Hopeful Monsters Read online

  magician: there was a photograph of him on the chimney-piece of my father's study which was a counter-balance to my mother's photograph of Karl Marx on the chimney-piece of the dining-room. Professor Einstein's head, set rather loosely on his shoulders, seemed to have a life of its own; Karl Marx's head seemed to have been jammed down on to his shoulders with a hammer. I would say to my father as we sat above the wonders of the world in our airship 'What is it that is so special about the theories of Professor Einstein?'

  My father said 'Shall I try to explain?'

  I said 'I like hearing you talk. It doesn't matter if I don't understand.'

  This was the time - the winter of 1918-19 - when Einstein had recently published his paper concerning the General Theory of Relativity (the papers concerning the Special Theory had been published some years previously), but the conjectures put forward in the General Theory had not yet been verified. Nothing in these theories had yet much caught the public imagination: people seemed not to be ready for such images as they might evoke. But my father had become obsessed with trying to make intelligible an interpretation of the General Theory: it was this, he said, that should alter people's ideas about the universe and about themselves.

  My father said 'All right, I'll try to tell you. I'm not sure, anyway, just what it means to understand.'

  I think my father had already tried to explain - usually more to himself in fact than to me - the Special Theory of Relativity. I remember the phrases about there being no absolute space nor absolute time: my space is my space; your time is yours; if I am travelling at a certain speed in relation to you it might as well be you who are travelling at a certain speed in relation to me; the only thing that is absolute is the speed of light. The speed of light is constant no matter if it arises from this or that travelling hither or thither: if there seem to be contradictions, these are because the measuring devices themselves get bigger or smaller and not the speed of light. I do not suppose I grasped the latter idea: but I do not think I found if difficult to see the idea of each person, each observer or group, having his or her or its own world: was not this, after all, what I had come to feel about the people in the streets, my mother's friends, her cousins in the country? I felt sometimes that I understood even about the absoluteness of the speed of light - was not this something that my father and I felt ourselves in touch with

  as we looked down on all these separate worlds from the super-world of our airship?

  I said 'You are going to tell me about the new thing, the General Theory.'

  My father said 'Ah!'

  There are two or three particular and personalised images that stick in my mind from my father's efforts to explain to me, aged nine, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. These images arose from the conjectu.e that light itself had weight, so that it could be bent or pulled in the proximity of matter by what used to be called 'gravity': that if there is enough matter in the universe (which Einstein thought there was) then space itself would be bent or curved - and it would be just such curvature that could properly be called gravity. The particular images suggested by my father that have stuck in my mind are, firstly, of a small group of people standing back to back on a vast and lonely plain; they are looking outwards; they are trying to see something other than just their surroundings and themselves. But they can never by the nature of things see anything outside the curve of their own universe, since gravity pulls their vision back (my father drew a diagram of this) so that it comes on top of them again like falling arrows. The second image is that of a single person on this vast and lonely plain who has constructed an enormously powerful telescope; by this he hopes to be able to break at last out of the bonds of his own vision; he looks through it; he sees - what appears to be a new star! Then he realises that what he is looking at is the back of his own head - or the place where his head now is billions of years ago, or in the future, or whatever. Anyway, here he is now with the light from him or to him having gone right round the universe and himself never being able to see any further than the back of his own head. But then there was a third image that my father gave me, different in kind from the others: which is of gravity being like the effect of two people sitting side by side on an old sofa so that the springs sag and they are drawn together in the middle: and there were my father and I sitting side by side on the sofa in his study.

  I would say to my father 'But is this true?'

  My father said 'Mathematically, it seems to be true.'

  'But is it really?'

  'Ah, what is really!'

  I would think - But together, might not my father and I get beyond the backs of our heads in our airship?

  Sometimes when my father and I had our arms around one another sitting like this my mother would put her head round the door of his study and say 'Are you coming?'

  My father would say 'Coming where?'

  To supper.'

  4 Ah yes, supper.'

  Then my mother would perhaps advance into the room and say 'What have you two been doing?'

  Talking.'

  'It didn't sound like talking to me!'

  Thinking then.'

  'Do you have to sit like that when you think?'

  And I would think - Oh do let us get through, yes, into some other dimension!

  It was such conversations I had with my father that seemed relevant to the evening when the group of people round Rosa Luxemburg had been in our apartment (they being like the people on the vast and lonely plain) and when the young man and the girl stayed for supper.

  My mother had gone to argue with Magda in the kitchen. Helga was banging plates down on the sideboard in the dining-room. My father had said to the girl, who was quite pretty, 'What is your subject?' The girl had said 'Physics.' My father had said Then we will have a lot to talk about!' And I had wondered why my father was not talking more to me.

