The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  I had arrived prepared — overprepared — for a shock; and the drive through the streets wasn’t as depressing as I’d anticipated. As it was night, you couldn’t see much, anyhow, and it so happened that the houses along our route were less badly damaged than elsewhere. Indeed, the end of the drive brought a shock of a different kind; for I found myself among the new neon-lighted shops and bars of the Kurfuerstendamm, and entered a modernistic hotel where I was surrounded by thick-necked cigar-smoking businessmen who might have stepped right out of the cartoons of Georg Grosz. It was I, not these people, who had changed; for now I could afford to live with them. During my former Berlin existence as a down-at-heel English teacher, I used to know such places only from the outside, peering into them as I passed along the sidewalk with disapproval, moral superiority and envy.

  But in those days (February, 1952) the Kurfuerstendamm was one of the still few areas of relatively intact prosperity. At the end of it, the nineteenth-century-Gothic Memorial Church looked more Gothic than ever in its jaggedly pinnacled ruins. The Tauentzienstrasse beyond was like an avenue of shattered monuments. Through wide gaps between formless mounds of rubble, you got views over the great central desert of destruction, and saw the Sieges Saeule rising forlornly from the treeless, snow-covered plain of the Tiergarten, which was dotted with bizarre remnants of statuary: a uniformed general, a naked nymph on a horse. In the background, the skeleton of a railroad station showed up starkly; and against the blue winter sky, a red flag fluttered from the Brandenburger Tor, entrance to the Soviet sector. There was something doubly strange about this landscape. It is strange enough to see a vast city shattered and dead. It is far stranger to see one that is briskly and teemingly inhabited, amidst its ruins. Berlin seemed convinced that it was alive; and, after a few hours there, you began to agree that it certainly was.

  The street where I used to live is behind the Nollendorfplatz, about ten minutes’ walk from the hotel where I was staying. I knew that my old landlady, “Frl. Schroeder,” was still there; we had been corresponding, but I hadn’t told her that I was coming to Berlin for fear of a last-minute disappointment. Even before the war, this was a decayed and forbidding district; but when I saw it again I was really awestruck. The fronts of the buildings were pitted with shrapnel and eaten by rot and weather, so that they had that curiously blurred, sightless look you see on the face of the Sphinx.

  Only a very young and frivolous foreigner, I thought, could have lived in such a place and found it amusing. Hadn’t there been something youthfully heartless in my enjoyment of the spectacle of Berlin in the early thirties, with its poverty, its political hatred and its despair? I felt extremely middle-aged, that morning. The house next to ours had been hit: on the third floor, a handsome tiled stove still stood in the corner of a half-room which jutted out over the abyss. With reverent feet, I entered the deep dank courtyard, whose floor the sun never strikes, and climbed the musty stairs, dark even in the daytime, to Frl. Schroeder’s door. The scream she uttered on recognizing me must have been heard all over the building.

  She looked wonderful; better, now, in her seventies than in her fifties, and considerably slimmer. (Her only objection to my description of her in my stories was that I’d said she “waddled.”) Yet she had been through as bad a time as any average Berliner: serious illness, poverty — forcing her to move to this much smaller flat, where she nevertheless had to have one lodger in the only spare bedroom and another sleeping in the kitchen — then the war, and the last awful year of bombing, when she and the other tenants lived almost continuously in the cellar. “There were forty or fifty of us down there. We used to hold each other in our arms and say at least we’d all die together. I can tell you, Herr Issyvoo, we prayed so much we got quite religious.”

  And then, with the fall of Berlin, came the Russian soldiers, searching the houses for arms. Frl. Schroeder thought she had nothing to fear until, at the last moment, she discovered to her horror that an Italian lodger, who had run away, had left a sporting rifle in his room. Caught with it, she would certainly have been shot; probably the whole building would have been burned down. So she and a woman friend took the rifle apart, hid the pieces under their clothes and set out for the canal, into which they planned to drop them. This they finally succeeded in doing, but only after a hair-raising encounter with some more Russians, who chased them with erotic intentions.

