Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  Suzy's father said 'Come back to the house.'

  Suzy said 'That is my father.'

  Suzy drank from the bottle of wine. I drank from the bottle of wine. I turned to offer it to Suzy's father.

  There was a thick pall of smoke drifting across the garden. It was coming from some next-door garden, or perhaps from a building that was on fire. I thought I might say - Well that's nothing to do with me.

  Or - We have been working on the problem of how to get Suzy to Paris.

  Suzy's father said 'There's a building next door on fire.'

  I thought - You mean, all this might be a part of some composition like that of a painting?

  There were some firemen in metal helmets who had come on to the lawn. I thought - Or they are Greeks and Trojans -

  - Or perhaps I am drunk!

  The guests who had been in the house were coming out on to the lawn. They were looking at the pall of smoke, then turning away and coughing. Wittgenstein was on the lawn: he was looking up at the smoke as if he was considering its colour, its texture. I thought - Well what indeed do you make of this aesthetically?

  Suzy said 'We've been talking about going to Paris.'

  Her father said 'You're going to Paris?'

  I stood up on the log. I was holding Suzy's hand. I thought -Indeed we are on a tightrope; do I not have to hold her hand!

  Suzy's father said to me 'You're not taking her to Paris!'

  I thought I might say - No, I'm going to Russia: or to work for the unemployed.

  I noticed that Melvyn and Mullen had come out on to the lawn. Mullen was watching me. Melvyn was talking to Wittgenstein.

  Wittgenstein was turning away as if annoyed. I thought - But indeed these images, these ideas, these people, come into my head -

  - Put in a figure here: another one turns up there -

  - This is reality?

  People were moving off through the house, coughing.

  Suzy and I walked across the lawn. I was still holding her hand. Her father followed us. Melvyn and Mullen were watching. When we were near the house Mullen said to me 'I didn't know you would be here!'

  I thought I might say - Ah, you think we know anything!

  Wittgenstein said 'This smoke is not poisonous.'

  Suzy's father said 'How do you know?'

  Wittgenstein said 'It is the smell.'

  Melvyn went down on one knee and held his arms out towards Suzy and me. He said 'Beauty and the Beast!'

  Suzy's father said to Suzy 'You know these people?'

  The firemen seemed to be trying to clear the lawn. People were going in twos and threes towards the house holding handkerchiefs to their noses. I thought - Then there will be just our small group left in the picture.

  Mullen said to me 'Have you thought about what we talked about?'

  I thought - Why, what did we talk about?

  I said'Yes.'

  He said 'And what do you think - '

  I thought - Of physics? Of politics? I said 'It is a matter for aesthetics.'

  Melvyn had put his arm round Suzy. Suzy's father was saying 'Why did you think that I said you couldn't go to Paris?'

  Wittgenstein was looking at me. He said 'Thank you.' I wasn't sure if I had heard this, or if he had said it to me. Then he moved off towards the house.

  I let go of Suzy's hand. I went after Wittgenstein. Then I thought - Oh, but anyway, I am drunk.

  I saw that my father and mother were coming into the house from the roadway. I thought - But there are too many people in this picture! Get them out.

  Wittgenstein had gone through on to the roadway where I could see that Donald was standing. I thought - Oh yes, Donald can be in this picture! Wittgenstein was now talking to Donald.

  My father said to me 'I didn't know you'd be at this party.'

  My mother said 'Are you all right?'

  I said 'Yes, I'm all right.'

  Suzy's father was pushing Melvyn out of the house. Mullen and Suzy were following; they were watching me. My mother and father were standing side by side. We had all emerged on to the roadway. Wittgenstein and Donald were going off, talking.

  The smoke that had been blowing from a next-door building now seemed to be going up in a straight column into the sky.

  I waved to Suzy. I thought - Oh but we had it, for a moment, exactly, didn't we, what you can't talk about, in a picture!

