Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Once upon this time there were Max and Lilia; then Lilia's younger brother Bert to whom Eleanor became analyst and mentor; then the girl called Judith who became the lover or beloved of all the male protagonists of these stories; then also Jason, who was or

546

is the correlator of the stories — the writer of this postcript — who loved both Lilia and Judith, who in the end, as it were, is married happily to Lilia. And there is the child who emerges from these stories — as a result of the activities of all the protagonists but in fact, of course, from his mother Lilia. Perhaps too the child is what might come alive in the mind of a watcher or a reader: it is stories, patterns, as Eleanor and Max used to say, that bear the seeds of what is living.

There is also another child, a girl: but this appears at the very end of these stories.

There was always a problem about how to write about all this — liveliness being somewhat secret, being what is experienced on one's own, moving often in the dark between levels. The writer writes: there is that which he writes and that which is what comes alive (or does not) both in his mind and in the mind of a watcher or a reader. Is it you: is it you? It is this that might be like a child. Stories are messages. (Is it not this that Eleanor and Max have been saying?) To exist there has to be a code: messages bring things into existence.

At the beginning it seemed there were seeds; they were like people on a stage; they were in a writer's mind; they were saying 'How do we bring this into existence? — what we would like: in other minds, in the outside world.' The messages, to be effective, would have to be partly in the dark. The questions would be not just what did happen then, not what will happen next, but what is happening now. An actor comes on; he is watched; he watches himself being watched; he watches himself watching. From the recognition of this predicament other questions grow: 'What is acting and what is not?'; 'What is real and what is not?'; 'What is the style that can be seen to be not false but true?' And the answers are not in words: they are (indeed!) what flowers (if any) grow. For creation there will have been some journey through the dark — for an audience, for a reader, for demonstrators in a mind or on a stage: what on earth, after all, is a human being to do? Eleanor and Max and the others wanted to form messages. They might have been linked to archetypes in my mind: but from whatever such seeds, flowers are the flowers that grow.

Lilia split up with Max; Bert was helped to be freed by Eleanor; in time he found what he wanted with Judith; Lilia returned to me, that is, Jason. The stories go to and fro — like a sieve, a riddle. In the end, one might say — There are one or two diamonds!

Eleanor and Max seemed to be our parents or grandparents in

this. But we all felt ourselves to be agents in a strange but indeed not always hostile territory.

I would think — For God's sake, not on our way back to, but for the first time free of, that boring old Garden of Eden!

There was a time when Max, the Professor, was getting old and had become ill; in fact he was supposed to be dying. (I am leapfrogging over the backs of these stories: there may not exactly be an end; but by now there is something living or there is not.) There was this time when Max was supposed to have cancer and to be dying and he was being looked after by his young friend Judith. Judith was also looking after her baby. She was also involved (I think) in writing her part of the story about these years — as indeed all of us had from time to time been trying to do, except perhaps Lilia, but then she was the mother of the child. And we all came to visit Max on his so-called death-bed; on a day that also happened to be his birthday. You imagine the setting (you; or you?): the bedroom of a flat in a Regency building in a town on the south coast of England; the window looking out over a cold grey sea; Max propped up in bed; the new baby in her cot by the window; Judith moving to and fro between death and birth — oh, well, indeed, what is the message! We had come to visit Max; we had also come to see Judith and her baby. First Bert arrived — Bert who might or might not be the father of Judith's baby but what did it matter: what is a father, after all: did not the women in these stories imagine themselves at moments as neo-Virgin Marys? Bert had wanted to marry Judith: he had been quite pleased, probably, when this had not quite occurred; it is easier, after all, for a non-ending to be happy. Bert came into the room and greeted Judith; he stood with Judith by the cot at the window looking down at the baby; oh yes, there are paintings like this. Then Bert went to the bed and stood by Max. He said 'How are you?' Max said Tm dying, thank you.' Bert pulled up a chair and sat by Max's bed. Max had closed his eyes. Bert cleared his throat as if he were doing some business on a stage to show that he was trying to get Max's attention. Max smiled. Bert said 'Look here, this cancer you're supposed to have, isn't it true that it occurs when certain cells of the body go into runaway, out of control? I mean, they just multiply and look after themselves without any regard for the body as a whole?' Max said 'Something like that.' Bert said 'And isn't this something you've been going on about all your life — I mean, about the need to stop it?' Max, from behind closed eyes, said 'Yes, that's right.' One

could not quite tell, I suppose, whether he was laughing or crying. Bert said 'Well, don't you think, perhaps, that in that case you should stop it?' Max did seem to be trying to deal with some moisture behind his eyes; like someone who might have come across an oasis in a desert. He said 'I've got to die sometime.' Bert said 'But not if you don't want to.' Max said 'I do want to.' The baby, by the window, began to make a slight noise of crying; as if it were a bird very far away. Max said quickly 'And anyway, one has to make room for other people.' Bert said 'Oh but that's up to the other people!'Judith lifted her baby out of the cot and came and sat on the end of the bed: she began to feed the baby from her breast. Max opened his eyes and watched Judith and the baby. Tears appeared on his cheeks like diamonds. He said 'Dear God, what is immortal.'

Shortly after this the other couple who appear in these stories arrived — Lilia and Jason. We came in with our child. The child, a boy, was about eight years old at this time; he had fair hair; he was not dark like his father. He had a face of extraordinary brightness and gravity. He went up and looked at the baby that Judith was holding: this baby was a girl. Lilia and I stood by Max's bed; we were holding hands. Max turned his head to us and said 'You two are together again, are you?' I said 'Have we been away?' Lilia said 'Till life do us part.' Bert said 'We were just talking about how to be immortal.' We, the four of us, stood around Max's bed. It did not seem necessary to talk much. The child turned from watching Judith feed her baby and he came to the head of the bed and looked at Max. His head was at the same height as Max's head, so that he was like a planet spun off from some old sun. He said 'Are.you really going to die?' Max said 'I'm trying, but these people won't let me.' The child said 'Why are you trying?' Max said 'I've done everything I want to do: what more can I do?' The skin of Max's face was slightly wrinkled but curiously healthy like that of an apple. The child felt in his pocket. He said 'Have you seen this trick?' Max said 'What trick?' The child said 'It's a trick I do with this medal.' The child took out of his pocket what looked like an old Roman medallion. Max stared at it. He said 'I know that medal.' The child said 'I toss it, and if it comes down tails then you're allowed to die, but if it comes down heads then you're not.' Max closed his eyes. The child tossed the coin in the air, caught it, and turned it over on to the back of his other hand. Then he said to Max 'What do you think it is?' Max said 'Heads.' The child said 'Yes!'