Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

In the picture gallery I became interested in two small paintings by Domenico Veneziano which hung side by side. One was of the Annunciation and was very beautiful: the Angel and Mary faced each other across a courtyard, they did not look at each other; they seemed to be intent on whatever it was in between. Behind them, and in between, there was a closed door in a garden at the back of the courtyard. The other painting depicted a group present at a miracle performed by some saint in a street: it was ugly. The people seemed to be intent on portraying dramatic emotion; as if they felt that this was required of them by some observer.

  I thought - It is not exactly that this painting is ugly: it is giving some aesthetic message about what is ugly.

  Then - You and I, in the Black Forest, we knew something about

  that first painting, that courtyard; that doorway at the back in between?

  There was a day - sometime during my second term I think -when Melvyn brought Mullen to visit me in my room. I had not thought much about what they might come to visit me for: to look me over as a possible recruit for the Apostles, for homosexual purposes, possibly because Melvyn had told Mullen of my interest in Russia? Melvyn and Mullen sat on my sofa side by side; they were like two characters in a ballet - the dancing master and his pupil - and of course they were actors! Mullen wore his long blue coat with the collar turned up at the back; Melvyn had narrow trousers tapering to small pointed shoes. I sat with my chair tipped back against a wall. I thought - They have come to do an experiment with me; but why should not that which is observed cause disturbance among the observers?

  'I don't think you know Mullen, do you?'

  'No, how do you do.'

  'How do you do.'

  'Would you like some tea?'

  'No, thank you.'

  'A glass of sherry?'

  'No, thank you.'

  Melvyn and Mullen sat side by side. I thought - Well, they have cottoned on to the idea about the stylishness of silence.

  Then - I wonder who, between the two of them, it is who buggers whom?

  I said to Mullen 'Can I ask you about aesthetics?'

  Mullen said 'Please do.'

  Mullen had cold pale eyes like the water in a goldfish bowl. I thought - somewhere far inside there might be something golden swimming around.

  I said 'In the Fitzwilliam Museum there are two small paintings by Domenico Veneziano: one is of the Annunciation and is very beautiful; the other is of a saint's miracle and is not. In the Annunciation, down a garden path, there is a closed door in a wall. This seems to guard some secret. What is this secret? I mean, can it ever be said?'

  Melvyn and Mullen stared at me. I thought - This scene is like what I have gathered from my mother about psychoanalysis: the analyst sits in silence until the patient, out of embarrassment, makes

  a fool of himself. Then - But, after all, it is the patient who is being kind to the analyst.

  I said 4 In the other painting, of the so-called "miracle", everyone seemed to be posing dramatically for the painter. But there is nothing between them or at the back of them. There is no secret.'

  After a time Melvyn said 'Ducky, Mullen's subject is fourteenth-century Russian icons.'

  I said 'Do you think there are two sorts of portraits? One in which people seem to be posing for the painter, and another in which they are saying "All right I see why you have to do this."'

  Melvyn and Mullen said nothing.

  I said 'In religious paintings I do not think people should pose for God.'

  Then after a time I said 'I see this is not the way people usually talk about fourteenth-century Russian icons.'

  Melvyn said 'In that you are correct.'

  Mullen said 'Melvyn tells me you are a physicist.'

  I said'Yes.'

  Mullen said 'In physics, do you think there should be secrets?'

  I thought - Oh good heavens, no wonder I have had to make a fool of myself!

  I said 'I don't know.'

  Melvyn said 'Ducky, we came to ask you if you'd like to join the local football fan club.'

  I said 'What does the local football fan club do?'

  Melvyn said 'It watches football.'

  Mullen said 'But it should not be a political decision, whether physics has secrets?'

  I said 'I suppose not.'

  Melvyn said 'Time, gentlemen, please.'

  Mullen said 'Perhaps we will see you at the football club.'

  I said 'I hope so.'

  After they had gone, I felt that I would rush out and obliterate their absurd footprints in the snow. I thought - I need your help, my beautiful German girl.

  I remained in my sexual limbo at this time. There was a boy with whom I had once been in love at school: there was the fantasy that I had in some way been in love with my mother. I dreamed, but was still frightened, of girls. Sex took the form with me of what one did with one's dreams: dreams were of what one might meet again round some corner. I felt - My beautiful German girl will one day

  rise again sword-in-hand from a lake; she will help me to slay the dragons that entrap me in dreams; that make me feel that reality is untouchable.

  Sometime after my meeting with Mullen, Melvyn caught me on the stairs and said 'Ducky, I can't quite tell into what, or not, you've put your pretty foot with Mullen!'

  From this I gathered that I had been some sort of success.

  I thought - But in relation to what: aesthetics? Or the local football fan club?

  Then - Oh but I am bored with Melvyn's riddles! They are the posing of someone who is afraid there is no painter.

  Then - We lay like a seed, you and I, beneath that tree; that might stay alive all winter.

  I had one or two letters from you, my beautiful German girl. But they were like hard flashes from a sword that came up from that dark lake. Well, why do you think it was so long before we saw each other again? There is a proper fear.

