The World as I Found It

by Bruce Duffy

  There was much pain to undo by the time Russell finally tiptoed up to Miss Marmer’s room. It was better sex than they’d had in weeks. Whatever else, it gave Russell a huge and priapic pleasure to be having his while his old rival lay snoring away in the next room.

  And having had good sex the night before, Russell felt he could be more conciliatory with Max this morning, saying, I’m sorry for having angered you last night. Truly, I didn’t mean to.

  Max’s forearms were resting across the table. Still chewing, he passed this off with an indistinct smile. Last night I was in anger, he said. Not today. Ludwig and me, we talked outside, in the dark. This does for me good. I know I have anger. This is bad, I know. I work hard to stop my anger, but still it comes. Max shrugged. There it is.

  Russell said abruptly, I do want to pay you for your work today. Let me at least give you something.

  No, please — Max spread his flattened palm across the table. This is good between us. I need no money.

  Russell smiled. Have children and you will.

  This was more tail pulling, and Max knew it. Russell could see Max’s rising anger, and as he turned, he was smiling just as he had two hours earlier when he crept past Moore’s door.

  After Russell had drunk his tea, he woke the Moores. Then he went into the study, where Dora was spending a few minutes with John and Kate.

  It was a relatively new ritual, this fifteen-minute family gathering every morning. Fifteen minutes a day wasn’t long for a family to have together, but for the school’s other children, it was a major show of favoritism. Russell and Dora were keenly aware of this, but they felt that for the present the potential damage from inattention far outweighed the passing frictions that John and Kate would suffer at the hands of their envious schoolmates.

  From almost the day Beacon Hill had opened in 1927, the Russells, as a family, had been hostage to these pressures. In fact, the constraints that the school would place on family life was probably the drawback that Russell and Dora had least considered in their decision to open the school. But if Russell and Dora were ill prepared for this, John and Kate were that much less so. Having spent their first years in quite ordinary and happy family life, they suddenly found themselves having to share their parents like toys or clothes or any other of the school’s semicommunal property. As the elder, John had been the first to feel it, realizing that if he was shown any favor, or even the hint of it, he would sorely pay for it. And of course it was something to live down anyway, like being the preacher’s son. It wasn’t much better for Kate, and since there was no fighting it, the two children retreated, vainly trying to be anonymous. It was an impossible position. They felt encased in bubbles, not quite Russells and not quite children in a place that was not quite their home nor even quite their school — at least in the sense that it was a school for the other children. It wasn’t fair. The other children could escape. They could spend the holidays in a home that was really a home and not a school as well. Not John and Kate. Like cast-off toys, they had to remain behind during the holidays, sleeping in rooms suddenly full of empty beds and eating at a long dinner table with two people who were suddenly not just “Dora” and “Bertrand” but “Mummy” and “Daddy.”

  These were not the only pressures. Even if Beacon Hill had robbed them of their parents, John and Kate felt responsible to the school in ways that the other children did not. For one thing, they were both acutely conscious of money, which there was never enough of. And they were even more conscious of time, which, like money, their parents never had either. Still, if the school was a thief and an intruder, it was at least familiar. Before this baby came along, money, time and rival children had been the threat, but now it was something else — something to do with love, or split love. The children didn’t analyze it; they simply felt it, a sense of abandonment and insecurity that was not much different from what their parents felt, with life crumbling around them. For all of them, this crisis manifested itself as a lack of love, yet this was largely an illusion. The problem was not the lack of love but rather the confusion of too much pent-up, twisted love contesting at once, so that everything was thwarted and disguised. Their parents were drawing apart, and in the process they were pulling the children apart as well. To the children, it simply felt like another kind of belt tightening, as at the dinner table, where, as a matter of economy, they could spread their bread with either butter or jam but not both. Not both.

  Russell was the biggest loser in this game. Dora was pregnant and sick — she had their sympathy. All he was doing, though, was leaving for America. Kate, in her hidden way, was taking it especially hard. No longer was she Daddy’s girl — now she was Mummy’s girl, all wrapped up in the baby, wishing, in a way, that she were the baby, bundled under her mother’s loose Russian peasant smock. Intellectually, Russell understood this. He knew all too well how children shunt back and forth in their loyalties and affections, but now he was abnormally sensitive. John especially felt the pressure of his need. As his sister went over to his mother, the boy, like one in a sharply heeling sailboat, leaned to the other side. But most of all, John was simply withdrawing, edging away into himself even as his parents pressed closer, increasingly smothering and insecure.

