gates of gold

ConradNo. I have forgotten everything about what went before me. I am now forgetting everything that will come after me. I was once asked, 'What have you achieved in the theatre?' I replied, 'Nothing.' 'And what will you leave after you?' 'Well, the same, nothing.' The young man I gave those answers to, he was very angry with me, for he was planning to devote his life to this profession and he believed I was trying to destroy him. I wasn't. I was saving him. Or maybe I was seeing what he wanted, and he didn't like what I saw. For this was his beginning, his continuing, his end. He would, like myself, like yourself, turn into nothing, be not remembered and yet he would work with all his heart to prevent such forgetfulness. I believe in work. I am a hard-working man. That is how I have led my life, but where was it leading me? Nowhere? Perhaps. But that is immaterial. I work with all my strength to achieve – nothing. To leave nothing. That is what I have done and will never deny it. In that I am a man of a certain generation, a hard-liner – Stalin, you call me. But perhaps I belong to an earlier generation. I may be, like yourself, a follower of the Venerable Bede. Now there was a monk among monks. They were violent men. When the Vikings attacked, these holy men, chanting their aves to the goddess they loved, drew from the60sleeves of their habits grenades, shotguns, knives and rifles. They blasted the bastards to kingdom come. Or so I believed, growing up as a boy, near Jarrow in the north of England.