The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  “Do you know this country well?” I asked. Since I had noticed the wig, I found myself somehow unable to go on calling him sir. And, anyhow, if he wore it to make himself look younger, it was both tactless and unkind to insist thus upon the difference between our ages.

  “I know Amsterdam pretty well.” Mr Norris rubbed his chin with a nervous, furtive movement. He had a trick of doing this and of opening his mouth in a kind of snarling grimace quite without ferocity, like an old lion in a cage. “Pretty well, yes.”

  “I should like to go there very much. It must be so quiet and peaceful.”

  “On the contrary, I can assure you that it’s one of the most dangerous cities in Europe.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. Deeply attached as I am to Amsterdam, I shall always maintain that it has three fatal drawbacks. In the first place, the stairs are so steep in many of the houses that it requires a professional mountaineer to ascend them without risking heart failure or a broken neck. Secondly, there are the cyclists. They positively overrun the town, and appear to make it a point of honour to ride without the faintest consideration for human life. I had an exceedingly narrow escape only this morning. And, thirdly, there are the canals. In summer, you know . . . most insanitary. Oh, most insanitary. I can’t tell you what I’ve suffered. For weeks on end I was never without a sore throat.”

  By the time we had reached Bentheim, Mr Norris had delivered a lecture on the disadvantages of most of the chief European cities. I was astonished to find how much he had travelled. He had suffered from rheumatics in Stockholm and draughts in Kaunas; in Riga he had been bored, in Warsaw treated with extreme discourtesy, in Belgrade he had been unable to obtain his favourite brand of toothpaste. In Rome he had been annoyed by insects, in Madrid by beggars, in Marseilles by taxi-horns. In Bucharest he had had an exceedingly unpleasant experience with a water-closet. Constantinople he had found expensive and lacking in taste. The only two cities of which he greatly approved were Paris and Athens. Athens particularly. Athens was his spiritual home.

  By now the train had stopped. Pale stout men in blue uniforms strolled up and down the platform with that faintly sinister air of leisure which invests the movements of officials at frontier stations. They were not unlike prison warders. It was as if we might none of us be allowed to travel any farther. Far down the corridor of the coach a voice echoed: “Deutsche Passkontrolle.”

  “I think,” said Mr Norris, smiling urbanely at me, “that one of my pleasant memories is of the mornings I used to spend pottering about those quaint old streets behind the Temple of Theseus.”

  He was extremely nervous. His delicate white hand fiddled incessantly with the signet ring on his little finger; his uneasy blue eyes kept squinting rapid glances into the corridor. His voice rang false; high-pitched in archly forced gaiety, it resembled the voice of a character in a pre-war drawing-room comedy. He spoke so loudly that the people in the next compartment must certainly have been able to hear him.

  “One comes, quite unexpectedly, upon the most fascinating little corners. A single column standing in the middle of a rubbish-heap . . .”

  “Deutsche Passkontrolle. All passports, please.”

  An official had appeared in the doorway of our compartment. His voice made Mr Norris give a slight but visible jump. Anxious to allow him time to pull himself together, I hastily offered my own passport. As I had expected, it was barely glanced at.

  “I am travelling to Berlin,” said Mr Norris, handing over his passport with a charming smile; so charming, indeed, that it seemed a little overdone. The official did not react. He merely grunted, turned over the pages with considerable interest, and then, taking the passport out into the corridor, held it up to the light of the window.

  “It’s a remarkable fact,” said Mr Norris, conversationally, to me, “that nowhere in classical literature will you find any reference to the Lycabettos Hill.”

  I was amazed to see what a state he was in; his fingers twitched and his voice was scarcely under control. There were actually beads of sweat on his alabaster forehead. If this was what he called “being fussed,” if these were the agonies he suffered whenever he broke a by-law, it was no wonder that his nerves had turned him prematurely bald. He shot an instant’s glance of acute misery into the corridor. Another official had arrived. They were examining the passport together, with their backs turned towards us. By what was obviously an heroic effort Mr Norris managed to maintain his chattily informative tone.