  Dora and Russell were blind to their vying. Almost against their wills or better judgment, they both played the game, seeing who the children most gravitated to — who they asked first, hugged harder, seemed the gladder to see.

  Dora had beaten him there that morning. She was sitting on the sofa with Kate — Mummy and Kate and Baby. Kate, with her hand on Dora’s stomach, was monitoring the baby. Entering the room, chirping with all the overanimation of guilt, Russell said, Kate-Kate-Kate! He gave the girl a kiss, then made a perfunctory peck at Dora. Kate, preoccupied, exclaimed, Mummy, I felt him kick. He’s kicking more. I’m sure it’s a boy. A girl would never kick so much, do you think?

  Russell had no appetite for this. Ceding Kate to Dora this morning, he went over to John. But his approach was all wrong, too needy and sudden. The boy was terribly slow to wake — Russell should have known better than to expect much from him at this early hour. John’s face was pale, and his dark hair was matted to one side. Sleepily, the boy was checking his little bag for the trip they were taking down the coast that morning. Russell was speaking to him — at him — about the mysteries surrounding the Long Man, the ancient 231-foot figure outlined in chalk on Windover Hill, where they would be going that afternoon. The boy had already seen the Long Man. He’d seen him several times. But still Russell rattled on, outlining the various theories about the figure, until he broke off, realizing that John was only half listening.

  It was always like this before he went on a trip, only now it was worse. For weeks Russell had felt the children shrinking from him. Harder still, Russell felt himself running out of time to atone for his leaving, which John and Kate saw as part of a broader desertion. The children loved the beach, so in his desperation that morning Russell upped the ante, telling John and Kate that he would take them to the beach the next day with the Moores and Mr. Wittgenstein.

  In ordinary circumstances, John in particular would have been overjoyed at this. Now he hardly seemed to notice. He just turned to his mother and said, Mummy, will you please …

  That was all it took. For Russell, it didn’t matter what the boy asked; what mattered was that he had asked Dora and not him. That was it — Dora’s match, her fourth in as many days.

  Max was hard at work under the sink, thrusting and grunting, when Russell returned to the kitchen to get more tea. The floor shook. He saw Max’s gaping thighs, then the big red wrench as the frozen steel fittings shrieked and gave way.

  Russell fled upstairs, but that was no better. At the top of the stairs, he heard loud accusations. It was Miss Marmer. She was shouting, shouting at Lily. But the unbelievable thing was that Lily was shouting back — shouting tearfully but shouting just the same. Russell was too late to tell what it was about. The door burst open, and Li
ly shot past him, down the stairs. Then Miss Marmer flew out, looking as if the girl had flung a bedpan in her face. Miss Marmer was even more furious when she saw him standing there. Russell had barely opened his mouth when she cut him off.

  This is my affair, not yours! Every time I see you, you’re mooning about, sniffing after her. Now stand off!

  Loaded with fifteen children and five teachers, the old red bus, salt-eaten and bug-eyed, left at nine for their day trip. Miss Marmer was in charge. She was also taking personal charge of Rabe, who looked quite chastened, all but shackled beside her in the front seat, directly behind the driver.

  It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, with a good clearing breeze blowing in from the sea. Russell and Dora and the other teachers were there to wave good-bye as the merry bus pulled away. The children waved and called back, excited that there would be singing and bathing and a promised stop for ice cream, a rarity at that nutrition-conscious school. But where was Lily? Russell heard one of the teachers ask. Probably off sulking somewhere, or cowering, he thought. Russell was certainly glad he wasn’t on that bus.

