Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  You said 'Max needed to get out of prison.'I needed a passport. Yes, it was by chance.'

  My mother said 'But anyway, I don't understand, weren't you working for the other side?'

  You said 'Yes, it was odd how it happened, wasn't it?'

  I said 'She was saving lives.'

  My father said 'People nowadays don't seem to know which side they are on in politics.'

  My mother said 'And of course no one talks about love.'

  My mother was beside me at the other end of the table. She did not eat. I thought - Perhaps she is on the bottle again: or perhaps as a practising analyst she knows about jealousy but not how to use it.

  I said 'Yes, it seems to be very difficult to talk about love.'

  She said 'Oh it is if you don't have it.'

  I said to her 'Did we, you and I, talk about love?'

  My mother rang a little bell on the table. A servant came in. This servant was a stranger.

  I thought - And my mother is a stranger: whatever we used to be, she and I, is now perhaps in little bits of light in another part of the universe; like Mrs Elgin the cook and Watson the parlourmaid.

  - And there are you, my angel, as if flying over rooftops; looking for marks on the doorposts and lintels of this or that house, for who shall be preserved and who shall be scattered in bits and pieces.

  After lunch we walked, you and I, on the lawn. I held your hand. You were trembling. You said 'Will I have to come here again?'

  I said 'No, you won't have to come here again.'

  You said 'You see what they are, parents and children!'

  I said 'There are enough in the world: we will find enough children.'

  I thought - And perhaps we will pick them up, your children, and carry them out of Egypt.

  When we went back to the house my father was waiting for us by the french windows. He said 'Your mother has a headache.'

  I said 'Shall I go up to her?'

  He said 'No, I don't think that would be wise.'

  I said 'Shall we go then?'

  He said 'I appreciate your bringing Eleanor here.'

  I thought - Perhaps this is the way that mothers, if they are analysts, have to wean their children.

  There were things I was not understanding in the experiments I was doing in my work: it was difficult to tell if, in fact, atoms were being split, and if there were any signs of the geometrical progression that might lead to a Bomb. There were certainly transmutations taking place that were the results of neutrons being absorbed into the nuclei of a heavy element; this absorption disturbed particles already there which were then emitted; the element was thus transmuted into one of a somewhat different number or weight (the atomic number of an element being the number of positively charged protons its nucleus is said to contain; its atomic weight being the number of protons together with neutrons); but it was often difficult to tell just what the element had been transmuted into. This classification had to be done chemically: the chemical analysis of an atom depends on the number of electrons it can be said to have in its outer orbits or shells; it is these that make the chemical combinations by which it is tested. However, the atoms of barium and radium, although the former is of almost half the latter's atomic number and weight, have an identical number of electrons in their outer shells; so that in practice it is difficult to distinguish atoms of radium from those of barium. In our laboratory neither Donald Hodge nor I were expert chemists. Sometimes the calculations that one of us made and passed to the other - all arising from the little clicks and bumps of light - made no sense. I would think - But don't we then just make up new names for things that seem to make no sense?

  Donald said 'It looks like barium, it sounds like barium, but don't be taken in by that - '

  I said 'You insist that it must be radium?*

  We had been irradiating an element with an atomic number and weight very close to those of radium. If, in fact, this had been transmuted into barium this could mean that the atom had indeed been split; but it was easier to see it as having undergone the slight transformation into radium, because orthodox opinion still held that as a result of the bombardment of a nucleus only small bits and pieces would be chipped off.

  I said 'But you know Bohr's theory that, in fact, the force which holds a nucleus together is like that which holds together a drop of water - '

  Donald said 'Or fairies at the bottom of the garden.'

  I said 'But why not?'

  He said 'You theorists would see a dragon at the heart of the philosopher's stone.'

  I thought - But of course what you can't accept is that if what we are getting is in fact barium and even with the chance of a chain reaction -

  - That would indeed release the dragon from the philosopher's stone!

  Donald sometimes came up to see us in the evenings; he would join us in a chair round the fire. Donald had become more sceptical with age: he was still a bachelor: he was uneasy in the presence of women. He would assume funny voices; do his trick of curling his top lip up underneath his nose.

  You said 'But what would be the conditions that would make you believe that it was barium?'

  Donald said 'The mathematics.'

  You said 'And you can't get the mathematics.'

  Donald said'No.'

  You said 'Perhaps you don't want the mathematics.'

  Donald poked at the fire. I thought - But we, you and I, do we want the dragon?'

  I thought - Donald will be needing to make a joke of all this. I said 'But if mathematics is a description of a function of your mind - '

  Donald said 'Then is it in my mind that the earth goes round the sun.' He mimed putting a telescope to a blind eye. He said in an upper-class voice 'I say, isn't that an eye that I see out there?'

  You said to him, as if you were taking what he said seriously 'But doesn't the earth go round the sun?'

  I said to Donald 'But it's you who say that it must be the instruments that are wrong - '

  Donald said 'Do you know the story of the frog in the saucepan of water?'

  You said'No.'

  I thought - But Donald, you do really know what we are trying to talk about: I mean, if it were barium; about the dragon in the stone.

