Hopeful Monsters

by Nicholas Mosley

  She had a way of appearing to think before she spoke and then saying something that seemed designed to keep one slightly under her spell. She said 'How odd that you don't want to be with your girlfriend in Zurich! Are you sure you're not running away by staying at home?'

  I said 'I'm trying to get to Russia!'

  She said 'But not succeeding!'

  I thought - But that is grotesque! Then - Anyway, you don't seem to be getting very far in setting yourself up as an analyst.

  I said 'Aren't you supposed to be jealous of my girlfriend in Zurich?'

  My mother said 'How can I be if you are not with her?'

  I thought - Well, that's quite clever.

  I did nothing much of importance in Cambridge during this year. I learned some Russian: I spent time working in the laboratory under Kapitsa; we were examining the properties of liquid helium. But I had lost much of my interest in physics temporarily. I thought - What indeed if they are connected to nothing, these switches and dials?

  I once said to Kapitsa 'But why does no one seem to be interested in finding out more about this power at the centre of the atom -what might be a practical use?'

  Kapitsa said 'People only find, you know, what they want to find.'

  'People don't want power?'

  'Oh, they want power they can handle!'

  I thought - But is it not a power which they cannot handle that would be to do with change?

  I said 'H. G. Wells wrote a story years ago about the making of an atomic bomb. This had results that were so hideous that it eventually brought peace to the world.'

  Kapitsa said 'Can you give me the reference of this story?'

  Often I had thought about going to Zurich. But I had to work, and you had to work; and I remembered what you had said about our three days. You had said 'I cannot do more than this now: I am still the German child of my father and my mother: I have to stay here and wait and see.' And I had thought - I must not press things: they will come round again. If I press, nothing either new or old may grow.

  Also, I suppose, I was still frightened - not of having too little but (as you would say) of taking on too much.

  Also from time to time I was carrying on with the girl called Suzy. (There are not many things I have not wanted to tell you concerning these years!)

  During that winter I did write to you to say that I was thinking of coming out to Zurich. Then before I posted it I had a letter from you-

  I cannot stay in this place. It is only just over the border from Freiburg, Heidelberg. I did cross the border secretly one night; my father sent me back. He said I would be arrested: I am known as one of a gang responsible for killing Nazis. And I suppose I would endanger my father if I went back. He says my mother is in some prison-camp near Munich. But if I cannot go home I do not want to stay here. I do not like these people. They are quite right, perhaps, to say we have brought the Nazis on ourselves.

  I have been offered work with a group of anthropologists who are going to the interior of West Africa: I have agreed to go with them; I have to sign on for two years. They are leaving next week.

  Oh Max, I am so sorry, but what can I do? I have such hatred. I cannot settle here. I cannot come to England as I have not the proper papers.

  I will probably be gone by the time you get this letter. You will not save me this time: I have so longed for you to come here! But you have been right not to come. I have felt so destructive, I would have destroyed what we have had together. My only pleasure about Europe has become the prospect of people killing each other. I sometimes feel this about my mother. I cannot stay here thinking things like this.

  I would mind if they killed you! They cannot kill the time we have had together. This I suppose was the best of my life. You do believe it will come round again.

  I will let you know where I am. Let me know if you go to Russia. You may find something there but I do not think that it will be what you expect. We are both trying to learn in our different ways, I suppose, how to survive.

  I thought - But dear God, to survive you first have to die?

  - Or is it that the thing in oneself that throws such chances away has to die?

  In the summer of 1934 there were two incidents that seemed to increase the sense of threat in Europe. The first was the murder by Hitler of Rohm, one of his oldest colleagues, together with several hundred Brownshirts of whom Rohm was the leader. Hitler had done this, it was said, to placate the army, which he now needed more than Rohm. Then shortly after this the news came through that Kapitsa, who had gone on his annual holiday and then to a conference in Russia, had been detained against his will and was not being allowed to come back to Cambridge. I thought - But perhaps the pelican is trying to look after its own breast: what if Russia becomes interested in the sort of power that might be locked up in the heart of the atom?

  My father said 'Well, now it's out of the question that you should go to Russia!'

  I thought I might say, as if I were acting - I didn't know you cared!

  I said 'I'm not Kapitsa.'

  My father said 'Presumably you're enough of a physicist for them to want to keep you. Also you're my son.'

  I thought - We might both be flattered if they kept me?

  I said 'I might be able to find out something about Kapitsa. He might quite want to stay in Russia. He might be making out that he doesn't want to stay to get more out of the people in Cambridge.'

  My father said 'Why do you say that?'

  I said 'Anyway, I'll be under Vavilov's protection in Russia.'

  My father said 'They'll do away with Vavilov if they want to, those Russians.'

  I thought - But it might be interesting to try to look at what they want?

  My mother floated about the house as if it were she who were being martyred. I said to her 'But why aren't you showing more emotion about my going to Russia? Why aren't you rolling about on the floor and yelling, as in an opera?'

  My mother said gravely 'I have spent enough time, goodness knows, trying to stop myself reaching a condition in which I am rolling about on the floor.'

