Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Now I must say something about this play because it was representative of something happening and being demonstrated at the same time.

Franz and Bruno and Minna and I were sitting on the grass. We were with the two Nazi boys with whom we seemed to have made friends. We were looking up at the restored fagade of the castle. I was wondering about you.

At first it was difficult to know what was going on in the play: people seemed to be saying what was occurring just in the backs of their own heads; one had become accustomed, I suppose, to people in plays pretending to make sense. There was also the impression of vast and imponderable events elsewhere — but these were nevertheless of almost no importance. I had not seen a play like this before: it was like life! There was a middle-aged couple in an apartment in Berlin; they had a daughter who had been engaged to a soldier who had gone missing in the war; she was carrying on with a war profiteer. Her parents wanted her to forget her old love and marry the war profiteer. I thought — Well, I am too young to have carried on with a war profiteer, but do you not see that this is like life? (Who was I talking to? Franz? Bruno? you? Anyone who will listen?) After a time the daughter yields to the pressures of her parents and becomes engaged to the war profiteer: but just at this moment her old lover turns up (you would say — Of course!). He has been a prisoner of war (well, what were you doing in that

forest?); they meet; he learns that she has become engaged to a war profiteer; he wanders off again; he acts somewhat demented; I mean you did act somewhat sad, didn't you? All this is taking place against the background of the Sparticist revolution; the rifles and machine-guns in the streets, the storming of a newspaper building. But of course the two main characters in the play are not paying much attention to this: it is boring. But then, what is not? It is for the sake of what this might be that the girl and her ex-lover have gone wandering off again: did you not say that what matters is what turns up? And in the meantime the other people in the play are carrying on seeing, saying, just what is trapped within their own heads. And Franz and Bruno and Minna and I and the Nazi boys were watching, sitting on the grass. Of course, I had not seen a play like this before! Plays were usually about people acting as if they did not know they were acting. Here everyone seemed to know this: and so it was as if they were not.

Sometimes when the girl and her ex-lover were on the stage they seemed to be searching amongst the audience and to be saying — Is it you? Is it you? Then they bumped into each other again; he learned that she was pregnant by the war profiteer; they wandered apart again. And all the time there were the machine-guns, the storming of the newspaper building, the characters like politicians appearing and disappearing in the streets. Most of these were drunk. But then why, in the end, should not the business of the girl being pregnant by the war profiteer also be boring? Oh, I had never before seen a play like this!

The Nazi boys were getting restless; perhaps this was because the whole business of politics, let alone conventional feeling, was being treated with contempt: who cares about the storming of newspaper buildings! who cares about one's girl being made pregnant by a war profiteer! The girl and her ex-lover bumped into each other again. One of the Nazi boys put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Then the girl and her ex-lover turned and looked at him: it was as if now they might be seeing what was happening not on a stage. The girl and her ex-lover had seemed at last to be about to go off together hand in hand: what they were looking for, they said, was a bed. Almost the last line in the play was 'Now comes bed! The great, white, wide, bed!' I thought — You mean, you and I, we should simply have gone to bed? Then — This is the code: what is the message?

This was the end of the play: people in the audience were standing

and shaking their fists; they were booing and whistling; several had advanced to the edge of the platform of the stage. They saw indeed that they had been treated with contempt. The cast — except for the girl and her old lover who had by now gone offhand-in-hand — had come on to the stage as if to take their bow: now they acted as if they had noticed the audience for the first time — it was just the girl and her lover who had previously looked amongst the audience. The cast reacted as if, yes, the audience might indeed be a crowd storming the castle or a newspaper building — well were they acting or were they not? Or was what was now going on on a different level off-stage. The light in one of the windows high up in the fagade at the back of the stage suddenly came on: framed in the window there could be seen the girl and her lover who were facing each other with their hands on each other's shoulders; they were looking at each other tenderly: well might they be on their way to bed! People in the audience, looking up, were quiet for a moment; then this vision seemed to enrage them further. The other members of the cast were backing towards a drawbridge that was across a gap between the back of the stage and the facade; they were acting (or not) as if they were fighting a rearguard action; the mob, the audience, were beginning to climb on to the stage. I thought — Well, might it not be part of an actor's expertise to produce what is real? But to what end? A large number of the audience were now on the stage; the actors had withdrawn behind the drawbridge and were pulling it up: they were shaking their fists at the audience: I thought — Well perhaps to show things as ridiculous is real.

The audience who had arrived at the gap at the back of the stage were again looking up; the girl and her lover had moved away from one window and had appeared at another: they had half undressed: they seemed to have got even nearer to bed. The other members of the cast now appeared at windows and on balconies in the faqade and began to throw down on the audience, or act as if they were throwing down — what? — arrows? boiling oil? It seemed just pieces of screwed-up paper. But no one was laughing. Franz and Minna and the Nazi boys had moved up towards the stage. I had stayed behind on the grass in the courtyard.

You know those memory theatres of the seventeenth century in which people used to act dramas to help them to try to remember what they might be about — it was difficult to remember at a time when there were so few written stories. Well, it is always difficult, perhaps, to know what one is about even when everything seems

to be happening all at once; but there seemed to be something here showing this; even if it was to do just with what turns up. You said 'Hullo.' I said 'Hullo.' I mean there you were, yes, in the courtyard, having come up beside me. I said 'I thought you had gone.' You said 'But I came back.' I thought I might say — Why? But it was as if we were the man and the girl who had come across each other again outside a newspaper building. I said 'Wasn't the play wonderful?' You said 'Yes.' You had taken me by the arm. We were standing watching the facade of the castle which was like the backdrop to a theatre. You said 'This is what you meant by what you are talking about also happening?' I said 'Yes.' I thought — And you have turned up. Then — But this is what we can't talk about: so what happens now? You said 'Shall we go?' I said 'Yes, let's.' We turned to go out of the courtyard. There was all the violence behind us on the stage. You said 'I wonder if we should just go to bed.' I said 'Oh we will sometime.' You said 'Yes.' We were going out of the castle: there was the path up into the hills; there was a path down to the village. You said 'As a matter of fact, I still do have to catch a train, but I thought it vital to see you just one more time.' I said 'Yes, I do think it is vital to know that I could see you one more time.' You said 'But it is all right now?' I said 'Yes, it is.all right now.' You said 'I have missed one or two trains.' I said 'You can catch one now.'