Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  thought he might say - I see a broken-backed cottage: something dead coming alive.

  Then Lilia said 'What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to approve of the war in Vietnam.'

  He said 'No, I don't approve of it, it's just that if there isn't a war there, there might be a worse one somewhere else. You can try to stop this war, but you can't achieve innocence.'

  Lilia said 'God, what a boring attitude!'

  Max said 'Yes, it's difficult to talk about it.'

  The odd thing about this meeting (this was how Max told the story) was that they each talked as if they knew who the other was - Max as if he knew she was Lilia; Lilia as if the person whom she had recognised as a public figure was the person who her mother had told her had so much influenced her years ago although she had not told her his name - though in fact it was only the next day that they uncovered these parts of their stories. Towards the end of the evening, after they had had dinner together and had talked - perhaps about patterns? about things being apt to return on the curve of the universe? - they had gone back to the small flat where Lilia was staying and she had given Max coffee and had sat straight-backed and smoked a cigarette and backed away as if the smoke were coming after her; and it was then that she had said to him the sentence that had become some sort of talisman for her - 'I must tell you, I never go to bed with people I like.'

  And Max had said 'Then that's all right.'

  She had said 'Why?'

  Max had said 'Because either we like each other or else we will go to bed.'

  And she had thought - Oh, if you say that, it can be both?

  Max and Lilia set up house together for a time. Lilia's mother and father were away in California - he was working in films; she was doing social work with the homeless. Max and Lilia used to stay in the cottage on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk: Max would go to and fro between there and Cambridge. Max needed someone once more to adore: Lilia needed someone to learn from. Their affair worked very well for a time, in spite of Max being so much older. But this is the beginning of another story, or set of stories.

  Once upon this time there were Max and Lilia; then Lilia's younger brother Bert to whom Eleanor became analyst and mentor; then the girl called Judith who became the lover or beloved of all the male protagonists of these stories; then also Jason, who was or

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  is the correlator of the stories - the writer of this postcript - who loved both Lilia and Judith, who in the end, as it were, is married happily to Lilia. And there is the child who emerges from these stories - as a result of the activities of all the protagonists but in fact, of course, from his mother Lilia. Perhaps too the child is what might come alive in the mind of a watcher or a reader: it is stories, patterns, as Eleanor and Max used to say, that bear the seeds of what is living.

  There is also another child, a girl: but this appears at the very end of these stories.

  There was always a problem about how to write about all this -liveliness being somewhat secret, being what is experienced on one's own, moving often in the dark between levels. The writer writes: there is that which he writes and that which is what comes alive (or does not) both in his mind and in the mind of a watcher or a reader. Is it you: is it you? It is this that might be like a child. Stories are messages. (Is it not this that Eleanor and Max have been saying?) To exist there has to be a code: messages bring things into existence.

  At the beginning it seemed there were seeds; they were like people on a stage; they were in a writer's mind; they were saying 'How do we bring this into existence? - what we would like: in other minds, in the outside world.' The messages, to be effective, would have to be partly in the dark. The questions would be not just what did happen then, not what will happen next, but what is happening now. An actor comes on; he is watched; he watches himself being watched; he watches himself watching. From the recognition of this predicament other questions grow: 'What is acting and what is not?'; 'What is real and what is not?'; 'What is the style that can be seen to be not false but true?' And the answers are not in words: they are (indeed!) what flowers (if any) grow. For creation there will have been some journey through the dark - for an audience, for a reader, for demonstrators in a mind or on a stage: what on earth, after all, is a human being to do? Eleanor and Max and the others wanted to form messages. They might have been linked to archetypes in my mind: but from whatever such seeds, flowers are the flowers that grow.

  Lilia split up with Max; Bert was helped to be freed by Eleanor; in time he found what he wanted with Judith; Lilia returned to me, that is, Jason. The stories go to and fro - like a sieve, a riddle. In the end, one might say - There are one or two diamonds!

  Eleanor and Max seemed to be our parents or grandparents in

  this. But we all felt ourselves to be agents in a strange but indeed not always hostile territory.

  I would think - For God's sake, not on our way back to, but for the first time free of, that boring old Garden of Eden!

