Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  There was also an item about some minor official on trial who was accused of arranging the distribution of thousands of tons of deliberately poisoned wheat-seed in Odessa. The official was called I. A. Platov. I thought - Might those be the initials of Mitzi's father? Not ofKolya.

  Then - If things are random, is it not possible to avoid them?

  - But what is surprising about these events in Berchtesgaden, Vienna, Moscow, is not that they happen, but that anything different ever happens -

  - Would it not be a miracle if Kolya got to Cambridge!

  I saw your face looking in through the cafe window. I had chosen the cafe because it was opposite the building where Melvyn had rooms, but I had not expected you to come back before evening. You came in and said 'I didn't think you would be here.' I said 'No, I didn't think you would be here.' You said 'I've missed you.' I said 'I've missed you too.' You said 'Now we can have lunch.' I said 'Yes, I'm starving.'

  Then I said 'I think I may have news of Bruno.'

  You said'Oh.'

  I said 'He may be at the university.'

  'What university?'

  'London. You could make enquiries at the central office building.'

  You said 'You want me to find Bruno!'

  I said 'I don't want you to find Bruno!'

  You said 'Oh no, it does not matter what we want, I suppose.'

  I said 'Someone told me when I was having a drink in a pub with my horrible friend Melvyn.'

  I thought - Those terrible people in Moscow, Vienna, Berchtes-gaden - they get what they want?

  After lunch you went to the university to make enquiries about Bruno. I went back to Melvyn's rooms and lay on the bed. I felt lost and sad. I thought - Human beings are required to be something too difficult if they are to create, to break things up, to create. After a time I went to Melvyn's desk and opened it and on the top of a pile of letters - placed there, it seemed, so that anyone who opened the desk would immediately see it - was a letter from Caroline to Melvyn which had been written, I could tell, a year and a half ago from Barcelona. It began -

  You wouldn't believe it, but M. has gone off to the front! Oh what a relief! He was becoming such a bore. You'd like my new friend, though. Do you remember what you once said about some boy? - Wherever you kiss him, it's like kissing his beard.

  I put the letter back and closed the desk. I thought - Well, I was sad and depressed anyway -

  - What do you do, fart at the Devil?

  - But I have known that long ago I should have made some contact with Caroline.

  I tried to remember the telephone number of Caroline's aunt: I found it in the telephone book. I got through, and asked if Caroline

  was there. Caroline's aunt said 'She'll be back this evening.' I tried to explain to myself what I was doing. I thought - Explanations are ridiculous.

  Then - It is knowing that things are ridiculous, that will get us round and round the world on our journeys from and to the Garden of Eden?

  I skimmed through some of the volumes of Melvyn's pornographic library. I thought - All this pain, this violence, it is what kills people; without it they would not survive?

  When you came back in the evening you were with Bruno: I was sitting at the window looking out. You both seemed so young; you came skipping down the pavement - you with your long legs and hips like a pestle and mortar; like one of those animals down from the skies. I thought - It is when I have been away from you that I can see you once more like this; pounding at my heart from anywhere in the universe.

  You said 'You remember Bruno?'

  I said 'I remember Bruno!'

  Bruno said 'You were the character in that play by Brecht who wandered on to the stage and stole our darling daughter Elena!'

  I said 'It took me some time.'

  Bruno said 'Ah, the timing is not our business.'

  I thought - You and Bruno and Trixie, when you were young, when you visited Kleist's grave, you knew what was your business?

  I said 'You're teaching philosophy?'

  Bruno said 'No one has heard of Heidegger in this happy country! And now I learn from Wittgenstein that there is nothing anyway to be said.'

  I said 'But there are still beautiful ways of saying this.'

  Bruno said 'Ah that is why Heidegger has become silent!'

  You were looking so pleased, with your hands clasped in front of you, like a mother proud of her children.

  I said 'You two go out by yourselves to dinner tonight.'

  You said 'You come too!'

  I said 'No, you have a lot to talk about.'

