Hopeful Monsters (38 page)

I said 'Are we lucky or did we work for it - ' You said 4 You can't talk about what is the difference.' I said 'That is what you are doing in your work?' You said 'This is happiness.' Then - 'But don't you find it difficult to talk about what you are actually doing in your work?'

The laboratory to which I went each day was in a long stone building on top of a hill: it looked out over a dark landscape striped with grey houses. My work was to do with seeing what happened when the nuclei of a heavy element such as uranium or thorium were bombarded with neutrons. Now indeed it might be thought odd what I was actually doing. There was a small glass phial that I had to fill with a radioactive material that emitted neutrons; this material was usually in the form of a radon gas which had to be caught in the phial by means of condensation; this could take place when the closed end of the phial was dipped into liquid air which lowered the temperature to 200 degrees below zero. I could then direct the gas into the phial from its radium source so that it condensed on the walls; then I had to melt the open end of the phial to seal the glass. With such cold at one end and heat at the other there was a danger that if the task were done too quickly the glass would break; but if it were done too slowly then the condensed liquid might evaporate again and escape; so this was a performance indeed requiring skill: hoopla! abracadabra! The small sealed phial had then to be fixed within a larger glass tube so that the assembly could be handled without too much danger of radiation; then this apparatus had to be taken quickly into another room - quickly because the radioactive life of the material was short; into another room because the material to be bombarded had to be kept clear of any stray radiation during the assembly of what was to bombard it. In this other room the material to be irradiated was packed in special containers; the packing consisted of some material that might slow the neutrons down so that they might be caught and absorbed by the target-material more easily; into this container was put the phial which would emit the irradiating neutrons. These materials were left in the container for this or that length of time: then the phial containing the irradiating material was removed and the material

which, it was hoped, had been made radioactive was taken to yet another room to be tested for just what particles, if any, were being emitted. This test was carried out by means of Geiger-counters placed in the proximity of the irradiated material: the Geiger-counters themselves were gas-filled tubes with electrically charged wires strung inside: if any electrically charged particles from the irradiated and now (it was hoped) irradiating material entered these tubes then the gas inside them was affected so that electrons were released from it and were drawn to the wire with the effect of causing a change in the pulse of the electric current; this change was converted by an amplifier into a sound like a click, or it was shown in the form of a jump in a line of light on a screen. It was these clicks or jumps that were showing us what went on in the nucleus of an atom.

And so - for minutes, days, months - by listening to noises like those of old bones being cast out on the ground; by watching for bumps like those in a snake swallowing a mouse; by such rituals one felt one might be discovering the basic stuff of the universe -the ways in which humans might be able to use the secrets of the universe, or blow it up. I would think - Ah well, at least in so far as we are able to look at the style of this process by which scientists hope to understand the secrets of the universe, this is an interesting experiment!

There were innumerable variations which could be played with these games - in the type and strength of the neutron-emitting material; in the substance to be irradiated; in the type of packing by which the neutrons might be slowed down; in the spacings and duration of the experiment. Also, indeed, there were variations in the state of mind of an observer - who might sometimes be enthralled; might sometimes at the end of a long day find himself wondering - Well, if this is the way in which humans think they get into contact with the basic stuff of the universe, why shouldn't they blow themselves up? But then again - Is it not the state of mind of seeing that the observer in some way orders what he observes that might preserve the universe?

When I came home to you in the evenings you would be sitting with your hands held out to the fire: you would say 'But these little bits and pieces you say you are dealing with in these experiments -atoms, nuclei, particles, whatever - you do not in fact know what it is that exists?'

'Exactly.'

'What you see, hear, touch, are little clicks that come out of an amplifier; lines and bumps on a screen - '

'Right.'

'But because, according to science, you have to ask what causes these bumps and clicks, and because you have to give names to what you say are causing them, you make up atoms, nuclei, particles, neutrons - '

I said 'But what else do we do anyway with our sense-impressions?'

When you held out your hands to the fire you were like a being that is at home within flames.

You said 'What do you really think?'

I said 'It's often fairly ridiculous when you look at what you actually do: you do have the impression that you are engaged in some ritual for the sake of something quite different.'

You said 'Such as what is behind the shadows in that cave.'

I said 'If there is energy, constancy, then there is a sun. You know the sun, even if you see only what it does or doesn't light up.'

When we were together thus in the evenings, you and I, it was, yes, as if we were held by a force as strong and brittle as light; as gentle and vulnerable as that which forms a drop of water; so delicate that a shaft from outside might break us; so indestructible that we would still be together even if we were at different parts of the universe. I thought - What joy, even with the chance of the universe blowing up!

You said 'Human activities are games: words are toys - '

'For the sake of what - '

This.'

I said 'You see, one can say this much about it!'

The line of enquiry that you were pursuing at this time was to do with psychological implications of mediaeval and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century alchemy. Alchemists had talked as if they were concerned with the physical transformation of matter, but they had hardly ever talked about what they actually did, and from this it seemed that they themselves might have felt that there was something different going on. You said 'They were trying to examine ways in which there might be connections between the inside and outside worlds: but they couldn't talk about these much or they disappeared, or they occurred in individual instances, and thus were not to do with science, which depends on instances that are repeatable and with the statistics you get from these.'

I said They were coincidences.'

You said 'If you like.'

I said 'What sort of thing in fact did they say?'

You said 'Oh something like "Take a phial of an arcane substance such as mercury; entice darkness into it and seal the phial by fire. From this watch the dragon, half-serpent and half-bird, emerge. This will be the spirit imprisoned in matter; from its liberation, there can be the marriage of opposites - the spirit and the stone."'

