Hopeful Monsters (20 page)

But no one gets away from their schooldays, or indeed from their families, except by what grows in the mind; and this goes on for the most part in the dark.

There is a Freudian theory that any young man who in childhood has been the undisputed favourite of his mother goes through life with the feelings of a conqueror. Well, I did not consciously want to be anything so vulgar as a conqueror: but I did imagine, yes, that I had got away from my upbringing and my family.

I felt I had been helped in this by the strange dark girl who had risen sword in hand, as it were, from the mists of that lake in the Black Forest: whom I loved; but whom I did not feel ready to take on on a mundane level.

I remember that we talked about politics, you and I: were you not closer to Communism at that time than you remember? (You imagined you had got away from your mother?) You certainly

showed your antipathy to those Nazi boys: I suspected at first that you did not go down to the performance of the play in the evening because your friends had joined up with them - or was I even then being too modest? You showed some antipathy to me when I suggested that in the cannibal-race of the Western world these Nazis might play the part of scavengers, garbage-collectors, to clean the mess up. But then was not this the sort of thing that was being said by the Communist friends of your mother's?

In Cambridge before 1930, it is true, we did not know much of either Communism or Fascism. It was the fashion, I suppose, to say about Russia 'Of course, the experiment might go either this way or that.' And about Italy 'At least Mussolini makes the trains run on time.' Reactions amongst students were influenced by the contempt we had for what we saw and read of politicians at home. These seemed to be like dinosaurs already half fossilised in rock: we thought - Hurry on, ice-cap, come down from the pole.

I would say to my mother 'Freud doesn't seem too optimistic about the chances of social improvement.'

My mother would say 'Truth after all does not depend upon the chances of improvement.'

I said to my father 'But if there is no guiding principle in evolution, then why should one form of behaviour be any better than another?'

My father said 'Science and ethics belong to different worlds.'

I would think - But might not this attitude be like that of the dinosaurs just before they were caught by the cold?

But then I would think of you, my beautiful German girl: whose legs as they moved within your skirt were like the clappers of a bell; the memory of whose mouth still sometimes took me by the throat so that it was as if I could not breathe. I thought - There are connections here beyond the reach of the scientific world; sailors are lured to rocks by sirens; rocks are where fishes and humans crawl out on to a new land.

In Cambridge, young men put their heads into the sand of scrums on football fields. Old men stood and watched them as if they themselves would leap in and be blind.

Oh yes, I felt as if I were an agent in occupied territory. But what was the agency? What was it for? Who were the other agents? (Of course, you.)

Indeed one should not stay too long in the company of someone whom one feels is a fellow agent: there is such work to be done!

When I first went to my father's old college I had rooms on a staircase on which there were also the rooms of a man called Melvyn. Melvyn was a short chubby man with a round face and a high domed forehead and eyebrows that went up to a point in the middle like those of a stage devil. My rooms were above his, so that I had to pass his door when I went up the stairs. He would leave his door open when he was inside his room so that it was as if he wanted to be on show for whoever would look at him. Within this frame he would appear to be posing in various tableaux: the student at his desk; the aesthete reclining on his chaise-longue; the visionary at the window; the eccentric flat on his back on the floor with a pillow under his head. I would think - It is as if, yes, he is doing these performances because he is like one of those particles that might not exist unless someone is observing them. Then - Or is it I who make up such patterns into which people have to fit; if I did not, might I not exist?

Or - But I wonder about this, and they do not?

One morning in the middle of my first term I was going up the stairs and through Melvyn's open doorway I saw that he was lying half on and half off his chaise-longue as if he were ill; his shirt was open at the neck and half out of his trousers; one arm trailed towards the ground where an empty glass had fallen on its side. I thought -This is a tableau to which I am supposed to guess the reference: The Death of Nelson? The Suicide of Chatterton? I went on up the stairs. When I came down again some fifteen minutes later Melvyn was still in the same position. I tried to work out - Well, of course he does this to attract attention: but then don't people who try to kill themselves also do it to attract attention? I went in. I thought I might wander round his room and appear to be interested in the books that were on his shelves; then, if it were a game, I would not have appeared to have been a fool; I would not have rushed like an ambulance man into a charade.

On Melvyn's walls there were posters depicting heroic Russian workers: there were scrolls in the form of strip-cartoons illustrating the life of Lenin. I thought - Perhaps this is why I am being lured into this room, so that there can be observed my reactions to the life of Lenin. Then - But what if I am a fly; do I not want to study the life of such spiders?

There was a smell coming from Melvyn so that I was aware of him even when I had my back to him. The smell was of stale wine,

unwashedness, not quite of death. I wondered - By a sense of smell, people might be tested on what they think of Lenin?

I went and stood by Melvyn. His small cherub's mouth had a slight encrustation round it. It was like the opening to a waste-pipe that had been blocked.

After a time Melvyn opened one eye and said 'Kiss me, Hardy.'

I said 'Yes, I thought of that.'

'What did you think of?'

'The Death of Nelson.'

He said 'England expects every man to do his duty.'

I said 'I was just passing the door of your room.'

He said 'Do you know what my nanny used to call "duty?"'

'No, what - '

He said 'After breakfast, every morning - that's what Nanny used to call "duty".'

He reached for the glass that was on its side on the floor. Then he sat up and pointed to a bottle of wine that was on a table behind him. He held out the glass. I took the bottle and poured out some wine. He drank.

I said 'Have you been to Russia?'

He said 'Why, are you a policeman?'

I said 'No, but I'd like to go there.'

He said 'You know how one loves policemen!'

I moved off round the room again. On the shelves there was a set of books bound in black leather which had no titles nor lettering on the spines. I wondered - They are pornography?

I said 'Do you have contacts in Russia?'