  My father said to the young man 'What do you do?'

  The young man said 'My subject is philosophy but at the moment I am occupied in politics.'

  My father said, as he so often said, 'Ah.'

  During supper my father sat at the head of the table: I sat on one side of him and the young man sat on the other: the girl sat next to the young man. I remember the atmosphere, the style, of this supper quite well - perhaps because it was almost the first time I had been allowed up so late; out of deference, I suppose, to the tensions of the evening. Whoever remembers the exact words of conversations? but I imagine I can recreate the style, the attitudes, of my father.

  He said to the girl 'What do you know of the theories of Professor Einstein?'

  The girl, who had a scraping voice that did not go with her soft squashed face, said 'I understand they have not been verified.'

  My father said 'What do you think might count as verification?'

  The girl said 'I understand verification is unlikely.'

  My father turned to the young man who had small steel pince-nez from which a black ribbon hung down. My father said 'And what is the opinion of a philosopher or a politician on these matters?'

  The young man said 'I think these are matters for scientists and mathematicians.'

  My father said 'Should not a philosopher have ideas or opinions about what might be called reality?'

  The young man said 'It is the job of philosophers to clarify concepts. It is the job of scientists to uncover facts.'

  My father said 'But are not concepts seen to be of the same nature as facts?'

  The young man said 'And it is the job of politicians to separate practical sense from nonsense, which is the tool of exploitation.'

  My father said 'I see.' He used to say 'I see' when he was disappointed; this was slightly different from when he said 'Ah!'

  At some such moment in this conversation my mother came in; she banged plates about with Helga or Magda at the sideboard. She said 'It might make more sense to talk about the practical difficulties of getting the materials for this soup.'

  The young man said 'Indeed.'


  The girl said 'I'm sorry.'

  My mother said 'It is not your fault.'

  My father raised his eyebrows; he seemed to be hoping he might take off, as if he were a rocket.

  My mother sat down at the other end of the table. Helga handed round the soup. After a time my mother said 'Some people do not seem to realise that even at this moment there are people being killed in the streets.'

  My father picked up his napkin, put it down, looked at the girl, looked at the young man, looked at me. I thought - Well, you did not put your arms around me: what am I supposed to do alone in our airship?

  Then my father said to my mother 'But haven't you been looking forward to the time when people would be killed in the streets? Haven't you said that the revolution could not come until there were people being killed in the streets?'

  My mother said 'That is an insult!' She banged her knife and fork down on the table.

  I thought I might now join in by saying - But didn't you want

  my father to protect this young man and the girl by saying that they were two of his students at the university?

  My mother went out of the room. We could hear her talking, or crying, with Magda in the kitchen.

  The girl said to my father 'Don't you care?'

  My father raised his eyebrows; gazed at a corner of the ceiling.

  The young man said 'In my opinion, the scientific reality is that there is this repression of the masses.'

  My father said 'I see.'

  After a time the girl said 'Excuse me, I will go and see if your wife is all right.' She left the room.

  We sat at the table and drank our soup - my father, the young man with pince-nez and myself. I thought - Oh yes, our various visions, like arrows, are going out and coming crashing round on to the backs of our own heads.

  Then - But it is true that my mother must have had difficulty in getting the materials for the soup?

  After a time the young man said 'But the masses have the real power according to the iron laws of history.'

  My father said 'Then for God's sake join them.'

  The young man stood up and bowed, and went out - presumably to join my mother and the girl and Helga and Magda in the kitchen.

  I thought - So now, yes, my father and I are alone in our airship.

  My father sat staring at a corner of the ceiling. I thought - But it is all right, it is all right, even if there are things one does not understand and cannot say: is not this what you have taught me?

  Eventually a bed was made for the young man in the drawing-room; the girl was to sleep on the floor of my room.

  Sometime during the night people did in fact come knocking at the door of our apartment; I heard my father going to answer the door; he was calm, authoritative; after a time the people who had knocked went away. What my father had said was that there was no one in the apartment except his family and servants; he could give his assurance on this point on the authority of his position at the university. I was in my bed with the girl beside me on a mattress on the floor. I was thinking - Well what does one understand? What is truth? What is authority? What is caring for others, in this lonely business of our airship?

