Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

objectively be on your way to a true revolution if you are standing smiling on the edge of a grave and are waiting to be pushed in? It did not occur to me that people might feel at home in this sort of thing.

I found my mother at work in the building behind Alexander-platz: she was in her small office next door to where printing machinery clattered and whirred. Her desk was littered with papers, cigarette ash, dust, shavings from pencils. She was like a bird who has been trying to build a nest, and has failed.

I thought — I must have been a cuckoo in her small, fierce nest: but it was herself, and not me, that was pushed out.

She said 'Hullo.'

'Hullo.'

'Is that fancy dress you are wearing?'

'No, it's a skirt I bought when I was in England last year.'

'It makes you look like a child.'

I thought — You do not want me to look like a child? You do not want to hear about my visit to England last year?

I said 'I wondered if you had any work for me here.'

She said 'Work for you here?'

'For the Party.'

'You want to join the Party?'

'Yes.'

My mother had a cigarette which she was trying to keep alight on a small metal tray on her desk. She worked at it, puffing, then put it down carefully on the tray; then she coughed and watched it roll off on to her papers.

'We can't pay you, you know.'

'I know. I've got a little money from Father.'

'You've got money from your father?'

'Yes.'

My mother had got this habit, which I had not noticed in her before, of repeating what I had just said in the form of a question. I thought — This is what people do when they feel they have to protect themselves: when one side of the brain feels itself threatened by the other?

I said 'It doesn't matter if you haven't got work for me here. I can go and stay with Bruno, who is living in something called the Rosa Luxemburg Block.'

My mother said 'Bruno is living in the Rosa Luxemburg Block?'

My mother had a photograph of Rosa Luxemburg on her desk.

Rosa Luxemburg was the bright-eyed, slightly crooked-nosed lady that I had know as a child; she had come to our apartment, had held me to her breast, then had been hit on the head and thrown into a canal. In the photograph she was wearing one of her flowered hats. I wondered — Did one side of her head have time to know, suddenly, what the other was suffering?

My mother said 'You're seeing Bruno?'

I said'Yes.'

'You should be careful.'

'You know he's now a member of the Party?'

'We're having a certain amount of trouble with the people in that block.'

I thought I might say — You're having a certain amount of trouble with the people in that block?

My mother managed at that moment to catch the attention of a man who was passing in the passage with his arms full of papers: she spoke to him; he stood still, and as if long-suffering, with the papers in his arms. I thought — This is like those times in our apartment in Cranachstrasse when Helga the parlourmaid came into the dining-room and whatever of interest might be being said had to stop: it was as if servants were censors between one side of the brain and the other. Now instead of servants it seemed that my mother for this purpose had her cough, her cigarettes, and just any comrade in the passage who happened to be passing with his arms full of papers. After a time my mother stopped talking and the man went on.

Mother said 'Sorry — ?'

I said 'As a matter of fact Bruno has been doing some very interesting work for the Party: he has been involved in the editing of some of the early manuscripts of Karl Marx. Do you know about these early manuscripts of Karl Marx?'

My mother was chewing the inside of her lips and looking at the photograph of Rosa Luxemburg; it was as if she were carrying on a conversation with Rosa Luxemburg just inside her head.

I said 'These early manuscripts seem to be very interesting because they are saying that true socialism, or Communism, is not to do with argument, with reason, which is often playing with words, but with the work one does with one's hands. I mean a person has a sense of the aesthetic value of himself only in relation to the work that he is doing with his hands — '

My mother began coughing and her cigarette rolled off its tray

on to her papers: she began beating at her papers, and ash flew over her desk. I thought — To create a diversion, she might be a bird that would set fire to its nest.

I said 'And what is interesting is that this idea in Karl Marx is almost exactly the same as what Heidegger has been saying, who has now been taken up by the Nazis. Do you think it is because of this that — '

My mother said 'This is what Bruno has been telling you?'

I had been going to say — Is it because of this that we are not taking our opposition to the Nazis seriously? But I thought — If I say that I will be playing tricks with words.

The man with his arms full of papers came back along the passage. He paused by the door and looked in at my mother as if to see whether he was needed.

I said 'No, someone else told me that.'

My mother said 'Who?'

I said 'Franz.'

My mother pulled a piece of paper towards her and rummaged about on her desk; she looked through the door but the man with the papers had gone.

My mother said 'Franz is a Nazi.'

I said 'Apparently.'

'And Bruno's family are Social Fascists.'

'They're Social Democrats.'

'Socialists who are not with the Party can be called Social Fascists.'

I said 'They're Jews!'

I thought — But I must be careful here: though surely there is a way in which to talk of such things without tricks.

I remembered of course the argument that, in an 'objective' sense, Communists should feel more hostile to the Social Democrats than to the Nazis because Social Democrats appeared to be trying to delay the death-throes of capitalism and so were making it difficult for true Communism to arise from Fascism's ashes. I thought — But surely you can see the ugliness of the trick that calls left-wing Jews Social Fascists!

My mother seemed to be having a conversation inside her mouth with the photograph of Rosa Luxemburg.

I said 'But I don't see the point of this playing about with words. We may think it's inevitable that the Nazis will get power, all right;

but shouldn't we be fighting them for the sake of what will come after?'

My mother said 'Bruno says it is inevitable that the Nazis will get power?'

'No, I thought it was the kind of thing you were saying.'

'I never said it!'

'But you're preparing to go underground — '

'Do you know how many of our people have been killed in the streets?'

I thought — But either this conversation is mad, or is it in fact a good dialectical trick that one side of the Party's brain should not admit to the other that the Nazis should get power?

I said 'But surely it's important, on some level, to admit to yourself at least what you're doing; to give a hint perhaps to other people that you know — '

My mother said 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

I said 'I see.'

I thought — It may be that I am a child in all this: but what is this style that has no regard for a child -

My mother said 'Perhaps it would be useful, after all, to have someone in the Rosa Luxemburg Block. You can let me know what the people with Bruno are doing.'

I said 'Why, what are they doing?'

She said again, as if it were a phrase in which she had been rehearsed 'We're having a certain amount of trouble with the people in that block.'

I thought — You want me to be a spy?

I said 'You mean, you think there may be spies or traitors in that block?'

My mother said 'Have I said anything about spies and traitors?'