Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

When I was out in the street I thought — Perhaps, after all, this is normal in politics: you have to make out you do not know what you are, so that when things go wrong it can be believed that you have not known what you were doing -

— Otherwise you could not bear it?

— But things will come round, in the end, on the curve of the universe; and they either will or will not hit you on the back of the head.

In the streets of Berlin there was something of the same atmosphere as there had been when I was a child: a sense of aftermath, of premonition, of things in suspension here and now. When I had

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been a child there had been the impression of enormous events round some corner: these had manifested themselves only perhaps when the soldiers going out through the Brandenburg Gate had turned and fired on the crowd. But now there were these lines of Nazis coming marching from around their corners: it was as if they were the urgent heralds, harbingers, of enormous events to be unveiled; they had none of the tricks or innocence of people who did not know what they were doing; with their sweating faces and flaming torches they were simply people out to light funeral pyres.

I thought — Or they are like long lines of shit, these Brownshirts, churning in someone's insides -

— Will not the inevitability of natural history mean that they will have to dump themselves as muck on the world outside?

That evening when I left my mother I made my way to the Rosa Luxemburg Block. This was a workers' tenement building now occupied mostly by left-wing students and intellectuals — 'intellectual' being a word to describe any Party member not of working-class origins. People gather together according to type at times of crisis, and it was true that in the summer there had been dozens, even hundreds of Party members killed in street fights with the Nazis. But people in the Rosa Luxemburg Block seemed to be far more conscious of their own danger than, for instance, the people in the building where my mother worked: they sheltered behind barricaded doors and shuttered windows. I wondered — Is this because as 'intellectuals' they are more frightened or more in the forefront of the street-fighting with the Nazis? Or is it just that it has traditionally been the role of intellectuals to be picked on by both sides as potential enemies or traitors; so indeed there might be reason for their apprehension of danger?

When I first arrived at the Block I was taken into a guardroom at the side of the barricaded front door: there was a girl sitting on a mattress on the floor cleaning a rifle; a man and a woman were keeping watch through slits in the boarded-up window. I was made to stand in the middle of the room while I was questioned by a man in a Trotsky-style cap: the others pretended not to notice I was there. I thought — But these people are like actors; they are acting what they have learned from films about people keeping watch through slits in the window; they have had to learn to act, because they are not working class.

The man with the cap said 'You are looking for Bruno?'

'Yes.'

'You have information that Bruno is here?'

I said 'I have a letter from Bruno. He suggested I might join him.'

I held out to the man in the cap a letter that I had had from Bruno when I had been with my father in Heidelberg. Before he took the letter the man looked as if for instructions at the girl who was sitting on a mattress on the floor cleaning the rifle. The girl did not look up. After a time the man took the letter.

I thought — It might have been a better shot, in a film, if the girl had leaned forwards in a disinterested manner and put a drop more oil on the rag with which she was cleaning the rifle.

I said 'And perhaps you know my mother: I have just come from her.'

I told them my mother's name and the name of the building behind Alexanderplatz.

The man in the cloth cap said 'You have just come from your mother in Alexanderplatz?'

I waited while he read Bruno's letter. I thought — It might have been a mistake to mention my mother. Then — But these people are not professionals: they may simply be having difficulty with their scripts.

I said 'Is there some trouble between you and the people at Alexanderplatz?'

The man with the Trotsky cap said 'Your mother told you that?'

I wanted to say — But there is no script! There is no stage! We are all at the edge of a cliff!

After a time the man with the cap sent the woman by the window to find Bruno. The girl with the rifle took the woman's place by the window. The man with the cap sat down on the mattress. I leaned with my back against a wall. I thought — All right, in such situations we have to be actors, but should we not also be writers of our scripts?

Then — But how can I truly work with these people!

The woman who had been by the window came back into the room and was followed by Bruno. When Bruno saw me he at first pretended not to know who I was; he gazed around blankly. I wanted to say — But Bruno, you will have us shot! Then he seemed to recognise me suddenly: he put a hand up over his eyes; he backed away to the opposite wall with his other hand groping behind him.

He said as if he were obviously quoting ' — Have I yet eyes to see? Now in my soul doth beauty's source reveal its rich outpouring — '

I said 'Stop it, Bruno.'

He said 'That's the password! Right!' Then he came and put his arms around me.

I said 'When Faust says "Stop!" — it's the password?'

Bruno looked at the man with the Trotsky cap. He said 'You see?'

Bruno held me at arm's length. He had grown thinner and more pale. He had dark rings round his eyes, as if tiredness had got lodged there like dirt against a grating. I thought — And within his huge soft eyes there is something like fingers groping through with a message.

He said 'We have to be careful! There are traitors everywhere: spies! That's the official Party line!'

I thought — Bruno, you can't get away with this!

The man in the Trotsky cap watched us. Then I thought — But this style — this is the message that Bruno is carrying?

I went to live with Bruno in the Rosa Luxemburg Block. This was at the end of October 1932. Few people in the Block had any sort of work at this time: there were six million unemployed in Germany. Food and fuel had to be scrounged: it was difficult not to act as if one were some sort of outlaw. I thought — Indeed, perhaps it is reasonable for people to feel themselves on the edge of a cliff and not caring too much about who pushes them over.

But then in new elections in November the Nazis actually lost seats in the Reichstag; the Communists gained: it seemed that at last the country had realised that it might not have to jump or be pushed. But still — what on earth were people to do if they did not now go over a cliff: wander for ever in lost multitudes in a desert?

When I first moved in to the Rosa Luxemburg Block the inhabitants were organised into cells of about twenty people: this was for the purposes of administration and defence. Then after a time we were split further into cells of just five or six people: the point of this, it was explained, was that if we did have to go underground then only the leader of each cell would know the identities of the other four or five in his cell and only he would have contact with a Party member higher up in the heirarchy; this was in order that, if anyone was taken prisoner by the Nazis, it would be difficult for him or her to betray more than a few of their colleagues.

I said to Bruno 'But why is all this happening just when the Nazis have lost seats in the Reichstag and the Communists have gained? I mean why are we preparing to go underground now?'

Bruno said 'But think what a terrible betrayal of history it will be