  In the summer holidays of that year politicians went abroad to their usual watering-places while the mechanism of the capitalist world ran down; it seemed to make drooping, groaning noises like those of a clockwork gramophone. Politicians were recalled from their watering-places to see if they could get the capitalist world wound up; but it seemed that they had lost the handle, it was no longer in the nursery toy-box.

  I had heard of a clergyman in the north of England who was looking for volunteers to help build, or re-build, a church hall which was to be made into a recreational centre for the use or edification of the unemployed. I thought - I can go and help build a hall for the unemployed, but will I not be doing this for my own edification?

  Then - But might not the world be wound up, if everyone tried to see what was their own edification?

  I bought a second-hand suit of clothes and travelled to the north of England. It had seemed that I might emerge in a different dimension. People had said - But you cannot imagine the north of England!

  I might have said - But do you not carry around what you imagine in your own head?

  When I got out at the railway station I seemed to be underground; the train had run into the centre of the town in cuttings and tunnels. Climbing, I emerged into an area of heavy blackened buildings - a town hall, a department store, a bank, a museum. It was as if these had been in a fire which had been put out by rain. I thought - But this is just how I have imagined the north of England!

  There was a pale grey light as if the town were set on the curve of a low hill; or on the surface of a convex mirror.

  I had a haversack on my back. I walked in the direction in which I imagined the river. The river was where there were the dockyards and shipbuilding yards which had once been the reason for the existence of the town.

  The ground fell away from the central keep or fastness of the town hall, the department store, the bank, the museum, to where there were the dwellings and workplaces of the people that might be sacrificed, as it were, if the town were besieged. I thought - But now, what are the besiegers? they are more to do with states of mind.

  I turned off the main road and went into an area of narrow streets and tall, jumbled houses. Here there were piles of refuse and splintered wood and broken carts. Men stood by the broken carts. I thought - Could not the men use the wood to mend the carts and take away the litter? Then - But of course, one is not supposed to think like this now. There were smells. I thought - Humans have lost their sense of smell: they once had a sense like that of hunting dogs, which made connections.

  The men wore cloth caps and mufflers. The women had long thick skirts and shawls over their heads: some of them carried small children with dark furious eyes. There were older children in clothes and caps that were too big for them; it was as if they were involved in a game of dressing-up. It was these children who, as I walked through the streets, paid attention to me, followed me, mocked the way I walked. When I turned to them they would pretend to have been doing something different. I thought - It is this age, from five to eleven, that children still have a chance to do what they want to do.

  I was on my way to the church of the clergyman who had asked for people to help build, or re-build, the recreational hall for the unemployed. He had found it difficult, apparently, to get local men and women to do this for themselves. They had felt that it would be some sort of defeat for them: they wanted work provided as part of what other people wanted to do.

  I did not want to arrive at the church straightaway: I wanted to observe more of the strange landscapes in which besiegers and victims seemed reflections of states
of mind.

  I moved out of the narrow jostling streets into a more open area where the ground sloped down towards the river. Here there were long rows of low houses back-to-back like stitching. There were not many women and children visible here, and the men in cloth

  caps seemed to have been swept into groups on street corners. The windows of shops on these corners were boarded up; the walls of houses at the ends of rows were falling down. I thought - This landscape is like clothing coming apart at the seams: a shroud that has been tied too tightly over the body of the earth, our mother.

  Beyond the houses was a maze of railway lines that went down towards the river. The lines were raised on posts; they were where coal must once have been carried down to ships. Now the railway was not working; there were rows of stationary trucks like bumps on the spines of skeletons. Beyond the railway lines were the shipyards with tall grey cranes that were themselves like birds become skeletons, for want of anything to feed off.

  I thought - These images are of a charnel house: these images are in my mind. If I am an anthropologist come to take notes of this strange tribe, what I should be doing is taking notes of states of mind.

  The railway lines were like the tracks of baby turtles that had once run down towards the sea: the birds, the cranes, the crabs, the seagulls had got them.

  I thought - But one or two get through?

  - Or the town hall, the department store, the bank, the museum, has burned like a volcano and the lava has pushed human beings down towards the sea -

  - But it is these images in my mind that go tumbling, jostling, like a crowd running down towards a river!

