Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Dear Max,

I could not have waited. I told you I had to return to the bus.

Your pastor did not tell me you were coming back. He suggested that you might be away some time.

The child was standing by the building when I arrived. She seemed to know who I meant when I asked for you. It seemed she had some connection with you. Yes, she spoke to me. She said she hoped to see you.

Yes, I remember how when we left each other at that castle you were going off with a child.

I did not enjoy my visit to England. I made my party come the whole way across England to see you.

I am thinking of joining the Communist Party. Here, with the

danger of the Nazis, one has to be either one thing or the other. It is not good trusting any longer to chance.

No, I do not suppose I will be coming again to England. Of course, I would love to see you if you come to Germany.

I am glad that this girl you are taking an interest in is being taken care of by your mother.

I think there has to be some commitment to the struggle. I do not understand what you seem to be interested in in England. You could have telephoned me in London if you had liked.

No, I do not know the painting you refer to of a closed door at the back of a courtyard.

With love from Eleanor

I thought — Oh God damn you, my beautiful German girl!

— I did telephone you in London! But you had gone. Then — It is true I might have telephoned earlier -

— But I will go to Germany and put things right!

At this time all these people circling round me — Peter Reece, Melvyn, Mullen, now even my beautiful German girl — seemed to want to commit themselves to something like suspending themselves from an unbreakable beam in the ceiling -

— While I, what was I, falling, falling, in empty space -

— Committing myself not to the struggle, but to chance?

There was a day not long after this time — it was just before Christmas; I had been getting somewhat depressed: I had been thinking — It is all very well, yes, to be on the look-out for this world that is said to be unobservable by the observer: the world of pure, but unknowable, chance and effect -

— But what is love; what is home? There must be something more than the suspension of disbelief, as it were, in a ruined boathouse -

There was a day when I was at Cambridge and I had been lying on my bed and becoming depressed like this, when there was a knock on my door and I said 'Come in' and someone put their head round the door whom for a second I did not recognise and then I saw that it was the girl called Suzy. She said 'Am I allowed to come in?' I said 'I don't know, are you?' She said 'I mean, what are the college rules?' I said 'Oh the college rules!' She had had her hair cut short. I said 'I was just thinking about you.' She said 'Were you?' I said 'Yes, but I didn't know it was you.' She said 'What were you thinking?'

I said 'I was wondering whether, if you came in now, we might possibly — '

She said 'Were you really?'

I said 'But if I had known it was you, you might not have come in/

She came and sat on the edge of my bed. She was very young and pretty and healthy-looking. She said 'Half the time I don't understand what you're saying. But never mind, you seem to do the trick.'

I thought — But what's the trick?

I said 'How's Paris?'

She said 'Very well, thank you.'

'Why aren't you there?'

'I'm here for Christmas, then I'm going back.'

I said 'And what's the trick?'

'My father still thinks I'm in love with you.'

'And aren't you?'

'I don't know.'

I thought I might say — Then let's find out.

She said 'But I think I have to do a bit more to convince my father.'

I said 'Then let's do the trick.'

While we undressed she said 'You don't sound very enthusiastic'

'I'm struck dumb.'

'That's unlike you.'

'I'm practising.'

We were like people about to go swimming from a pebbly beach. I thought — But of course, I hardly dare believe this.

She said 'I wanted to make love with someone before I went back to Paris.'

I said 'Why?'

She said 'Never mind.'

I said 'Then aren't I lucky.'

I thought — I mean, luck is when you have not imagined what you would or would not mind.

Afterwards she said 'That was nice. Thank you.'

I said 'Thank you too!'

She said 'Aren't you going to say you love me?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Perhaps I do, and it'll go away.'

That means you don't.'

4 No.'

•Why not?'

'I haven't said it.'

We lay like babies in a pram underneath the leaves, the shadows.

She said 'Have you got a girlfriend?'

4 Yes.'

'Do you love her?'

'Yes.'

'Does that mean you don't?'

'No.'

'But you said it.'

'I said it to you.'

Then I thought — Why don't I go to Paris and settle down with this lovely English girl? I am tired of all the tricky stuff: though of course if it were not for the tricky stuff I would not be with this lovely English girl -

She said 'Why not come to Paris?'

I said'Perhaps I will.'

'Who is your girlfriend?'

'She's German.'

'How often do you see her?'

'Not often.'

She said 'Well I'm not going to ask you why not.'

I thought — But this tricky stuff is all right, isn't it, in the end; I mean it is all right for us, my beautiful German girl?

196

From Heidelberg I went to Berlin. I wanted to visit my mother. I had not been to Berlin for nearly two years. My mother was still an active member of the German Communist Party. I was thinking, as I told you, of joining the Communist Party myself. I wanted to be committed, all-of-a-piece. I did not want to be a particle with neither velocity nor location.

I said to my father 'I don't know when I'll see you again.'

He said 'You will give my love to your mother?'

I thought — My father has not seen my mother for — what? — four, five years? Yet there is a sense in which he does not feel separate from her.

When I arrived in Berlin there were processions of Nazis with torches in the streets. They were dead-faced, sweating men as if on their way to light some funeral pyre.

In the elections of the summer of 1932 the Nazis had become the largest single party in the Reichstag; it seemed inevitable that they would get power. No other party seemed to have the will to get power, yet still on the brink people dithered. Von Papen became Chancellor, then von Schleicher became Chancellor; what a jump in the dark it would be for Hitler to become Chancellor! People seemed to be standing on the edge of a cliff and closing their eyes and holding their noses.

Certainly the Communists did not seem to want to get power. They imagined that they had been told by Karl Marx that, before a true socialist society could be achieved, the death-throes of capitalism had to be gone through — this was an inevitability of history — and the death-throes of capitalism were represented by Fascism or Nazism. So the Nazis had to be accepted — in an 'objective' sense to be encouraged even — so that the proper historical way could be paved for the Communist revolution. In another sense, of course, the Nazis remained the enemies: in the 'concrete situation' they had to be fought in the streets. There was something slightly mad about Communists at this time; they were like archaic statues smiling and walking forwards, one side of the brain not quite letting the other know what is was doing. This was called, in the jargon, the 'dialectic'. As well as madness, of course, it could be seen as a form of esoteric knowledge like that at the heart of the philosopher's stone.

When I got to Berlin, the Communists were so reconciled to the prospect of the Nazis getting power that they were preparing to go underground. I did not know what to make of this: how can you