  It was a day or two after this, I think, that the revolution of the left-wing extremists that had been simmering came to the boil in Berlin:

  this was the second week in January 1919. The eruption of the left wing brought out the right-wing extremists; there were gangs in caps and thick dark suits running through the streets; gangs in makeshift uniforms clanking about in lorries. I saw comparatively little of this; for a week I was not allowed out of the apartment. I would stand at the window and look down. What I understood vaguely at the time and in more detail later was that the left-wing extremists, or Spartacists as they were called, had emerged with rifles and machine-guns; had attacked, and taken over, three or four newspaper offices (this might have seemed apt to my childish vision, since I saw their business as being to do with the banging about of bits of paper). There was sporadic shooting, a few hundred deaths, a failure in storming government buildings. Railway stations and the Telegraph Office were occupied: but all this was being done not so much by the workers as by people who had said that it should be being done by the workers - in accordance with the iron laws of history. Workers for the most part stayed at home. And the right-wing gangs took time off from their clattering in lorries to retire to cellars and drink beer - and to wait for the time perhaps when they could re-emerge and deal with the left-wing extremists who in the end would have to emerge from the newspaper offices without even having had any beer.

  I would sometimes hear the sound of firing in the streets; sometimes see the lorries going past with the men hanging on like the claws of crabs. Once there was a column of people with banners going past and they were shouting 'Out! Out!': later there was a column with banners containing slogans of the other side going past and they were shouting 'Out!' I would think - But where are the people dying in the streets? Or are they being kept like a score, as in a game of cards.

  My father stayed in the apartment for a few days; then he was needed at the university. The young man and the girl had moved on to another hiding-place. Some of my mother's friends would come to the door now and then and there would be whispered consultations in the hallway; they would sit for a short while on the chair on which Rosa Luxemburg had sat. I thought - They are like tops that have been whipped up by Rosa Luxemburg, and are now running down.

  Once a day Magda or Helga or my mother would go out to try to get food; they would have to queue in streets where there was the sound of firing. When they came back they would rest in the

  chair in the hallway, and we would gather round: I thought -Perhaps tops are kept spinning by the sound of firing.

  I tried to talk with my mother. She would sit with her back to me at her desk in the drawing-room or at the table in the kitchen. I would say 'But what is happening?'

  She said 'It will not be a defeat. It will be a victory.'

  'But where is Rosa Luxemburg?'

  'In hiding.'

  'How will it be a victory?'

  'In the end, it will be a victory.'

  I imagined Rosa Luxemburg crouched like a small hawk at the top of someone's airing cupboard.

  Then there was an evening when there were more than the usual comings and goings at the door of our apartment. My father had come home; he went to join in whatever was happening. I sat on my own in my room. I was often on my own in my room at this time; I used to plan how, if the gangs from the street came to get me, I would climb out of the window and up the ventilation area in the centre of the building. But then what should I do - fly above rooftops? This particular evening, after the more than usual comings and goings in the hallway, there were just the sounds of my father talking quietly to my mother and my mother crying; then my mother began to make a noise like howling. I went out of my room and along the passage. My mother was sitting on the chair in the hallway and my father was standing over her. My mother was hitting him with her fists. I said, as I so often said, 'What's happened?'

  My father said 'They've found Rosa Luxemburg.'

  My mother said 'They've killed her.'

  My father said 'Come to bed.'

  My mother said to my father 'You killed her!'

  I thought - Do you mean my father's thoughts, like arrows, went right round the universe -

  My father said 'You go to bed.'

  I said 'Me?'

  My father said 'Yes.'

  I thought - But I don't think you've killed her!

  My father sat up with my mother most of that night. Sometimes she became calm; sometimes she cried and shouted. It did not seem that anything my father said made any difference to my mother. I

  sat in my room and listened. I thought - You mean, my mother doesn't want to see what it is she herself has been doing?

  The next morning details came through about what had happened - or what people thought must have happened - to Rosa Luxe
mburg. She had been found hiding in someone's house by one of the right-wing gangs roaming the streets; she had been taken to the Eden Hotel to be interrogated; then the gang had said they were going to hand her over to the police. On the way out of the hotel she had been hit on the head by a rifle butt; she had been pushed into a car half dead. In the car she had probably been shot, and her body had been dumped in a canal. The official story put out was that on the way to the police station the car had been stopped by a mob and Rosa Luxemburg had been dragged from it and lynched. No one bothered to try to believe this. But with her death the revolution was effectively over. Her body was recovered some months later from the canal. A few of her followers continued to imagine that she must still be alive, and that the whole story was a ruse so that she could remain in hiding and eventually emerge.

  My father said to my mother 'There is a sense, you see, in which something like that might be true.'

  My mother said 'What sense?'

  My father said 'She always knew that that sort of revolution wouldn't work. Now she can become a symbol.'