Regarding the Russians — there is evidence that they, possibly under the guidance of Kapitsa, were quite far ahead in research into
the Bomb by 1945: they were helped comparatively little by the spying that Max had been unwilling to be part of. Max's friend Kolya, from Odessa, did eventually find his way to Cambridge, in the 1940s: but he too did not like to become involved in fruitless speculation.
With regard to Eleanor — when she rejoined Max in England in the autumn of 1939 (she used to maintain that she could not remember what exactly in the end had happened in the matter of Rudi and Stefan and the diamonds, because the subject was too boring and was it not the job of memory to get rid of stuff that was boring? but to those who knew her it seemed obvious that she had given what was not her share of the diamonds back) — when Eleanor got back to England in 1939 she stayed with Max for a time in a village near the country house to the north-east of Cambridge where he was working. (It was Eleanor who used to tell the story of what happened to the girl with fair hair: she did marry the child's father, who was an undergraduate at Cambridge; he later joined the army and was sent abroad and the girl spent much of the war alone with her child, who was indeed a girl called Lilia.) Eleanor and Max took a room in the village and there Eleanor began to write her first book, which was some sort of history or meditation on the history of the Jews: it was never published in its original form. Eleanor had had the subject in mind, I suppose, ever since she had been in Spain: something of the substance of the first version of the book can be gleaned perhaps from what she wrote later of her time in Spain.
Eleanor had had the vision of the Jewish and Christian versions of history as being essentially not contradictory: Jews were a chosen people, to be sure — this was their own conviction, thus could be explained the destructive jealousies of the people around them. Their 'chosenness' could be understood in the sense of their being endowed, genetically even, with some special trait: this could be seen as a gift of God just as well as a result of chance. The special trait of the Jews, Eleanor argued, was to do with their ability originally to hold a view of humans both as entities subject to laws of cause and effect but also as agents, components, in the working-out of a larger pattern. Those who were not endowed with this trait — who had no vision of'God' or 'chance' in fact working out a pattern — of course felt a threat from those who had: this was a characteristic of evolution: those who possessed a special trait might supersede, if circumstances favoured them, those who did not. But, having thus been endowed with a special trait, it seemed that Jews had not been
endowed at the same time with a gift for creating circumstances in which it could flourish — and this too was a characteristic of evolution, that a coincidence of chances, gifts, is required for successful adaptation to be achieved. The Jews, that is, with their faculty for seeing a pattern for themselves and through this for the things around them, yet had little ability to prevail over nor indeed to live at peace with their neighbours. And their neighbours, of course, without the ability to see any pattern (if it could be so called) except that of one organism flourishing at the expense of another, were apt to set out to disprove the claims of 'chosenness' by the Jews by turning on them every now and then and killing them or carrying them into captivity. This was indeed the Jews' own view of their history and mythology. This had at one time been particularised into the expectation of a Messiah — the coming of the Messiah would be the circumstances in which their facility which had been potential could become actual; what had hitherto been a predicament could become a triumph.
But then when either the Messiah did not come (the Jewish version) or did come and was not recognised by Jews (the Christian version) there occurred what might have been expected to occur according to either interpretation — the Jews were scattered throughout the world. Either they were being punished for apparently not being sufficiently worthy of a Messiah, or they were being punished for not recognising a Messiah when he came. But also might they not have been scattered (this was Eleanor's interpretation) in a way that had nothing to do with punishment but be part of a required pattern whether or not a Messiah had come: might they not have been scattered, that is, as seeds, so that their special trait — their view of the working-out of a pattern — might have had a chance to take root around the world. But as things were, everyone seemed stuck within a cycle of hopelessness or vengeance: Jews with their faculty for seeing that there was some design for the world but still without the ability to find much of a part in it for themselves except through suffering; Christians with their taking over of the triumphal Messianic idea but still without a faculty for trusting any pattern except that of so-called Victory' by the elimination of one thing by another. Neither Jews nor Christians in their formal protestations seemed to have the attitude of mind to see their responsibilities as agents of self-creation within a larger pattern — a trust that, by attending with care to means, ends would look after themselves. Christians had glimpsed something of this with their doctrine of the
Holy Spirit: but having noted the potential power of such a trust, they had not been able to say much about it.
In the first draft of her book it seems that Eleanor wrote that the Jewish people might have to undergo some extreme form of suffering before they could see that there had been enough of this and they could once more feel themselves as active agents in their destiny — as agents even in the destiny of others — in the way of imparting knowledge of the frightening interplay, beauty even, between triumph and suffering in events' patterning. But Eleanor wrote the first draft in the early days of the war before the extemities of actual Jewish suffering were known: later, when stories of horror began to filter through from occupied Europe, Eleanor put aside the first version of her book, with its view of the efficacy of suffering, and concentrated on what might be a direct and practical connection between this and the chance of the creation of a state of Israeclass="underline" she became, that is, an increasingly ardent and optimistic Zionist. She did not mind the shelving of her book: she knew, as Max had done, that even in what might be true about the working-out of patterns, there are some things best recognised in silence.
Eleanor had been with Max when he had first gone to America: they had had their home, for a time, on the edge of a painted desert. She had been writing: he had been working on the Bomb: they had, as always, been happy together. But how was it possible in such circumstances to settle down without anxiety? So when Max still had work of importance to do but Eleanor had put her book aside, she went off on her own for a time to be an active worker in the cause of Zionism; she managed to get to Palestine, where she became part of an organisation that helped Jews to get out of occupied Europe. Max encouraged her in this: he said 'In marriage, why should it not be life-giving to be sometimes apart: what else is pattern?' Eleanor stayed in Palestine long enough to see success in her work but also the dangers inherent in Zionism — that the very reaction to suffering might go into chauvinistic runaway, out of control; that only by stepping back from memories of suffering might there be a coming to terms with the necessity to live at peace with neighbours. She would say 'Indeed, what else is pattern.'
During the years that followed, Eleanor and Max were sometimes together, sometimes apart: but always, they said, they felt themselves together — as partners, that is, in the working-out of some design, under the guidance of what turned up. They evolved an ironic style of talking about their love and their marriage: sometimes