  There was a time when Max, the Professor, was getting old and had become ill; in fact he was supposed to be dying. (I am leapfrogging over the backs of these stories: there may not exactly be an end; but by now there is something living or there is not.) There was this time when Max was supposed to have cancer and to be dying and he was being looked after by his young friend Judith. Judith was also looking after her baby. She was also involved (I think) in writing her part of the story about these years - as indeed all of us had from time to time been trying to do, except perhaps Lilia, but then she was the mother of the child. And we all came to visit Max on his so-called death-bed; on a day that also happened to be his birthday. You imagine the setting (you; or you?): the bedroom of a flat in a Regency building in a town on the south coast of England; the window looking out over a cold grey sea; Max propped up in bed; the new baby in her cot by the window; Judith moving to and fro between death and birth - oh, well, indeed, what is the message! We had come to visit Max; we had also come to see Judith and her baby. First Bert arrived - Bert who might or might not be the father of Judith's baby but what did it matter: what is a father, after all: did not the women in these stories imagine themselves at moments as neo-Virgin Marys? Bert had wanted to marry Judith: he had been quite pleased, probably, when this had not quite occurred; it is easier, after all, for a non-ending to be happy. Bert came into the room and greeted Judith; he stood with Judith by the cot at the window looking down at the baby; oh yes, there are paintings like this. Then Bert went to the bed and stood by Max. He said 'How are you?' Max said Tm dying, thank you.' Bert pulled up a chair and sat by Max's bed. Max had closed his eyes. Bert cleared his throat as if he were doing some business on a stage to show that he was trying to get Max's attention. Max smiled. Bert said 'Look here, this cancer you're supposed to have, isn't it true that it occurs when certain cells of the body go into runaway, out of control? I mean, they just multiply and look after themselves without any regard for the body as a whole?' Max said 'Something like that.' Bert said 'And isn't this something you've been going on about all your life - I mean, about the need to stop it?' Max, from behind closed eyes, said 'Yes, that's right.' One

  could not quite tell, I suppose, whether he was laughing or crying. Bert said 'Well, don't you think, perhaps, that in that case you should stop it?' Max did seem to be trying to deal with some moisture behind his eyes; like someone who might have come across an oasis in a desert. He said 'I've got to die sometime.' Bert said 'But not if you don't want to.' Max said 'I do want to.' The baby, by the window, began to make a slight noise of crying; as if it were a bird very far away. Max said quickly 'And anyway, one has to make room for other people.' Bert said 'Oh but that's up to the other people!'Judith lifted her baby out of the cot and came and sat on the end of the bed: she began to feed the baby from her breast. Max opened his eyes and watched Judith and the baby. Tears appeared on his cheeks like diamonds. He said 'Dear God, what is immortal.'

  Shortly after this the other couple who app
ear in these stories arrived - Lilia and Jason. We came in with our child. The child, a boy, was about eight years old at this time; he had fair hair; he was not dark like his father. He had a face of extraordinary brightness and gravity. He went up and looked at the baby that Judith was holding: this baby was a girl. Lilia and I stood by Max's bed; we were holding hands. Max turned his head to us and said 'You two are together again, are you?' I said 'Have we been away?' Lilia said 'Till life do us part.' Bert said 'We were just talking about how to be immortal.' We, the four of us, stood around Max's bed. It did not seem necessary to talk much. The child turned from watching Judith feed her baby and he came to the head of the bed and looked at Max. His head was at the same height as Max's head, so that he was like a planet spun off from some old sun. He said 'Are .you really going to die?' Max said 'I'm trying, but these people won't let me.' The child said 'Why are you trying?' Max said 'I've done everything I want to do: what more can I do?' The skin of Max's face was slightly wrinkled but curiously healthy like that of an apple. The child felt in his pocket. He said 'Have you seen this trick?' Max said 'What trick?' The child said 'It's a trick I do with this medal.' The child took out of his pocket what looked like an old Roman medallion. Max stared at it. He said 'I know that medal.' The child said 'I toss it, and if it comes down tails then you're allowed to die, but if it comes down heads then you're not.' Max closed his eyes. The child tossed the coin in the air, caught it, and turned it over on to the back of his other hand. Then he said to Max 'What do you think it is?' Max said 'Heads.' The child said 'Yes!'

  He uncovered the coin and held it out towards Max. Max said 'But you wouldn't let me fix the choice in the first place.' The child said 'It's all the better if you know the trick.' He rocked from side to side with laughter. Bert put out a hand and took the coin from the child: he turned it over. On one side there was the head of a bird carrying what looked like a flower in its beak: on the other there was the image of a snake with its tail in its mouth so that its head, but not its tail, was visible. Bert handed the medallion back to the child: he said 'You're learning.' Lilia had gone to the end of the bed and was making cooing noises at Judith's baby.

  I had brought with me a bag that contained a bottle of champagne and some plastic mugs. Judith said 'We've got glasses.' I said 'I suppose I think no one but myself ever has glasses.' Lilia said 'How typical.' We stood round the bed and toasted Max, for his birthday, with champagne. Max held a plastic mug on his chest. He seemed to be having difficulty in opening his eyes. The child had some sips of champagne and was allowed to hold the baby. He took it to the window to show it the sun and the sea.

  We were, I suppose, waiting for Eleanor to arrive. The news was that she had been with her horse in the north of England; she had said that she would be with us sometime in the evening. Bert, however, had heard that she had had a fall from her horse. Judith said 'But she's always having falls from her horse.' Bert said 'So, how typical.' We stood around Max's bed: he seemed to like hearing us making these noises around him.

