Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  that these were parents or relatives of other would-be novices to be inducted. Neither Nellie's mother nor father was there.

  I thought - We, you and I, are Nellie's mother and father?

  - It is because this is like one of those Shakespearian recognition scenes that I seem to be on the edge of tears?

  The time came for us to be taken through to a chapel at the back of the building. We were placed in a gallery below which were rows of nuns like shadows. I thought - They see that they are shadows on the walls of a cave; they get out into the sun when they are praying? Three would-be novices were led in and knelt at the altar-rail: even in their habits and seen from the back I thought I could tell which one was Nellie. I thought I might say - Ah, we know each other, we are agents in hostile territory! An old priest moved to and fro beyond the altar-rail. I thought - This is a ceremony that has been performed thousands of times before, will be performed thousands of times again: could there be evidence that it holds the world together?

  You were kneeling beside me. It seemed that it might be we, you and I, who were again being married; who were to be sent out into the world, of course together, but on our own in so far as we were agents in hostile territory.

  I wanted to say to Nellie - Give us your blessing.

  After the ceremony we went back into the cream-walled room where cakes and sandwiches had been added to the cups and urns. The nun who had welcomed us had been joined by others; several of them seemed to be on the edge of laughter. I thought - The people who landed here centuries ago in their acorn boats; what made them survive, what did they hear, was it laughter?

  When Nellie, the young Nellie, came in, I saw I had been right, yes, that it was she: such an open, clever face; such bright dark eyes. It was as if she would always be close to laughter - in her black habit scattering bits and pieces of light. She greeted, and was greeted by, people near the door: they conversed with her in deaf-and-dumb language; they seemed to be sprinkling each other with drops of light. Then she looked across the room at you and me. I thought - Oh why have I not been here before! Because this would have been not too little, but too much? Nellie became quite still; she clasped her hands in front of her: I thought - There are, indeed, paintings like this: of the recognition of what seems to be too much. She came towards us across the room. I held out both my hands to her; she took these and placed them on her shoulders. She was quite

  a small girl; pale; like something that has had to grow a long way towards the light. I thought I might say - I did not know if you would remember me! I said 'Nellie, I am so glad to see you, we have come to give you our love.' Nellie, looking at me, put a hand against my throat. I said This is my wife, Eleanor.' After a time Nellie said in a voice that was like bird-song coming from a roof 'Yes, I know.' She turned to you and you put your arms round each other and kissed. Then Nellie stood back and said something to an older nun who had come up to her, using her hands. The older nun said 'She says that every day she has prayed for you.' Nellie said quickly in the voice that seemed to come from the sky 'For you both.' The older nun laughed and said 'And of course will continue to pray for you.' Then we all started laughing. It was as if we might have to hold on to each other. I thought - Oh dear God, you see why I could not have come here before; I would have been burned up by this sun.

  It continued to be almost unbearable, this sense of pleasure to be in the presence of Nellie. I thought - It was not exactly silence, that language, when they were building their tower up to heaven.

  What is it, this energy that is light?

  On the way back in the train I said to you 'When you spoke to her, all those years ago, what did you say she said to you?'

  You said 'She told me where you were.'

  I thought - Where was I? Then - I was already one of those bits and pieces of light?

  This was in the spring of 1938 - after Hitler's Nazis had marched into Austria, at the beginning of his threats against Czechoslovakia, halfway down Europe's runaway descent towards hell. In the laboratory we were getting nowhere with our work; it was as if we knew we would get nowhere, we were waiting for something from outside to come in. There were rumours that people in Berlin were on the edge of a breakthrough. I thought - If there is to be the risk of total destruction, then there will perhaps be an equally great need for light.

  In the summer Bruno came to stay with us. He was hollow-eyed, Jewish, full of energy. He said 'If Hitler marches into Czechoslovakia, then at last there will be war!'

  I said 'But do you know what may happen if there is a war? I mean, what they might be discovering in Germany?'

