Hopeful Monsters (12 page)

He too looked sad; I did not know why. He was coming towards me along the passage. I thought - Well it can't be just that I'm going away to school. I said Tm ofT. I've come to say goodbye.' He put his arm round my shoulder. He said 'Something rather terrible has happened.' I said 'What?' We were going back along the corridor to the room in which I had left my salamanders. He said 'Your mother's taking you?' I said 'Yes.' He said 'Kammerer's shot himself I said 'Dr Kammerer's shot himself?' Miss Box had taken the lid off my aquaterrareum; she was staring down at it. I said 'Why?' My father said 'I don't know.' Then - 'I believe he had some trouble with women.' My father and I had come up beside my aquaterrareum and we were staring down at it with Miss Box; she had taken the top off the shelter. On the sand, which had turned rather yellow and green in the course of time, there were my two salamanders parallel and facing the same way; and in between them, as if it were completing some hierogram, some coded message, there was a smaller but perfectly formed third salamander, with the same colouring, black and gold. Now you remember (oh do you!) what might originally have been the point of my experiment until

it became simply about what might happily live or happily die - the point had been to take two lowland salamanders which normally produce tadpole-like larvae and to put them in alpine conditions (or in conditions of such beauty that who would care whatever occurred) and to see whether - as Dr Kammerer had claimed, and for which he had been ridiculed - two fully formed offspring would be produced. Well here there seemed to be just one perfectly formed offspring: but was not that enough! It was lying between its parents as if they might be three sticks cast by some augur on the ground; to give, indeed, some message, but what? Or of course one could say - Nothing. Myself and my father and Miss Box were looking down. My father said 'When did this happen?' Miss Box said 'I don't know.' My father said 'But these are Salamandra salamandra/ I said 'Yes.' I was thinking - Well, indeed when might this have happened? When was the last time I saw my salamanders? Miss Box said 'It's not some trick?' I thought - Of course it's not some trick! What do you mean, I ran round a corner and bought a third salamander? then - Oh but what if it happened when my mother and I were doing whatever it was we did that evening together: would that be a trick? I said 'No.' I thought I heard my mother hooting the horn of the car in the street below. My father said 'You didn't keep a record of your experiment?' I said 'No.' Miss Box said 'Then we can't of course tell.' I was thinking - But there would be no need now for Dr Kammerer to shoot himself! My father said 'No, we can't of course tell.' There was another hooting from the street below. My father said 'You'd better go.' I said 'Yes.' My father said 'We'll look into your experiment!' I said 'Thank you.' Miss Box was putting the lid on my aquaterrareum. I was thinking - But what will they do, nothing? But what will that matter: what has happened has happened: and is not everything that matters a unique experiment? I said 'Goodbye then.' My father said 'Goodbye.' Then he said 'You'd better say nothing to your mother.' I thought - About my experiment? About Dr Kammerer? Then -But of course I will say something to my mother! My father was still looking down into my aquaterrareum. I ran down the staircase and out into the street. My mother was sitting in the car still staring in front of her. I said 'Something rather terrifying has happened.' She said 'Yes, I know.' I thought - How do you know? Then -That was a telephone call from Hans? From London? I said 'Dr Kammerer's shot himself.' My mother said 'Is your father pleased?' I said 'No.' I was sitting beside her in the car. She drove off. I

thought - But what if my mother and I have changed; and on to some different level. I found that I did not want to tell her about how my two lowland salamanders seemed suddenly to have produced one highland salamander; perhaps this was after all a thing that one should not talk about too much.

trinket, bedspread, pair of boots, ancestral ornament - anything saved and hidden might suddenly become life-giving (was this like your so-called 'gene-pool'?). Of course, many Schieber were Jews -how practised at this sort of thing had Jews become over the years! - their tribal identity having been maintained indeed by their response to a hostile environment. Or was it that other people for their own protection (not survival!) were apt to notice only the Schieber that happened to be Jews? Certainly Jews, as usual, took no trouble to disguise themselves. There was still the question, yes -was all this exposure, immolation, necessary for survival?