  “Every time I went out on the street, they’d be after me,” said Frl. Schroeder, not without a certain complacency. “So I used to screw up my eyes — like this — and make a hump in my back, and limp. You ought to have seen me, Herr Issyvoo! Even those Russians didn’t want me any more. I looked like a regular old hag!”

  By the time she had finished her stories, we were both quite exhausted with laughing and crying, and had drunk a whole bottle of Liebfraumilch.

  Frl. Schroeder could only give me news of two of my old friends. Bobby the bartender had come through the war without a scratch, and had gotten married. Otto Nowak, now a black-market operator, had shown up recently at the flat, wanting to buy some carpets.

  “He hadn’t changed one bit. He was very well dressed — quite the fine gentleman. There’s a rich woman somewhere in the background, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh, you can rely on him to look after himself! And he’s as fresh as ever. I soon sent him about his business.”

  As I listened to all this, I marveled, as one always does, at the individual’s ability to be himself and survive, amidst a huge undifferentiated military mess. This was Frl. Schroeder’s History of World War II — and its only moral was: “Somehow or other, life goes on in spite of everything.”

  When we said Goodbye, she gave me the brass dolphin-clock which is referred to on the second page of Goodbye to Berlin, where I ask, prophetically, how it could ever be destroyed. It couldn’t, apparently — for a bomb-blast had hurled it across the room and only slightly scratched its green marble base. It stands now on my writing table in a Californian garden — and I like to think that it will survive me, and anything that may be dropped on this neighborhood, in the near or distant future. Meanwhile, I treasure it, as a souvenir of my dear friend and as a symbol of that indestructible something in a place and an environment that resists all outward change.

  The indestructible something — that, I soon realized, was what I had had to come back to Berlin to look for. And I seemed to sense it almost at once, in the very air of the city and in the sound of its inhabitants’ voices. Berlin in winter, like New York, has an atmosphere that is immensely exhilarating. Evening after evening, I left the hotel and wandered from bar to bar, overstimulated and sleepless. And all I wanted was to speak and hear German. I felt I could never tire of the rich, confident, well-remembered tones of the Berliner accent; and I was surprised and pleased to discover how little the idiom and the slang had altered. Berliners love to talk — with a blunt directness which is both rude and friendly — and even in their grumbling there is a note of pleasure.

  Comparing the two cities — the Berlin I knew in the early thirties and the Berlin I revisited in the early fifties — I have to admit that the latter is, in many respects, a far more exciting setting for a novel or a sequence of stories. Life in the Berlin of 1952 had an intensely dramatic doubleness. Here was a shadow-line cutting a city in half — a frontier between two worlds at war — across which people were actually being kidnapped, to disappear into prisons or graves. And yet this shadow-frontier was being freely crossed in the most humdrum manner every day, on foot, in buses, or in electric trains, by thousands of Berliners commuting back and forth between their work and their homes. Many men and women who lived in West Berlin were on the black list of the East German police; and, if the Russians had suddenly marched in, they couldn’t have hoped to escape. Yet, in this no man’s land between the worlds, you heard the usual talk about business and sport, the new car, the new apartment, the new lover. “My God,” I exclaimed to one of my acquaintances, after he had been holding forth on such topics for an
hour or more, “one would think you lived in Minneapolis!” This was said, and taken, as a compliment. Berliners, in those days, were justifiably a little proud of their sang-froid. They still have reason to be.

  How would Mr Norris have thrived in these troubled waters? Would he, perhaps, have found the fish rather too large and the current too strong for him? Would Sally Bowles have set her cap at the New Rich of the reconstruction period, or preferred the American, British and French officers? Would Otto Nowak have stuck to the black market, or entered the circles of the neo-Nazis? Could Bernhard Landauer have rebuilt his firm amidst the wreckage — and would he have cared to? All that is not for me to say. The ways of my own life have led me elsewhere. But I hope that some young foreigner has fallen in love with this later city, and is writing what happened or might have happened to him there.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Santa Monica

  California

  July, 1954

  † With this edition, we return to Isherwood’s original title. [Ed.]

