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.