  When Eleanor arrived the door swung open and no one came through it for a while: the door was set in a dark alcove: you had to move to see who might be outside. When Eleanor did appear she was on crutches: she seemed to be trying to get herself rearranged: she carried a scarf, a woollen hat, two paper bags: she wore a long multi-coloured cloak which she was draping over her crutches so that they were like wings. When we went to help her there did not seem to be any space in which to do this: she began to laugh; when she came into the room with her bits and pieces it was, yes, as if she were a juggler on a tightrope. She was an old lady with a nut-brown face and dark hair streaked with grey. Before she had appeared it had seemed that it might be Death waiting outside: now, with her cloak like plumage and her movement on crutches that made her seem to float above the ground, it was as if she might be an angel that had won a brief contest with Death in the corridor. By the time she got round the corner of the alcove and thus in sight

  of Max he had opened his eyes and was watching her. They smiled at one another. There were tears on Max's cheeks: between him and Eleanor there seemed to be bits and pieces of light like a glass screen breaking. It was odd, since we knew each of them so well, how seldom in fact we had seen Eleanor and Max together. He said 'Hullo.' She said 'Hullo.' She moved to the edge of the bed and she put both her crutches in one hand so that she could pivot round to sit on the edge of the bed beside him. Max said 'Why are you on crutches?' Eleanor said 'So I could get up the stairs.' She had managed to lower herself on to the edge of the bed; she now had her back to Max. Jason - or I - offered her a glass of champagne: it seemed that she might produce an extra hand, like one of Shiva's, to take it. Max said 'Then why have I got this cancer?' She said 'Well, why have you?' She seemed to be trying to swing herself round on one hip so that she would be facing Max: this would be a difficult feat; she would have to get half on her back, holding champagne, on her tightrope. Max said 'Perhaps it was so that I could be looked after by Judith.' Eleanor said 'Well, you are being looked after by Judith.' There was a moment when Eleanor was in fact on her back with her arms and legs in the air; she was like some giant baby; then she was over on to her other side, facing Max, her legs coming down over his, her head suddenly a few inches from him. Max kissed her. Eleanor said 'So now, what is it?' Max widened his eyes as if he were about to explode: a sun speeding across a desert. He said 'I can't die!' Eleanor said 'Why not?' Max said 'Because I'm too happy!' Eleanor put an arm round him and held him. They stayed embraced. They were like one of those everlastingly happy couples on an Etruscan tomb. We watched them. The child had come from the window carrying the baby; he seemed to be pointing out to it Max and Eleanor. Max said 'For God's sake, something sometime has to die!' Eleanor said 'I think it is the cancer that is dying.'

  The 'Catastrophe Practice' Series of Novels

  Humans can learn through catastrophe. Evolution can take a step forwards. We can't change things by efforts of will; what we can do is 'practise' a state of mind that may be able to deal with catastrophe when it comes.

  1. Hopeful Monsters (U.K. 1990; U.S. 1991): Max and Eleanor are students growing up in the 1920s in Cambridge and Berlin. They have to come to terms with the rise of Communism and Naziism, the crack-up of old ways of thinking in science and philosophy, the self-destructiveness of the Spanish Civil War, the making of the Bomb. What they learn can be passed on, eventually, to the protagonists of the books that follow.

  2. Imago Bird (U.K. 1980; U.S. 1989): Bert is a student in the 1970s. Through his family he finds himself involved with Establishment politics; through his girlfriend with the revolutionary Trotskyites. He is helped to make his way through this crazy social and political maze by a psychotherapist, Dr Anders— Eleanor from Hopeful Monsters.

  3. Serpent (U.K. 1981; U.S. 1990): Jason is a scriptwriter. He is writing (in the 1970s) a script for a film about the Roman/Jewish war in A.D. 70. He is married to Lilia, Bert's sister, who was previously living with Max. The film people, bored, hatch a plot to break up Lilia and Jason's successful marriage. This is paralleled by the destructiveness/self-destructiveness mocked by Jason in his script. Jason and Lilia have learned to survive— and their child.

  4. Judith (U.K. 1986; U.S. 1991): Judith is an aspiring young actress in the 1970s. She goes into some sort of crack-up with promiscuity and drugs. She is rescued by Professor Ackerman—Max of Hopeful Monsters —who gets her to a healing ashram in India. Later, all the protagonists of these stories come together at an

  anti-nuclear demonstration outside an American airbase, where there is an explosion. They have all had a hand in the survival of the child; the child now has a hand in their survival.

  5. Catastrophe Practice (U.K. 1979; U.S. 1989): This was the first book written of the series—it was the 'seed' of the other books—now it is more clearly seen at the end. (This was the book that earned the 'experimental' tag; the other books are not conventionally experimental.) Catastrophe Practice is in the form of
four essays, three plays, and a short novel. It was trying to say—what is important about any 'act' is likely to be that which is going on offstage; it is by watching and listening for this that one might be ready for catastrophe—and something new might be born, and survive.

  —Nicholas Mosley

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