  Mr Norris Changes Trains

  for W. H. Auden

  Chapter One

  My first impression was that the stranger’s eyes were of an unusually light blue. They met mine for several blank seconds, vacant, unmistakably scared. Startled and innocently naughty, they half reminded me of an incident I couldn’t quite place; something which had happened a long time ago, to do with the upper fourth form classroom. They were the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules. Not that I had caught him, apparently, at anything except his own thoughts: perhaps he imagined I could read them. At any rate, he seemed not to have heard or seen me cross the compartment from my corner to his own, for he started violently at the sound of my voice; so violently, indeed, that his nervous recoil hit me like repercussion. Instinctively I took a pace backwards.

  It was exactly as though we had collided with each other bodily in the street. We were both confused, both ready to be apologetic. Smiling, anxious to reassure him, I repeated my question:

  “I wonder, sir, if you could let me have a match?”

  Even now, he didn’t answer at once. He appeared to be engaged in some sort of rapid mental calculation, while his fingers, nervously active, sketched a number of flurried gestures round his waistcoat. For all they conveyed, he might equally have been going to undress, to draw a revolver, or merely to make sure that I hadn’t stolen his money. Then the moment of agitation passed from his gaze like a little cloud, leaving a clear blue sky. At last he had understood what it was that I wanted:

  “Yes, yes. Er — certainly. Of course.”

  As he spoke he touched his left temple delicately with his finger-tips, coughed, and suddenly smiled. His smile had great charm. It disclosed the ugliest teeth I had ever seen. They were like broken rocks.

  “Certainly,” he repeated. “With pleasure.”

  Delicately, with finger and thumb, he fished in the waistcoat pocket of his expensive-looking soft grey suit, extracted a gold spirit-lighter. His hands were white, small, and beautifully manicured.

  I offered him my cigarettes.

  “Er — thank you. Thank you.”

  “After you, sir.”

  “No, no. Please.”

  The tiny flame of the lighter flickered between us, as perishable as the atmosphere which our exaggerated politeness had created. The merest breath would have extinguished the one, the least incautious gesture or word would have destroyed the other. The cigarettes were both lighted now. We sat back in our respective places. The stranger was still doubtful of me. He was wondering whether he hadn’t gone too far, delivered himself to a bore or a crook. His timid soul was eager to retire. I, on my side, had nothing to read. I foresaw a journey of utter silence, lasting seven or eight hours. I was determined to talk.

  “Do you know what time we arrive at the frontier?”

  Looking back on the conversation, this question does not seem to me to have been particularly unusual. It is true that I had no interest in the answer; I wanted merely to ask something which might start us chatting, and which wasn’t, at the same time, inquisitive or impertinent. Its effect on the stranger was remarkable. I had certainly succeeded in arousing his interest. He gave me a long, odd glance, and his features seemed to stiffen a little. It was the glance of a poker-player who guesses suddenly that his opponent holds a straight flush and that he had better be careful. At length he answered, speaking slowly and with caution:

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you exactly. In about an hour’s time, I believe.”

  His glance, now vacant for a moment, was clouded again. An unpleasant thought seemed to tease him like a wasp; he moved his head slightly to avoid it. Then he added, with surprising petulance:

  “All these frontiers . . . such a horrible nuisance.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to take this. The thought crossed my mind that he was perhaps some kind of mild internationalist; a member of the League of Nations Union. I ventured encouragingly:

  “They ought to be done away with.”

  “I quite agree with you. They ought, indeed.”

