Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

There would come to our apartment in Berlin two of my mother's relations from the provinces — Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob. They would arrive with their suitcases and long black coats and trilby hats and beards. I would hope — Might they not after all be taken to be people just out to buy a train ticket? They would open their suitcases in the hall: there would be vegetables and butter and eggs and perhaps a chicken or two: my mother would greet them but then retire to her room: well how does a good Communist maintain her dignity under the necessity of capitalist manipulation? My father and Magda usually did the bargaining. They would hand over a sheet or a blanket, perhaps, from the store in the linen cupboard; a few books; an heirloom that had come from my mother's family anyway. And so we stayed alive. Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob would sit side by side on the sofa in the sitting-room like primeval images that had come floating across the sea in canoes. I would think — But, still, should not survivors, saviours, be more secret? Otherwise how easy it is for people to want to kill them! There are such opportunities for envy in the business of salvation: is this why it seems to go hand in hand with ruination?

There were in fact outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the streets of Berlin at this time. I had not noticed overt manifestations of it before — it had seemed no more than an oddity among the sophisticates of the university or of the Adlon Hotel. But it was now being said that Jews were taking over property cheaply from non-Jewish families who were hungry: Jewish shops were broken into and goods were looted. Of course there is envy of those who can adapt and look after their own kind on the part of those who cannot. (How would you put it? That there is hostility to mutants not only from the environment but, if the environment changes, from those who do not change?) Defence forces were organised by

Jews; a looter was shot and killed. I thought — Good. Then — But is it not the sign of a survivor to be different from those who are not?

I said to my father 'Would it not have been better if, from the beginning, Jews had remained secret?'

He said 'Then how could they have been agents of salvation?'

I said 'But people do not imitate them.'

He said 'I mean, perhaps they had to be scattered; to spread.'

I thought — You mean, what it is they spread still remains secret?

My father tried to explain about the inflation — about the postwar reparation payments that Germany was supposed to be making to France and England and America. The payments themselves were not affected by the inflation because they were in terms of gold; but it was the cost of them that was said to be causing the inflation in Germany. My father said 'But also the inflation might be a way of Germans saying to the French and English and Americans "Look, it makes no sense if this is what happens when you press us for payments: you will get nothing more from us if we are ruined.

I said to my father 'But can't they just announce this?'

My father said 'But then they would seem to be plotting; they wouldn't seem to be helpless.'

I said 'So it's a game.'

My father said 'But one of the rules is you can't call it a game.'

I thought — So some things, yes, do have to remain secret.

The inflation, in fact, ended more suddenly than it had begun. For a week or so there was no paper money of any value at all (there was a joke — a billion-mark note was the cheapest form of lavatory paper) then one day there were new clean banknotes with eight or nine noughts knocked off. And these were accepted. I said to my father 'But how can money be stabilised, or whatever it is called, just by knocking eight or nine noughts off?'

He said 'Well, just as it might suit people to have chaos for a time, so it usually suits them suddenly to stop.'

I said 'Why?'

He said 'They get bored.'

I said 'No one controls it.'

He said 'No, no one controls it.' Then — 'I think one can have a feel of it.'

I said 'But not talk about it.'

He said'No.'

I thought — You mean, one might influence it if one has a feel of it?

Then — We are like agents in occupied territory.

I was not having much contact with my mother at this time: she had moved out of our apartment except at weekends and was staying in a room in the east side of Berlin where she worked at one of the Communist Party offices. I thought — She is a fighter: fighters do not want to remain secret; fighters often die. Then — It is more straightforward, of course, to have an instinct to die?

Every now and then I would become slightly ill again at this time; I would spend a few days in bed. I would think — When I do imagine I understand things, it is as if a white light is coming down: indeed it seems difficult sometimes to stay alive.

My father would come and sit on the edge of my bed and talk to me. He once said 'As a matter of fact there is an old Jewish tradition that the real saviours of the world — those who stop the human race from destroying itself- are very few; perhaps no more than seven, seven just men, and they do remain secret! They are not known even to each other; perhaps in this guise they are hardly known to themselves.'

I thought, of course — Perhaps I am one of them!

Then — But if I were, I suppose I would not know this myself.

In the summer of 1925 I was fifteen and I was for the first time allowed out in the streets on my own: I was aware of the enormous changes that had taken place in Berlin since the days of my earliest memories. I had not noticed much of this going on at the time (change does indeed often seem to take place secretly) but now there were no more left-wing or right-wing militants in the streets; no more men with rifles hanging on to lorries like claws; no more soldiers with their helmets and bedrolls like chickens just out of eggs. There was suddenly an energy, a polish, a surface glitter in the streets: it was as if something garish had broken through a skin: something to do with the sun, perhaps; or with disease, or with cosmetics.

At the school I was going to at the time I had a girlfriend called Trixie and a boyfriend called Bruno: we went around together as a gang. Trixie was blonde with blue eyes and curly hair; Bruno was olive-skinned and Jewish. Bruno was our manager and clown; Trixie was our figurehead. I imagined myself as some sort of charioteer with reins in my fingers in the background.

I said 'My father has the idea that there may be seven or so just men, people, who hold the world together; and they may not even know each other.'

Bruno said Then thank God they are not us!'

I said 'Why not?'

He said 'Do we not know each other?'

Trixie was anxious because she feared that she would still be a virgin at the age of sixteen: she felt this would be a hindrance to her becoming grand and powerful and rich. She said 'It's not that I care about the business of becoming not a virgin, it's just that I think one should start practising how to get what one wants now.'

Bruno said 'Practising what?'

Trixie said 'How should I know? You tell us, Bruno.'

Bruno put a hand to his throat and made out that he was being strangled; he fell against a wall; he sank down on his haunches.

Bruno came from a family who were some sort of high-class Schieber. he seemed always to have cigarettes, new clothes, watches, money. He told us about the night-life of Berlin where there was a whole new world behind the facades of rock-like buildings — of Aladdin's caves that opened up with a dazzle of lights and jewels.

I said 'Well why don't you take us?'

He said 'Because I'd be responsible.'

I said 'Responsible for what?'

He said 'For the poor men, God help them, who might want to make you not virgins.'