  “So far as we know, it appears to have been overrun with wolves.”

  The other official had got the passport now. He looked as though he was going to take it away with him. His colleague was referring to a small black shiny notebook. Raising his head, he asked abruptly:

  “You are at present residing at Courbierestrasse 168?”

  For a moment I thought Mr Norris was going to faint.

  “Er — yes . . . I am . . .”

  Like a bird with a cobra, his eyes were fastened upon his interrogator in helpless fascination. One might have supposed that he expected to be arrested on the spot. Actually, all that happened was that the official made a note in his book, grunted again, and turning on his heel went on to the next compartment. His colleague handed the passport back to Mr Norris and said: “Thank you, sir,” saluted politely and followed him.

  Mr Norris sank back against the hard wooden seat with a deep sigh. For a moment he seemed incapable of speech. Taking out a big white silk handkerchief, he began to dab at his forehead, being careful not to disarrange his wig.

  “I wonder if you’d be so very kind as to open the window,” he said at length in a faint voice. “It seems to have got dreadfully stuffy in here all of a sudden.”

  I hastened to do so.

  “Is there anything I can fetch you?” I asked. “A glass of water?”

  He feebly waved the offer aside. “Most good of you . . . No. I shall be all right in a moment. My heart isn’t quite what it was.” He sighed: “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. All this travelling . . . very bad for me.”

  “You know, you really shouldn’t upset yourself so.” I felt more than ever protective towards him at that moment. This affectionate protectiveness, which he so easily and dangerously inspired in me, was to colour all our future dealings. “You let yourself be annoyed by trifles.”

  “You call that a trifle!” he exclaimed in rather pathetic

  protest.

  “Of course. It was bound to have been put right in a few minutes, anyhow. The man simply mistook you for somebody else of the same name.”

  “You really think so?” He was childishly eager to be reassured.

  “What other possible explanation is there?”

  Mr Norris didn’t seem so certain of this. He said dubiously: “Well — er — none, I suppose.”

  “Besides, it often happens, you know. The most innocent people get mistaken for famous jewel thieves. They undress them and search them all over. Fancy if they’d done that to you!”

  “Really!” Mr Norris giggled. “The mere thought brings a blush to my modest cheek.”

  We both laughed. I was glad that I had managed to cheer him up so successfully. But what on earth, I wondered, would happen when the customs examiner arrived? For this, if I was right about the smuggled presents, was the real cause of all his nervousness. If the little misunderstanding about the passport had upset him so much, the customs officer would most certainly give him a heart attack. I wondered if I hadn’t better mention this straight out and offer to hide the things in my own suitcase; but he seemed so blissfully unconscious of any approaching trouble that I hadn’t the heart to disturb him.

  I was quite wrong. The customs examination, when it came, seemed positively to give Norris pleasure. He showed not the slightest signs of uneasiness; nor was anything dutiable discovered in his luggage. In fluent German he laughed and joked with the official over a large bottle of Coty perfume: “Oh, yes, it’s for my personal use, I ca
n assure you. I wouldn’t part with it for the world. Do let me give you a drop on your handkerchief. It’s so deliciously refreshing.”

  At length it was all over. The train cranked slowly forward into Germany. The dining-car attendant came down the corridor, sounding his little gong.

  “And now, my dear boy,” said Mr Norris, “after these alarms and excursions and your most valuable moral support, for which I’m more grateful than I can tell you, I hope you’ll do me the honour of being my guest at lunch.”

  I thanked him and said that I should be delighted.

  When we were seated comfortably in the restaurant car, Mr Norris ordered a small cognac:

  “I have made it a general rule never to drink before meals, but there are times when the occasion seems to demand it.”

  The soup was served. He took one spoonful, then called the attendant and addressed him in a tone of mild reproach.

