Mulberry’s asleep behind sunglasses. Ede’s sunk so low, his head is level with the tabletop. Alexander Kirwin looks vacantly out the window. Benedict Kirwin looks vacantly out the window. Titmuss looks vacantly out the window. Guthrie looks vacantly at Wittgenstein. Chakrabarti just looks vacant. Scroggins, usually the most vacant of all: missing. The effort of thinking. Wittgenstein stands silently in the corner of the room. He grasps his head. He shakes his head. Sweat streams from his face. Divine help: that’s what he needs, he says. We cannot think by ourselves, no more than we can create ourselves. Wittgenstein asks a general question, and waits for a reply. Silence. He asks his question again, slightly rephrasing it. More silence. He asks it for a third time. Still more silence. Okulu ventures a timorous reply. Wittgenstein waves it aside. Doyle says something. Not good enough!, Wittgenstein says. Silence, stretching out. Silence, the equivalent in time to Death Valley. To the Russian steppe.