  Bruno said, 'Sir, are you casting aspersions on my dishonour?'

  When you and Bruno had gone - talking, talking; skipping on the pavement as if on hot coals in a game that fakirs or children play - I rang up Caroline's aunt's house and this time Caroline answered the telephone and I said 'This is Lazarus come from the dead, come back to tell you all; I shall tell you all.' Caroline said 'Good God,

  I'm not talking to you!' I said 'Meet you behind the gasworks, twenty minutes.' This was a phrase I had used when years ago we were arranging to meet in the pub. I rang off. I thought - Well, this may not work. Then - But after all it is quite fun. And what was that other phrase - Shall we sin, that grace may abound?

  - And the answer was God forbid!

  In the pub there were one or two of the people who had been there that morning. When Caroline came in she looked much more grown-up and assured. I thought - Well God, if you want to, forbid! She said 'I'm really not going to talk to you!' I said 'You mean, we can skip the preliminaries?' She said 'I thought you were dead.' I said 'I very nearly was.' She said 'Then we were told that you'd gone over to the Fascists.' I said 'I think your friend with the beard wanted to have me shot.' She said 'Well, you've perked up, haven't you!'

  I wanted to send some message to you - Don't worry, this is all right, my angel, my loved one.

  I said to Caroline 'I should have got in touch with you before, but I did hear from Melvyn that you were all right.'

  Caroline said 'Melvyn says that you're now with some Fascist tart holed up in the north.'

  I said 'She's not a Fascist tart, she's an agent in occupied territory.'

  She said 'She is?'

  I said 'She saved me when I was going to be shot; I mean, not by your friend, but by the other side.'

  Caroline said 'It doesn't seem you were very popular.' Then 'But I never believe anything you say, you see.'

  I said 'But you were all right?'

  Caroline told me how she had made a great success of her reporting from Barcelona in the early days of the Civil War; her reports had been taken up by a national newspaper in England. She had come home, had gone out to Spain again in 1937, had been in Barcelona for the fighting between Stalinists and Trotskyites. She had, in fact, got a scoop because she had been with her boyfriend, the man with the beard, when he had been arrested by Stalinists. While Caroline talked she leaned towards me and I found that I was leaning slightly away from her: it was as if she were wearing scent to cover up some quite different smell.

  I said 'Then you're on your way to becoming a top-class journalist.'

  She said 'I am a top-class journalist!'

  I said 'That's good.'

  She said 'When you can't think of anything else to say, you always say "That's good"!'

  I thought - Well, that's quite witty.

  She told me a little about her life in Barcelona with Buenaventura, the man with the beard. I watched her mouth as she talked. I thought - People feed on the violence of war as they feed on Melvyn's pornography; then they spew it out again, chewed, like sick, to feed others.

  Caroline was saying 'He did the most fantastic things with the co-operatives, he got them working round the clock.'

  I said 'Did he hang little tassles on them?'

  She said 'On what?'

  I said 'The co-operatives.'

  She said 'You are disgusting!' Then 'I'm not going to stay with you if you're
still like that!'

  I thought - Then good, it will be - God forbid.

  She said 'And anyway what about you and Spooks?'

  I said 'Why do you call her Spooks?'

  She said 'Melvyn calls her Spooks.'

  I said 'Do you still see Melvyn?'

  She said 'Now don't start that again!' Then - 'Do you and she roll about in the snow in the frozen north?'

  Caroline and I got rather drunk. I told her a fanciful version of the story of the battle I had been involved in in Spain - And there was this castle! And there was I like Jack on the beanstalk! I felt, as I listened to myself- But I am making myself sick. I found that I did not tell her of my shooting of the man with the machine-gun. I thought - This is not because I am ashamed: it is too heartfelt to be brought up as sick.

  She said 'All right, let's go back to Auntie's.'

  I thought - You mean, you want to make love at Auntie's?

  Then - Well God, come on then -

  Caroline put her head on my shoulder. She said 'As a matter of fact, I think he did want you shot!'

