Hopeful Monsters (41 page)

I said 'And then I turned up in Berlin two years later at the time of the Reichstag fire - '

You said 'Yes?'

I said 'I suppose if I had not missed you that time in the north, then I might not have turned up just when it was necessary for you to get out of Berlin; and we might never have had our three days together - or this, or anything.'

You said 'You think you can't say that?'

I thought - Or you can say it about anything.

During the last six or seven years I had often thought I should visit Nellie: I had put it off, I did not quite know why. I had sometimes written to her: I had got letters back in a meticulous, childlike hand. She told me news of her school: the work and the gossip: she had said -1 do not suppose this will interest you. In later years she had ended her letters with 'With love from yours in Christ.' I thought now - Well, yes, but what does this mean: some shaping within the stone?

I said to you 'But if we ever have to go apart from each other again, do you think that this time we will have to leave so much to chance, or can we not make our own arrangements to come together?'

You said 'You think we will have to go apart?'

I said'No.'

You said 'We have been together, yes, for nearly two years.'

I wrote to Peter Reece to say that you and I would both come to Nellie's induction. I wrote to Nellie to say that you and I were married. I said to you 'I wonder if she will remember you.' You said 'Of course she will remember me!' I said 'You only met her

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once.' You said 'So how often did you meet her?' I said 'Oh yes, I see.'

We went by train to Nellie's ceremony. It was a grey cold day. We travelled to the landscape of mudflats and the estuary of the river - to where seeds, in the shape of humans, had once blown across the sea in small boats.

I said 'I don't see why there shouldn't be a world of coincidences as well as a world of cause and effect; why "gods" shouldn't be a word for our knowing this and trusting it.'

You said 'Put ourselves in the way of it? Of knowing what to do?'

I said 'Two years is not such a long time!'

You said 'We've been so lucky!'

We got out at the station to which I had come years ago; from which I had walked with my haversack down towards the river; where had been the derelict railway lines like the trails of dying animals dragging their way towards the sea. Here Nellie, the child Nellie, had gone rolling and bouncing like a seed; there had been a barrier like the edge of the known world; she had got through.

You said 'Don't be sad.'

I said 'Things are so frightening!'

You said 'I suppose you loved her.'

We got a bus from the bridge over the river to Nellie's convent which was some way out of the town. There were the mudflats; there were the ruins of the monastery built by men who had arrived in boats like acorn-cups; there the children had played with their burning-glass in the sun. I thought - The monks brought their own light, which was like fire.

I said 'It's things as they really are, that get you through?'

You said 'If you love them.'

The convent, which was next to the nun's school, was a grey stone building set back from the road: traffic struggled past like a retreating army. There was a bell that was worked by a chain near the door; when I pulled it a bit of the chain came away in my hand. A young nun came to the door and saw the chain in my hand and began to laugh. I said 'I'm terribly sorry!' The nun took us through to a room with cream-coloured walls and a large mahogany table on which there were cups and saucers and an urn; we were offered tea or coffee. The nun seemed always to be on the edge of laughter: as if what an extraordinary business it was to be offering tea or coffee! There were four or five other couples in the room; it seemed

that these were parents or relatives of other would-be novices to be inducted. Neither Nellie's mother nor father was there.

I thought - We, you and I, are Nellie's mother and father?

- It is because this is like one of those Shakespearian recognition scenes that I seem to be on the edge of tears?

The time came for us to be taken through to a chapel at the back of the building. We were placed in a gallery below which were rows of nuns like shadows. I thought - They see that they are shadows on the walls of a cave; they get out into the sun when they are praying? Three would-be novices were led in and knelt at the altar-rail: even in their habits and seen from the back I thought I could tell which one was Nellie. I thought I might say - Ah, we know each other, we are agents in hostile territory! An old priest moved to and fro beyond the altar-rail. I thought - This is a ceremony that has been performed thousands of times before, will be performed thousands of times again: could there be evidence that it holds the world together?

You were kneeling beside me. It seemed that it might be we, you and I, who were again being married; who were to be sent out into the world, of course together, but on our own in so far as we were agents in hostile territory.

I wanted to say to Nellie - Give us your blessing.

After the ceremony we went back into the cream-walled room where cakes and sandwiches had been added to the cups and urns. The nun who had welcomed us had been joined by others; several of them seemed to be on the edge of laughter. I thought - The people who landed here centuries ago in their acorn boats; what made them survive, what did they hear, was it laughter?

When Nellie, the young Nellie, came in, I saw I had been right, yes, that it was she: such an open, clever face; such bright dark eyes. It was as if she would always be close to laughter - in her black habit scattering bits and pieces of light. She greeted, and was greeted by, people near the door: they conversed with her in deaf-and-dumb language; they seemed to be sprinkling each other with drops of light. Then she looked across the room at you and me. I thought - Oh why have I not been here before! Because this would have been not too little, but too much? Nellie became quite still; she clasped her hands in front of her: I thought - There are, indeed, paintings like this: of the recognition of what seems to be too much. She came towards us across the room. I held out both my hands to her; she took these and placed them on her shoulders. She was quite

a small girl; pale; like something that has had to grow a long way towards the light. I thought I might say - I did not know if you would remember me! I said 'Nellie, I am so glad to see you, we have come to give you our love.' Nellie, looking at me, put a hand against my throat. I said This is my wife, Eleanor.' After a time Nellie said in a voice that was like bird-song coming from a roof 'Yes, I know.' She turned to you and you put your arms round each other and kissed. Then Nellie stood back and said something to an older nun who had come up to her, using her hands. The older nun said 'She says that every day she has prayed for you.' Nellie said quickly in the voice that seemed to come from the sky 'For you both.' The older nun laughed and said 'And of course will continue to pray for you.' Then we all started laughing. It was as if we might have to hold on to each other. I thought - Oh dear God, you see why I could not have come here before; I would have been burned up by this sun.

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.'