Hopeful Monsters (15 page)

round his feet. I thought - Oh but I have no patterns in my mind that I can connect to something like this! He will hang himself upside down? He will be a sacrifice to something - what? - that which demands sacrifices of gods? Then again - This is ridiculous. I could not see the pistol. It might be under his bundle of clothes. Franz stood up and put one end of the rope through or over some aperture or projection in the roof of the cave; he pulled the end down; then he lay on his back and went on pulling so that his feet at the other end of the rope were heaved up towards the ceiling. He was then in the position of a piece of meat in a butcher's shop; or, yes, like a bat. I thought - But was not St Peter crucified like this? And there are all his poor insides, his cock and balls, hanging out! You mean, men might need to do something like this to give themselves a proper airing? When Franz was almost suspended, with his head just touching the ground, he slowly, through some inner momentum, swung so that his face was towards me: he seemed to see me: though it was difficult to imagine just what he saw, being upside down. I wondered - But doesn't the brain normally see things upside down? Might he not be doing some experiment to see things the right way up? There were, in fact, I knew, strange rituals being performed by nature-worshippers at this time. I thought that if I just stayed still, he might see me as some nymph of the forest. Then Franz let go of the end of the rope so that he collapsed, slowly, in a somersault. I thought I should bend down and pretend to have been doing something to my shoe. I picked up one or two pine-needles on the floor of the forest: the pine-needles seemed to be a representation of the fork in the road. I thought - Oh yes, there are connections between inside and outside worlds: you could say this is some turning I have taken. When I looked up again Franz was sitting with his feet underneath him and his bundle of clothes in his lap and he was holding the pistol which he was pointing sideways. There was no sign of the rope. I thought - He has not had time to untie the rope so that is why he is sitting with his feet underneath him. It did not seem that I could go either away or towards him. I thought - So I will stay here, on this my tightrope, just beyond the fork in the roadway.

After a time Franz, still watching me, raised the barrel of the gun so that it was in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I leaped into the air with my arms and legs flying out like those of a puppet. I thought - Oh it is I who have been shot, and am flying off round the universe!

Then - But this has got me moving.

I began walking towards Franz. The pistol had not gone off. I thought - He put only one bullet in it?

Franz watched me as I walked towards him. He held the pistol in his lap. The pistol was of the revolver type with which you can put as many bullets as you like into the cylinder and spin it.

I said Tve come here before. I often come here.* I do not know why I said this. I suppose I was offering some sort of explanation.

He said 'You often come here.'

I said* Yes.'

He said as if quoting ' - and must we not return and run down the lane in front of us, that long and terrible lane, must we not return, you and I, eternally - '

I said 'Oh yes, who said that?'

He said 'Nietzsche.'

I said 'Oh yes, Nietzsche.'

I had moved to the wall at the side of the cave which was opposite him. I leaned with my back to the wall. He still had his feet underneath him as if he were a mermaid.

I said 'And what happens then?'

He said 'What happens when?'

'At the turning. Doesn't he, Zarathustra, bite off the head of a snake, or something?'

'He comes across someone else who has a snake halfway down his throat, so he tells him to bite the head off.'

'And does he?'

'Yes.'

I said 'And then what?'

He said 'He is free. He is laughing.'

I said 'Can't you do that?'

After a time Franz raised the revolver and pointed it into the cave. Then he pulled the trigger. There was an explosion in which it seemed that my eardrums were going in and out together with the roof and walls of the cave; then hundreds of bats were flying around me like bits of black glass, like broken shadows, they bumped into walls, they almost bumped into me, I put my arms over my head. I thought - God damn you! Then - Oh well, have the shadows gone from the walls of the cave?

After a time I could see between my fingers that Franz was untying the rope from around his feet. When the bats had all gone I

looked up. I said 'Had you got just one bullet in it? You could have known where the bullet was!'

He said 'Oh yes, I might have known where the bullet was.'

I said 'I mean, that would have been sensible.'

He said 'You think it right to be sensible?'

I said'Yes.'

He said 'In this game?'

I said 'What game?'

He was still untying the rope from his feet. Then he said 'Why did you come here?'

I said 'I was following you.'

'Why?'

'I wanted to ask you about the connections between philosophy and physics.'

'You wanted to ask me about the connections between philosophy and physics.'

'Yes.'

He stretched his feet out in front of him. He leaned fowards and rubbed his ankle, which seemed to be hurting him.

He said 'In philosophy you are stuck within your own brains. In physics you are stuck within your own brains. So why not give your brains an airing.'

I said 'That's what Kleist thought.'

He said 'Yes, that's what Kleist thought.'

I said 'Why is it like that in physics?'

He leaned back and rested his head against the wall of the cave.

He said 'In physics what you observe is dependent on the fact that you observe: there is no way of observing anything apart from you as observer. You shine a light on an object and you alter it by the fact that you shine a light: you do not shine a light and then you cannot observe it. In some experiments light appears to be waves: in other experiments it appears to be particles. You can tell a particle's exact velocity, or location, but you can't tell both at the same time. There is no way of saying what anything is, apart from the way in which you are observing it.'

I said 'And you don't like that.'

'No.'

'Why not?'

He said 'There are such terrible things that go on in these heads in which we are trapped. They will destroy us. Why should we not destroy them.'

I said 'Yes, but once you know that - '

He said 'What?'

I said 'Let me see your ankle.'

I went across the floor of the cave to him: I looked down at his ankle, where the rope had chafed him. I said 'You let them out, you let them out, all those bats.'

He said 'Where?'

I said 'From the cave. From the mind.'

He said 'Yes, but where do they go to?' He banged his head gently against the wall of the cave.

I said 'That is not your business.'

He said 'What is my business?'

I said 'Where does it hurt you?'

