Hopeful Monsters

I said 'But you know Bohr's theory that, in fact, the force which holds a nucleus together is like that which holds together a drop of water — '

Donald said 'Or fairies at the bottom of the garden.'

I said 'But why not?'

He said 'You theorists would see a dragon at the heart of the philosopher's stone.'

I thought — But of course what you can't accept is that if what we are getting is in fact barium and even with the chance of a chain reaction -

— That would indeed release the dragon from the philosopher's stone!

Donald sometimes came up to see us in the evenings; he would join us in a chair round the fire. Donald had become more sceptical with age: he was still a bachelor: he was uneasy in the presence of women. He would assume funny voices; do his trick of curling his top lip up underneath his nose.

You said 'But what would be the conditions that would make you believe that it was barium?'

Donald said 'The mathematics.'

You said 'And you can't get the mathematics.'

Donald said'No.'

You said 'Perhaps you don't want the mathematics.'

Donald poked at the fire. I thought — But we, you and I, do we want the dragon?'

I thought — Donald will be needing to make a joke of all this. I said 'But if mathematics is a description of a function of your mind — '

Donald said 'Then is it in my mind that the earth goes round the sun.' He mimed putting a telescope to a blind eye. He said in an upper-class voice 'I say, isn't that an eye that I see out there?'

You said to him, as if you were taking what he said seriously 'But doesn't the earth go round the sun?'

I said to Donald 'But it's you who say that it must be the instruments that are wrong — '

Donald said 'Do you know the story of the frog in the saucepan of water?'

You said'No.'

I thought — But Donald, you do really know what we are trying to talk about: I mean, if it were barium; about the dragon in the stone.

Donald said 'If you put a frog in a saucepan of water, and then raise the temperature of the water very slowly so that there is no decisive moment at which the frog will know that it should jump, then it will boil to death.'

You said 'Is that true?'

Donald jumped up and flapped his elbows up and down. He said 'Me no wan tee boil to deathee!' Then he went to the door. He said 'A bedtime story, children.'

After Donald had gone, you said 'You don't all have to protect yourselves by pretending to be mad scientists.'

I said 'That's right. But I've got you.'

When I lay with you at night we were either face to face with my arms around you so that it was as if what I held were glowing patterns of light: or when you turned with your back to me we fitted into one another like the yin and yang of the universe. Then after a time when you turned again there would be no separate parts of us; my mind had gone out; we were the whole. Then some image might come in — This frog is about to boil! Dear God, this red-hot saucepan is the sun! Jump! What a miraculous universe!

We were some salamander, perfect in the flames.

In the laboratory Donald and I gave up the experiments which presented us with problems for which we could not or would not find answers: we went back to a different and more boring line of checking results obtained by others. I wondered — So where is our task? Our mission? What are we doing, you and I? Then — But there is still the interesting question of what I think I am doing watching for little clicks and bumps of light: what, indeed, in general do humans think they are doing?

In the evenings when I came back to you we would not talk much now about what we had done during the day. I thought — These bumps and clicks: either there is, or is not, something growing elsewhere.

We began to read English and German literature to each other in

the evenings. (You said 'Not French.' I said 'Why not French?' You said ' Oh all right, but the French seem to use words as if they say everything.') We read Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Kleist. I said 'What things are seems to depend on an act of recognition: but one seems almost to have to give up hoping for this before it occurs.'

You said 'You go on a journey.'

I said 'You know you're going; you don't know where you're going, or how would you be discovering?'

Time passed, or perhaps seemed to stand still, in this routine: it was in the coming round again that there seemed to be a present. So of course why should we want anything to come in from outside to break us up, we bits and pieces of a nucleus! I thought — Oh but how can there be creation, even of what we are now, if there is not some breaking up?

And what was happening in the outside world during 1937? In Spain and Russia Trotskyites and anarchists were being murdered: in Germany Hitler gathered his generals round him and plotted for war. In England there was the visit of the New Zealand cricket team: what quiet clicks, what pleasant bumps of light! I thought — And for us what a miracle that we should be undergoing no further violent change; but being, for the moment, just as we are!

You said 'What was this vision that you had in Spain?'

I said 'That consciousness creates things: but for us to become used to this, we have to become used to some breaking up, reforming, breaking up, of ourselves.'

You said 'Do you want that?'

I said 'Want!' Then — 'It is too paradoxical for us to talk about want.'

Sometime early in 1938 Donald Hodge set about rebuilding and re-equipping the laboratory: I was encouraged to take a holiday. I said 'We can go to London.' You said 'Yes.' I said 'I suppose this is the sort of thing I'm talking about.' You said 'I've been thinking for ages that I must try and find out what has happened to Bruno.' I said 'But you don't think I want to go to London!' You said 'Then I suppose that's all right.'

I arranged for us to stay in the rooms of my old friend Melvyn: Melvyn would be away; he said that he would be on some expedition to Spain. It was in this building that I had lived two years ago. I wondered — Will there be anything from that old outside world coming in?

I said 'What shall I do while you are out looking for Bruno?'

You said 'I hope you will cease to exist.'

I said 'But we will be connected!'

You said 'Then that's all right.'

In London we went to cinemas and exhibitions. The films were for the most part about people being together, going apart, coming together again: I thought — Well what else is a story? Then — But no one gets the point. In the exhibitions the most interesting paintings were those in which people and things seemed to be being split up into little bits and pieces of light. I thought — But the point is that we, the people watching, can know this; and so we are not split up. I said to you 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' You said 'It's not as if I want to be with anyone except you.' I thought — Well, that's all right.

I said 'How will you find Bruno?'

You said 'I can't write to Trixie and her husband; it might be dangerous for them.'

I said 'Can't you write in code?'

You said 'They would still have to answer.' Then — 'Perhaps I can do something like cast palm-nuts from one hand to the other.'

There was a committee that provided aid for refugees from Nazi Germany; you found their address and made enquiries. They said they had no knowledge of Bruno. You also tried to find out what you could about your father.

You said 'There's no news except from my cousins that he's in a camp.'

I said 'There's nothing you can do.'

You said 'I should have tried to do something before.'

I thought — I suppose I should have found out long ago what happened to Caroline.