  I had come to the edge of an area of wasteland that lay between the houses like stitching and the delta of railway lines on their wooden pillars. Beyond the railway lines were the cranes and the river: there were no ships on the river; there were some hulks on the mud that seemed part of the land, rotting. There was a group of children playing on the wasteland: they were on top of a small hill of slag and rubble. The children were playing a game of rolling old rubber tyres down this hill; the tyres rolled and bounced and span towards the railway lines at the bottom. There was a small embankment with a wire fence on top in front of the railway lines and when the tyres reached this they leapt and whirled in the air and then flopped down like dead fishes. There was one small opening in the embankment which consisted of an archway which gave access to the area under the railway lines beyond. The children did not seeem to be aiming the tyres particularly for this opening; the game seemed to be just to watch the tyres bounce and leap.

  I thought - The children on that mound are like Napoleon and his marshals surveying a battlefield: they watched soldiers and cannon balls bounce and leap, flopping down like dead fishes.

  - Or these children are rolling their tyres down the inner surface of the four-dimensional continuum of the universe to see what, at the end, will be the effects of light, of gravity.

  There was one child who was smaller than the others who was pushing a large tyre up the hill. This child wore a cap and a coat down to its ankles. It was like a small Sisyphus just emerged from an egg, pushing its own shell up a hill.

  I thought - Or this is like one of those experiments in which you bombard with particles a small aperture in a screen and it is according either to chance or to how you have set up the experiment what, if anything, gets through.

  When the small child who was pushing the tyre up the hill reached the top the other children gathered round. I had sat down on my haversack at the edge of the wasteland at some distance from the hill. I thought - I will stay here and observe not only the customs of this strange tribe but myself observing -

  - Out of the confusion of images, might something of myself get through?

  The small child was climbing into the large tyre which the other children held for him: I mean he was getting himself wedged inside the tyre as if he were the centrepiece of a wheel. He had his head down, his knees against his chin, his arms around his knees. It was also, I suppose, as if he were within the casing of some seed; his small face peering out. Or was not this like an illustration to some sacred text - the microcosm and the macrocosm, the human within the circle, the part that is the whole. These images went spinning in my mind. Then I thought - But surely the child within the tyre cannot be rolled down the slope; those tyres went bounding, leaping, so violently: the child will die! The other children held the tyre while the small child settled himself in; then they gave the tyre a push and the tyre went off whirling, bouncing, down the slope. I thought - But the child's neck will be broken: you see why this is not possible! I stood up. I wanted to stretch out my hand against -what? - gravity? The tyre hit a projection, took off, landed, took off again. I thought - There is something so soft inside, like water bouncing against stone. This also is in my head. I picked up my haversack and began to move down the hill. The other children had turned and were running away down the far side. I thought - They

  know, of course, that the child in the tyre may be killed. The tyre was heading for the low embankment with the wire fence on top; there was just the one small opening through to the area beneath the railway lines beyond. I thought - So now, come on, what is it in that experiment that makes the one particle get through: the condition set by the experimenter. The tyre with the child inside made a long low leap and then disappeared, yes, through the opening in the embankment: it went out of sight in the area beneath the railway lines. I had been running; I stopped; I said - Thank you. I thought - You mean, what if that particle were a seed, with a child inside? Then - This is ridiculous. I went on. There were puddles of oily water on the wasteland in which light was reflected like rainbows. I reached the archway in the embankment and went through; there was a maze of posts carrying the railway lines above my head. I thought - So, now, what am I learning about an anthropology of the mind! The maze of posts was like some dead forest; the ruins of an ancient temple; what had the temple been used for, the sacrifice of a child? But this child had got through! And was now back in the ruined temple. And so on. I was picking my way between the posts that were like the trunks of rotting trees. I thought - It is as if they, and these images, have been a long time under water. I could not see the tyre: it had found its way, presumably, some distance into the maze. Or had it gone right over the rim of the land, and back to its origins in water. There was a small clearing within the maze; the railway lines made a loop so that there was a patch of open sky above; within this clearing there was a half-collapsed hut and two small grey-and-green bushes. I thought - This is the home of some old hermit, perhaps; or that Garden, where now these bushes are the remains of those two trees. The tyre had come to rest half propped against one of the pillars at the edge of the clearing; there was a shaft of sunlight coming down towards the hut. I thought - This clearing itself is in the shape of an egg: the tyre with the child inside is like a seed that has come in by chance, by design, from outside to that old garden, that hut like a rotting tomb. Then - Stop thinking! There was an arm hanging out from the inside of the tyre; it was a small white arm which was, yes, like some shoot not so much from a seed as into it. I said to myself again - Stop thinking! I had been thinking that if the child were dead, then people might imagine I had murdered it. I went on into the clearing. Well there it was, this strange self-risking, self-sacrificing, self-immolation of a child. I went up to the tyre and

