Who are you?I am your son, dad.
Who am I?You are my dad.
(Pause.) Where did we live?We lived in lots of places. Every time your wife was settled in a job, your children were happy at school and had made friends, you made sure that we moved.
Oh. Was I a happy person?Well, no not exactly. You were happy in the mornings. You used to sing in the bathroom. You had a nice, baritone voice. Although, of course – under the strict code by which you were brought up – singing in public would have been ‘showing off’. (Your mother, from what I can remember, enjoyed entertaining people. But none of her accomplishments were generous ones. She did not like people competing with her. Some people say that your father was ‘weak’. If so, how on earth did he become the Mayor of Droitwich? You do not seem to have any memories or opinions relating to your father. From what you have conveyed, he is a blank canvas. I find that extraordinary. But there are many things about you – midlands man - that baffle me.)
I suppose you felt that each new day offered possibilities. By the time the evening came, you had become deeply depressed. Disappointed by the imperfections of reality, I suppose. You would be drunk then. Not floridly drunk, but soporific. You would be uncommunicative and in a bad mood. Cut off. You would lie on the settee, with a bottle next to it, and fall asleep. Not just one night but every night. Exactly the same, for forty years.
Did I have friends?A few, dad. You weren't unusual in that. Men, generally, don't have many friends.
Your mother was a happy person, wasn't she?Yes, she was. She provided the happiness and optimism that were absent from your nature. Together, you formed one person.
Are you happy?I try to be, dad. Having therapy has helped.
Therapy?It doesn't matter.
I can't see the point of going on, really.No, dad. But, you see, not believing in anything wouldn't help you there – ontologically – would it? Your nihilism has come to back to haunt you. It's a shame. But what can I say? You brought me up to believe that happiness is impossible and that nothing means anything. Those seemed to be your beliefs. I think that you drew consolation from them. You didn't really believe those statements. They were the armour that you put up against the world. In a Sartrean sense, they were your contingent belief system, your ‘bad faith’.
Your problem was you were too intelligent. What was it that you called most people. Ah, yes, morons. It's a lonely place to be, isn't it. Standing on an empty stage, in the dark.
Now, there are big holes in your brain, like a Swiss cheese. Holes where memories are supposed to be and the meanings and narratives that we attach to them. You are trying to make some sense of your life, retrospectively. You are seeking a meaning that has more dignity than mere gravity but your powerful brain is struggling. For example, you are reaching for your absent wife in the darkness. But she is not there. Even her memory is fading. Your recollections have to be jogged into life by photographs. What you mainly remember about her is how cheerful she was, how brave and how her love was boundless. You were guilty, at the end, of taking her for granted. I think that you have come to realise that. It makes your eyes fill with tears.
I am not going to tell you any of this now. It wouldn't be fair. You are near the final stages of your journey. You are like a helpless man being sucked into a whirlpool.For the record, I would like to say that I do not like nihilism. It has never appealed to me, aesthetically or philosophically. That is why I don't like the plays of Beckett or abstract painting. Both make me feel sick – nauseous in Sartre's terminology. Life does have meaning, in my opinion – and not merely a ‘meaning’ that connotes with consciousness, a meaning beyond itself.
Also for the record, I don't think it was your ‘fault’ that you spent your life in an unhappy solipsistic universe, like one of Beckett's characters. Firstly, you had not felt loved or valued by your parents. Secondly, you were cursed by unusual intelligence, accompanied by emotional illiteracy. You were not a words person. You found consolation in drawing straight lines (you were a draughtsman) and in the certainties of numbers. It was one of the minor sadnesses of your life that neither of your children inherited your form of intelligence. (Numbers also make me feel sick. I hate the fact that calculations always produce the same result. It's like plodding along behind dreary tracks in the snow.) Everybody knows these things. That's why the people who are closest to you love you.
Now, you are like a demented Mr Scrooge – one who goes through the rigmarole of the ghosts and the clanking chains but who wakes up the following morning exactly the same person, because he has forgotten what he has learned. You are a goldfish man, Chauncey Gardiner in
Being There, the character in
Groundhog Day who is trapped an eternal and unchanging present (a film, incidentally, that you have never seen). It's cruel trick. A trick whose cruelty would appeal to you.
Who are you?I am your son, dad.
Who am I?You are my dad.
Where do I live?You live in Kidderminster. It's a small town in the midlands. The people who live there don't make a fuss. They are very friendly. It suits you.
Do you live there?No, dad.
Do you have children?Yes, dad, and you have a great grandson.
Do I? Oh, yes. (Brightens, as he remembers). He's a happy little chap, isn't he?Yes, dad. He is like the distilled essence of sunshine. He is the embodiment of the innocence and joy that we all have inside, before – if we are unlucky – it is stripped away by an unloving family or a corrupting world. You were loving by the way. I acknowledge that. But you did not have a language to express or negotiate feelings. And you were too isolated in your own way of being to learn one. Love is the God inside us. Oh and by the way, God exists. So you were wrong.
Does he?
l think so, yes.
Really?
It's too late for us to talk about this now. Let's just leave it.
