The two salamanders that I was going to pick up when my garden was ready were another breed of lowland salamanders, known as Salamandra salamandra, or Fire Salamanders: their usual habitat was dark and damp woods. They stayed for the most part during the day under rotting bark or leaves; they came out in the evenings to get food. I learned what I could about them from books lent to me by Miss Box: my father, when he overheard me talking to Miss Box, would smile and look away (I thought — His feelings about Miss Box are what are called 'paradoxical'?). My plan had been originally to make for these lowland salamanders something that could be called an alpine setting. But my enthusiasm had now gone beyond this: I wanted to make for them something beautiful like a setting for jewels, or the inside of a painting. Then I would see how my salamanders might stay alive! The inside of a painting, it seemed to me, was to do with what is immortal.
The breeding habits of these lowland salamanders was that they mated in the spring and then fifty or more tadpole-like larvae were born in water the following year. I had been told by Miss Box that the two salamanders designated for me had been together for some time. I did not know if they had mated: I assumed they were male and female. The point of my experiment had at one time been to see whether these lowland salamanders, in their new setting, might produce offspring in the manner of alpine salamanders — which was to give birth not to larvae but to two fully formed offspring. But this was what I had put out of my mind: my plan now was not to expect, but just to let things occur on their own. I thought — Things
grow, develop on their own, don't they; once you have provided a setting.
The day came when my garden (in the books it was called an 'aquaterrareum') was ready: I bicycled in to Miss Box to pick up my salamanders. They were two small bright lizards about six inches long: their skin was mainly black but had golden patches and hoops. They seemed to sit, or lie, or stand, completely still, even when I was transporting them in a cardboard box on my bicycle from the laboratory. And then, when they were in the bright fair world that I had constructed for them, they were, yes, like jewels! they were so beautiful.
I had set up my aquaterrareum in my bedroom: I wanted it here rather than in the room with my chemistry set next door because I wanted to be with my salamanders at night. I do not know why I felt particular about this. Perhaps I felt — What strange influences, chances, flit about beneath the moon at night.
My salamanders sat or stood or lay sometimes parallel, sometimes apart, sometimes with their noses close together like an arrow. I hardly ever saw them move. They would be, yes, on the silver sand, by the stones like gold or diamonds, like things made immortal by a painting.
My mother came up to look at my aquaterrareum. She had that expression on her face that my father sometimes had when it was as if he could not make up his mind whether to be deprecating or impressed. She said 'That's beautiful!'
I said 'Yes.'
'What are they called?'
'Adam and Eve.'
'What good names!'
I said 'I think they might also be what are called "hopeful monsters".'
She said 'What are hopeful monsters?'
I said 'They are things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them.'
She said 'So you have made an environment that might be ready for them!'
I said 'Yes.'
She put her arms round me and hugged me. She said 'You are my hopeful monster!'
I thought I might say — But hopeful monsters, don't you know, nearly always die young.
— Because the Gods love them?
Then — But was God ever with his mother, by that garden, looking down?
Much of my spare time that winter was spent in collecting food for my salamanders: I got worms from the herbaceous borders, slugs from underneath stones, insects from behind the bark of trees. I dropped these like manna into my salamanders' garden. I once put a long black centipede in and it crawled over their still tails: I wondered — But have I introduced a snake into their garden! Then — Poor snake! But my salamanders paid no attention to it, and after a time it died.
I seldom saw my salamanders eat. Sometimes at night I imagined I had glimpsed a tongue flashing out; but it seemed to have travelled faster then light. I thought — Perhaps their tongues move in the jumps that Hans used to talk about; the jumps of those particles that are on one level and then instantaneously they are on another.
I had one or two letters from Hans: my mother also had one or two letters from him. We would eye each other's letters over the breakfast table.
Throughout that winter I cared for my salamanders; then in the spring they seemed to be spending more and more time within their shelter; there would be just their tails sticking out, like fishes that have managed to crawl up on to dry land. I thought — They can do whatever they want! I am not that fussy old God of the Garden of Eden.
Except when I was at school I was on my own a lot of that summer. My mother was going up to a new series of lectures in London; my father was working in Cambridge. Then halfway through the summer term there was a fire in my day-school and the school was closed. It was thought to be not worth while to send me anywhere else, because I was due to go to boarding-school anyway in the autumn.
So I went out on my bicycle and explored the countryside. I still collected food for my salamanders, though I was now not caring about them quite as much, since I knew I would have to leave them when I went away to school. However I felt that in some way just by riding about the countryside I was keeping in touch with my salamanders: I too was finding myself in a strange world; I thought it beautiful, but there now seemed to be something frightening growing in myself. I wondered — In learning about myself, might I not be discovering something for my salamanders -
— What is going on here might be connected to what is going on there -
— For something interesting to happen, should not that old God in Eden have been trying to find out more about himself, rather than hanging about and nagging his salamanders?
On my journeys on my bicycle I came across a country house that was empty and had fallen into disrepair: there was a lake and a boathouse and a punt: I could push myself across to an island where there was another rotting boathouse with a loft which had a table and a few broken chairs. Here it seemed that a hermit might once have lived: there was a crucifix with one arm dangling away from the wall. I felt as if I might have come to some aquaterrareum prepared for myself; the inside of a picture, yes; but of something rotting like that which was going on in my own head. I would sit cross-legged on the floor and close my eyes and try to breathe slower and slower; I had read about this in a book I had borrowed from my mother; I felt I needed to find some stillness, or suffer some explosion.
That summer it was as if there were some blockage inside me: there was an ache in my groin, stomach, heart; it shot up into my head. Well, what do adolescent boys do about sex? Oh we have been liberated from ghostly fears about masturbation, have we not! But how dispiriting can be this lack of haunting. Which is worse, to suffer from a lack of spirit or of sex?