  Standing over in the garden, Dorothy and Moore watched the old bus lumber off. Dorothy was off herself for a day’s birding. They were an incongruous pair, Moore in his ill-fitting morning suit, as prescribed for Vivas, and Dorothy in her old green skirt, walking shoes and oat straw hat. She was well equipped for the day, with binoculars, canteen and the wicker creel containing her lunch and other gear. She was glad to be getting away. She and Moore had heard the commotion upstairs between the young teacher and Miss Marmer. They had also seen the strain of Russell’s forced gaiety at breakfast.

  Giving Moore his instructions for the day, Dorothy said, All right, now don’t be getting too heated in discussion. And don’t let Bertie get under your skin. We’ve another day here, remember.

  She kissed him and started off resolutely, burrs already sticking to her socks. Moore called back, You be careful yourself. Not to twist an ankle or something. Have you your whistle?

  I have mine, replied Dorothy with a cagey smile. Have you yours?

  Colloquy

  IT WAS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION that the two examiners would give the candidate his doctorate, but they weren’t letting him off the hook that easily.

  Promptly at nine, the Viva convened in Russell’s office, where the examiners were at first quite jovial, hazing the candidate for not having worn the prescribed morning suit.

  Mr. Wittgenstein, said Russell imperiously. We note that you are improperly attired. Do you fancy, sir, that this is an examination for a paper-hanger’s permit? Taking his cue, Moore leaned toward the candidate, saying in an anxious stage whisper, I could lend you a tie. It would vastly help your chances.

  But these frivolities soon ended and then, inevitably, the bickering started, with the two examiners squabbling about who would ask the first question.

  You’re the professor, said Russell to Moore with a dry smile.

  True, said Moore with a nod. But it was you, Dr. Russell, who guided Mr. Wittgenstein’s early work.

  Oh, come now, said Russell, turning a shade obstinate. I thought I was merely the poor bloke you asked to look on.

  Here Moore detected a faint note of challenge in his tone, as if Russell wanted to prove his long-standing claim that he, Moore, had never understood Wittgenstein’s early ideas, much less this new work.

  Very well, said Moore, the color rising in his cheeks. I will start. So saying, Moore composed his thoughts for a moment, then began:

  Mr. Wittgenstein, I find your early work admirable in its attempt to achieve a synoptic view of all that we know, and, equally important, of all that we cannot know. This you do by inscribing, as it were, an arc defining the relative limits of things: knowledge, consciousness, language, the world. In the Tractatus in particular you attempt an ascent of the absolute, and yet you do this with profound humility before the limits of what you say that human understanding will never penetrate or surpass. You say that what we cannot meaningfully speak about we must pass over in silence. You say the meaning of the world must lie outside of the world. What is curious, though, is that you yourself step outside this limit to speak of things that, as you say, are beyond the scope of logic or intelligible speech — things such as ethics, eternity, God, the mystical. In your book, Mr. Wittgenstein, you move from a state of natural facts within the world to arrangements of those facts as depicted through concatenations of language, which is undergirded by logic, or what you beautifully refer to in almost Homeric style as the Great Mirror. This mirror — logic — in turn, reflects the underlying structure of the world, just as it mirrors the inner workings of language. You say that words picture facts in the world, that they display them. You say that logical pictures can depict the world, and yet you also point out that language often disguises what it discloses.

  Here Moore paused, then continued:

  It is a terse and rigorous book. At times, it seems as if it was painful for you to say even one word more than was necessary to express your meaning. Indeed, I might say that, in its compression and elisions, your work reads at times like a great poem. At the same time it is true that the book’s very terseness — its attempts to capture essences in declarative, oracular statements — leads to tremendous difficulties in interpretation. It is an ideal world you picture, Mr. Wittgenstein. It is a calm, classical and, above all, hierarchic world. Now, Dr. Russell, in his introduction to the Tractatus, notes that your concern is to determine what the conditions would be for a logically perfect language —

  That is Russell’s assumption, injected Wittgenstein. It is not mine.

  Though, I might add, broke in Russell, that Mr. Wittgenstein has always shown a marked antipathy for anyone who would presume to summarize, much less comment on, his work.

  Moore was insistent. Will you both kindly let me finish? Please, let us all try today to dispense with old squabbles. Or shall I yield to you, Dr. Russell?

  No, no, said Russell, feeling he had won his point. Please do continue.