  I thought - Well, that's quite witty!

  I said 'It might be more jolly for me if you were rolling about.'

  She said 'That's your problem.' She put a hand up and touched my cheek. Then she took her hand away quickly. She said 'We can't have everything we want, you know.'

  I thought - It helps you to survive, if you are witty?

  When the time came for me to set out for Odessa I travelled by train to Marseilles and then caught a boat. I was thinking - no, not thinking! - I was trying to say to myself- Listen; watch; see what happens, one thing after another.

  This was the first time I had felt, really, that I was getting away from home. When I was in Marseilles I wondered - Boats go from here to West Africa?

  Odessa was a large modern city that seemed to be flourishing. (I thought - So what had I expected?) There were wide streets with buses and trams; heavy stone buildings not so different from Berlin, Paris, Manchester. There were men in cloth caps and old women with shawls over their heads; young women in hats like acorns. What I had known previously about Odessa was that it was where Trotsky had been to school. Trotsky believed in permanent revolution - that you could not build a socialist state unless the rest of the world was becoming socialist too: socialism was a sort of purity that had to be guarded from corruption. It seemed that Trotsky had been defeated because people did not want to become pure; they wanted to be what they were, to be tethered to the earth and corrupted. They needed some iron to be put into their souls, or how would they know what to do? Stalin was the man of iron: he

  was at home with the corruption of power. But then in what sense would this be revolution?

  I thought - Stop thinking! How do you stop thinking?

  The family that I was going to stay with were called Platov: the father was a lecturer in zoology at the Academy of Sciences: he was a friend of Vavilov's and had corresponded with my father. The mother was
of German extraction so that the family spoke German; I would thus be able to converse with them fairly easily, although one of the purposes of my visit was that I should learn Russian. The Platovs lived in an apartment block, the outside of which was decorated with heavy stone scrolls and pediments and balconies. Inside there were lampshades with fringes; red velvet cushions with black tassles. I thought - One's expectations are to do with needs of the mind: do people in Russia have images of people starving in Berlin, Paris, Manchester?

  Then - Life in fact goes on in nests; hurricanes blow over them.

  There was a son, Kolya, who was slightly younger than I; and a daughter, Mitzi, who was slightly older. The father was a tall thin man with a pointed beard: the mother was a short bulging woman with a tight waist that made her like an hour-glass. She bounced slightly as she walked: she wore a long skirt so that one could not see her legs. I thought - You mean, I am still interested in mothers?

  When I arrived, Mitzi and Kolya welcomed me politely. Then Mitzi giggled and went out of the room. I thought - What does that mean? Then - Can I not make it what I want it to mean?

  We sat round a dinner-table on high-backed carved wooden chairs. Mr Platov made formal conversation as if there were servants in the room: Mrs Platov stood at the sideboard and ladled out soup or stew. The children looked down at their plates as if embarrassed. I thought - Perhaps if there are no servants there are still secret police in the next-door room so that we can have polite conversation.

  Mr Platov said to me 'So you wish to go to lectures at the biology department of our Academy of Sciences? There is much interesting work being done in the biology department of our Academy!'

  I said 'Ah yes, the fame of your Professor Lysenko has spread to England.'

  Mr Platov said to his wife at the sideboard 'A little more seasoning in the stew, do you think?'

  I said 'Are Professor Lysenko's theories taken seriously in Odessa?'

  Mr Platov said 'Indeed Professor Lysenko's theories are taken seriously in Odessa!' He held his knife and fork on either side of his plate as if they were implements to hold something burning. He said 'Is that not right, Kolya?'

  Kolya said 'What?'

  Mr Platov said 'Professor Lysenko's theories are taken seriously in Odessa.'

  Kolya said 'I don't know.'

  Mitzi said 'Kolya is a poet.'

  I said'Oh.'

  Kolya said 'I am not.'

  Mitzi giggled.

  I thought - If I were an anthropologist I would make a note: human motives are equally incomprehensible in Berlin, Cambridge, Odessa.

  The lectures I hoped to go to at the Academy of Sciences, about the subject of which I had tried to find out more before I had left England, were to do with the claims of the biologist called Lysenko whom Vavilov had been talking about in Cambridge. It was he who was being hailed as the leader of a new breed of Soviet scientists - who could make two ears of wheat grow where previously there had only been one; who saw his task - in emulation, as it were, of what Marx had said about history - as not just to describe nature but to change it. I had talked more to my father about this: I had said 'Is it possible that a new strain of wheat might be found if it were badly enough needed?' My father had said 'It is possible that a new strain of Soviet scientists might be found if it is badly enough needed.'

  It seemed that what had happened was that when the shortage of food had been most severe, the Soviet government had called on scientists to discover a more productive strain of wheat - not just to discover circumstances by which wheat growing would become more productive, but to create a type of wheat in which this characteristic would be passed on genetically. Orthodox biologists had explained: but this cannot be done to order; a new strain of wheat will depend on a chance mutation; this can be looked for and perhaps caught and then can be encouraged, but this will take patience, time; what is the meaning of 'chance' if we think we can summon it to order?

