Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

I was sitting next to Bruno. Bruno gazed back at the lecturer with his huge troubled eyes. I wished I had remembered to tell Franz what Bruno had said — 'In a society lined up at the edge of a cliff, who are the traitors?'

But then — Who are the agents of evolution?

After a time the lecturer glared at her audience and said 'You may have seen stories in the Fascist press about conditions on the agricultural front. These stories are lies; but it is necessary to face squarely in the spirit of revolutionary self-criticism the fact that attempts have been made by opportunist elements, yes, to sabotage heroic efforts on the agricultural front. Crops have been burned and cattle have been killed by criminally sectarian peasants or Kulaks rather than that their produce should be provided for the town. So be warned, comrades! The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!'

Bruno clapped loudly and said 'Bravo!'

I thought — For God's sake, Bruno -

Then — There was that lecture years ago at which my father and I saw Einstein clapping and mocking -

At the end of the lecture there was an opportunity for discussion. Bruno stood up and frowned accusingly at the lecturer.

I thought — But Bruno, do you want us to survive?

Bruno said 'Should we not pay more concrete tribute to the

foresight of Comrade Stalin in ensuring that there has been this failure in the five-year plan — '

I whispered 'Sit down, Bruno — '

Bruno said ' — for otherwise how could saboteurs and criminals be weeded out!'

Bruno sat down. After a time the lecturer said 'But there has been no failure in the five-year plan.'

Bruno said 'Are you saying that it is not Fascist revisionism to deny that for criminals to be weeded out there shall be revolutionary self-criticism?' He glared round the room with his eyebrows raised. No one looked at him.

I thought — Bruno, I suppose this might be one way of getting out!

Bruno leaned back with his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes.

I thought — What about my arranging a meeting at the Adlon Hotel between Bruno and Franz and me — and you, my English boy?

One day Bruno and I went by bus and on foot to the cold and windy lake where, eight or nine years before, Bruno and Trixie and I had come to row and walk between trees and lie on pine-needles and play at making love. Here we had discovered some world of love; we had been like seeds, had germinated within ourselves something that seemed to have a life of its own. Bruno and I went to re-visit Kleist's grave: houses had been built in the area so that the tomb was now in a space between gardens; there were empty bottles and bits of cardboard within the fence around the grave. On the stone there was the message — 'He lived and sang and suffered in hard and sorrowful times: he sought death on this spot and found immortality.'

Bruno and I stood looking at the grave holding hands. I thought — We humans, yes, are like old bottles and cardboard containers; what do we contain; what is our immortality?

I said 'Kleist did not have to kill himself.'

Bruno said 'Perhaps he did not see the bits of himself that would go floating like messages in bottles on the sea.'

I said 'But they are so beautiful!'

Bruno said 'Don't cry.'

Bruno put his arms around me. He was a fragile, rather top-heavy figure with a huge head. I thought — Perhaps we are both like those creatures that are born before their time.

Bruno said 'Do you know the story of Josephus?'

I thought — Of course I know the story of Josephus! Then — I have forgotten it. Then — Stories, of course, are what are immortal.

Bruno and I walked around the lake. We had our arms round each other. He said -

'Josephus was a general in the Jewish army in AD 67. The Jews were fighting the Romans; Josephus found himself and his army besieged in a town called Jotapata. The situation was hopeless: Josephus wanted to surrender; he was told by the Romans that his life would be spared. But the other Jewish elders, with whom he was sheltering in a cellar, refused to consider this: they insisted that he, and they, should die, together with the rest of the townspeople, although Josephus told them that if they surrendered he could probably get some sort of terms for all of them. So it was arranged that those in the cellar should kill one another, drawing lots to see who should kill who, and then the last man should kill himself. But it seems that Josephus managed to fix the lots so that he and another man were the last two left alive, and then he and this man agreed to surrender to the Romans.'

I said 'And what happened then?'

Bruno said 'The townspeople were killed; Josephus went to live in Rome, and wrote the history of the Jewish war, including this story.'

I said 'And how did he manage to fix the lots?'

Bruno said 'Josephus has always been regarded as a grotesque traitor by the Jews: he is what Judas Iscariot is to the Christians.'

I said 'How did he manage to fix the lots?'

Bruno said 'No one knows. Perhaps he was one of the seven just men.'

I said 'I suppose he what might be called cheated.'

Then he said 'Nellie, I love you, but I can't make love to you any more!'

I said 'Oh I think that is all right.'

I thought — There are other ways in which we might be immortal.

In Berlin I found a letter from you, from England, which had been sent to a poste-restante address because I had not wanted to give you the address of the Rosa Luxemburg Block. I had written to you to say that Franz wanted to get in touch with you: I thought he wanted to talk to you about physics. I had said that I hoped that one day we all might meet. I had told you that in February I hoped to be going skiing; I had added 'Why don't you come too?'

In your letter you said -

Dearest Eleanor,

As it happens (can you believe this!) I am tomorrow going skiing with my friend called Hans (do you remember? he was the one who thought that Mephistopheles should be played by a twelve-year-old boy). Hans's family have a chalet somewhere in the mountains of southern Germany. I will find out the address and put it at the end of this letter. And where will you be?

Perhaps we will bump into each other like two of those particles which, if they have bumped into each other once, may never be quite not as if bumping into each other again.

Yes, indeed I would like to talk to Franz about physics. Shall I come to Berlin after skiing?

Do you know about these particles? People have become interested in them here. You remember the problem: how do you measure objectively what a particle is up to when what you measure is just the effect of your measuring? Well someone here has got an idea. Why not take two particles that have bumped into one another once (by a castle in the Black Forest, for instance) and if you know all about this meeting, and you measure what one of the particles is doing now, then although your measurements of this one will be affected by your measuring, you will be able to work out from these and from your knowledge of the effects of the original meeting, what the second particle will be doing — and this won't be affected by your measuring because it won't be it that's being measured — and so can this be called 'objective'? No, of course this doesn't make sense. Having measured the one, then if by doing this you are finding out anything about the other at all, you are affecting it.

So where are you now? Why should anyone want anything to be called 'objective'?

I am thinking of taking up biology.

Or that pseudo-science, whatever it is, by which the future is foretold by studying the cracks in heated bones.

I am dispirited. I do not know how to find you. You did not tell me where you were going skiing in your letter.