkegaard’, W. says finally, to fill the silence. ‘We intend to think the conjunction of Marx and Kierkegaard’, W. says. ‘They were both born in the same year, you know’, W. says to our speaker.
He’s feeling really ill now, our speaker, that much is clear, we think to ourselves. What will we do? The fog's thickening. We need to stay close! To keep a head count! And it's darkening, too. Are we really going to meet our God? Do you think we'll receive the Tablets of Law? — 'Go on, say something profound', W. says to our kidnapped speaker.