Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

I said to Bruno 'But other people like playing these games: you're no good at them!'

Bruno said 'Oh yes, we're on the side of reality.'

I said 'I mean, why do you think they've chosen you?'

He said, 'You mean, I might not be able to get up at the end of the third act?'

I had imagined that I would not be involved in the raid on the cafe-brothel just as I had not been involved with the uses to which my car had been put before. But now the chairman of the Retaliatory Strike Committee came to me and said that there was a job for me to do. He looked away towards the door. I thought — He is waiting for a diversion like someone coming past with an armful of papers.

Then — But why indeed are they taking so much trouble this time for both Bruno and me to be involved?

It appeared that the job that had been worked out for me was to

dress up as a streetwalker or prostitute and to hang about in the street outside the cafe-club so that I could be some kind of liaison between the people on the roof and the getaway car which would be round some corner. Because the club was also a brothel, this in theory might seem to make sense: but in fact it did not, for why should someone pretending to be a prostitute outside a brothel be any less likely to be picked up and questioned than anyone else? When I mentioned this the eyes of the chairman again drifted away. I thought — He would not mind if Bruno and I were picked up and questioned?

When I began to tell Bruno my doubts about dressing up as a prostitute he said 'Anyway, it's a transvestite brothel.'

I said 'Bruno, how do you know?'

Bruno said 'A joke!'

I thought — Bruno, you think you can do anything with jokes!

Bruno and I joined the other members of the Retaliatory Strike Committee round a table on which there was a sketch-map spread out of the streets in the area of the brothel. I thought — Now we are officers in a dug-out scene in a film about the Great War: where do these images come from; where are they going? Is it that there are wars and so we have these images, or that our minds have these images and so there are wars?

There did not seem to be any sense in there being a liaison between the waiting car and the people on the roof- except that it completed some design on the map. The chairman of the Committee had small steel spectacles and a drooping moustache; he waved a pencil above the map. I thought — He is conjuring up a vision of heroes; of people who on paper have identity and location.

Then — Why did those people in the Great War not get out? Because if the war was in everyone's mind, there was nowhere for them to go?

— But just by seeing this, Bruno and I think we can get out?

It seemed that I should visit my mother before I went on the raid: I might not see her again; I felt I might get some hold on what on earth I was up to. My mother was in her two-roomed apartment at the top of the building in which she worked; she shared these rooms with a woman friend who had once also been a friend of Rosa Luxemburg. I had wondered — Do my mother and this woman make love? Then — What does it mean if one has no difficulty in imagining one's mother and a woman making love -

— That there is nothing about which one is caring?

My mother was propped up in bed with a shawl around her: she said that she had a feverish headache. She had often said she had a feverish headache when I had been a child. I wondered — Does she now understand any more what she is protecting herself against?

The woman who had also been a friend of Rosa Luxemburg's was not there. I thought I might say — I would not mind, you know, if she were.

I told my mother about the raid. I said 'But it doesn't make much sense. We're going to drop a bomb through the skylight of a brothel.'

I waited for my mother to say — You are going to drop a bomb through the skylight of a brothel?

She wrapped her shawl around her and rocked backwards and forwards. She said 'Your father never had much time for brothels.'

I thought — She has in fact gone mad? Then — She is plotting something like a witch?

I said 'I suppose it's dangerous.'

She said 'I blame Bruno.'

'You blame Bruno what for?'

'For getting you into this.'

'For getting me into what?'

She said 'He took you once before to a brothel.'

I thought — There is something purposeful in this madness. Then — Who told her that: my father?

I cooked a meal for my mother on a gas-ring in a corner of her bedroom. She tried to insist that she did not want anything to eat. She hugged her shawl around her. I thought — But this may be the last time I will see you, my mother!

I said 'Why have you got it in for Bruno?'

She said 'I never liked him. His parents were snobs.'

'You talk about him as if he might be a spy.'

She said 'Yes.' Then — 'Probably it's because you're my daughter.'

I thought — But if you can see that, can't you see everything?

— I mean, isn't everything all right?

