"The object of life is impossible; one cuts out fabrication and creates reality. A mirror is held to the back of the head and one's hand has to move the opposite way from what was intended."
In these closing lines from Impossible Object, one has embodied both Nicholas Mosley's subject of love and imagination, as well as his unmatched lyric style. In eight carefully connected stories that are joined by introspective interludes on related subjects, the author pursues the notion, through the lives of a couple seen by different narrators, that "those who like unhappy ends can have them, and those who don't will have to look for them."
The impossible object of the title, "the triangle that can exist in two dimensions but not in three," is a controlling symbol for the impossibility of realizing the good life unless one recognizes the impossibility of attaining it: only then can it be possible to realize it, through a kind of renunciation, especially in "a sophisticated, corrupt, chaotic world." Such a provocative theme, comic or tragic by turns, was met by critics in 1968 as brilliant, insightful, intense, and moving, but especially original.
WE USED TO LIVE in a farmhouse, my wife and I, of a kind in which the inside has been painted white and carpets have been laid over yellow tiles and brickwork. Beams sloped at angles above doors and there were steps scooped out like cooking spoons. In the holidays the house always seemed full of children; they haunted it with the thumps and screams of poltergeists, playing games and fighting and banging off walls, indolently torturing one another in corridors. Children are our contacts with the past: spirits were once thought to work through adolescents.
My wife and I have three sons; one of fifteen and one of eleven and one of eight. Their friends, and younger children, used to come in from the village to play these games. At Christmas time life was pushed indoors: fields were sodden so that it was as if we were on an island. I felt myself pursued by these ghosts; defended myself by ignoring them, moved from my study where I worked to the sitting room or kitchen and stepped past the running or struggling bodies as if they were used to being walked through. They would pause for a moment as I passed like the croaking of frogs; then resume after I had gone.
My wife and I used to let the children play much as they liked, believing that if they fought now they would not want to blow up the world later. There is this theory that violence has to come out somewhere, so it might as well come out to the detriment of parents, which is their proper function.
We used to have tea, the family and guests, in the large farm kitchen with the old range boarded up and pipes going through like messengers to the boiler. The children crowded in; the ones that were used to us stretching immediately for food and the ones that were not sitting starving. We tried to help the underprivileged, my wife and I, standing at the back and encouraging equality like a butler and a parlourmaid. This seems to be the prerogative of humans as opposed to that of God; who seems on the side of the beautiful and greedy.
There was a day when my eldest son brought his first girl friend home to tea. This is a difficult time for any father: he is old, his wife busy, he is spry and battered as a boxer. As a professional he knows when to duck; the swings of an opponent come only out of his mind—jealousy and betrayal. To avoid these should he easy. But amateurs do not know the rules; and sons' girl friends are amateurs.
My eldest son's first girl friend was someone of whom we had only heard: he had met her in the village, had fallen in love. She was fourteen; an only child. Her parents were dead; she spent her holidays in the houses of friends and relations. She was with a cousin for Christmas. When spirits are in adolescents, they herald their approach with trumpets.
There is a relationship between father and son that is like love. You see the forgotten part of yourself; you smile and are frightened of it, you want it to nourish and yet know that part of it or you will be destroyed. You and your son walk one slightly ahead of the other down the dusty street like a posse hunting for criminals: you fight with jealousy and betrayal until they are defeated and then, from an upstairs window, someone shoots you.
The family sits round the kitchen table. Father is at the head in an old grey jersey, dark trousers, ruined shoes. He does some pretence of eating more loudly than the others in order to shame them; he thinks this is more helpful than telling them about good manners straight out. Such is cowardice—or the liberal imagination. I put my head down to the small children on either side and gobble: I can make them laugh like this, requiring love like any human. My wife is at the other end handing round cakes as if they were medals; she has this habit like that of royalty to treat everyone as immortal or an adult. The smaller children sit half underneath the table like men in racing cars, their dark hair helmets. The elder children slump. The table has a red plastic top. There are hot buttered toast and cakes and biscuits.
My eldest son and his girl friend had not yet arrived.
The point of a family is that there is space to be free and thus to care. If mistakes are made, then there is time to pick up the pieces and put them together again.
My eldest son's girl friend appeared on her own as if she might have come to the wrong house—a windfall such as an actress with a car broken down or a charity flag-seller. I was coming along the corridor from the kitchen; I had left the tea-party because I had been showing off; was thinking—wouldn't it be better if parents simply betrayed their children and then the children would be free of them? In the doorway was a tall young girl with the light behind her. I put out an arm to guide her back to the kitchen. She wore a black jersey and a pale blue skirt. The skirt ended just below her behind. She had white socks and long black hair. I said "Come and have tea." I walked slightly ahead. My wife was at the stove toasting crumpets. I pulled a chair back. The girl had a young round face with long lashes. The lashes were false. This amazed me. I pushed the chair in and stood behind. There were girls nowadays who pouted and whirled their arms like clockwork toys.
My eldest son was still outside doing something to his bicycle.
I went round talking to the younger children. I pretended I couldn't remember their names. I said "Do you know what happens if you eat silver paper?" There were two little girls from the cottage next door who were scrubbed and polished till the surface had rubbed off them. I thought—At the chimpanzee's tea-party the keeper has to act a clown in order not to embarrass his prisoners.
My eldest son came in. He was tall and dark with hair brushed forward like feathers.
Children do not speak to each other much in front of adults. They wait with eyes cast down like people who have committed murder and are being interrogated. Their crime is deeper than love or happiness; something from their birth, and about what will become of them. My eldest son sat by his girl friend and was as solicitous as a statue. Across the table—I was seated again—there were these lines from four of us forming a square. One line went from my son to his girl friend who were in love, another between my wife and I who were married; there was a diagonal between my son and my wife which was their original crime and ecstasy, and between myself and the girl friend who were ridiculous. Between my son and I was our hunt up the dusty street; and perhaps my wife always grieved for her non-existent daughter. I passed the girl friend some cakes. She had a soft mouth which birds could peck crumbs off. I was not ashamed of feeling his. I thought—We can love ourselves enough now to know our awfulness: girls of fourteen are symbols of the unobtainable. They are birds in the Sahara or eels in the water-tank: they will fight for their lives there. Witches usually choose their own executioners.
I asked—Where was she at school? Did she like it? How long was she staying?
My wife thinks that people would be happier without polite conversation.
I thought—I will go away to the Argentine and live there like God on forged papers. I will sit in the sun and wear dark glasses and read my obituaries.
My eldest son likes intelligent conversation. He asks questions of the kind that are debated on brains trusts and are of interest to dreamers and rulers of the world.
He said "Have you seen the figures about the birthrate?"
I said "Without war or disease, what can you do about it?"
He said "Do you approve of war then?"
I said "Of course I don't approve of war!"
Children are logical. They think an argument is an answer, as politicians do.
My son said—"We'll all be standing on top of each other in five hundred years."
I said "I know who I'd like to stand on top of me."
My wife disapproves of these jokes. She thinks I am flirting with my children. I am.
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