Hopeful Monsters (37 page)

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.'

When I said things like this Mitzi would stop and stand at the edge of the pavement and look across the road as if she were waiting for a gap in the traffic.

I thought - But if reality is a function of the experimental condition -

- Am I really trying to get Mitzi into bed?

I said 'Mitzi, but we can talk, no one can hear us here! Or if they do, you can always say that you were being kind to me, in order to get me sent to Siberia!'

Occasionally I got Mitzi to smile. She would then walk for a time with her arm through mine. She would say 'Why are you not serious? It is your way in England never to be serious?'

I said 'But it is you who are not serious!'

She said 'Me?'

I said 'The things you will not talk about. The things you will not even listen to - '

Mitzi began to take her arm away from mine.

I said loudly 'For instance, the magnificently improved production of wheat- !'

Mitzi put her hands over her ears and ran across the road.

Then I thought - But perhaps it is they who know some things are too serious to be within the range of talk -

- And I am protecting myself from Mitzi by talking like this?

- Why do I not say just - Let's make love!

Once I caught up with her after she had run away and I said 'Oh Mitzi, all the things going on in your country may be all right for all I know. I mean the theories of Comrade Lysenko, the failures in the production of wheat. I mean, of course, it may be true that old patterns have to be broken up; then what lovely things may grow! I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you may be right! I mean, I'm saying that for all I know Comrade Stalin may be right - '

I was holding Mitzi's arm. She was staring at me belligerently as if by will she could make me do whatever she wanted me to do -

I thought - But I am trying to say just - Let's make love!

This was a time - the winter of 1934/35 - when what became known later as the Terror had not yet got under way in Stalin's Russia; but there had been the stories of senseless killings as well as those of famine on and off for years. However, not long after I had arrived in Russia there was the assassination of Kirov, the Bolshevik Party leader in Leningrad, and this was seen later as the starting-point for the Terror. Kirov was murdered by a mentally unstable dissident; this dissident, Nikolaev, could have been working on his own or he might have been one of a group; but the point was that in the Soviet system he could be said to have been working with anyone - so that anyone could be said to be responsible for the murder of the Party leader, Kirov. And how useful this could be for someone who wanted to get rid of enemies! The precedent for this sort of thing was the Nazis' use of the Reichstag fire, when a mentally unstable dissident had given Hitler the chance to get rid of anyone he chose. Now Kirov's assassination was being used by Stalin to arrest and put on trial Zinoviev and Kamenev, two of his oldest colleagues - and the precedent for this, of course, was Hitler's killing of Rohm. I thought - Well, indeed, there are patterns here that become established in the mind: but dictators, of course, are too stupid to see that they are parts of patterns of mind -

Then - It is because of you, my beautiful German girl, that I find it so difficult to get involved with Mitzi!

I went on trying to talk to Kolya. I said 'But I see that for a

Communist society to work, old loyalties have to be broken up. But why can't you just say this - '

Kolya sometimes spoke with passion. 'Why should you say anything? What do you think you have to say? You people in the West make an idol of words! You think that once you have said something you have achieved it.'

I thought - Yes, I know that.

I said 'All right, there may be things better not said. But does anyone know this at the top? I mean, does anyone know what's happening? If there's no one - '

Kolya said 'You think you can know what is happening? What is happening? Tell me!'

I said 'All right, people are being shot without reason - '

He said 'How do you know?'

I said 'You can look.'

He said 'Do you look at every battlefield? Do you find somewhere where people do not die?'

I thought - Kolya has learned something that I have not?

- But I used to know once that it is impossible with some experiments to limit the area in which one might look for reasons or results.

Kolya said 'What do you think human beings are! Look to actions, not to words.'

I thought - Kolya is saying, like Kapitsa: Look at the paradoxes in Holy Mother Russia!

Then - I am using you as an excuse, my beautiful German girl, for not getting involved with Mitzi?

One afternoon when I thought I was alone in the apartment (I would sit on my bed with my Russian textbooks on my knees and wrapped against the cold like a kidnap victim), and so could get on with what seemed to be my business of dreaming about Mitzi (I would think - But are not good Communist girls supposed to be easily available in Russia?), I heard a noise in the dining-room as if someone were moving quietly, not wishing to be heard. I got up and went out into the passage surreptitiously because I too did not want to be heard (I had been thinking - I know it is my own fault that I get no further than dreams with Mitzi: I must be more resolute, cunning: why do I see everything as an experiment to see what will happen?) and through the open door of the dining-room I saw Mrs Platov standing by the sideboard. She was holding a bottle dangling from her hand. She had her back to me and was

quite still; she herself seemed to be in a dream. I thought - so perhaps now I will see what people here do when they think they are not being seen; when they show not what they talk about, but what they are in themselves. Then - But of course I have an image in my mind of a middle-aged mother with a bottle in her hand: I do not have to come all this way to learn about that, O my mother! There was a thin silver light coming into the room from snow outside; this lit up glints in bottles and glasses on the sideboard. I thought - But this is something archetypal: a Dutch interior perhaps? A Vermeer? Then Mrs Platov held the bottle behind her; the bottle seemed to be empty; it had been of vodka: then she began to lift up her skirt at the back. I thought - Good heavens, is that what they do in Russia? Then - If Mrs Platov sees me I can say I have come to mend the pianola. There was a pianola that was broken in the dining-room, and I had for some time been hoping to mend it. Mrs Platov seemed to be wearing nothing underneath her skirt. She began to walk, waddling somewhat, to the far end of the dining-room table with her skirt still raised and the bottle held against her at her back; then she turned and began to lower herself on to the chair on which she usually sat at the end of the table. In this position she was now facing me, who was just beyond the open door. I could not tell whether or not she saw me; she seemed to become frozen, either in some sort of trance, or perhaps under the impression that if she stayed still enough she might be invisible. I thought - But of course, she wants to be like one of those toys that sit with spikes up inside them; who thus stare straight ahead and do not see anything, hear anything; indeed, yes, they would want to be this sort of thing in Russia. It seemed that if I moved then Mrs Platov might have to notice me beyond the doorway, so I stood still: I thought - You mean, it is thus that visitors who come to Russia have to make out that they do not hear anything, see anything. Or I thought I might say to Mrs Platov - But I don't mind if you are on the bottle! Ha ha! I mean I don't mind if you are this literally. Then - Perhaps it is this that is peculiar about Russia: they do things literally; they don't use metaphors. After a time, Mrs Platov seemed to see me; she was crouching, half sitting, as if getting down on a lavatory. I said 'I thought I might try to mend the pianola!' I smiled and waved, and moved away. It seemed to me that I had thought of something very clever here - I mean about metaphors; about pianolas - though I could.not quite explain to myself why. When I got back to my room I was less than ever able