  “Surely you’ll agree that there’s too much onion?” he asked anxiously. “Will you do me a personal favour? I should like you to taste it for yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the attendant, who was extremely busy, and whisked away the plate with faintly insolent deference. Mr Norris was pained.

  “Did you see that? He wouldn’t taste it. He wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong. Dear me, how very obstinate some people are!”

  He forgot this little disappointment in human nature within a few moments, however. He had begun to study the wine list with great care.

  “Let me see . . . Let me see . . . Would you be prepared to contemplate a hock? You would? It’s a lottery, mind you. On a train one must always be prepared for the worst. I think we’ll risk it, shall we?”

  The hock arrived and was a success. Mr Norris had not tasted such good hock, he told me, since his lunch with the Swedish Ambassador in Vienna last year. And there were kidneys, his favourite dish. “Dear me,” he remarked with pleasure, “I find I’ve got quite an appetite . . . If you want to get kidneys perfectly cooked you should go to Budapest. It was a revelation to me . . . I must say these are really delicious, don’t you agree? Really quite delicious. At first I thought I tasted that odious red pepper, but it was merely my overwrought imagination.” He called the attendant: “Will you please give the chef my compliments and say that I should like to congratulate him on a most excellent lunch? Thank you. And now bring me a cigar.” Cigars were brought, sniffed at, weighed between the finger and thumb. Mr Norris finally selected the largest on the tray: “What, my dear boy, you don’t smoke them? Oh, but you should. Well, well, perhaps you have other vices?”

  By this time he was in the best of spirits.

  “I must say the older I get the more I come to value the little comforts of this life. As a general rule, I make a point of travelling first class. It always pays. One gets treated with so much more consideration. Take today, for instance. If I hadn’t been in a third-class compartment, they’d never have dreamed of bothering me. There you have the German official all over. ‘A race of non-commissioned officers,’ didn’t somebody call them? How very good that is! How true . . .”

  Mr Norris picked his teeth for a few moments in thoughtful silence.

  “My generation was brought up to regard luxury from an aesthetic standpoint. Since the War, people don’t seem to feel that any more. Too often they are merely gross. They take their pleasures coarsely, don’t you find? At times, one feels guilty, oneself, with so much unemployment and distress everywhere. The conditions in Berlin are very bad. Oh, very bad . . . as no doubt you yourself know. In my small way I do what I can to help, but it’s such a drop in the ocean.” Mr Norris sighed and touched his napkin with his lips.

  “And here we are, riding in the lap of luxury. The social reformers would condemn us, no doubt. All the same, I suppose if somebody didn’t use this dining-car, we should have all these employees on the dole as well . . . Dear me, dear me. Things are so very complex nowadays.”

  We parted at the Zoo Station. Mr Norris held my hand for a long time amidst the jostle of arriving passengers.

  “Auf Wiedersehen, my dear boy. Auf Wiedersehen. I won’t say goodbye because I hope that we shall be seeing each other in the very near future. Any little discomforts I may have suffered on that odious journey have been amply repaid by the great pleasure of making your acquaintance. And now I wonder if you’d care to have tea with me at my flat one day this week? Shall we make it Saturday? Here’s my card. Do please say you’ll come.”

  I promised that I would.

  Chapter Two

  Mr Norris had two front doors to his flat. They stood side by side. Both had little round peep-holes in the centre panel and brightly polished knobs and brass nameplates. On the left-hand plate was engraved: Arthur Norris. Private. And on the right hand: Arthur Norris. Export and Import.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I pressed the button of the left-hand bell. The bell was startlingly loud; it must have been clearly audible all over the flat. Nevertheless, nothing happened. No sound came from within. I was just about to ring again when I became aware that an eye was regarding me through the peep-hole in the door. How long it had been there, I didn’t know. I felt embarrassed and uncertain whether to stare the eye out of its hole or merely pretend that I hadn’t seen it. Ostentatiously, I examined the ceiling, the floor, the walls; then ventured a furtive glance to make sure that it had gone. It hadn’t. Vexed, I turned my back on the door altogether. Nearly a minute passed.