  Bruno said 'Can't you find out from Franz - you remember old

  Franz - what they are doing, how far they have got, in Germany? He's up to his neck in that sort of work.'

  You said 4 Yes, perhaps I will try to make contact with Franz: and he might have news of my father.'

  I thought - Pray for us, Nellie, will you? We may be off to some sort of war.

  Melvyn came up to stay with us: he overlapped with Bruno for one night. He said 'You Jews, it's you who are going to discover how to get us all blown up! Why don't you do what you usually do to prove your moral superiority?'

  Bruno said 'Which is what?'

  Melvyn said 'Get just yourselves blown up.'

  Bruno said 'Oh don't worry, we'll doubtless do that.'

  People began to fill sandbags and dig trenches in the parks. Hitler was appearing on newsreels at Berchtesgaden like a strict governess showing men in striped trousers in and out of her study. Melvyn said 'You know what he's supposed to like having done to him, don't you?'

  Bruno said 'Yes.'

  Melvyn said 'But think of having to do it!'

  You said 'Perhaps we will.'

  Then in September there was the agreement at Munich between England, France, Germany and Italy by which a large part of Czechoslovakia was handed over to Germany without a fight; there were cheering crowds at railway stations and at airports. But the sandbags were not emptied; trenches were not filled in. Very soon it seemed that there was some shame at the celebrations; a knowledge that, after all, there would be war.

  You said 'Perhaps I should go to Zurich before it is too late and find out what I can about my father.'

  I said 'Yes, you've always wanted to go back to Zurich.'

  You shouted 'Don't say it like that!'

  I said 'I'm not saying it like that!' Then - 'And perhaps you'll be able to talk to Franz.'

  We continued to cling to each other, you and I - in our bed; in our room in front of the fire. These were our rocks in a cold sea. I thought - But if we go apart, we can send each other messages, like those mythical sea-birds that can build nests on the waters of a cold sea.

  You said 'You think we can only do what we have to do, become active, if we are sometimes in a practical sense separate?'

  I said 'I have not said that!'

  You said 'Of course you have not said that!'

  I thought - And then from time to time we can have again those Shakespearian recognition scenes, miracle scenes; and at least will not have become fused, without energy, like ordinary ghastly married couples.

  Sometime before Christmas I paid my annual visit to my father and my mother. I went on my own. I said to you 'Goodbye!' Then

  - 'Oh no, you never much liked opera.*

  You said 'Meet you behind the gasworks - or whatever is that strange place that you say.'

  I found my mother, upright, in her seat by the window. I thought

  - This is how she will appear, having been dug out of the ashes in a thousand years. She said 'I'm sorry I was horrible the last time you were here.' I said 'Oh that's all right.' Then - 'I thought psychoanalysts were usually awful to their children.' She said 'Yes, why is that, do you think?' I said 'I suppose it's to try to help them get away.' She said 'How kind!' I said 'Yes, but it only works if it's conscious, and then you can't really do it, can you?'

  When I found my father in his study he see
med old, as if ash were already falling from factory chimneys on to snow. He said 'What are you doing for Christmas? Or don't you have Christmas any more?'

  I thought I might say - Oh no, we eat babies.

  I said 'I always find it frightening, Christmas: all those babies being killed: and such celebration!'

  My father said 'I suppose it's like the production of any new species.'

  I thought - Well, what I have learned from you is some sort of irony, my father and my mother: thank you: let it stand me in good stead.

  I went to see Mullen at Cambridge. He had not been in touch with me since the time I had been with Caroline in the London pub. He was in the same building in the college in which he had been an undergraduate years ago. I said 'You never got in touch with me so I thought I'd get in touch with you: but what inferences you will draw from this!'

  He said 'What news have you of our friend Kapitsa?'

  I said 'I have no news of Kapitsa. I was going to ask you.'

  Mullen was a long thin figure who seemed to be bent into his

  chair in the shape of a hook. He said 'Sherry?' Then - 'Your wife was a Party member, was she not?'