He said 'Oh do say you are policeman!' Then - 'You're not allowed to ask a direct question.'

I came and stood by his chaise-longue again. I looked down. I thought - I am trying to find out what is his interest in Communism: he is trying to find out whether or not I am homosexual.

There was no formal Communist organisation in Cambridge at this time: the first Communist cell was set up in 1931. But I had become interested in Communism when I had been in Germany: I had talked about it with you, my beautiful German girl. You had told me something of your early life; of your mother. Of course, I had wanted to know more.

On the other hand there was an age-old and now quite open tradition of homosexuality at Cambridge. In fact it was so unfashionable not to be homosexual that people were apt to pretend

to be homosexual when they were not. I had already gathered, of course, that Melvyn was homosexual.

I sat down on the edge of Melvyn's chaise-longue. I said 'Can I have a drink?'

He said 'You come in here - you break into my room - '

I said 'You like that, do you?'

He said 'You prima donna you.'

I poured some wine into another glass. I thought - He is one of those people who like going down to the East End of London and getting themselves beaten up?

Then - This would not mean that he could not be a Communist.

I said 'I guessed The Death of Nelson. That means I can ask you a direct question.'

He said 'What do you want to ask?'

I said 'Are you a Communist?'

He said 'You think people tell the truth when they're asked a direct question?'

I said 'No. But you won't answer. And you have the stuff about Lenin on your walls.'

In the days that followed I saw quite a lot of Melvyn. In the evenings I would go for a drink in his room and enter into the game of Let-us-talk-wittily-in-riddles-because-then-we-need-never-feel-committed-to-whatever-has-been-said. But then I would remember - Did not we, you and I, say something about truth landing up in riddles?

Melvyn was such an obvious type of stage devil: his charm was that of Mephistopheles; he played tricks with words because the only value he recognised was that of manipulation.

I would try to remember - What was it that those beautiful earnest Germans were saying about Mephistopheles and Faust? That they are manifestations of the same person? That it is in a decadent world that dark forces get split off from a person and are put into the hands of others?

- In a healthy world one would see that they are in the hands of oneself?

Melvyn did from time to time seem to talk seriously about this interest in Communism and Marxism, but still as if he were an actor performing a serious part. An actor conventionally uses his skill so that an audience will not ask questions about reality: I thought - But we, you and I, would always want to ask questions about reality.

Melvyn would say - 'But it is quite simple. There are a few people getting big money for doing almost no work. There are many people getting almost no money for doing very hard work. It is obviously in the interests of the majority therefore to introduce a system in which people are paid for the value of their work.'

I would say 'Why?*

He would say 'Why what?'

I would say 'Do you think people are interested in choosing what would rationally be to their advantage?'

He would say 'All right, irrationality indeed has hitherto been prevalent in primitive societies - *

'But now it need not be - '

'No.'

'What if the need to have a hard time is built into human nature?'

'There is no such thing as human nature. Human beings are conditioned by the nature of their work: their system of work is not conditioned by human nature.'

'Then what about you?'

'What about me?'

'Do you think everything you do is rational?'

'Don't flatter yourself, ducky, that it is in my interest that you should give me a hard time.'

Sometimes when Melvyn was bored with the company he was in, or was drunk, he would let the conversation roll along seriously for a time and then would drag it away like one of those birds pretending to trail a broken wing so that predators should not find its nest.

He would say 'Did you know Stalin was a woman?'

Someone would say 'No.'

Then he would say something like 'At the fifteenth Party Congress, when Trotsky went to have a pee, he noticed that Stalin was in the Ladies.'

I would try to think of something to say like 'Perhaps Stalin wanted a shit.'

Melvyn would say 'Oh very good, ducky, you're learning.'

I thought - But what exactly is Melvyn's nest from which he wants such conversations to be diverted?

Then there was one evening towards the end of the first term when we were on our own and Melvyn was drunk; he had spent two days in London. He did not talk to me about what he did in

London. I would think - He has got himself tied up by guardsmen? He has been making contact with his political friends?

He said 'I want to tell you that there is nothing more disgusting than innocence, ducky.'

I said 'Who is innocent?'

He said 'You and Trotsky.'

This was shortly after the time when Trotsky had been banished by Stalin from Russia and was being blamed for most of the things that were going wrong in that country. It was only just being admitted by Communists that there was anything wrong in Russia, and there had to be a scapegoat.

I said 'Why is it innocent to talk about the millions that seem to be starving in Russia?'

He said 'I hope you are not one of those people who are starry-eyed about Russia. They have only had a year or two of their five-year plan, after all. Industrial production is up three hundred percent, electrification four hundred percent, agriculture and consumer goods - well, don't be taken in by that, they're not all starving.'

I said 'But what exactly are you saying?'

He said 'What exactly am I saying! That is what I call innocence! That is what I am saying!'

I said 'They're putting the blame on to Trotsky because they know the five-year plan is going to fail.'

Melvyn said 'Of course the five-year plan is going to fail! What on earth would happen if it succeeded: have you thought of that? You think you can transform a society by a five-year plan succeeding? You can't. It has to fail. Then people can be blamed, yes: people in Russia have to be disciplined. They have to be made to be afraid. How do you think people could be made to change if the five-year plan succeeded?'

I said 'You mean, Stalin is trying to transform human nature by making people afraid?'

'In order that there will be a society in which people need not be afraid.'

'You think you can eliminate fear by making people afraid?'

'History's not so innocent as you, ducky.'

'I don't think history's innocent.'

'Good for you.'

'You think people in Russia know what they're doing?'

'Doing what - '

144

They know that they want the five-year plan to fail?'

'Who's said anything about the five-year plan going to fail? I've not said anything about a five-year plan going to fail!*