I said 'Quite like we physicists.'

You said 'But alchemists seemed to know that they were using a code.'

I said 'But in physics there might in fact be a big bang at the end.'

You said 'Perhaps alchemists were talking about the sort of things that might follow from a big bang.'

I said 'Perhaps they were talking about us.'

When we carried on like this in the evenings it was, yes, as if we might be in contact with something quite different going on: with some parts of ourselves that were beyond the walls of a cave; that were burning, without being consumed, in a hot sun.

You said 'Oh I do love you.'

I said 'I love you too.'

I thought I might say - You are particles of light: I am the crests of waves.

- This room, this fireplace, you and I, will always be: whatever lives or dies in the sun.

There came a time when I felt that I should take you to visit my parents. I had telephoned them when I had got back from Spain: I had told them I had married my German girl. It was evident that they had not much liked the idea of this: you were, after all, not only a German but (though of course this was not said) also a Jew. I said to you 'They think you married me in order to get a passport.' You said, 'Well, I did marry you in order to get a passport.' I said 'Oh yes, of course, so you did.'

We went by train to Cambridge: we walked from the station. Here were the bits and pieces of the cocoon out of which I was born: the shop that sold sweets, the village post office, the stream in which there could be races with floating sticks. You walked with your long strides as if you had been trained like a camel to cover vast distances. I thought - A camel or a cloud; or an angel riding a horse across a battlefield.

My mother and father were in the room with the bow window

beyond which were the lawn, the croquet hoops, the red-brick walls. They had been playing cards: they were themselves like cards lying face up on a table, waiting to be picked up for a new game. I said This is Nellie, Eleanor; she saved my life, I told you; I was about to be shot.' My mother said 'I can't remember, what was it they were going to shoot you for?' My father said 'We could have sent the car for you to the station.'

I thought - Now tread carefully amongst these old bones, these bumps of childhood: remember that there is something different going on in the sun.

My mother would not look at me. She sat very upright during lunch. She watched you and my father at the other end of the table. You were saying 'Yes, we met in Spain. We had planned to meet, you see. I mean, we had planned to meet somewhere, but we didn't know that it would be Spain.'

My father said 'You mean it was by chance.'

You said 'Max needed to get out of prison.'I needed a passport. Yes, it was by chance.'

My mother said 'But anyway, I don't understand, weren't you working for the other side?'

You said 'Yes, it was odd how it happened, wasn't it?'

I said 'She was saving lives.'

My father said 'People nowadays don't seem to know which side they are on in politics.'

My mother said 'And of course no one talks about love.'

My mother was beside me at the other end of the table. She did not eat. I thought - Perhaps she is on the bottle again: or perhaps as a practising analyst she knows about jealousy but not how to use it.

I said 'Yes, it seems to be very difficult to talk about love.'

She said 'Oh it is if you don't have it.'

I said to her 'Did we, you and I, talk about love?'

My mother rang a little bell on the table. A servant came in. This servant was a stranger.

I thought - And my mother is a stranger: whatever we used to be, she and I, is now perhaps in little bits of light in another part of the universe; like Mrs Elgin the cook and Watson the parlourmaid.

- And there are you, my angel, as if flying over rooftops; looking for marks on the doorposts and lintels of this or that house, for who shall be preserved and who shall be scattered in bits and pieces.

After lunch we walked, you and I, on the lawn. I held your hand. You were trembling. You said 'Will I have to come here again?'

I said 'No, you won't have to come here again.'

You said 'You see what they are, parents and children!'

I said 'There are enough in the world: we will find enough children.'

I thought - And perhaps we will pick them up, your children, and carry them out of Egypt.

When we went back to the house my father was waiting for us by the french windows. He said 'Your mother has a headache.'

I said 'Shall I go up to her?'

He said 'No, I don't think that would be wise.'

I said 'Shall we go then?'

He said 'I appreciate your bringing Eleanor here.'

I thought - Perhaps this is the way that mothers, if they are analysts, have to wean their children.

There were things I was not understanding in the experiments I was doing in my work: it was difficult to tell if, in fact, atoms were being split, and if there were any signs of the geometrical progression that might lead to a Bomb. There were certainly transmutations taking place that were the results of neutrons being absorbed into the nuclei of a heavy element; this absorption disturbed particles already there which were then emitted; the element was thus transmuted into one of a somewhat different number or weight (the atomic number of an element being the number of positively charged protons its nucleus is said to contain; its atomic weight being the number of protons together with neutrons); but it was often difficult to tell just what the element had been transmuted into. This classification had to be done chemically: the chemical analysis of an atom depends on the number of electrons it can be said to have in its outer orbits or shells; it is these that make the chemical combinations by which it is tested. However, the atoms of barium and radium, although the former is of almost half the latter's atomic number and weight, have an identical number of electrons in their outer shells; so that in practice it is difficult to distinguish atoms of radium from those of barium. In our laboratory neither Donald Hodge nor I were expert chemists. Sometimes the calculations that one of us made and passed to the other - all arising from the little clicks and bumps of light - made no sense. I would think - But don't we then just make up new names for things that seem to make no sense?

Donald said 'It looks like barium, it sounds like barium, but don't be taken in by that - '

I said 'You insist that it must be radium?*

We had been irradiating an element with an atomic number and weight very close to those of radium. If, in fact, this had been transmuted into barium this could mean that the atom had indeed been split; but it was easier to see it as having undergone the slight transformation into radium, because orthodox opinion still held that as a result of the bombardment of a nucleus only small bits and pieces would be chipped off.