  Donald said 'If you put a frog in a saucepan of water, and then raise the temperature of the water very slowly so that there is no decisive moment at which the frog will know that it should jump, then it will boil to death.'

  You said 'Is that true?'

  Donald jumped up and flapped his elbows up and down. He said 'Me no wan tee boil to deathee!' Then he went to the door. He said 'A bedtime story, children.'

  After Donald had gone, you said 'You don't all have to protect yourselves by pretending to be mad scientists.'

  I said 'That's right. But I've got you.'

  When I lay with you at night we were either face to face with my arms around you so that it was as if what I held were glowing patterns of light: or when you turned with your back to me we fitted into one another like the yin and yang of the universe. Then after a time when you turned again there would be no separate parts of us; my mind had gone out; we were the whole. Then some image might come in - This frog is about to boil! Dear God, this red-hot saucepan is the sun! Jump! What a miraculous universe!

  We were some salamander, perfect in the flames.

  In the laboratory Donald and I gave up the experiments which presented us with problems for which we could not or would not find answers: we went back to a different and more boring line of checking results obtained by others. I wondered - So where is our task? Our mission? What are we doing, you and I? Then - But there is still the interesting question of what I think I am doing watching for little clicks and bumps of light: what, indeed, in general do humans think they are doing?

  In the evenings when I came back to you we would not talk much now about what we had done during the day. I thought -These bumps and clicks: either there is, or is not, something growing elsewhere.

  We began to rea
d English and German literature to each other in

  the evenings. (You said 'Not French.' I said 'Why not French?' You said ' Oh all right, but the French seem to use words as if they say everything.') We read Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Kleist. I said 'What things are seems to depend on an act of recognition: but one seems almost to have to give up hoping for this before it occurs.'

  You said 'You go on a journey.'

  I said 'You know you're going; you don't know where you're going, or how would you be discovering?'

  Time passed, or perhaps seemed to stand still, in this routine: it was in the coming round again that there seemed to be a present. So of course why should we want anything to come in from outside to break us up, we bits and pieces of a nucleus! I thought - Oh but how can there be creation, even of what we are now, if there is not some breaking up?

  And what was happening in the outside world during 1937? In Spain and Russia Trotskyites and anarchists were being murdered: in Germany Hitler gathered his generals round him and plotted for war. In England there was the visit of the New Zealand cricket team: what quiet clicks, what pleasant bumps of light! I thought -And for us what a miracle that we should be undergoing no further violent change; but being, for the moment, just as we are!

  You said 'What was this vision that you had in Spain?'

  I said 'That consciousness creates things: but for us to become used to this, we have to become used to some breaking up, reforming, breaking up, of ourselves.'

  You said 'Do you want that?'

  I said 'Want!' Then - 'It is too paradoxical for us to talk about want.'

  Sometime early in 1938 Donald Hodge set about rebuilding and re-equipping the laboratory: I was encouraged to take a holiday. I said 'We can go to London.' You said 'Yes.' I said 'I suppose this is the sort of thing I'm talking about.' You said 'I've been thinking for ages that I must try and find out what has happened to Bruno.' I said 'But you don't think I want to go to London!' You said 'Then I suppose that's all right.'

  I arranged for us to stay in the rooms of my old friend Melvyn: Melvyn would be away; he said that he would be on some expedition to Spain. It was in this building that I had lived two years ago. I wondered - Will there be anything from that old outside world coming in?

  I said 'What shall I do while you are out looking for Bruno?'

  You said 'I hope you will cease to exist.'

  I said 'But we will be connected!'

  You said 'Then that's all right.'

  In London we went to cinemas and exhibitions. The films were for the most part about people being together, going apart, coming together again: I thought - Well what else is a story? Then - But no one gets the point. In the exhibitions the most interesting paintings were those in which people and things seemed to be being split up into little bits and pieces of light. I thought - But the point is that we, the people watching, can know this; and so we are not split up. I said to you 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' You said 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' I thought - Well, that's all right.

  I said 'How will you find Bruno?'

  You said 'I can't write to Trixie and her husband; it might be dangerous for them.'

  I said 'Can't you write in code?'

  You said 'They would still have to answer.' Then - 'Perhaps I can do something like cast palm-nuts from one hand to the other.'

  There was a committee that provided aid for refugees from Nazi Germany; you found their address and made enquiries. They said they had no knowledge of Bruno. You also tried to find out what you could about your father.

  You said 'There's no news except from my cousins that he's in a camp.'

  I said 'There's nothing you can do.'

  You said 'I should have tried to do something before.'

  I thought - I suppose I should have found out long ago what happened to Caroline.

  There was a day when Melvyn arrived back unexpectedly from Spain. Or perhaps he had never been to Spain: I thought - Of course, he has just been waiting round some corner so that he can break in on us in bed. We were, in fact, in bed, and making love. Melvyn's eyebrows had become so pointed that they were indeed like those of a devil. He said 'You two! See me in my study after prayers.'

  I said 'How was Spain?'

  He said 'Very hot, Spain.'

  I said 'This is Helena.'

  He said 'Darling, you've got the face, but I'd take the thousand ships.'