  When, finally, I did turn round it was because the other door, the Export and Import door, had opened. A young man stood on the threshold.

  “Is Mr Norris in?” I asked.

  The young man eyed me suspiciously. He had watery light yellow eyes and a blotched complexion the colour of porridge. His head was huge and round, set awkwardly on a short plump body. He wore a smart lounge suit and patent-leather shoes. I didn’t like the look of him at all.

  “Have you an appointment?”

  “Yes.” My tone was extremely curt.

  At once, the young man’s face curved into oily smiles. “Oh, it’s Mr Bradshaw? One moment, if you please.”

  And, to my astonishment, he closed the door in my face, only to reappear an instant later at the left-hand door, standing aside for me to enter the flat. This behaviour seemed all the more extraordinary because, as I noticed immediately I was inside, the Private side of the entrance hall was divided from the Export side only by a thick hanging curtain.

  “Mr Norris wished me to say that he will be with you in one moment,” said the big-headed young man, treading delicately across the thick carpet on the toes of his patent-leather shoes. He spoke very softly, as if he were afraid of being overheard. Opening the door of a large sitting-room, he silently motioned me to take a chair and withdrew.

  Left alone, I looked around me, slightly mystified. Everything was in good taste, the furniture, the carpet, the colour scheme. But the room was curiously without character. It was like a room on the stage or in the window of a high-class furnishing store; elegant, expensive, discreet. I had expected Mr Norris’s background to be altogether more exotic; something Chinese would have suited him, with golden and scarlet dragons.

  The young man had left the door ajar. From somewhere just outside I heard him say, presumably into a telephone: “The gentleman is here, sir.” And now, with even greater distinctness, Mr Norris’s voice was audible as he replied, from behind a door in the opposite wall of the sitting-room: “Oh, is he? Thank you.”

  I wanted to laugh. This little comedy was so unnecessary as to seem slightly sinister. A moment later Mr Norris himself came into the room, nervously rubbing his manicured hands together.

  “My dear boy, this is indeed an honour! Delighted to welcome you under the shadow of my humble roof-tree.”

  He didn’t look well, I thought. His face wasn’t so rosy today, and there were rings under his eyes. He sat down for a moment in an armchair, but rose again immediately, as if he were not in the mood for sitting still. He m
ust have been wearing a different wig, for the joins in this one showed as plain as murder.

  “You’d like to see over the flat, I expect?” he asked, nervously touching his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  “I should, very much.” I smiled, puzzled because Mr Norris was obviously in a great hurry about something. With fussy haste, he took me by the elbow, steering me towards the door in the opposite wall, from which he himself had just emerged.

  “We’ll go this way first, yes.”

  But hardly had we taken a couple of steps when there was a sudden outburst of voices from the entrance hall.

  “You can’t. It’s impossible,” came the voice of the young man who had ushered me into the flat. And a strange, loud, angry voice answered: “That’s a dirty lie! I tell you he’s here!”

  Mr Norris stopped as suddenly as if he’d been shot. “Oh dear!” he whispered, hardly audible. “Oh dear!” Stricken with indecision and alarm, he stood still in the middle of the room, as though desperately considering which way to turn. His grip on my arm tightened, either for support or merely to implore me to keep quiet.

  “Mr Norris will not be back until late this evening.” The young man’s voice was no longer apologetic, but firm. “It’s no good your waiting.”

  He seemed to have shifted his position and to be just outside, perhaps barring the way into the sitting-room. And, the next moment, the sitting-room door was quietly shut, with a click of a key being turned. We were locked in.

  “He’s in there!” shouted the strange voice, loud and menacing. There was a scuffling, followed by a heavy thud, as if the young man had been flung violently against the door. The thud roused Mr Norris to action. With a single, surprisingly agile movement, he dragged me after him into the adjoining room. We stood there together in the doorway, ready, at any moment, for a further retreat. I could hear him panting heavily at my side.