  There was no mistaking his warmth. He had a large blunt fleshy nose and a chin which seemed to have slipped sideways. It was like a broken concertina. When he spoke, it jerked crooked in the most curious fashion and a deep cleft dimple like a wound surprisingly appeared in the side of it. Above his ripe red cheeks, his forehead was sculpturally white, like marble. A queerly cut fringe of dark grey hair lay across it, compact, thick, and heavy. After a moment’s examination, I realized, with extreme interest, that he was wearing a wig.

  “Particularly,” I followed up my success, “all these red-tape formalities; the passport examination, and so forth.”

  But now. This wasn’t right. I saw at once from his expression that I’d somehow managed to strike a new, disturbing note. We were speaking similar but distinct languages. This time, however, the stranger’s reaction was not mistrust. He asked, with a puzzling air of frankness and unconcealed curiosity:

  “Have you ever had trouble here yourself?”

  It wasn’t so much the question which I found odd, as the tone in which he asked it. I smiled to hide my mystification.

  “Oh, no. Quite the reverse. Often they don’t bother to open anything; and as for your passport, they hardly look at it.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

  He must have seen from my face what I was thinking, for he added hastily: “It may seem absurd, but I do so hate being fussed and bothered.”

  “Of course. I quite understand.”

  I grinned, for I had just arrived at a satisfactory explanation of his behaviour. The old boy was engaged in a little innocent private smuggling. Probably a piece of silk for his wife or a box of cigars for a friend. And now, of course, he was beginning to feel scared. Certainly he looked prosperous enough to pay any amount of duty. The rich have strange pleasures.

  “You haven’t crossed this frontier before, then?” I felt kindly and protective and superior. I would cheer him up, and, if things came to the worst, prompt him with some plausible lie to soften the heart of the customs officer.

  “Of recent years, no. I usually travel by Belgium. For a variety of reasons. Yes.” Again he looked vague, paused, and solemnly scratched his chin. All at once, something seemed to rouse him to awareness of my presence: “Perhaps, at this stage in the proceedings, I ought to introduce myself. Arthur Norris, Gent. Or shall we say: Of independent means?” He tittered nervously, exclaimed in alarm: “Don’t get up, I beg.”

  It was too far to shake hands without moving. We compromised by a polite seated bow from the waist.

  “My name’s William Bradshaw,” I said.

  “Dear me, you’re not by any chance one of the Suffolk Bradshaws?”

  “I suppose I am. Before the War we used to live near Ipswich.”

  “Did you really, now? I used at one time to go and stay with a Mrs Hope-Lucas. She had a lovely place near
Matlock. She was a Miss Bradshaw before her marriage.”

  “Yes, that’s right. She was my great-aunt Agnes. She died about seven years ago.”

  “Did she? Dear, dear. I’m very sorry to hear that . . . Of course, I knew her when I was quite a young man; and she was a middle-aged lady then. I’m speaking now, mind you, of ’ninety-eight.”

  All this time I was covertly studying his wig. I had never seen one so cleverly made before. At the back of the skull, where it was brushed in with his own hair, it was wonderfully matched. Only the parting betrayed it at once, and even this would have passed muster at the distance of three or four yards.

  “Well, well,” observed Mr Norris. “Dear me, what a very small place the world is.”

  “You never met my mother, I suppose? Or my uncle, the admiral?”

  I was quite resigned, now, to playing the relationships game. It was boring but exacting, and could be continued for hours. Already I saw a whole chain of easy moves ahead of me — uncles, aunts, cousins, their marriages and their properties, death duties, mortgages, sales. Then on to public school and university, comparing notes on food, exchanging anecdotes about masters, famous matches, and celebrated rows. I knew the exact tone to adopt.

  But, to my surprise, Mr Norris didn’t seem to want to play this game after all. He answered hurriedly:

  “I’m afraid not. No. Since the War, I’ve rather lost touch with my English friends. My affairs have taken me abroad a good deal.”

  The word “abroad” caused both of us naturally to look out of the window. Holland was slipping past our viewpoint with the smooth somnolence of an afterdinner dream: a placid swampy landscape bounded by an electric tram travelling along the wall of a dike.