  knelt down beside it. The child was still wedged inside. Its head was at an angle which made it seem that its neck might indeed be broken: its knee and elbows were scraped and slightly raw. The child's eyes were closed; it was holding its cap down by its knee; it had dark curly hair; it was smiling. One of its cheeks was brown and pink with dirt and blood: I wondered ifl might lick it. I thought

  - The child is alive! Then I realized that the child, whom I had taken to be a boy, was in fact a girl: she was a small bright girl of eight or nine. She had opened one eye and was smiling. I thought I might say - Are you all right? None of this
seemed, at the time, all that extraordinary. It seemed that I should put out a hand and see if any bones were broken; but I did not want to touch the child; I remained squatting in front of her with my forearms on my knees. I smiled at her. The girl moved her neck, her arms, tentatively, as if preparing to climb out of the tyre; she was looking towards something beyond me. I thought - Well, now, what am I going to see if I turn: some old monster emerge from that hut that has been sleeping for a thousand years? When I turned my head there was, yes, someone standing by the hut; it was another child, a boy; smaller even than the child within the tyre: this child seemed to have come out of the hut and was standing by the two grey-and-green bushes. I thought

  - Well, you mean, this is what we have been waiting for all these centuries, these children? Then - This is ridiculous. The girl was climbing out of the tyre; her coat was torn; she had thin arms and legs like bones which have been picked clean. She remained crouching. Then with her hands she made flashing, darting movements towards the child who was by the hut: it was as if she were flicking bits of light at him; as if the bits of light might come down on him like golden rain. Then this child came up to her and held out his hand. He was wearing a rough brown smock to just below his knees. I thought - Oh I see, the child who has been in the tyre is deaf or dumb; or this other child is deaf and dumb; perhaps they both are; that's why she makes these flashing movements with her hands. Then - Or this silence, this scattering of light, is like the speech, or milk, of angels. The child who had been in the tyre stood and took the hand of the smaller child who was standing gravely by her. She did not in fact appear to be injured. Neither child up to this time had paid much attention to me. I thought - But that is all right, I am an observer in this clearing in the jungle. Then the girl who had been in the tyre did turn to me and made one or two flicking movements towards me with a hand. I smiled; I nodded; I

  shook my head. I thought - But what does it matter if I do not understand? I understand. Then the girl, laughing, held her hand in front of her hips and made one or two movements forwards and back with her finger and thumb in a circle which might have been taken, if they had not been done so laughingly, to refer to something that could be called obscene. I laughed too; I raised my hand; I shook my head. Then the girl turned away. I thought - But thank you for the offer! It was kind. The two children set off beneath the railway lines hand-in-hand. The girl stopped once more and looked back at me; she made no more flicking movements with her hands. She looked first at me, then at the hut, then at the boy; then she remained for a time looking back at me. I watched her. I thought -She is trying to make some further message. I tried to say to her -It is all right! Then I watched them go. I had sat down on my haversack in the clearing by the hut. I was thinking - Well what might indeed grow, in the mind, if there is silence: something that has been dormant for a thousand years?