  I said 'Who?' I thought - But you can't say that!

  She said 'Buenaventura!' She giggled.

  I felt I had to get out of the pub. On our way out we passed a group of people by the door. One of them was Mullen. I had not seen Mullen since I had been with him in the picture gallery in Moscow. There he had stood with his back to the painting of the

  three Old Testament angels: he had been like a shadow against networks of light. He looked at me now, as he had looked at me then, with his sad yellow eyes. I thought - Perhaps he will not want to recognise me: perhaps he is once more waiting for that bald Russian man with whom he was in the picture gallery in Moscow, in the pub outside Cambridge. Here he was with a group of people I did not know.

  I said'Hullo.'

  Mullen said 'Hullo.' Then - 'I heard you'd been in Spain.'

  Caroline said Tve spent much more time than him in Spain!'

  Mullen said to me 'And now I hear that you're working at some university in the north.'

  I said'Yes.'

  Mullen said 'I wonder if you would like to have lunch with me sometime.'

  I said 'I would.'

  Caroline said 'What about me?'

  I said to Mullen 'How's Kapitsa?'

  Mullen looked at me with his almost expressionless eyes.

  I said 'But, in fact, I've got to get back to the north tomorrow.'

  Caroline said 'You're going back tomorrow?'

  I thought - Why did I say that? Then - Yes, I see.

  Caroline said 'Well, I'm not going with you to Auntie's if you're going back to Spooks tomorrow!'

  I thought I might say - All right, God, thank you.

  Mullen said 'You won't stay and have a drink?'

  Caroline said 'I will!'

  Mullen said 'I was talking to him.'

  Caroline said 'Oh you two, have a nice bugger!' She went back to the bar and seemed to be ordering herself a drink.

  I said 'Goodbye.' I seemed to be talking both to Mullen and to Caroline. I went out of the pub. I thought - Mullen is my guardian devil?

  I was lying on the bed in the room we had borrowed from Melvyn when you got back from your evening with Bruno. I was still feeling very sad. You looked tired. I said 'How was Bruno!' You said 'He was all right.' I said 'I met Mullen.' You said 'Who is Mullen?' I said 'He's the one, you know, who really is a Russian spy.' You said 'Bruno thinks that my father may be alive.'

  I said 'Why does he think that?'

  You said 'Because he says they're not killing people other than Jews.'

  I said 'So what will you do?'

  You said 'Bruno will find out what he can. Then I'll see.'

  I said 'Let's go home tomorrow.'

  You said 'Yes, let's go home tomorrow.' Then - 'Oh God, let's very nearly blow up the world, but not quite.'

  When we got back to our home in the north I found Donald Hodge's laboratory equipped with new and more elaborate devices. There were Geiger-counters encased in lead to guard against stray radiation; amplifiers connected to recording machines which had numbers showing on dials. We embarked on yet another series of experiments to check the results of the experiments of others. I sat and made notes of the numbers that appeared on the dials. I thought, as I had thought before - But we are trying to achieve two things here: one is to understand what might be going on in the nucleus of an atom; the other is to understand what is meant by understanding; and in this, of course, we are doing an experiment with mind. That which experiments is in a sense the same as that which is experimented on; but to understand understanding - would there not have to be developed some further level of mind? Perhaps it is just this for which I am waiting in front of these switches and dials - for some stray seed to be encouraged by this I that is watching and to be nurtured in this strange world of mind.

  I said to you 'But those old alchemists of yours - did they feel they had to change what it was to be human?'

  You said 'I suppose they wanted to know what it might be to be gods.'

  I said 'So humans couldn't blame any more what they called "gods".'

  You said, 'If you succeed in what you are doing in your work, I suppose we won't have anyone to blame except ourselves.'

  I found it increasingly difficult to talk to Donald Hodge about our work. He took up rugby football and cricket: he played these passionately: I thought - He finds it easier to knock around these simple bumps and clicks and balls.

