Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

— And I am protecting myself from Mitzi by talking like this?

— Why do I not say just — Let's make love!

Once I caught up with her after she had run away and I said 'Oh Mitzi, all the things going on in your country may be all right for all I know. I mean the theories of Comrade Lysenko, the failures in the production of wheat. I mean, of course, it may be true that old patterns have to be broken up; then what lovely things may grow! I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you may be right! I mean, I'm saying that for all I know Comrade Stalin may be right — '

I was holding Mitzi's arm. She was staring at me belligerently as if by will she could make me do whatever she wanted me to do -

I thought — But I am trying to say just — Let's make love!

This was a time — the winter of 1934/35 — when what became known later as the Terror had not yet got under way in Stalin's Russia; but there had been the stories of senseless killings as well as those of famine on and off for years. However, not long after I had arrived in Russia there was the assassination of Kirov, the Bolshevik Party leader in Leningrad, and this was seen later as the starting-point for the Terror. Kirov was murdered by a mentally unstable dissident; this dissident, Nikolaev, could have been working on his own or he might have been one of a group; but the point was that in the Soviet system he could be said to have been working with anyone — so that anyone could be said to be responsible for the murder of the Party leader, Kirov. And how useful this could be for someone who wanted to get rid of enemies! The precedent for this sort of thing was the Nazis' use of the Reichstag fire, when a mentally unstable dissident had given Hitler the chance to get rid of anyone he chose. Now Kirov's assassination was being used by Stalin to arrest and put on trial Zinoviev and Kamenev, two of his oldest colleagues — and the precedent for this, of course, was Hitler's killing of Rohm. I thought — Well, indeed, there are patterns here that become established in the mind: but dictators, of course, are too stupid to see that they are parts of patterns of mind -

Then — It is because of you, my beautiful German girl, that I find it so difficult to get involved with Mitzi!

I went on trying to talk to Kolya. I said 'But I see that for a

Communist society to work, old loyalties have to be broken up. But why can't you just say this — '

Kolya sometimes spoke with passion. 'Why should you say anything? What do you think you have to say? You people in the West make an idol of words! You think that once you have said something you have achieved it.'

I thought — Yes, I know that.

I said 'All right, there may be things better not said. But does anyone know this at the top? I mean, does anyone know what's happening? If there's no one — '

Kolya said 'You think you can know what is happening? What is happening? Tell me!'

I said 'All right, people are being shot without reason — '

He said 'How do you know?'

I said 'You can look.'

He said 'Do you look at every battlefield? Do you find somewhere where people do not die?'

I thought — Kolya has learned something that I have not?

— But I used to know once that it is impossible with some experiments to limit the area in which one might look for reasons or results.

Kolya said 'What do you think human beings are! Look to actions, not to words.'

I thought — Kolya is saying, like Kapitsa: Look at the paradoxes in Holy Mother Russia!

Then — I am using you as an excuse, my beautiful German girl, for not getting involved with Mitzi?

One afternoon when I thought I was alone in the apartment (I would sit on my bed with my Russian textbooks on my knees and wrapped against the cold like a kidnap victim), and so could get on with what seemed to be my business of dreaming about Mitzi (I would think — But are not good Communist girls supposed to be easily available in Russia?), I heard a noise in the dining-room as if someone were moving quietly, not wishing to be heard. I got up and went out into the passage surreptitiously because I too did not want to be heard (I had been thinking — I know it is my own fault that I get no further than dreams with Mitzi: I must be more resolute, cunning: why do I see everything as an experiment to see what will happen?) and through the open door of the dining-room I saw Mrs Platov standing by the sideboard. She was holding a bottle dangling from her hand. She had her back to me and was

quite still; she herself seemed to be in a dream. I thought — so perhaps now I will see what people here do when they think they are not being seen; when they show not what they talk about, but what they are in themselves. Then — But of course I have an image in my mind of a middle-aged mother with a bottle in her hand: I do not have to come all this way to learn about that, O my mother! There was a thin silver light coming into the room from snow outside; this lit up glints in bottles and glasses on the sideboard. I thought — But this is something archetypal: a Dutch interior perhaps? A Vermeer? Then Mrs Platov held the bottle behind her; the bottle seemed to be empty; it had been of vodka: then she began to lift up her skirt at the back. I thought — Good heavens, is that what they do in Russia? Then — If Mrs Platov sees me I can say I have come to mend the pianola. There was a pianola that was broken in the dining-room, and I had for some time been hoping to mend it. Mrs Platov seemed to be wearing nothing underneath her skirt. She began to walk, waddling somewhat, to the far end of the dining-room table with her skirt still raised and the bottle held against her at her back; then she turned and began to lower herself on to the chair on which she usually sat at the end of the table. In this position she was now facing me, who was just beyond the open door. I could not tell whether or not she saw me; she seemed to become frozen, either in some sort of trance, or perhaps under the impression that if she stayed still enough she might be invisible. I thought — But of course, she wants to be like one of those toys that sit with spikes up inside them; who thus stare straight ahead and do not see anything, hear anything; indeed, yes, they would want to be this sort of thing in Russia. It seemed that if I moved then Mrs Platov might have to notice me beyond the doorway, so I stood still: I thought — You mean, it is thus that visitors who come to Russia have to make out that they do not hear anything, see anything. Or I thought I might say to Mrs Platov — But I don't mind if you are on the bottle! Ha ha! I mean I don't mind if you are this literally. Then — Perhaps it is this that is peculiar about Russia: they do things literally; they don't use metaphors. After a time, Mrs Platov seemed to see me; she was crouching, half sitting, as if getting down on a lavatory. I said 'I thought I might try to mend the pianola!' I smiled and waved, and moved away. It seemed to me that I had thought of something very clever here — I mean about metaphors; about pianolas — though I could.not quite explain to myself why. When I got back to my room I was less than ever able

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I said 'Are we lucky or did we work for it — ' You said 4 You can't talk about what is the difference.' I said 'That is what you are doing in your work?' You said 'This is happiness.' Then — 'But don't you find it difficult to talk about what you are actually doing in your work?'

The laboratory to which I went each day was in a long stone building on top of a hill: it looked out over a dark landscape striped with grey houses. My work was to do with seeing what happened when the nuclei of a heavy element such as uranium or thorium were bombarded with neutrons. Now indeed it might be thought odd what I was actually doing. There was a small glass phial that I had to fill with a radioactive material that emitted neutrons; this material was usually in the form of a radon gas which had to be caught in the phial by means of condensation; this could take place when the closed end of the phial was dipped into liquid air which lowered the temperature to 200 degrees below zero. I could then direct the gas into the phial from its radium source so that it condensed on the walls; then I had to melt the open end of the phial to seal the glass. With such cold at one end and heat at the other there was a danger that if the task were done too quickly the glass would break; but if it were done too slowly then the condensed liquid might evaporate again and escape; so this was a performance indeed requiring skill: hoopla! abracadabra! The small sealed phial had then to be fixed within a larger glass tube so that the assembly could be handled without too much danger of radiation; then this apparatus had to be taken quickly into another room — quickly because the radioactive life of the material was short; into another room because the material to be bombarded had to be kept clear of any stray radiation during the assembly of what was to bombard it. In this other room the material to be irradiated was packed in special containers; the packing consisted of some material that might slow the neutrons down so that they might be caught and absorbed by the target-material more easily; into this container was put the phial which would emit the irradiating neutrons. These materials were left in the container for this or that length of time: then the phial containing the irradiating material was removed and the material