Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

It continued to be almost unbearable, this sense of pleasure to be in the presence of Nellie. I thought — It was not exactly silence, that language, when they were building their tower up to heaven.

What is it, this energy that is light?

On the way back in the train I said to you 'When you spoke to her, all those years ago, what did you say she said to you?'

You said 'She told me where you were.'

I thought — Where was I? Then — I was already one of those bits and pieces of light?

This was in the spring of 1938 — after Hitler's Nazis had marched into Austria, at the beginning of his threats against Czechoslovakia, halfway down Europe's runaway descent towards hell. In the laboratory we were getting nowhere with our work; it was as if we knew we would get nowhere, we were waiting for something from outside to come in. There were rumours that people in Berlin were on the edge of a breakthrough. I thought — If there is to be the risk of total destruction, then there will perhaps be an equally great need for light.

In the summer Bruno came to stay with us. He was hollow-eyed, Jewish, full of energy. He said 'If Hitler marches into Czechoslovakia, then at last there will be war!'

I said 'But do you know what may happen if there is a war? I mean, what they might be discovering in Germany?'

Bruno said 'Can't you find out from Franz — you remember old

Franz — what they are doing, how far they have got, in Germany? He's up to his neck in that sort of work.'

You said 4 Yes, perhaps I will try to make contact with Franz: and he might have news of my father.'

I thought — Pray for us, Nellie, will you? We may be off to some sort of war.

Melvyn came up to stay with us: he overlapped with Bruno for one night. He said 'You Jews, it's you who are going to discover how to get us all blown up! Why don't you do what you usually do to prove your moral superiority?'

Bruno said 'Which is what?'

Melvyn said 'Get just yourselves blown up.'

Bruno said 'Oh don't worry, we'll doubtless do that.'

People began to fill sandbags and dig trenches in the parks. Hitler was appearing on newsreels at Berchtesgaden like a strict governess showing men in striped trousers in and out of her study. Melvyn said 'You know what he's supposed to like having done to him, don't you?'

Bruno said 'Yes.'

Melvyn said 'But think of having to do it!'

You said 'Perhaps we will.'

Then in September there was the agreement at Munich between England, France, Germany and Italy by which a large part of Czechoslovakia was handed over to Germany without a fight; there were cheering crowds at railway stations and at airports. But the sandbags were not emptied; trenches were not filled in. Very soon it seemed that there was some shame at the celebrations; a knowledge that, after all, there would be war.

You said 'Perhaps I should go to Zurich before it is too late and find out what I can about my father.'

I said 'Yes, you've always wanted to go back to Zurich.'

You shouted 'Don't say it like that!'

I said 'I'm not saying it like that!' Then — 'And perhaps you'll be able to talk to Franz.'

We continued to cling to each other, you and I — in our bed; in our room in front of the fire. These were our rocks in a cold sea. I thought — But if we go apart, we can send each other messages, like those mythical sea-birds that can build nests on the waters of a cold sea.

You said 'You think we can only do what we have to do, become active, if we are sometimes in a practical sense separate?'

I said 'I have not said that!'

You said 'Of course you have not said that!'

I thought — And then from time to time we can have again those Shakespearian recognition scenes, miracle scenes; and at least will not have become fused, without energy, like ordinary ghastly married couples.

Sometime before Christmas I paid my annual visit to my father and my mother. I went on my own. I said to you 'Goodbye!' Then

- 'Oh no, you never much liked opera.*

You said 'Meet you behind the gasworks — or whatever is that strange place that you say.'

I found my mother, upright, in her seat by the window. I thought

— This is how she will appear, having been dug out of the ashes in a thousand years. She said 'I'm sorry I was horrible the last time you were here.' I said 'Oh that's all right.' Then — 'I thought psychoanalysts were usually awful to their children.' She said 'Yes, why is that, do you think?' I said 'I suppose it's to try to help them get away.' She said 'How kind!' I said 'Yes, but it only works if it's conscious, and then you can't really do it, can you?'

When I found my father in his study he seemed old, as if ash were already falling from factory chimneys on to snow. He said 'What are you doing for Christmas? Or don't you have Christmas any more?'

I thought I might say — Oh no, we eat babies.

I said 'I always find it frightening, Christmas: all those babies being killed: and such celebration!'

My father said 'I suppose it's like the production of any new species.'

I thought — Well, what I have learned from you is some sort of irony, my father and my mother: thank you: let it stand me in good stead.

I went to see Mullen at Cambridge. He had not been in touch with me since the time I had been with Caroline in the London pub. He was in the same building in the college in which he had been an undergraduate years ago. I said 'You never got in touch with me so I thought I'd get in touch with you: but what inferences you will draw from this!'

He said 'What news have you of our friend Kapitsa?'

I said 'I have no news of Kapitsa. I was going to ask you.'

Mullen was a long thin figure who seemed to be bent into his

chair in the shape of a hook. He said 'Sherry?' Then — 'Your wife was a Party member, was she not?'

I said 'That was a long time ago.'

He said 'And then she was a nurse with the Nationalists in Spain.'

I said 'The things we have to do, in our different ways!'

He said 'You asked me a question a long time ago.'

'What was that?'

He said 'What is the essential difference between Communism and Nazism — when they both seem so similar in their ruthlessness and in their manipulation of power.'

'And what did you say?'

'What I say now is that Communists, for all their brutalities and stupidities, are on the side of life; whereas Nazis — as they say so explicitly themselves — are on the side of death.'

I said 'What about these people in Moscow now who say they deserve to die?'

He said 'But you know the answer to that.' Then — 'Why shouldn't they want to die?'

When Mullen smiled he had large yellow teeth which seemed to have been stained perhaps by drops running down from his eyes.

I said 'What you really want to know is, whether anyone is getting anywhere here with this business of radioactivity.'

He said'Yes.'

I said 'We're getting nowhere. Kapitsa might be getting somewhere. There are stories that they might be getting near to a breakthrough in Germany. That was what I wanted to talk to you about.'

Mullen said 'Why do you say that Kapitsa might be getting somewhere?'

I said 'Because he has the imagination, he would want to succeed, he would not want everything he cared about to be destroyed.'

Mullen spread himself in his chair as if he were trying to make himself more anonymous, like a linen cover. He said 'You agree that it would be a disaster if such technology was developed by the Nazis.'

I said 'How far has Kapitsa got? Don't you know?'

He said 'Would you tell me if you got anywhere here in the future?'

I said 'I'd say what I thought was right so long as I'd made no undertaking not to. I wouldn't do anything explicitly for a foreign power.'