Hopeful Monsters (36 page)

Vavilov said 'I have told your father that I might be able to get you a place in the Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Odessa.'

I thought - Vavilov, if he is kind to me, might not be a survivor?

My father said 'Vavilov has been telling me of the weird and

wonderful work that is being done in Odessa. There is a man there who claims to make two ears of wheat grow where only one grew before: who thinks he can pass on by inheritance this acquired characteristic.'

Vavilov said The results are still under investigation.' He looked anxious.

My father said 'How long will it be before he is exposed?'

I thought - But my father does not realise that it is Vavilov who might be exposed.

I said 'My father and I have never quite agreed about what might be called the passing-on of acquired characteristics: perhaps that is because we are father and son.'

My father looked put out. I thought - But what is the point of being a biologist if one does not see that it may be jokes that help one to survive.

My father said 'Max once tried to repeat one of Kammerer's experiments with salamanders.'

Vavilov said 'Ah, and what did you find?'

I said 'I wondered in how large an area one might look for what one might find: perhaps the experiment was to do with love.'

Neither Vavilov nor my father seemed to see the point of this. I thought - Ah, but perhaps I am learning to be a trickster.

I got my degree in the summer of 1933: there was a delay before I could get a place at Odessa. During the year I lingered on in Cambridge I tried to find out what I could about what was going on in Russia. There had been Stalin's five-year plan for industrialisation which had begun in 1929; this was said to have been completed in 1932. Steel output was up by 300%; electrification by 400% - but what did these figures mean? Why should they refer to anything? Why should they not just be figures worked out by men in white coats sitting in front of lots of paper - not even screens and dials. There were, yes, the enormous dams visited by tourists; the rivers diverted; the festoons of wires stretching across the countryside. But where did the wires go: perhaps they ran out into a desert.

There were the stories of starvation and mass murder, but also the attempts at justification: the demand for food had increased greatly as a result of the growth of the population of the towns; it was this that had led necessarily to the enforced collectivisation of agriculture; it was when peasants had hoarded their produce that there had been some shootings; of course there had had to be some break-up of traditional ways of life. But then also there were the

official stories of triumphant peasants riding across vast plains on tractors and waving their caps in the air; workers with a new strain of hope where none had been before. I thought - But why should not all these sets of stories be true? Just as, if one looks at light in one way it can be said to be waves; in another, particles -

- And it is not true, anyway, that old ground has to be broken up - and so on.

My mother was away through much of that summer and autumn; she was taking a further step in her psychoanalytical training in America. She did not spend much time with my father now. I thought - With everything you learn, you also learn to be alone -

- What work are you doing in Zurich now, my brave dark German girl?

When my mother came back from America she seemed older and more calm. She moved about the house with her hands folded in front of her. I thought - She has stopped drinking? She has come to terms with some young lover? Then - She has come to terms with me?

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.'