Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

In the evenings when I came back to you we would not talk much now about what we had done during the day. I thought — These bumps and clicks: either there is, or is not, something growing elsewhere.

We began to read English and German literature to each other in

the evenings. (You said 'Not French.' I said 'Why not French?' You said ' Oh all right, but the French seem to use words as if they say everything.') We read Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Kleist. I said 'What things are seems to depend on an act of recognition: but one seems almost to have to give up hoping for this before it occurs.'

You said 'You go on a journey.'

I said 'You know you're going; you don't know where you're going, or how would you be discovering?'

Time passed, or perhaps seemed to stand still, in this routine: it was in the coming round again that there seemed to be a present. So of course why should we want anything to come in from outside to break us up, we bits and pieces of a nucleus! I thought — Oh but how can there be creation, even of what we are now, if there is not some breaking up?

And what was happening in the outside world during 1937? In Spain and Russia Trotskyites and anarchists were being murdered: in Germany Hitler gathered his generals round him and plotted for war. In England there was the visit of the New Zealand cricket team: what quiet clicks, what pleasant bumps of light! I thought — And for us what a miracle that we should be undergoing no further violent change; but being, for the moment, just as we are!

You said 'What was this vision that you had in Spain?'

I said 'That consciousness creates things: but for us to become used to this, we have to become used to some breaking up, reforming, breaking up, of ourselves.'

You said 'Do you want that?'

I said 'Want!' Then — 'It is too paradoxical for us to talk about want.'

Sometime early in 1938 Donald Hodge set about rebuilding and re-equipping the laboratory: I was encouraged to take a holiday. I said 'We can go to London.' You said 'Yes.' I said 'I suppose this is the sort of thing I'm talking about.' You said 'I've been thinking for ages that I must try and find out what has happened to Bruno.' I said 'But you don't think I want to go to London!' You said 'Then I suppose that's all right.'

I arranged for us to stay in the rooms of my old friend Melvyn: Melvyn would be away; he said that he would be on some expedition to Spain. It was in this building that I had lived two years ago. I wondered — Will there be anything from that old outside world coming in?

I said 'What shall I do while you are out looking for Bruno?'

You said 'I hope you will cease to exist.'

I said 'But we will be connected!'

You said 'Then that's all right.'

In London we went to cinemas and exhibitions. The films were for the most part about people being together, going apart, coming together again: I thought — Well what else is a story? Then — But no one gets the point. In the exhibitions the most interesting paintings were those in which people and things seemed to be being split up into little bits and pieces of light. I thought — But the point is that we, the people watching, can know this; and so we are not split up. I said to you 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' You said 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' I thought — Well, that's all right.

I said 'How will you find Bruno?'

You said 'I can't write to Trixie and her husband; it might be dangerous for them.'

I said 'Can't you write in code?'

You said 'They would still have to answer.' Then — 'Perhaps I can do something like cast palm-nuts from one hand to the other.'

There was a committee that provided aid for refugees from Nazi Germany; you found their address and made enquiries. They said they had no knowledge of Bruno. You also tried to find out what you could about your father.

You said 'There's no news except from my cousins that he's in a camp.'

I said 'There's nothing you can do.'

You said 'I should have tried to do something before.'

I thought — I suppose I should have found out long ago what happened to Caroline.

There was a day when Melvyn arrived back unexpectedly from Spain. Or perhaps he had never been to Spain: I thought — Of course, he has just been waiting round some corner so that he can break in on us in bed. We were, in fact, in bed, and making love. Melvyn's eyebrows had become so pointed that they were indeed like those of a devil. He said 'You two! See me in my study after prayers.'

I said 'How was Spain?'

He said 'Very hot, Spain.'

I said 'This is Helena.'

He said 'Darling, you've got the face, but I'd take the thousand ships.'

I thought — The Devil becomes a bore: but he was necessary to do whatever it was in the Garden of Eden?

You said 'How do you do.'

Melvyn said 'Fairly straightforwardly in the morning, ducky.'

I said 'I don't suppose you've even been to Spain!'

He said 'You two were clever to have got out when you did.'

You said 'Why?'

Melvyn said 'Franco's going to win.'

I said 'Whose side are you on at the moment, the Russians or the Germans?'

Melvyn said to you 'Oh but have I heard some stories about you!'

You got out of bed to dress. Melvyn watched you.

He said 'I've always thought that one is given a much easier time by one's enemies than by one's friends.'

I said 'Oh very true.'

When you were dressed you said 'I'll go and look for Bruno.'

I thought — You won't let Melvyn hurt us, will you?

Melvyn said 'I do think Hitler's doing the most tremendous job, you know: getting rid of all those nice clever unmentionables who could help him.'

You said to me 'I'll see you.'

Melvyn said 'Those naughty Aryan boys can't boil a cup of tea!'

I said 'Eleanor's father and mother have disappeared in concentration camps.'

You said to me 'It's all right.'

I thought — The Devil, or Melvyn, must be in some sort of despair -

— He will get us out of our Garden of Eden, to look for Bruno?

Melvyn and I went to a pub. It was a pub where I had sometimes gone with Caroline. I thought — Is there not some weird Middle Eastern sect in which the Devil is considered a saint, for having got Adam and Eve moving on from their Garden of Eden?

Melvyn was saying to whoever would listen to him in the pub — 'Of course Stalin doesn't want the Reds to win the war in Spain. What he wants to do is persecute Trotskyites. He's got his problems at home: he has to say they're caused by Trotskyites. Who cares about Spain? Hitler, too, wants the war to go on: what a chance to try out weapons! And for the rest — oh what an opportunity to act a bit of caring! If you think anyone outside Spain wants the war to

end, you're a child — one who'll end up like one of those orphans of the children's crusade.'

I thought — My angel, take care, will you, how you cross the road: look to left and right; remember, if you want me, perhaps I will know?

Melvyn said 'People with power always want to wipe out heretics rather than infidels: if power is kept pure, then infidels wipe out themselves.'

I said 'So why be in politics at all — that of the Germans or the Russians?'

Melvyn said 'Do you know about this children's crusade? There are a lot of children in Europe left over from Stalin's burning of the heretics, and so they are being sold into slavery in Spain.'

I said 'I was going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.'

Melvyn said 'I like the idea of your wife getting herself on to the wrong side. That was clever.'

I thought — But Melvyn, if you're so clever, don't you know that you should know more, or nothing?

There were some people at the bar of the pub whom I recognised from meeting them two years ago with Caroline. They were talking about the prospects of war if Hitler moved into Austria: would Austria fight; would Britain and France recognise their obligations. Melvyn went to fetch beer and got into a conversation with them. I thought — But if human life is a matter of style, of means rather than of ends -