  I said to you 'Gods made such terrible things occur.'

  You said 'You think we can't make terrible things occur?'

  I said 'Chip away at the stone - '

  You said 'We can still call "gods" the knowing that there is shape inside.'

  I had a letter from Peter Reece, the clergyman I had stayed with years ago in the derelict town in the north. He gave me news of Nellie - the deaf-and-dumb girl whom my mother and I had befriended, whom I had first come across when she had gone bounding down the hill in her tyre. Nellie had been at the school for handicapped children run by nuns. Peter Reece wrote to say that Nellie was about to be inducted as a novice into the order of nuns; she had asked especially if I might be present at the ceremony. Peter Reece had sent his leter to my parents' house: he had not known where I was; nor, of course, that I was married.

  I said to you That time when we missed each other in the north of England -'

  You said* Yes/

  I said 'And then I turned up in Berlin two years later at the time of the Reichstag fire - '

  You said 'Yes?'

  I said 'I suppose if I had not missed you that time in the north, then I might not have turned up just when it was necessary for you to get out of Berlin; and we might never have had our three days together - or this, or anything.'

  You said 'You think you can't say that?'

  I thought - Or you can say it about anything.

  During the last six or seven years I had often thought I should visit Nellie: I had put it off, I did not quite know why. I had sometimes written to her: I had got letters back in a meticulous, childlike hand. She told me news of her school: the work and the gossip: she had said -1 do not suppose this will interest you. In later years she had ended her letters with 'With love from yours in Christ.' I thought now - Well, yes, but what does this mean: some shaping within the stone?

  I said to you 'But if we ever have to go apart from each other again, do you think that this time we will have to leave so much to chance, or can we not make our own arrangements to come together?'

  You said 'You think we will have to go apart?'

  I said'No.'

  You said 'We have been together, yes, for nearly two years.'

  I wrote to Peter Reece to say that you and I would both come to Nellie's induction. I wrote to Nellie to say that you and I were married. I said to you 'I wonder if she will remember you.' You said 'Of course she will remember me!' I said 'You only met her

  484

  once.'
You said 'So how often did you meet her?' I said 'Oh yes, I see.'

  We went by train to Nellie's ceremony. It was a grey cold day. We travelled to the landscape of mudflats and the estuary of the river - to where seeds, in the shape of humans, had once blown across the sea in small boats.

  I said 'I don't see why there shouldn't be a world of coincidences as well as a world of cause and effect; why "gods" shouldn't be a word for our knowing this and trusting it.'

  You said 'Put ourselves in the way of it? Of knowing what to do?'

  I said 'Two years is not such a long time!'

  You said 'We've been so lucky!'

  We got out at the station to which I had come years ago; from which I had walked with my haversack down towards the river; where had been the derelict railway lines like the trails of dying animals dragging their way towards the sea. Here Nellie, the child Nellie, had gone rolling and bouncing like a seed; there had been a barrier like the edge of the known world; she had got through.

  You said 'Don't be sad.'

  I said 'Things are so frightening!'

  You said 'I suppose you loved her.'

  We got a bus from the bridge over the river to Nellie's convent which was some way out of the town. There were the mudflats; there were the ruins of the monastery built by men who had arrived in boats like acorn-cups; there the children had played with their burning-glass in the sun. I thought - The monks brought their own light, which was like fire.

  I said 'It's things as they really are, that get you through?'

  You said 'If you love them.'

  The convent, which was next to the nun's school, was a grey stone building set back from the road: traffic struggled past like a retreating army. There was a bell that was worked by a chain near the door; when I pulled it a bit of the chain came away in my hand. A young nun came to the door and saw the chain in my hand and began to laugh. I said 'I'm terribly sorry!' The nun took us through to a room with cream-coloured walls and a large mahogany table on which there were cups and saucers and an urn; we were offered tea or coffee. The nun seemed always to be on the edge of laughter: as if what an extraordinary business it was to be offering tea or coffee! There were four or five other couples in the room; it seemed