Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

I would mind if they killed you! They cannot kill the time we have had together. This I suppose was the best of my life. You do believe it will come round again.

I will let you know where I am. Let me know if you go to Russia. You may find something there but I do not think that it will be what you expect. We are both trying to learn in our different ways, I suppose, how to survive.

I thought — But dear God, to survive you first have to die?

— Or is it that the thing in oneself that throws such chances away has to die?

In the summer of 1934 there were two incidents that seemed to increase the sense of threat in Europe. The first was the murder by Hitler of Rohm, one of his oldest colleagues, together with several hundred Brownshirts of whom Rohm was the leader. Hitler had done this, it was said, to placate the army, which he now needed more than Rohm. Then shortly after this the news came through that Kapitsa, who had gone on his annual holiday and then to a conference in Russia, had been detained against his will and was not being allowed to come back to Cambridge. I thought — But perhaps the pelican is trying to look after its own breast: what if Russia becomes interested in the sort of power that might be locked up in the heart of the atom?

My father said 'Well, now it's out of the question that you should go to Russia!'

I thought I might say, as if I were acting — I didn't know you cared!

I said 'I'm not Kapitsa.'

My father said 'Presumably you're enough of a physicist for them to want to keep you. Also you're my son.'

I thought — We might both be flattered if they kept me?

I said 'I might be able to find out something about Kapitsa. He might quite want to stay in Russia. He might be making out that he doesn't want to stay to get more out of the people in Cambridge.'

My father said 'Why do you say that?'

I said 'Anyway, I'll be under Vavilov's protection in Russia.'

My father said 'They'll do away with Vavilov if they want to, those Russians.'

I thought — But it might be interesting to try to look at what they want?

My mother floated about the house as if it were she who were being martyred. I said to her 'But why aren't you showing more emotion about my going to Russia? Why aren't you rolling about on the floor and yelling, as in an opera?'

My mother said gravely 'I have spent enough time, goodness knows, trying to stop myself reaching a condition in which I am rolling about on the floor.'

I thought — Well, that's quite witty!

I said 'It might be more jolly for me if you were rolling about.'

She said 'That's your problem.' She put a hand up and touched my cheek. Then she took her hand away quickly. She said 'We can't have everything we want, you know.'

I thought — It helps you to survive, if you are witty?

When the time came for me to set out for Odessa I travelled by train to Marseilles and then caught a boat. I was thinking — no, not thinking! — I was trying to say to myself- Listen; watch; see what happens, one thing after another.

This was the first time I had felt, really, that I was getting away from home. When I was in Marseilles I wondered — Boats go from here to West Africa?

Odessa was a large modern city that seemed to be flourishing. (I thought — So what had I expected?) There were wide streets with buses and trams; heavy stone buildings not so different from Berlin, Paris, Manchester. There were men in cloth caps and old women with shawls over their heads; young women in hats like acorns. What I had known previously about Odessa was that it was where Trotsky had been to school. Trotsky believed in permanent revolution — that you could not build a socialist state unless the rest of the world was becoming socialist too: socialism was a sort of purity that had to be guarded from corruption. It seemed that Trotsky had been defeated because people did not want to become pure; they wanted to be what they were, to be tethered to the earth and corrupted. They needed some iron to be put into their souls, or how would they know what to do? Stalin was the man of iron: he

was at home with the corruption of power. But then in what sense would this be revolution?

I thought — Stop thinking! How do you stop thinking?

The family that I was going to stay with were called Platov: the father was a lecturer in zoology at the Academy of Sciences: he was a friend of Vavilov's and had corresponded with my father. The mother was of German extraction so that the family spoke German; I would thus be able to converse with them fairly easily, although one of the purposes of my visit was that I should learn Russian. The Platovs lived in an apartment block, the outside of which was decorated with heavy stone scrolls and pediments and balconies. Inside there were lampshades with fringes; red velvet cushions with black tassles. I thought — One's expectations are to do with needs of the mind: do people in Russia have images of people starving in Berlin, Paris, Manchester?

Then — Life in fact goes on in nests; hurricanes blow over them.

There was a son, Kolya, who was slightly younger than I; and a daughter, Mitzi, who was slightly older. The father was a tall thin man with a pointed beard: the mother was a short bulging woman with a tight waist that made her like an hour-glass. She bounced slightly as she walked: she wore a long skirt so that one could not see her legs. I thought — You mean, I am still interested in mothers?

When I arrived, Mitzi and Kolya welcomed me politely. Then Mitzi giggled and went out of the room. I thought — What does that mean? Then — Can I not make it what I want it to mean?

We sat round a dinner-table on high-backed carved wooden chairs. Mr Platov made formal conversation as if there were servants in the room: Mrs Platov stood at the sideboard and ladled out soup or stew. The children looked down at their plates as if embarrassed. I thought — Perhaps if there are no servants there are still secret police in the next-door room so that we can have polite conversation.

Mr Platov said to me 'So you wish to go to lectures at the biology department of our Academy of Sciences? There is much interesting work being done in the biology department of our Academy!'

I said 'Ah yes, the fame of your Professor Lysenko has spread to England.'

Mr Platov said to his wife at the sideboard 'A little more seasoning in the stew, do you think?'

I said 'Are Professor Lysenko's theories taken seriously in Odessa?'

Mr Platov said 'Indeed Professor Lysenko's theories are taken seriously in Odessa!' He held his knife and fork on either side of his plate as if they were implements to hold something burning. He said 'Is that not right, Kolya?'

Kolya said 'What?'

Mr Platov said 'Professor Lysenko's theories are taken seriously in Odessa.'

Kolya said 'I don't know.'

Mitzi said 'Kolya is a poet.'

I said'Oh.'

Kolya said 'I am not.'

Mitzi giggled.

I thought — If I were an anthropologist I would make a note: human motives are equally incomprehensible in Berlin, Cambridge, Odessa.

The lectures I hoped to go to at the Academy of Sciences, about the subject of which I had tried to find out more before I had left England, were to do with the claims of the biologist called Lysenko whom Vavilov had been talking about in Cambridge. It was he who was being hailed as the leader of a new breed of Soviet scientists — who could make two ears of wheat grow where previously there had only been one; who saw his task — in emulation, as it were, of what Marx had said about history — as not just to describe nature but to change it. I had talked more to my father about this: I had said 'Is it possible that a new strain of wheat might be found if it were badly enough needed?' My father had said 'It is possible that a new strain of Soviet scientists might be found if it is badly enough needed.'