Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  my handling of the breeding experiment? Do tell us. Do give us the benefit of your experience.'

  My mother said 4 It is interesting you should put it like that.'

  My father said 'Like what.'

  My mother said '"Are you suggesting some flaw in my handling of the breeding - "' Then she broke off and said 'Oh never mind!'

  My father said 'Oh we're now going to have your expertise about the hidden meaning behind the meaning of words, are we?'

  My mother said 'Max asked you a question which you would not answer.' I did not think my mother was on the point of tears.

  Watson had completed her performance at the sideboard. But we anyway ate the rest of the meal in silence.

  I would think - Well, God protect me from inheriting any of the acquired characteristics of my father!

  And - There is no reason, is there, why I should not be a mutation?

  After such an evening my mother would come up to say goodnight to me in my room and she would lie back on the bed as if she were exhausted. She would say 'What a comfort you are to your old mother!'

  On this occasion I wanted to say - But what do you really feel about Dr Kammerer? It is different from what you feel about my father?

  But sometimes with my mother sprawled on my bed like this my mind went blank; it was as if we were somehow on hot sand; as if I were an insect that could be crawling on her.

  I do not know if I make sense in my descriptions of my mother: she was this large blonde woman who was sometimes girlish and sometimes queenly; sometimes apparently a victim and often victorious. In relation to my father she often seemed to be all these things at once: she would sit with her legs curled underneath her and her eyes cast sadly down like a mermaid on a rock; then, as if glistening with spray, she would be a siren luring helpless sailors to their doom. In arguments with my father she would sometimes seem to yield to his heavier weight; then suddenly, with a ju-jitsu-like flick of her wrist, as it were, it was as if she had him flying over her head and into the shrubbery. Or more prosaically, he would be rushing out to his car to go to Cambridge. There are tricks like this that people can do who practise psychoanalysis: opponents can attack you; you can say 'Now it is interesting why you say that!' and there they are, in the air on their way into the shrubbery.

  This evening when my mother was lying on her back in my room she looked at me with her eyes that even I could tell were somewhat wicked; and she said 'Shall we ask him again?'

  I said 'Who?'

  She said 'Dr Kammerer, of course.' Then - 'I know he liked you. Did you like him?'

  I said 'Yes.'

  I wanted to explain - It was somehow as if we all three, she and I and he, were agents in an occupied territory.

  Sometimes when my mother came up to talk to me in my bedroom like this she would after a time start pulling her skirt up and say 'I must pee.'

  This sort of thing between mother and son was, I suppose, unusual for the time: perhaps it came from ideas that arose out of psychoanalysis about the need for relationships between parents and children to be open. My mother would go next door to the bathroom and would expect me to go on chatting through the half-open door while she sat on the lavatory.

  I said 'What did you think was so special about Dr Kammerer?'

  She said 'He didn't show off. At least not to others.'

  She sat with her legs apart: her arms hung down between her knees.

  I said 'And that's a good thing?'

  She said'Yes.'

  I said 'Why?'

  She said 'I think he was interested in getting on with what he wanted.'

  She gave herself a wipe with some paper between her legs.

  My mother's interest in psychoanalysis had begun, I suppose, when she had found herself on the edge of the Bloomsbury Group and, possessing like other women in the group considerable energy which she did not want to expend in social or domestic chores or on the taking of buns and tea to the poor of the village - but, unlike some women in the group, finding that she had no literary or artistic talent - she had turned to what seemed to be the latest intellectual challenge, which was psychoanalysis. And what more effective business indeed can be turned to by people who have creative energy but no artistic talent (you think I am having a dig at you? but I am having a dig at myself! you know how I admire psychoanalysis!) than this discipline which can make people feel, if they wish, that they are creative in a way even superior to those

  who create artistically. For do not analysts feel that they can explain away the mechanisms of artistic creation? And how well, ju-jitsu-like, can they defend themselves against those who try to explain away the mechanisms of psychoanalysis! (And you know how I admire people who defend themselves without appearing to defend themselves.)

  Anyway, psychoanalysis had begun to make an impact on Bloomsbury at this time: James Strachey, brother of Lytton, had gone to Vienna in 1919 to be analysed by Freud; Adrian Stephen, Virginia Woolf's brother, had become a practising analyst in London. My mother, when I had begun to go to school, had become a founder member of a group studying psychoanalysis in Cambridge. Now in 1923 and 1924 she was going up once a week to whatever lectures were being given in London.

  I once said to her Tell me about these lectures.'

  She said 'You want me to explain about psychoanalysis?'

  I said'Yes.'

  (I do not think even my mother could have had this conversation while she was sitting on the lavatory: she was probably sitting in the bow window of the drawing-room, with her legs pulled up underneath her like a mermaid.)

  She said 'Psychoanalysis is to do with the idea that certain patterns are set in the mind, probably as a result of a person's experiences in early childhood. These experiences have been frightening; so a child protects himself by pushing his feelings into that part of the mind that is called the unconscious. There he need not think of them, but they go bad, like things rotting in a cellar. Psychoanalysis is the process of trying to bring them into the sun.'