  They started and stopped, but they didn’t get far. The telephone rang, the solicitor again. And when that was done, they got sidetracked with terminology and other wrangles that shot another hour, until Mrs. Bride brought them tea.

  Then from outside came a clatter. Looking out, Russell saw Max raising a large wooden ladder, preparing to fix a section of loose gutter on the back of the house. Moore, meanwhile, was saying to Wittgenstein:

  I recall when Ramsey visited you — oh, my, this must have been seven or eight years ago, when you were still in Trattenbach. Anyhow, you told Ramsey that the point of the Tractatus, for all its talk of logic and language, was actually ethical. Now, I thought this was an intriguing thing to say. After all, you say little in the book — at least directly — about ethics.

  To discern, said Wittgenstein. To discern clearly. This, as I see it, is an essentially ethical pursuit. But, you see, it was what I did not say in the book that seemed to me the most implicitly ethical.

  Moore was nodding, compressing his hands excitedly. Oh, absolutely. That was exactly my point. Your comment made me quite read the book again. And it struck me as being most curious, as if all your labors in logic were such that, by establishing what you could speak about intelligibly, you might isolate what you could not. Which, as I gather from Ramsey, you felt was more important anyway, this being the ethical and mystical part.

  Moore folded his hands, then continued:

  I hope I am not getting too personal. I don’t mean to get sidetracked into the history of the work and what you felt about it later. But — but I gather that by then, a good four years after completing the book, you were rather disenchanted with the whole enterprise. In the book, you said your propositions were like a ladder that one must ascend in order to climb beyond them. At which point, you said, the logical climber would view the world aright and would finally see that your propositions were nonsensical.

  If he was not too dizzy, remarked
Russell wryly.

  Moore ignored this and continued. But, as I say, when you spoke to Ramsey in Trattenbach — well, I gather you were by then rather disdainful — if that is not too strong a word — of your earlier thinking.

  Foreign, corrected Wittgenstein distractedly. That would be a better word for how my early thinking struck me. Already by that time, some of the book’s aspirations were growing foreign to me.

  Moore nodded as this sunk in, then charged off again, saying, But I recall, Mr. Wittgenstein, that you told Ramsey that you wanted nothing that needed to be reached by a ladder. You said that you were looking for something far more humble, a village and not a vast metropolis, or something to that effect. Oh, I remember Ramsey saying he had a terrible time yanking answers out of you. Moore glanced up at the ceiling, a reaching look. You know, I just now recall Ramsey mentioning a friend of yours! A large, rough-looking, happy-go-lucky fellow. That would have been Max, I guess?

  Wittgenstein compressed his lips. Yes, it must have been. He nodded. Yes, they did meet.

  Russell, meanwhile, was noticeably distracted. For twenty minutes now he’d been glancing out the window. Looking around, Moore saw Max grappling with the gutter from the top rung of the ladder.

  Oh my, said Moore, turning to Wittgenstein. I hope he doesn’t fall. Is he all right there, do you think?

  He’s fine, said Wittgenstein brusquely. Now — Wittgenstein took a breath — as for your question about Ramsey. The point is that it was then difficult for me to think about the book. I felt like a leftover season, with no weather that would have me or even carry me away. Wittgenstein thought for a moment about this, then added, You see, I was losing faith in the usefulness of an attempt to find the last word about language. Formerly, I was under the illusion — the common illusion — that there must be a key, or keys, to this puzzle. I was captive to the illusion that, because there is a prior order to the world, there must be an essence to language — that my inquiries would yield a unified and utterly simple solution of the purest crystal. Much of this problem, I think, can be traced to this … scientific craving, this craving for generality that seems to permeate our thinking. And the point is, we are philosophers, not scientists. Science is not our affair at all. Like me, Russell, you’ve taught young children. But consider how children acquire language. Consider, for instance, the way a child finds it almost impossible to believe that a word could have two entirely different meanings. But watching children, you see that, even when a word is used according to its so-called intended meaning, it is often used entirely differently in different contexts. Words are not that precise and scientific. On the contrary, words are very approximate and indeed often need our help, as when we emphatically point and say, I mean that broom — that broom over there.