  I said 'That was a long time ago.'

  He said 'And then she was a nurse with the Nationalists in Spain.'

  I said 'The things we have to do, in our different ways!'

  He said 'You asked me a question a long time ago.'

  'What was that?'

  He said 'What is the essential difference between Communism and Nazism - when they both seem so similar in their ruthlessness and in their manipulation of power.'

  'And what did you say?'

  'What I say now is that Communists, for all their brutalities and stupidities, are on the side of life; whereas Nazis - as they say so explicitly themselves - are on the side of death.'

  I said 'What about these people in Moscow now who say they deserve to die?'

  He said 'But you know the answer to that.' Then - 'Why shouldn't they want to die?'

  When Mullen smiled he had large yellow teeth which seemed to have been stained perhaps by drops running down from his eyes.

  I said 'What you really want to know is, whether anyone is getting anywhere here with this business of radioactivity.'

  He said'Yes.'

  I said 'We're getting nowhere. Kapitsa might be getting somewhere. There are stories that they might be getting near to a breakthrough in Germany. That was what I wanted to talk to you about.'

  Mullen said 'Why do you say that Kapitsa might be getting somewhere?'

  I said 'Because he has the imagination, he would want to succeed, he would not want everything he cared about to be destroyed.'

  Mullen spread himself in his chair as if he were trying to make himself more anonymous, like a linen cover. He said 'You agree that it would be a disaster if such technology was developed by the Nazis.'

  I said 'How far has Kapitsa got? Don't you know?'

  He said 'Would you tell me if you got anywhere here in the future?'

  I said 'I'd say what I thought was right so long as I'd made no undertaking not to. I wouldn't do anything explicitly for a foreign power.'

  He said 'You wouldn't tell the Nazis?'

  I said 'Of course I wouldn't tell the Nazis!'

  He said 'And you wouldn't tell me.'

  I said 'Oh I'm just going through the motions of what I think is right! What does it matter if you have nothing to tell me about Kapitsa?'

  For Christmas that year we went, you and I, to Holy Island, or Lindisfarne - a piece of land off the Northumberland coast stuck out like an antenna into the sea. I had wanted to go there because it was one of the places to which, centuries ago, people had been blown across the dark sea in little boats; they had landed, had put down roots; they had built monasteries and places of light: where had they come from, where were they going? We stayed in a boarding-house, you and I. We were the only guests. I thought -Here we are, on these mudflats: there is plenty of room at the inn.

  There was a Nativity scene set up in the village church: Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the child were all looking at an empty space on the ground just outside the framework of the setting. I thought - It is as if there had been some sort of nest there: the bird has flown.

  You said 'I used to think how important it was that there should be a reconciliation between Christians and Jews.'

  I said 'And don't you think that now?'

  You said 'I think we're always parts of the same thing.'

  There was a walk across fields to huge sand-dunes and a beach to which it seemed only birds ever came; they hurried on wet sand with their reflections underneath them. I thought - It might be they who carry strange seeds in their crops; from these seeds, when they drop them, a new race of men might grow. Where would they have come from, where would they be going? There was a hard rain driving in from the sea. Donald Hodge had gone for Christmas across the sea to Germany, then Denmark. He had gone there in response to rumours about what might be about to be revealed of the secrets of the atom. Perhaps was it from this that a strange new race of men might spring - as it was supposed to have done that first Christmas years ago, but not quite: the seeds for 2000 years having remained dormant as if under snow. I said to you 'I don't think it has ever really been seen, the point of that story.' You said 'The point is, what is a story?' I said 'Perhaps something the effect of which, in spite of its not being seen, grows.'

  At night it was so cold that it was as if spray were breaking over

  us where we clung to each other on our rock, and all the devils that had been sent out into the world were rushing back to us for warmth, for protection.