  I said 'I see.'

  She said 'How funny to be talking to you like this!'

  I wanted to say - What frightening experiences did I have in childhood?

  I said 'And do they get better in the sun?'

  She said 'Yes.' Then - 'Not always.' Then - 'I think so, if you are brave enough to let them.'

  I said 'What sort of experiences did I have in early childhood?' I laughed.

  I thought - Why am I laughing? Then - You mean, I am protecting myself?

  - From whatever things are rotting away in my cellar? From my mother?

  My mother seemed to think for a time. Then she said 'They are usually, yes, to do with your parents.'

  You know those experiences we have always been interested in, you and I - those moments when what one is talking about seems to coincide with what is happening: it is then that it is as if there is a white light coming down; some performance on a stage is over, and an audience is getting up to leave the theatre. Well, this was the first time I remember being conscious of such an experience: there I was with my mother in the bow window of the drawing-room; the sun was at our backs; she had her legs underneath her like a siren; I was a sailor who had swum to the edge of her rock and was about to pull myself up out of the sea.

  I said 4 Well, tell me.'

  She said 'What do you want to know?'

  I thought - How do I know if it is unconscious?

  Then she said 'In fact, of course, it is only you who know. The analyst can only help you to remember.'

  I said 'I see.' Then - 'How?'

  She said 'He or she listens for what is behind your words; for what is still in the dark, and not in the sun.'

  I said 'And can that be heard?'

  After a time she said 'I think so. Can't it?'

  I was thinking - There is, yes, this feeling of ants crawling over the earth, my mother.

  I said 'But how much does all this tie up with what my father is doing in biology?'

  She said 'Go
od heavens, in no way at all, as far as I know.' She looked disappointed.

  I said 'But shouldn't it?'

  She said 'Why?'

  I said 'Aren't they both to do with the things that go on between parents and children?'

  She said 'I hadn't thought of that.'

  I thought - But why haven't you thought of that?

  - You mean, it might be because of something that happened in your early childhood?

  I was quite pleased with this. I thought that I would like to tell it to my father.

  Then - But why is it, yes, that I seem to want to score off my mother?

  Dr Kammerer's visit to us was in 1923, the summer of my

  eleventh birthday. These conversations with my mother, and then with my father, might have taken place a year or two later. But I was quite a clever little boy; I was at a good school to which I went each day; I liked listening to and joining in the conversations of grown-ups. I had few friends of my own age at this time.

  I sometimes hung about outside the conservatory when my father was tending to what was left of his collection of sweet peas. His serious work was now done in his laboratory in Cambridge.

  He would say 'Come in! Don't moon about!'

  (He once said to me 'I used to have a goose like you who mooned about outside windows looking at itself in the glass: it thought its reflection was its lost lady-love, which I had eaten.')

  I said 'Can I ask you something?'

  'Fire away.'

  'How much is the work that you are doing in genetics to do with what Mother is interested in in psychoanalysis?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Nothing?'

  'Absolutely nothing.'

  'But why not?'

  My father was snipping bits off sweet peas. At some times of the year he would stroke them tenderly with a small artist's brush.

  He said 'Scientists are interested only in what you can test and measure and tabulate. Psychoanalysis is a set of ideas and practices wholly outside this discipline. People are foolish only if they claim that it is not.'

  I said 'Was that the trouble with Dr Kammerer?'

  My father laughed. He seemed to spray bits of moisture from his moustache on to his sweet peas.

  He said 'Yes, I think you might say that that is a trouble with Dr Kammerer.'

  I said 'But suppose there are things that affect things, you know, but they can't be tested and measured - '

  He said 'They wouldn't be science.'

  I said 'But they might exist.'

  He said 'Such as - '

  I said 'I don't know.' I wanted to say - I mean the sort of things that might go away if you look at them; that work through the unconscious.

  He said 'Have you been talking to your mother?'

  I thought - But you must know there are things going on behind

  the arguments you have with my mother; or if you don't, isn't this why you have such stupid arguments with my mother?

  So - What was it that could have happened to my father in early childhood?

  It was in the summer holidays of 1924 or even 1925 perhaps that my father went away on a long lecture tour of America. While he was away there came to stay with us a young student from Berlin University called Hans. Hans was the son of a professor who was in correspondence with my father.

  (You say you did not know Hans in Berlin? And what had been imagined then of coincidences in a universal unconscious!)

  I remember a conversation at the breakfast table just before my father left for America. He was reading a letter he had received from Berlin. He said This boy wants to come here and learn English.' My mother said 'How old is he?' My father said 'Eighteen.' My mother said 'He will make an interesting companion for Max.' My father said 'But it will be just at the time when I am away.' My mother said 'Well I suppose Max and I can speak English even when you are away.' My father said 'You know what I mean, you are not stupid.' I thought - Well I haven't any idea what he means: then - You mean, my mother might get up to no good with this boy? Then - But that is stupid!

  My mother said 'And he can teach Max German.'

  My father said 'That's a point.'

  My mother said 'And Max can look after me, can't you, Max.'

