Hopeful Monsters Read Online Free Page A

had attacked, and taken over, three or four newspaper offices (this might have seemed apt to my childish vision, since I saw their business as being to do with the banging about of bits of paper). There was sporadic shooting, a few hundred deaths, a failure in storming government buildings. Railway stations and the Telegraph Office were occupied: but all this was being done not so much by the workers as by people who had said that it should be being done by the workers - in accordance with the iron laws of history. Workers for the most part stayed at home. And the right-wing gangs took time off from their clattering in lorries to retire to cellars and drink beer - and to wait for the time perhaps when they could re-emerge and deal with the left-wing extremists who in the end would have to emerge from the newspaper offices without even having had any beer.
    I would sometimes hear the sound of firing in the streets; sometimes see the lorries going past with the men hanging on like the claws of crabs. Once there was a column of people with banners going past and they were shouting 'Out! Out!': later there was a column with banners containing slogans of the other side going past and they were shouting 'Out!' I would think - But where are the people dying in the streets? Or are they being kept like a score, as in a game of cards.
    My father stayed in the apartment for a few days; then he was needed at the university. The young man and the girl had moved on to another hiding-place. Some of my mother's friends would come to the door now and then and there would be whispered consultations in the hallway; they would sit for a short while on the chair on which Rosa Luxemburg had sat. I thought - They are like tops that have been whipped up by Rosa Luxemburg, and are now running down.
    Once a day Magda or Helga or my mother would go out to try to get food; they would have to queue in streets where there was the sound of firing. When they came back they would rest in the

    chair in the hallway, and we would gather round: I thought -Perhaps tops are kept spinning by the sound of firing.
    I tried to talk with my mother. She would sit with her back to me at her desk in the drawing-room or at the table in the kitchen. I would say 'But what is happening?'
    She said 'It will not be a defeat. It will be a victory.'
    'But where is Rosa Luxemburg?'
    'In hiding.'
    'How will it be a victory?'
    'In the end, it will be a victory.'
    I imagined Rosa Luxemburg crouched like a small hawk at the top of someone's airing cupboard.
    Then there was an evening when there were more than the usual comings and goings at the door of our apartment. My father had come home; he went to join in whatever was happening. I sat on my own in my room. I was often on my own in my room at this time; I used to plan how, if the gangs from the street came to get me, I would climb out of the window and up the ventilation area in the centre of the building. But then what should I do - fly above rooftops? This particular evening, after the more than usual comings and goings in the hallway, there were just the sounds of my father talking quietly to my mother and my mother crying; then my mother began to make a noise like howling. I went out of my room and along the passage. My mother was sitting on the chair in the hallway and my father was standing over her. My mother was hitting him with her fists. I said, as I so often said, 'What's happened?'
    My father said 'They've found Rosa Luxemburg.'
    My mother said 'They've killed her.'
    My father said 'Come to bed.'
    My mother said to my father 'You killed her!'
    I thought - Do you mean my father's thoughts, like arrows, went right round the universe -
    My father said 'You go to bed.'
    I said 'Me?'
    My father said 'Yes.'
    I thought - But I don't think you've killed her!
    My father sat up with my mother most of that night. Sometimes she became calm; sometimes she cried and shouted. It did not seem that anything my father said made any