He said 'You want to save me, do you?'

I said 'Yes.'

He said 'Why?'

I said 'That would be one of the things I'd like if I have to be going on doing it for ever.'

One of the ways in which members of fraternities maintained their senses of belonging and identity was in the matter of duelling. Boys seemed always to be on the look-out for an insult and for the opportunity to avenge it: in what simpler way could solidarity be demonstrated? Serious duelling occurred when a challenge was made and accepted between individuals. But when there was not much of this sort of duelling, a number of members of two fraternities came together for a ritual fight called a Mensur. In both events there were safeguards by which a fighter could achieve his sense of belonging with only a ritual wounding.

In a Mensur the boys from the two fraternities met in a gymnasium; they lined up opposite each other in pairs. (This was still happening, yes, in the late 1920s.) They carried swords with long thin blades. Their hands and arms and bodies were bandaged; only their heads were unprotected. (I would think - Dear God it is, indeed, as if they want to be hit just on their own heads!) At a signal, each boy put a hand behind his back and in the other raised his sword to a level slightly above his head. The fight consisted of queer flicking movements of the wrist with the forearm held straight: these were the rules: the idea was, in fact, that the boys should become cut about the face and head. And the aim was less that one should cut one's opponent's face than that oneself should

be cut: once one's cuts were deep enough, clear enough, then the fight was over. One had received one's accolade - one's mark of loyalty to the tribe.

I had once said to my father 'But if this sort of thing is a ritual, is it more sophisticated or more silly than just to be decorated by tribal witch-doctors with knives?'

He had said 'What would be sophisticated, I suppose, would be to be able to look at why one wanted to be cut by knives.'

Shortly after the time when I had come across Franz in the cave in the mountain, there was one of these fights in Freiburg in which Franz's fraternity, The Corps, was involved. Franz was one of those chosen to represent The Corps. I wondered if they had chosen him because he was good at duelling; or because, since he was so aloof, they wanted to involve him as an active member of The Corps.

Franz had half tried to avoid me since our time on the mountain. I imagined - But perhaps he likes to know that I am here.

Minna and I and some other girls watched this ritual Mensur through the windows of the gymnasium. Franz in fact fought quite well: he seemed both bored and yet purposeful; even sometimes alarmed. He flicked at the other boy's face; then when he had cut it - once, lightly - he lowered his sword and stood still. The other boy pointed his sword at him but Franz did not move. Then after a time he turned his back and went to the chairs at the side of the gymnasium and put down his sword and picked up his clothes and went out. This was against the conventions, because he himself had not yet been cut on the face.

I ran after Franz when he appeared in the road. He seemed to be heading for the path into the mountains.

I said 'Hey, can I borrow your pistol?'

He said 'Why?'

I said 'I want to shoot some bats.'

He said 'Do you want to save just me, or half the human race?'

I said 'I think about a third would be enough, don't you?'

He said 'Yes, I think a third would be about the right number.'

We walked up the path into the mountains. He walked slightly ahead of me. I thought - I am acting the part of someone trotting along behind him.

He said 'But have you heard the news, the human iace doesn't want to be saved.'

I said 'How can they know they don't want to be, until they have been?'

He stopped somewhere short of the turning to the cave. He sat on an outcrop of rock. He held his hands underneath him.

He said 'Human beings are not viable. They make sense on their own, yet they can't be on their own, they have to be in relationship to others. I am grateful to you for having been good to me. Yet it's this need to be in relationship that is destroying them.'

I said 'How have I been good to you?'

He said 'By not talking about what you have seen.'

I said 'But if you know all this - '

He said 'There you go again!'

I thought - I suppose I feel stupid with Franz because I am a bit in love with him.

I said 'If I'm good to you it's because I want to be. But there's no special virtue in loyalty. Most of the crimes of the world seem to be committed in the name of loyalty - '

He said 'Oh very true.'

I said 'So why do you do it?'

'Do what?'

'Go along with these ridiculous fraternities.'

'Where else would I go?'

I wanted to say - Here.

He said 'Unfortunately one carries whatever one is in one's head.'

I was going to say yet again - But once you know this -

He laughed and said 'Get it out, get it out.' Then - 'I know what you were going to say!'

I said 'What?'

He said 'Nellie, it will do for your epitaph.'

I thought - Well that's all right, isn't it?

That evening in the beer-cellar there was talk about how Franz had walked out of the Mensur before he had received his own wound: this was of course strongly criticised. But there were one or two of The Corps who argued that Franz might have been justified in that he had been wrongly paired in the first place; and this was why he had walked out.

I have mentioned the caste system that affected the relationship between members of fraternities: this was especially relevant to the matter of fighting duels. Challenges could only be made or received by members of fraternities one above or one below each other in caste. And at the lower end of this caste system were the Jewish fraternities. There were two main sorts of Jewish fraternities - the pro-Zionist and the pan-German. Both of these sang and strutted

about and drank themselves unconscious at night in the style of the others; but it was the custom amongst members of most non-Jewish fraternities that they should not fight duels with members of Jewish fraternities. If a challenge by one of the latter was made, it was turned down. It seemed to me that this was due not only to ingrained anti-Semitism but to the fact that Jews, by their nature and their situation, would be likely to have trained so well that they would be better as fighters than most non-Jews - Jews being apt to introduce a touch of reality into such ridiculous games.

Now, however, it was being suggested that the reason why Franz had not waited to let himself be cut about the face by the boy he had been paired with was because he had suspected that this boy might be a Jew. He wasn't. But it was being suggested that Franz might have suspected that he was, and so might have been justified in walking out.

I said to Minna 'But all this is typical of the pathetic games of Christians. It is the explanation that Franz would hate more than any other!'

Minna said 'I would like to fight a duel with the people who say this, on behalf of Franz.'