  Dearest Max,

  Here we have some excitement because Bruno (you remember Bruno?) has been working with his professor on some of the unpublished manuscripts of Karl Marx, and they have been finding results that are, to say the least, surprising. It appears that in these manuscripts (written in Paris in 1844) Marx is by no means the materialist and anti-spiritualist that has been supposed (is 'anti-spiritualist' the word? I was taught English by my German governess, Miss Henne). Marx says it is the capitalist world that is materialist and anti-spiritualist in that its only criterion is money: it is he, Karl Marx, who works for man's spiritual liberation. This can be achieved by the recognition that a man is what he does: in his work he can be an artist.

  Of course, Marx himself in later writings was somewhat responsible for the idea that he was anti-spiritualist: perhaps it was necessary for this earlier part of his work to have remained hidden?

  So much of what is guarded by a prophet's followers is perverted! This has been the experience of the Christian churches, no?

  Can you give me the source of your quotation about Jesus saying he teaches in parables so that people may not understand and be saved.

  I have met Bertolt Brecht. He is a small man who smells. Women say they find his smell attractive. He too seems to be saying something quite different from what people think he is saying. He says he is a Marxist. Do you think it might be to protect himself (by making himself attractive?) that he smells?

  Here we have been in some ferment because the Nazis obtained six and a half million votes at the last election and now are the second largest party in the Reichstag. There are still people who, like you, say that the Nazis may turn out to be something different from what they say. But if this is so, it will not be because they are clever. At the moment people don't believe them (because they themselves are stupid) when they say they want to kill Jews.

  I am interested in what you say about Wittgenstein: what do people at Cambridge say of the connections between Wittgenstein and Heidegger?

  There is a chance that I may come to England later this year. I am one of a group here planning
to make a pilgrimage to English locations of Engels and Karl Marx. Do not laugh: if I do not come to England, tell me how I can see you. I suppose our route will hardly pass through Cambridge. Could you come to London for a day?

  Max, I do not know how to write this. I found your last letter very formal.

  Yes, I know there are things that defeat themselves if they are said.

  But you have much love from your

  Elena

  I walked around with this letter in a pocket next to my heart. I felt - Oh my beautiful German girl! But you know I am yours! No matter what is the business of touch, taste, smell.

  Sometime in the spring (this was 1931: unemployment in England had risen to nearly three million; there was talk of the payments to the unemployed being cut) I learned that there was to be a lunch party at the house of some friends of my father's at which Wittgenstein was going to be present. I had continued to have this image of Wittgenstein as someone whom it was necessary for me to meet: it was as if he were a figure that I had to learn something from at a corner of the maze. I thought I might ask him (though I

  did not think I would - Can two people be together in those areas of silence: or do you have to be on your own -

  - But all human relationships are not like sitting in the front row of a cinema?

  I got myself invited to this lunch party through the host being a friend of my father's; I understood that Donald had not been invited. I wondered - Will he be hurt? Then - But these games people play are ridiculous.

  Now that it was spring there were people in punts as Donald and I walked by the river. I said 'You say that Wittgenstein's new philosophy is to do with the games that we play. I mean, does he suggest that all language is a game?'

  Donald said as if quoting ' - It is as if we are looking through spectacles and always describing the frames - '

  I said 'But if we realise this - '

  Donald said 'Don't you think that there would still be a game on a different level?'

  Punts floated on the river. Boys with poles leaned over girls who lay in the bottoms of the punts like queen bees. I thought - But it would be a worthwhile game.

  I said 'I've been invited to a lunch at which Wittgenstein is going to be present.'

  Donald said 'That is impossible: Wittgenstein never goes to lunches.'

  I thought - Do I mean, it would be a game in which, at the same time, one would be creating, or discovering, the conditions of the game?

  Donald and I walked for some time in silence.

  The party to which I had been invited took place on a bright spring day with a wind that lurked here and there round corners. Food had been set out on tables on a lawn; cushions were placed on steps going down from a small terrace. People stood with their backs to where they thought the wind might be; they turned this way and that all at once like fishes. Wittgenstein was seated in a small room inside the house: the room was crowded; there were people sitting on the floor and looking up at him as if he had been set in some niche. He was a thin, blue-eyed, curly-haired man; he seemed precisely delineated as if there was a light on the wall behind him. He wore a tweed jacket and an open-necked shirt. It seemed that although people were seeing him as if set up in a niche, he was not posing.

  I thought - It is as if he were looking at the people watching him and saying: 'Is it you? Is it you?'

  Then - Of course I know whom he reminds me of: Dr Kammerer!

  There was a man on the floor in front of Wittgenstein asking him some boring question about aesthetics; it went on and on: I thought - Dear God, the questioner might be myself.

  Then - But the question answers itself by its style, if it is to do with aesthetics.

  A wind seemed to be passing over Wittgenstein's face as if the question were affecting him physically. He was holding on his lap a plate of food at an angle at which the food seemed about to fall off. When the man had finished his question Wittgenstein just said 'I don't think that is correct.' Then he looked down at his plate as if there might be entrails on it.