I sat on the edge of her bed and ate sausages and beans I had cooked for her: she still would not eat anything. I thought I might say to Bruno — She does understand: but perhaps she has been in too long to want to get out.

Then — Of course I am trying to defend my mother.

I said 'Why can't we let the Nazis just get on with it, whatever it

is, if we think they're anyway going to pull the roof down on their heads?'

My mother said 'You still have to go through with it.'

I said 'Even if you die?'

My mother said 'You think you achieve anything without being ready to die?'

I thought — All right. Then — But you shouldn't be saying this to your daughter, O my mother!

Before I left her I said 'You won't tell anyone that I've told you about the raid, will you: we're not supposed to have told anyone.'

My mother said 'You think I'm a spy? Did Bruno say that?'

I thought — God damn! And I thought everything might be all right.

I said 'Goodbye.'

She said 'Goodbye.'

Walking through streets I thought — Oh mothers, what is it about mothers? We are tied to them as if by some terrible rope to the centre of the earth: we cut the rope and we go flying off through the universe; we do not cut the rope and our life-blood runs backwards like that of a baby left lying on the edge of a bed.

I had an almost physical sensation of being pulled in different directions at once: an arm here, a leg there: perhaps I would disintegrate: perhaps there would be a mad confident voice repeating my cries as questions as I fell through the universe.

Back in the Rosa Luxemburg Block preparations were going ahead for the raid. The home-made bomb was like a children's toy with bits of bottles and wires. I sat on the edge of my bed and prepared the clothes I had to dress up in. I said to myself, as if I were my own mother — Take care, my little one.

I said to Bruno 'What is it about Jewish mothers?'

Bruno said 'Oh they have a very important message about life!'

I said 'What?'

Bruno said 'If you sick it up for breakfast, you'll have it back for tea.'

I thought — But what we are doing here is evil: I think good may come out of evil -

— But it is not good to dwell on thinking like this.

You know the style in which streetwalkers in Berlin dressed at that time — high heels, short tight skirt, furs round shoulders like a life-belt; you've seen the paintings and anyway I've told you — well why was this supposed to be attractive? There must have been some

cord dragging people back to an area of phantoms. When the time came for the raid we dressed up in the room behind the guardroom; this was where the people who had been wounded had lain; we were putting ourselves in a position to get wounded; there were these cords, tie-ups, in the brain. We were soldiers going off for a raid in war: well, why do soldiers do it? They do not hate the enemy: they like to dress up in plumes, furs, breastplates. But if humans had not liked playing soldiers, how would they have survived? I mean how would they have fought against mammoths, bears, tigers — except in some sort of ecstasy, with the feathers of dead birds in their hair? I was dressed up in my ghastly tart's uniform for the parade or raid; the others were in black — bombers, burglars, hung with the tools of their trade. And now it was too late to turn back; we ourselves were like bombs ticking with little mechanisms inside us; sooner or later we would go off; tamper with the mechanism and all of us would die, let it go and perhaps one or two would live. And then wake up and find ourselves in some cold new world on the edge of a bed. Bruno and I did not look at each other much. He had put on a jacket like that of a chauffeur. I thought — But in my small car, who would have a chauffeur! We went out into the street; we piled into the car. I thought — Of course, we are on our way to a fancy-dress party. It suddenly did seem, with clarity, that I saw what we were doing: we were some sort of children doing what Mummy was telling us; we could not get out of going to the party because we would be alone and too much in the cold. But what was Mummy? Mummy was what in our minds we were tied to. But was I not now also myself looking down? We drove through streets. I wanted to say again — Hullo my little one! It's all right, my darling! We stopped the car a block or two from the cafe. We got out. Bruno was to wait with the car unless something untoward occurred — a gang of Nazis turned up, for instance — in which case he was to drive round the block to find me and I was to signal to the people on the roof. Or if something went wrong on the roof the people could signal to me, and I could pass the message on to Bruno: then we could all make our own way home. Sometimes this made sense: sometimes it was ridiculous. I thought — Does this depend on whether you look on it from the point of view of a child or a mother? Then — But could not the child help the mother to see that this is ridiculous?