There would come to our apartment in Berlin two of my mother's relations from the provinces - Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob. They would arrive with their suitcases and long black coats and trilby hats and beards. I would hope - Might they not after all be taken to be people just out to buy a train ticket? They would open their suitcases in the hall: there would be vegetables and butter and eggs and perhaps a chicken or two: my mother would greet them but then retire to her room: well how does a good Communist maintain her dignity under the necessity of capitalist manipulation? My father and Magda usually did the bargaining. They would hand over a sheet or a blanket, perhaps, from the store in the linen cupboard; a few books; an heirloom that had come from my mother's family anyway. And so we stayed alive. Cousin Walther and Cousin Jakob would sit side by side on the sofa in the sitting-room like primeval images that had come floating across the sea in canoes. I would think - But, still, should not survivors, saviours, be more secret? Otherwise how easy it is for people to want to kill them! There are such opportunities for envy in the business of salvation: is this why it seems to go hand in hand with ruination?

There were in fact outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the streets of Berlin at this time. I had not noticed overt manifestations of it before - it had seemed no more than an oddity among the sophisticates of the university or of the Adlon Hotel. But it was now being said that Jews were taking over property cheaply from non-Jewish families who were hungry: Jewish shops were broken into and goods were looted. Of course there is envy of those who can adapt and look after their own kind on the part of those who cannot. (How would you put it? That there is hostility to mutants not only from the environment but, if the environment changes, from those who do not change?) Defence forces were organised by

Jews; a looter was shot and killed. I thought - Good. Then - But is it not the sign of a survivor to be different from those who are not?

I said to my father 'Would it not have been better if, from the beginning, Jews had remained secret?'

He said 'Then how could they have been agents of salvation?'

I said 'But people do not imitate them.'

He said 'I mean, perhaps they had to be scattered; to spread.'

I thought - You mean, what it is they spread still remains secret?

My father tried to explain about the inflation - about the postwar reparation payments that Germany was supposed to be making to France and England and America. The payments themselves were not affected by the inflation because they were in terms of gold; but it was the cost of them that was said to be causing the inflation in Germany. My father said 'But also the inflation might be a way of Germans saying to the French and English and Americans "Look, it makes no sense if this is what happens when you press us for payments: you will get nothing more from us if we are ruined.

I said to my father 'But can't they just announce this?'

My father said 'But then they would seem to be plotting; they wouldn't seem to be helpless.'

I said 'So it's a game.'

My father said 'But one of the rules is you can't call it a game.'

I thought - So some things, yes, do have to remain secret.

The inflation, in fact, ended more suddenly than it had begun. For a week or so there was no paper money of any value at all (there was a joke - a billion-mark note was the cheapest form of lavatory paper) then one day there were new clean banknotes with eight or nine noughts knocked off. And these were accepted. I said to my father 'But how can money be stabilised, or whatever it is called, just by knocking eight or nine noughts off?'

He said 'Well, just as it might suit people to have chaos for a time, so it usually suits them suddenly to stop.'

I said 'Why?'

He said 'They get bored.'

I said 'No one controls it.'

He said 'No, no one controls it.' Then - 'I think one can have a feel of it.'

I said 'But not talk about it.'

He said'No.'

I thought - You mean, one might influence it if one has a feel of it?

Then - We are like agents in occupied territory.

I was not having much contact with my mother at this time: she had moved out of our apartment except at weekends and was staying in a room in the east side of Berlin where she worked at one of the Communist Party offices. I thought - She is a fighter: fighters do not want to remain secret; fighters often die. Then - It is more straightforward, of course, to have an instinct to die?

Every now and then I would become slightly ill again at this time; I would spend a few days in bed. I would think - When I do imagine I understand things, it is as if a white light is coming down: indeed it seems difficult sometimes to stay alive.