  So my father went away, and it was arranged that Hans would come to stay with us.

  When Hans arrived he was a fair-haired, blue-eyed young man with a soft round face and a large mouth. He might have been my mother's younger brother. From the window of my attic I could watch him and my mother on the lawn. They stood facing one another, laughing and talking. I thought - They are like the Queen and Jack of Hearts in a fairy story: perhaps my father knew what he was talking about after all; he knew what might be going on in my mother's unconscious or, indeed, her conscious?

  During the first few days of Hans's stay I kept out of the way of him and my mother; they spent much time together. I both did and did not see why I was doing this. I thought - Of course, it is in my unconscious; but of this fact I am conscious? Then - But participants in a fairy story have to be cunning to survive. I would watch my mother teaching Hans to play croquet on the lawn; she would stand

  behind him and hold his hands and show him how to swing the mallet between his legs. My mother never played croquet with my father's friends. I thought - This is ridiculous.

  I found myself bored with my chemistry set and my electricity set in my upstairs room. I would go down to my father's study and sit in his chair and put my feet up on his desk. It was unlikely that my mother would catch me, because she would be out playing croquet or picking fruit in the kitchen garden with Hans.

  On my father's shelves there were some papers to do with Kammerer. There were cuttings from newspapers in England and America - the headlines were: 'Vienna Biologist Hailed As The Greatest Of The Century'; 'Scientist Claims To Have Found How To Transmit Good Qualities'; 'Transformation Of The Human Race'. There were pencilled exclamation marks by my father at the sides of these cuttings: there was a letter to my father from someone in America expressing disquiet and even disgust at the fame that Kammerer had gained in America, where he had been on a lecture tour just before my father.

  I thought - My father has gone to America to fight some sort of duel with Kammerer? They will meet like knights on a hot and dusty Midwestern plain -

  Then - But who do I want to win in a battle between my father and Dr Kammerer?

  There were other papers on my father's shelves. Most of them I did not understand. There were mathematical symbols like small fishes trying to crawl up out of the sea on to dry land.

  I thought - But then what is the battle between me, and my mother, and this young man called Hans?

  - It is a help, if you imagine your unconscious as a participant in a fairy story?

  - I mean in the end, some of us may be fitted to the environment and some may not?

  Then - Who am I talking about? Who am I talking to? Myself? My father? Dr Kammerer?

  - Or that person, whoever it is, with whom one day I will have no battle with words.

  Once I went up to my mother's bedroom to look through the books that she kept by her bed. It had begun to strike me - Why does she sleep in a room separate from my father? Beside my mother's bed there was a book called The Interpretation of Dreams. She had marked some passages in the margins with a pencil. I sat

  down on my mother's bed to read some of these. I could not be caught, because my mother had gone out bicycling with Hans. I read -

  It may be that we were all destined to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers, and our first impulse of hatred and violence towards our fathers; our dreams convince us that we were. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and wedded his mother Jocasta, is nothing more or less than a wish fulfilment - the fulfilment of the wish of our childhood. But we, more fortunate than he, in so far as we have not become psychoneurotics, have since our childhood succeeded in withdrawing our sexual impulses from our mothers and in forgetting our jealousy ofourfathers.

>   I thought - Good heavens! Then - Well yes, indeed, but I have felt there is some style of truth in fairy stories.

  I went and played tennis by myself against a wall. The ball flew off old bricks at odd angles. I thought - This is practising, I suppose, to be ready for some random occurrence.

  That evening when my mother came up to my room to say goodnight - I had had supper early in the kitchen with Mrs Elgin and Watson; I had said that I was tired and hungry - that evening when my mother came up she appeared somewhat sombre, watchful. I thought - Well where are we: on a hot and dusty plain?

  She said 'What's the matter?'

  I said 'Nothing.'

  'You've been avoiding me.'

  'Have I?'

  'Is it Hans?'

  'Is what Hans?'

  She said 'He is our guest! I have to be nice to him.'

  She sat on my bed. She leaned back on her elbows with her head against the wall.

  I said 'I've been reading that book by Dr Freud called The Interpretation of Dreams. I mean - do you believe all that sort of stuff?'

  She said 'It's not Frood, it's Froid.' Then - 'Good heavens, where did you find it?'

  I said 'I found it by your bed.'

  'What were you doing by my bed?'

  If I had been older, and wittier, I suppose I might have said -

  You've been reading The Interpretation of Dreams, and you're asking me what I was doing by your bed?

  I said 'I wanted to see what you were reading.'

  She said 'And what did you find?'

  'There were those bits you had underlined.'

  'What bits had I underlined?'

  She had her legs hanging over the edge of the bed. I was both looking at her and pretending not to be looking at her. I thought -I am being like Dr Kammerer.

  I said 'About it's not just parents doing terrible things to children, but children wanting to do terrible things to parents.'

  She said 'Oh I don't call them terrible!' She looked away. I thought - There is that impression again of being on hot sand, or in long grass.

  I said 'Neither do I.'

  She said 'Oedipus Schmoedipus.'