I suppose I was quite angry with my mother at the time. I had begun to feel sympathy with my father. For all his faults, one could have a straight conversation with him: with my mother journeys through the maze were tortuous.
My mother still came up to my room, of course, to say goodnight. One evening there was some sort of glow about her. I thought — Perhaps she and Hans have got wherever they want to get to.
She said 'I've got a new book for you.'
I said 'What?'
She said 'It's called Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It's by Dr Freud.'
I said'Oh yes.'
She said 'He seems to have changed his ideas slightly. He says that basically there are two instincts, the life instinct and the death instinct.'
I thought I might say — Oh how brilliant!
She said 'And they're not particularly to do with sex. But a battle goes on between the two.'
I said 'And which was the instinct that made King Oedipus want whatever he wanted.'
She said "Don't be difficult.'
I said 'I'm not being difficult!'
She said 'On the deepest level, everything is paradoxical.'
I had become interested in this word 'paradoxical': I had looked it up in my father's dictionary. This had said that a paradox was something seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, but possibly well-founded and essentially true. I had thought — Yes! And there had been something like that white light coming down.
I said to my mother 'Is that why we find it difficult, you and I, to talk about things?'
She said 'I didn't know we did find it difficult to talk about things.' She was looking through some of the work I had been doing recently in German with Hans.
I said 'Are you in love with Hans?'
She said 'No, I'm not in love with Hans.' Then — 'Hans is a boy.' Then — 'I'm very fond of Hans.' Then — 'Aren't you?'
I thought — I've got her blushing!
Then there were evenings, yes, when Hans and I would work late in my room: he would read to me bits from Goethe or Schiller; he would not do much more than lean against me, rest his hand on my knee, half tumble sometimes on top of me. He would tell me
stories of walking-tours he went on with his friends in the Black Forest; how they would go singing over the hills during the day and there would be music and discussions round the camp fire at night; and sometimes at midnight they would bathe in moonlit lakes — of course, with no clothes on. This, Hans explained, was to do with the spirit of the Greeks (ah, what signals are given by a mention of the spirit of the Greeks!) — a perfect blending of passion and form, didn't I think? Hans's soft face as he leaned close to me was like an apple which wasps have been at. He said 'One day, when you are old enough, you must come with me on one of these walks in the Black Forest!'
I said 'How old would I have to be?'
He said 'I will ask your mother.'
I thought — For goodness' sake don't ask my mother!
But I had been given an image of this place called the Black Forest — which was where fauns and satyrs played, and witches.
Then there was one particular night just before the end of Hans's visit to us -
— Oh sometime before this, yes, I had been behaving as if I were more at ease with Hans and my mother; I no longer had meals with Mrs Elgin and Watson in the kitchen; Hans would practise on his own his croquet shots on the lawn; my mother would read out to me bits of letters that she had had from my father in America. She would say 'He seems to be having a good time!' and would look through the window at Hans on the lawn. I would think — Well aren't we all having a good time -
Then there was this particular night when Hans had come up to my room and he was reclining on my bed and was reminiscing, I suppose, about white and gold bodies flitting in the moonlight of the Black Forest; and I was at the washbasin, perhaps with one arm raised like some Greek statue by a fountain; and perhaps it was true that just before this I had had to hop out from underneath one of Hans's vague lunges at me on the bed; and then the door banged open and there was my mother on the threshold, all flashing eyes and hair like snakes and marble forehead; and she was glaring at Hans and pointing to the door; and he was getting up and going meekly past her even if with his tail, as it were, I suppose not exactly between his legs. And I with such sad, affected innocence was turning to my mother — a toothbrush halfway to my mouth (what else?) — and wide-eyed was suggesting — Have you gone mad? What on earth do you think you are up to? And my mother had to
sit on the edge of my bed and explain how she had been concerned about my not getting enough sleep; she had been angry with Hans because she thought he was preventing me from getting enough sleep; she was sorry she had over-reacted; and so on. And I was thinking — Oh yes; but aren't you listening to what is going on behind your words? (Oh so-called 'innocence', to be sure, can be cunning!) And then my mother was kissing me goodnight. And there were sounds of her going on and on talking with Hans through the night. And I was thinking — But the point of a fairy story is that someone has to win and there is something to be won, isn't it?
Then — Who was my mother jealous of: me or Hans?
Or — But is this an area where things are paradoxical?
This incident occurred only a day or two before Hans was due to leave us anyway. Before he went he managed to make with me a few half-whispered plans about possible future walks in the Black Forest.
Then when he had gone it seemed that I had nothing much to do. My mother went to London for a few days: I did not question why she had gone. But I did sometimes wonder, because I was lonely — Who is it after all who might have landed up in the shrubbery?
Then — But of course there is more going on than anyone quite knows about in a fairy story.
Now let me look at this timing again. I think the summer when Hans came to stay must have been in 1925, when I was nearly thirteen, because it was after Hans's visit, and after my father had got back from his tour of America, that my mother and father started talking about sending me away to a boarding-school. Up to this time I had been going to the day-school in Cambridge. I could hear my father's and mother's voices from behind closed doors — 'Max is too old to be hanging all day around his mother'; 'Yes, I agree, I have tried to encourage him to spend more time with people of his own age.' I thought — Well at least Hans's visit has given them something to agree about. It was decided that next year I should go to a boarding-school.
(It matters that I try to get the timing right? One's mind makes patterns: but what coincidences there are between these and the outside world!)
After he had been away my father would make a point of coming up and talking to me in my room. He would stand with his hands
in his pockets and his head seeming to be pressed against the sloping ceiling. He was like an elephant that has wandered into a cave in the jungle.
He would look at the books I was reading. There were the fantasy adventure stories; the encyclopaedias which tried to explain the way the world worked. I would go on asking my father questions about this: I would say 'But what are these things that you can't taste, touch, smelclass="underline" what are atoms: what are those things you work with — can you see, touch, genes?'
My father would say 'No.'
I would say 'Then what is it that scientists think they are testing, measuring?'
When my father sat on the end of my bed it was as if it might collapse, like some beanstalk.
He said, as Hans had done 'You set up experiments. You observe results. You measure the results. Of course, you may not be able to talk about what it is that is causing them.'