My father would come and sit on the edge of my bed and talk to me. He once said 'As a matter of fact there is an old Jewish tradition that the real saviours of the world - those who stop the human race from destroying itself- are very few; perhaps no more than seven, seven just men, and they do remain secret! They are not known even to each other; perhaps in this guise they are hardly known to themselves.'

I thought, of course - Perhaps I am one of them!

Then - But if I were, I suppose I would not know this myself.

In the summer of 1925 I was fifteen and I was for the first time allowed out in the streets on my own: I was aware of the enormous changes that had taken place in Berlin since the days of my earliest memories. I had not noticed much of this going on at the time (change does indeed often seem to take place secretly) but now there were no more left-wing or right-wing militants in the streets; no more men with rifles hanging on to lorries like claws; no more soldiers with their helmets and bedrolls like chickens just out of eggs. There was suddenly an energy, a polish, a surface glitter in the streets: it was as if something garish had broken through a skin: something to do with the sun, perhaps; or with disease, or with cosmetics.

At the school I was going to at the time I had a girlfriend called Trixie and a boyfriend called Bruno: we went around together as a gang. Trixie was blonde with blue eyes and curly hair; Bruno was olive-skinned and Jewish. Bruno was our manager and clown; Trixie was our figurehead. I imagined myself as some sort of charioteer with reins in my fingers in the background.

I said 'My father has the idea that there may be seven or so just men, people, who hold the world together; and they may not even know each other.'

Bruno said Then thank God they are not us!'

I said 'Why not?'

He said 'Do we not know each other?'

Trixie was anxious because she feared that she would still be a virgin at the age of sixteen: she felt this would be a hindrance to her becoming grand and powerful and rich. She said 'It's not that I care about the business of becoming not a virgin, it's just that I think one should start practising how to get what one wants now.'

Bruno said 'Practising what?'

Trixie said 'How should I know? You tell us, Bruno.'

Bruno put a hand to his throat and made out that he was being strangled; he fell against a wall; he sank down on his haunches.

Bruno came from a family who were some sort of high-class Schieber. he seemed always to have cigarettes, new clothes, watches, money. He told us about the night-life of Berlin where there was a whole new world behind the facades of rock-like buildings - of Aladdin's caves that opened up with a dazzle of lights and jewels.

I said 'Well why don't you take us?'

He said 'Because I'd be responsible.'

I said 'Responsible for what?'

He said 'For the poor men, God help them, who might want to make you not virgins.'

At weekends Bruno and Trixie and I would go out to the woods and lakes on the outskirts of Berlin; we would hire a boat and row out on the lakes; we would watch the courting couples who lay under the trees. One of the conventions of our relationship seemed to be that neither Trixie nor I became sexually involved with Bruno: we did not question this: I thought - It just seems to be necessary if our three-sided relationship is to continue.

Trixie said 'I don't believe you know where to take us.'

Bruno said 'It costs money.'

Trixie said 'Then how do we make money?'

Bruno said 'Trixie, Trixie, you want me to tell you how to make money!'

I thought - But none of us are really meaning what we are saying.

Near one of the lakes we visited on the western outskirts of Berlin, the Wannsee, was the grave of the writer Heinrich von Kleist who had shot himself at this spot together with his girlfriend

in 1811. A fence had been put up round a tombstone which was inscribed with Kleist's name and the dates of his birth and death and then the words 4 He lived, sang and suffered in hard and sorrowful times: he sought death on this spot and found immortality/

We were all three passionate admirers of Kleist. We would stand and stare at his grave; we did not know what more to do about it.

I said 'Why did he shoot himself!'

Bruno said 'Because he thought he could see only what was in his own head, and no one understood what he was saying.'

Trixie said 'Why did he shoot his girlfriend?'

Bruno said 'Because she had cancer.'

I thought - You mean, what are the connections between one thing and another?

Trixie and I went on pressing Bruno to take us to see the nightlife of Berlin. He was a year older than us; he was used to going to bars and cafes on his own. Trixie said 'But what exactly do you have to do there?'