  I thought - The Devil becomes a bore: but he was necessary to do whatever it was in the Garden of Eden?

  You said 'How do you do.'

  Melvyn said 'Fairly straightforwardly in the morning, ducky.'

  I said 'I don't suppose you've even been to Spain!'

  He said 'You two were clever to have got out when you did.'

  You said 'Why?'

  Melvyn said 'Franco's going to win.'

  I said 'Whose side are you on at the moment, the Russians or the Germans?'

  Melvyn said to you 'Oh but have I heard some stories about you!'

  You got out of bed to dress. Melvyn watched you.

  He said 'I've always thought that one is given a much easier time by one's enemies than by one's friends.'

  I said 'Oh very true.'

  When you were dressed you said 'I'll go and look for Bruno.'

  I thought - You won't let Melvyn hurt us, will you?

  Melvyn said 'I do think Hitler's doing the most tremendous job, you know: getting rid of all those nice clever unmentionables who could help him.'

  You said to me 'I'll see you.'

  Melvyn said 'Those naughty Aryan boys can't boil a cup of tea!'

  I said 'Eleanor's father and mother have disappeared in concentration camps.'

  You said to me 'It's all right.'

  I thought - The Devil, or Melvyn, must be in some sort of despair -

  - He will get us out of our Garden of Eden, to look for Bruno?

  Melvyn and I went to a pub. It was a pub where I had sometimes gone with Caroline. I thought - Is there not some weird Middle Eastern sect in which the Devil is considered a saint, for having got Adam and Eve moving on from their Garden of Eden?

  Melvyn was saying to whoever would listen to him in the pub -'Of course Stalin doesn't want the Reds to win the war in Spain. What he wants to do is persecute Trotskyites. He's got his problems at home: he has to say they're caused by Trotskyites. Who cares about Spain? Hitler, too, wants the war to go on: what a chance to try out weapons! And for the rest - oh what an opportunity to act a bit of caring! If you think anyone outside Spain wants the war to

  end, you're a child - one who'll end up like one of those orphans of the children's crusade.'

  I thought - My angel, take care, will you, how you cross the road: look to left and right; remember, if you want me, perhaps I will know?

  Melvyn said 'People with power always want to wipe out heretics rather than infidels: if power is kept pure, then infidels wipe out themselves.'

  I said 'So why be in politics at all - that of the Germans or the Russians?'

  Melvyn said 'Do you know about this children's crusade? There are a lot of children in Europe left over from Stalin's burning of the heretics, and so they are being sold into slavery in Spain.'

  I said 'I was going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.'

  Melvyn said 'I like the idea of your wife getting herself on to the wrong side. That was clever.'

  I thought - But Melvyn, if you're so clever, don't you know that you should know more, or nothing?

  There were some people at the bar of the pub whom I recognised from meeting them two years ago with Caroline. They were talking about the prospects of war if Hitler moved into Austria: would Austria fight; would Britain and France recognise their obligations. Melvyn went to fetch beer and got into a conversation with them. I thought - But if human life is a matter of style, of means rather than of ends -

  - Do I imagine that means just turn up for me?

  After a time I
followed Melvyn to the bar. I thought - Where are you now, my angel, my loved one.

  Melvyn was saying 'The more success Hitler has the more he'll get rid of those terribly useful Jews. And those pretty Aryan boys couldn't boil a cup of pee.'

  Then one of the men at the bar, whom I had met when I had been with Caroline, said to me 'There was a chap in here asking about you the other day.'

  I said 'Oh was there?'

  He said 'A German chap. He heard someone talking about you and Caroline.'

  I thought I might say - Do you know what's happened to Caroline?

  I said 'Who was he?'

  He said 'Working at the university. A philosopher. Got out of Germany a year or two ago. One of them. Said he knew you.'

  I said 'Was he called Bruno?'

  The man said 'Can't remember his name.'

  I thought - Do I really think that things work like this?

  I said 'Do you know what's happened to Caroline? I heard she was back from Spain.'

  He said 'She's around. Why not call her?'

  I thought - But you and I, so we are all right, my angel, my loved one.

  Melvyn was saying to someone at the bar 'But I am a secret agent, didn't you know?'

  Someone was saying, 'No, I didn't.'

  Someone else said 'But how can you be a secret agent if you do not keep it secret?'

  Melvyn said 'Good thinking!'

  I said 'I'm going.'

  Melvyn said 'Stop that man! He's a Nazi agent!'

  Out in the street there were placards announcing news of Hitler's latest threats against Austria, of this or that statesman's journeys between London, Vienna, Berchtesgaden. I bought a paper and sat in a cafe. I thought - Well, here we are, my angel: out on a mystery tour from the Garden of Eden.

  There was news of the latest trial in Russia. Some high-up Soviet dignitary had confessed to crimes that he could not possibly have committed; then in court he had denied his confession; then the next day he had confirmed it again. The newspaper reporter speculated -was this the only way in practice he could make a protest? Or was the whole to-and-fro business a put-up job by the prosecution to give verisimilitude to the ludicrous business of confession? I thought - But the point is, this is all at random, it is chaos.