  It was then that Stalin himself had apparently replied (might this not have been a joke? was it inconceivable that Stalin might be a

  joker?) that the task of a Marxist scientist was not to describe nature but to change it.

  And so just then there had turned up this scientist called Lysenko who claimed to have come across an improved strain of wheat, indeed by chance - he happened to have dropped a bag of winter-wheat seed in water one day and then had thrown it away in the snow because he had thought it would be useless. And this his father had happened to pick up by mistake and had sown the seed the following spring and, lo and behold! - a rabbit from a hat - out had popped two ears of wheat where one had grown before; and this new strain was one whose characteristics - yes! - could be passed on genetically. No evidence was put forward for this: it seemed that it was sufficient evidence that Marx might be thought to have suggested it. And so now all Soviet farmers had to do in order to save themselves and the country from famine was to dip their bags of winter seed into water and then throw them into snow-

  I had said to my father 'All right, this new breed of Soviet scientist has in fact popped up: but what will happen when it is found that what they claim is not passed on genetically?'

  My father had said 'Why should they ever find this? Isn't it this that I was saying to Vavilov - in a Soviet system it is necessary not for something to work, but to find someone to say that whatever is wanted works - '

  I had thought - But what an amazing experiment! To find out what happens when you say something happens, quite irrespective of whether it does or not -

  - Would not this be a real test of reality being a function of the experimental condition?

  Now, sitting round the dinner-table with the Platov family who were like actors on a stage keeping up appearances in front of an audience or secret police, I thought -

  - There may in fact be people in the wings waiting to kill them if they do not conform to the terms of the experimental condition!

  I went with Kolya to attend the lectures at the Academy of Sciences. I sat at the back of the lecture-hall which was very cold and I did not understand much of what the lecturer was saying. I thought - But if words have so little to do with meaning, what does it matter if I do not understand what a lecturer is saying? Here we all are in our overcoats and quilted jackets and caps with flaps that come down over our ears: we are like bags of winter-wheat seed

  dumped in the snow: indeed what is interesting is what will happen when, as it were, we are sown in spring - or what will happen if nothing happens in the spring - some ground will have been broken up, something one day may grow -

  - Might not Lysenko in fact just be saying - If an old strain is broken up, how can you know what will grow?

  I would walk back with Kolya from the Academy of Sciences. There were markets in the streets selling second-hand clothing and bits of old furniture. The atmosphere did not seem so different from the town in the north of England where I had been three years ago: there was even less food; but the atmosphere was somewhat more lively. I thought - It is within the mind that old patterns are being broken up -

  I said to Kolya 'But do you yourself think that Comrade Lysenko's theories will work?'

  Kolya said as if quoting ' - If there is a passionate desire, then every goal can be reached, every objective overcome - '

  I said 'That sounds like a poem.'

  He said'It is.'

  I said 'Did you write it?'

  He said 'No, Comrade Stalin wrote it/ Then he ran on ahead and kicked at a stone, or did a little dance, in the street.

  I said 'Comrade Stalin is a poet?'

  He said 'In Russia we are all poets!'

  I thought - A poet crosses out a word here, a sentence there -

  - Might a poet not see people as no more precious than words?

  I said 'Have you heard of an Austrian biologist called Kammerer?'

  Kolya said 'Oh yes, there was a film about Kammerer. He was on his way to take up an important position at the Academy in Moscow, when he was murdered by
reactionary Fascist academics and priests.'

  I said 'He was?'

  Kolya said 'You didn't know?' He did a small entrechat half on and half off the pavement.

  I said 'He thought he had discovered something about the inheritance of acquired characteristics.'

  Kolya said 'You see?'

  I thought - It is because no one knows whether people mean what they say or not that ballet is so popular in Russia?

  In the apartment I shared a room with Kolya. Kolya was a redheaded boy with eyes set close together. When we got ready for

  bed at night we each acted as if we were conscious of the other watching. I thought - But this is not homosexuality; it is in the style of a play by Brecht: we are trying to pass some message about being conscious that messages are being transmitted.

  Then again - Stop thinking!

  Mitzi was a strong round-faced girl who was training to become a champion discus-thrower. In the evenings she would change into a white blouse and white shorts and do exercises in her room. I thought - With Mitzi, indeed, it might be possible to stop thinking: to be held in her strong hand and whirled round and round and sent spinning through the universe.

  I began to look for opportunities to waylay Mitzi: I was sometimes able to walk with her to the Academy of Sciences where she was studying metallurgy. When the cold weather came she dressed in a long coat with a fur collar and a fur hat and muff. I thought -She is like a girl in Dostoevsky: not one of those demure girls, but one of the ones who get men's heads spinning round on platters -

  I said to Mitzi 'You like dancing? We could go and dance!'

  She said 'Oh I used to love dancing, but I now fear it is not good for the physique.'

  I said 'But of course it is good for the physique! Has not Comrade Stalin said "Let all the discus-throwers dance!"'

  She said 'Comrade Stalin has said that?'

  I said 'It is in one of his poems.'