  I thought - But if you feel you have been put in a niche like St Sebastian, can you not get up and leave the picture?

  A young girl had come into the room and was standing in front of Wittgenstein; she was holding out her hand as if to take his plate. She seemed to be asking him whether he wanted any more food; but perhaps was too shy to put this into words. I knew the girl slightly: she was one of the daughters of the family who were giving the party. Wittgenstein did not seem to notice her for a time. Then he looked up and frowned and said 'What do you want?'

  The girl stepped back as if she had been hit. She stumbled against the legs of the people behind her. Then she made for the door.

  Someone said 'She was asking you if you wanted more food.'

  Wittgenstein said 'But I haven't eaten the food I've got.'

  I was standing in the doorway; as the girl went past me she seemed enraged. I thought - You mean something quite different is happening?

  Wittgenstein had looked up to where I stood. I had the impression that he wanted me to do something for him.

  Then - But this is ridiculous!

  The girl had gone out of the house and on to the lawn. There was someone beginning to ask Wittgenstein another long and boring question. I thought I might say - All right I'll go after her. Then -This is to do with silences?

  The person who was asking the question was saying - 'But are you saying that what you call "objective" is simply what happens?'

  Wittgenstein, it was true, had been looking towards the door.

  I left the doorway and went out on to the lawn. There were people standing holding plates with their backs to the wind; paper napkins were blowing like the tops of waves. I was looking for the girl who had held her hand out to Wittgenstein: I thought - There could be a painting of that: of a meeting, and something quite different going on. Then - How old would she be: sixteen? seventeen? Then - But what happens, I mean, if something quite different is happening.

  The girl had gone to the end of the lawn where there was undergrowth beneath trees. There was a fallen willow which went halfway across a small pond or stream. The girl was climbing out on to the trunk of the tree. She had long fair hair which hung like shields on either side of her head. I thought - Her legs, yes, might almost be clappers of a bell.

  I went and stood by the roots of the fallen tree. The girl was sitting on the trunk with her legs dangling above water. I said 'He didn't mean to be rude.'

  The girl said 'I don't mind if he did mean to be rude. I hate this party.'

  I said 'Why?'

  She said 'No one says what they mean.'

  I climbed out on the log and sat down slightly apart from her, facing the same way; my feet dangling above the water. I said 'It's sometimes difficult to say what you mean.'

  She said 'Why?'

  I said 'Because you often don't know quite what you mean.'

  She seemed to think about this. She looked down into the water.

  She said 'I know what I mean.'

  I said 'What?'

  She said 'Nothing.' Then - 'I'm Suzy.'

  I said 'Yes.' Then - 'How old are you?'

  She said 'Seventeen.'

  'Are you still at school?'

  'No.'

  'What do you do then?'

  'I want to go to Paris.'

  I thought - Well this is what is happening: we are sitting side by side; we are looking down towards water; the light is coming through the leaves, the shadows.

  I said 'What do you want to do in Paris?'

  She said 'I want to study music'

  Then why don't you go?'

  'My father won't let me.'

  'Why won't he?'

  'He says I'm too young.'

  'Have you any friends with whom you could stay in Paris?'

  She looked round at me. She had a round face and a soft mouth. I thought - You mean, it is something on that other level that is happening?

  Then - Of course, she is sexy
.

  She said 'Why are you asking me these questions?'

  I said 'Have you a boyfriend?'

  She said 'No.' Then - 'I had a friend at school with whose parents I could stay in Paris.'

  'So it's not the money - '

  'No.'

  'And you can't study music here - '

  'There's nothing happening in music here.'

  I thought I might say - Well why not come with me to Russia: there may be something happening in music there.

  It seemed that as a first step I might move along the log and put my arm around her and kiss her. I found I managed to do this. After a time she said 'That was nice!'

  I thought - Dear God, and you think you can't get to Paris!

  There were the people on the lawn holding their plates like gauges in which rain might be collected: in the house there was still presumably Wittgenstein in his niche. I thought - But we are being given messages, yes, as if we are in contact with gravity.

  Then - But perhaps I should not be thinking of going to Russia, or to Paris: I should go to the north of England and do some work for the unemployed.

  Then - Why did I think this?

  I had been carrying a bottle of wine when I had come across the lawn: I had put it down by the roots of the tree. I stopped kissing Suzy and went to get the bottle. I thought - You mean, on this strange level, what you notice is just that one thing happens after another?

  I noticed that Suzy's father was coming towards us across the lawn. I crawled back, with the bottle of wine, and rejoined Suzy on the tree.

  Suzy said 'Does that mean you'll take me to Paris?'

  I said 'I think it means something perhaps like I'll take you to Paris.'

  She said 'And what does that mean?'

  I said 'It means we'll see.'

  Suzy and I were sitting with our arms round each other looking down into the water. We drank from the bottle of wine. Suzy's father had arrived at the roots of the tree and was watching us. I thought - Oh this might be a magic tree that will get someone or other to Paris!

  Suzy's father said 'What are you two doing?'

  Suzy said 'We are sitting on this tree.'