Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

You had said 'I do not want to be like Faust.'

I had said 'Faust needed someone to save him.'

Franz had said 'I am like Faust!'

I drove up into the mountains. I stopped in the village to ask someone the way. There was a voice on the wireless coming through half-closed shutters; it told of the extent of the German advance into Poland. I found that I did not want to talk to anyone to ask them the way.

It was not difficult to find Franz's house; there was only one road up from the back of the village. I recognised the driveway. The house was a long single-storey building with plate-glass windows

and a view over the top of the forest. There was a car parked at the side of the building which might have belonged to Franz or to some other member of his family. I left my car and went to the front of the house and looked in through one of the huge windows. There were signs of someone having recently been in the sitting-room: the cushions of the sofa had the imprint of a body; there were an ashtray and a glass and an empty bottle on the floor. There is something alarming about looking through a window into a room where humans have been recently but are no longer; what is the need for them to have been there at all.

I rang the bell by the front door. Behind me was the enormous expanse of the forest. A large black dog appeared from round a far corner of the house. Mephistopheles first appeared in the guise of a black dog, did he not? This dog was one of those that appear to be so embarrassed at the presence of humans that they can hardly move: it smiled and squirmed and dragged the back half of its body along the ground. But it was also behaving as dogs do when they want you to follow them. It seemed that there was no one in the house. I thought — Dogs behave like this when something terrible has happened to their masters in a forest.

I followed the dog past the far end of the house and into the trees. The forest was like that on the upper plateau of San Juan de la Pena at the place where the horse but not its rider had gone over the cliff. Or there was that mountain path in Switzerland where you and I had stopped in our walk — do we not often come to this place? — where there had been a rock, a butterfly, a cobweb, a tree. Or, indeed, before this there was the cave in a wood to which I had followed Franz and he had indeed seemed to be practising some self-destruction. The black dog snorted and slithered like a snake in front of me. Ahead, through the trees, in a small clearing which did seem to be, yes, on the edge of a cliff, I saw Franz sitting to one side of the path with his back against a tree. He was holding a shotgun between his knees; the barrel went up past his face. The black dog went up to him; it seemed to be laughing or crying. Franz gave no signs of seeing me. I went to him and said 'Hullo, Franz.' He still did not look at me. I said Tve come to ask you if you know about my father.' When he looked round it was as if he had experienced some sort of dying.

I said 'I understand that you've been in touch with my father.'

He said 'Who told you that?'

I said 'Walburga.'

'And you forwarded to me a letter from my father.'

'That was a long time ago.'

'Can you tell me what he is doing now? And I also, yes, wanted to talk to you.'

I had squatted in front of Franz. He was wearing one of those hats that have a feather from the tail of a bird sticking up on the crown. His once handsome face was like something plucked and hung in a larder.

He said 'He's said to be working for the Nazis.'

I said 'Do you believe that?'

'Why, is it important?'

'Of course it is.'

'Is there anything I could say, that you would necessarily believe?'

Franz seemed to yawn. He made stretching movements with his neck as if he were trying to loosen something from around it. I thought — He was thinking of shooting himself.

I said 'What work are you doing now?'

'I am doing nothing.'

'Are you working for the Nazis?'

'No.'

I said 'You were doing the same sort of work as Max, my husband, is doing in physics.'

Franz tried to laugh: or he sneezed; there was a sound like that of dice being rattled in his throat. He said 'Ah, about that, what can you believe!' Then he sat up and looked around the clearing. It was as if he were acting waking up and noticing where he was for the first time. He said 'But you shouldn't be here! The war's started.'

I said 'I know.'

'Then why have you come?'

'I wanted to talk to you, I told you, as well as find out about my father.*

Franz pressed his knuckles into his eyes. His face was so thin that it was as if his eyes might be pushed out. Then he said as if he were acting again or quoting ' — You cannot know the message without the code: how can you know the code without the message — '

I said 'Don't you know the message?'

He said 'That was a quotation from your father's book: he's had it published, did you know?'

I said 'Which one?'

Franz said 'Yes, I've been doing the same sort of physics as, I

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suppose, your husband has.' Then — 'Your father's book is on the relationship between language and scientific enquiry.'

I said 'Oh that one.'

Franz said as if quoting again ' — Truth is what occurs: the telling of it can make it something different — '

I said 'And they let him publish that?'

'Who?'

'The Nazis.'

Franz seemed to laugh again with dice rattling in his throat. He said 'Oh in your father's system there is some autonomy for the will.' Then — 'And, of course, they are very stupid.'

Franz put his gun down with the barrel pointing away from him. The black dog, which had been at his feet, wriggled out of the line of fire.

I said 'What else did he have to do? I mean, to get this job.'

Franz seemed to quote again ' — Truth is protected by masks: it can be sensed in the recognition of this — '

I said 'That's my father?'

Franz said 'No, that's me.'

I said 'Then why should I not know what to believe, in talking to you?'

Franz leaned forwards and tickled the ribs of the black dog. He said 'Your father has been put in charge of a department at the Institute which correlates the activities of other scientific departments. He has no direct powers. He is useful because he can get people to work for him who otherwise might be reluctant.'

I said 'Did he have to repudiate my mother?'

'Your mother's dead.'

'I know.'

'And you were in another country.'

I said 'So now what will he be able to do? I mean, you and he, what will you be able to do?'

Franz picked up the gun and held it with the ends of the barrels under his chin. The dog stood facing him with its back arched, its teeth bared.

Franz said 'I do not want to be a traitor to my country.'

I said 'In what way would you be a traitor to your country?'

Franz said 'There are certain circumstances, it is true, in which a patriot might not want his country to be a hundred percent successful in an area of scientifc enquiry over which its wartime leaders would wish to take control.'

I said again 'So what will you do?'

He said 'Ask your father.'

I said 'I'm asking you.'

Franz made a sound like an air-gun going off; like air being let out of a balloon. He took the gun away from under his chin and held it upright in front of him pointing into the air: he bowed his head down in front of it.

He said 'Of course one can always do nothing: I mean, try to see that nothing occurs.'

I said 'Yes, nothing: that was what I was going to ask you.'

He said 'You have not been in touch with your father? He has not been in touch with you?'

I said 'No.'

He said 'Then how did you know?' Then he said quickly, as if to stop my answering this question — 'Oh how did you know, how does one ever know, that is the question.'