  It was just after Christmas that I got a telegram from Donald Hodge asking me to return home urgently; he said something of great importance had occurred of which he could not tell me in a telegram. I thought - Oh indeed, some parturition? Some projected slaughter of innocents? Then - What we need, perhaps, is a story about stories.

  - Once upon a time, children, when it came to be necessary to eat the fruit of that second tree of Life -

  We left Holy Island, you and I, and went back to the laboratory. There we learned the story of what had actually happened across the sea that Christmas. I thought - It would be a technical problem, certainly, to put it into words.

  Once upon a time, children, there were two scientists who were working in a laboratory in Berlin. One was called Otto Hahn and the other Lise Meitner. One was a chemist and one was a physicist; one was a man and one was a woman; one was a Gentile and the other was a Jew. They had been working together for many years to try to understand the secrets of the atom. Then in the summer of 1938 their partnership was broken up: Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew, was forced to leave Austria/Germany: she went to Sweden to be an exile in a foreign country. Otto Hahn stayed behind in the laboratory in Berlin; he carried on with the experiments. He had been the one to set up and tabulate the experiments; Lise Meitner had been the one to try to understand what they might mean. Otto Hahn found that now more than ever the experiments made no sense: the nuclei of uranium seemed to be being transmuted into the nuclei of a much lighter element; and what understanding was there for this? There had, of course, been the theory that the nucleus of an atom might be held together like a drop of water; but although it could conceivably be imagined that a drop of water might split into two almost equal parts, there was still no mathematics to explain how this might occur; and what could be said scientifically about what could not be represented by mathematics? Otto Hahn wrote to Lise Meitner to tell her of the results of his experiments: she was, after all, the one who might be able to explain them, even if in exile. This was Christmas, 1938. Then Lise Meitner was joined in Sweden by her nephew, Otto Frisch: Otto Frisch was also an exile; also a physicist and a Jew. On Christmas Eve Lise Meitner

  and Otto Frisch went for a walk by the sea. There was snow on the ground: would this have reminded them of that very first Christmas years ago? Lise Meitner told Otto Fris
ch of the results of the experiments in Berlin: of the uranium nucleus that seemed to transmute itself into much lighter parts. They knew, of course, that if this were true (what a miracle!) - if the uranium nucleus were split into anything like two - then these parts, being of the same electrical charge, would repel each other with enormous force: then indeed there would be released energy locked up in the heart of an atom - a force for terrible creation or destruction. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch sat down in the snow: by the waters of a cold grey Babylon they - what? - held pencils and pieces of paper on their knees; they worked on the mathematics. The mathematics for once

  - perhaps it was the cold; perhaps it was the urgency of being in exile - did not seem too difficult. The internal charges within the unstable nucleus of an uranium atom were such that it was likely on its own to be on the point of overcoming the surface tension that held it together anyway: for it to split into two might after all indeed take no more than the impact of a neutron. And then - if the nucleus of a uranium atom did in fact split into the two much lighter nuclei of a barium and a krypton atom, which was what Otto Hahn was suggesting - then indeed there would be the violent repulsion and the release of force. But still - where was it, as it were, that the energy for this force came from? For in mathematics something does not come out of nothing. Then it was worked out

  - since the sum of the weights of barium and krypton nuclei are slightly less than the weight of a single uranium nucleus, some mass must have been lost in the process; and so what could have happened to this mass except that it must have been transformed into energy? The formula by which mass was transformed into energy was known. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch sat with their pencils and bits of paper on their knees. And so, yes - abracadabra! - it was seen that the mass that had been lost in the fission process was, when transformed, almost precisely the amount of energy which would be involved in the two new nuclei repelling each other with enormous force; and it was indeed exactly the amount of energy (though this was not seen till slightly later) - if it could be supposed that as part of the explosion were emitted also two or three loose neutrons - which, if suitably controlled, might then, of course, be used for the exploding of further uranium nuclei - and so on - in geometrical progression or chain reaction to whatever strength of