The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  Meanwhile, the stranger was rattling the sitting-room door as if he meant to burst it open: “You damned swindler!” he shouted in a terrible voice. “You wait till I get my hands on you!”

  It was all so very extraordinary that I quite forgot to feel frightened, although it might well be supposed that the person on the other side of the door was either raving drunk or insane. I cast a questioning glance at Mr Norris, who whispered reassuringly: “He’ll go away in a minute, I think.” The curious thing was that, although scared, he didn’t seem at all surprised by what was taking place. It might have been imagined, from his tone, that he was referring to an unpleasant but frequently recurring natural phenomenon: a violent thunder-storm, for instance. His blue eyes were warily, uneasily alert. His hands rested on the door handle, prepared to slam it shut at an instant’s notice.

  But Mr Norris had been right. The stranger soon got tired of rattling the sitting-room door. With an explosion of Berlin curses, his voice retreated. A moment later, we heard the outside door of the flat close with a tremendous bang.

  Mr Norris drew a long breath of relief. “I knew it couldn’t last long,” he remarked with satisfaction. Abstractedly pulling an envelope out of his pocket, he began fanning himself with it. “So upsetting,” he murmured. “Some people seem to be utterly lacking in consideration . . . My dear boy, I really must apologize for this disturbance. Quite unforeseen, I assure you.”

  I laughed. “That’s all right. It was rather exciting.”

  Mr Norris seemed pleased. “I’m glad you take it so lightly. It’s so rare to find anyone of your age who’s free from these ridiculous bourgeois prejudices. I feel that we have a great deal in common.”

  “Yes, I think we have,” I said, without, however being quite clear as to which particular prejudices he found ridiculous or how they applied to the angry visitor.

  “In the course of my long and not uneventful life, I can truthfully say that for sheer stupidity and obstructiveness, I have never met anyone to equal the small Berlin tradesman. I’m not speaking, now, mind you, of the larger firms. They’re always reasonable: more or less . . .”

  He was evidently in a confidential mood and might have imparted a good deal of interesting information, had not the sitting-room door now been unlocked and the young man with the large head reappeared on the threshold. The sight of him seemed to disconnect instantly the thread of Mr Norris’s ideas. His manner became at once apologetic, apprehensive, and vague, as though he and I had been caught doing something socially ridiculous which could only be passed off by an elaborate display of etiquette.

  “Allow me to introduce: Herr Schmidt — Mr Bradshaw. Herr Schmidt is my secretary and my right hand. Only, in this case,” Mr Norris tittered nervously, “I can assure you that the right hand knows perfectly well what the left hand doeth.”

  With several small nervous coughs he attempted to translate this joke into German. Herr Schmidt, who clearly didn’t understand it, did not even bother to pretend to be amused. He gave me a private smile, however, which invited me to join him in tolerant contemptuous patronage of his employer’s attempts at humour. I didn’t respond. I had taken a dislike to Schmidt already. He saw this, and at the moment I was pleased that he saw it.

  “Can I speak to you alone?” he said to Mr Norris, in a tone which was obviously intended to insult me. His tie, collar, and lounge suit were as neat as ever. I could see no sign whatever of the violent handling he had apparently just received.

  “Yes. Er — yes. Certainly. Of course.” Mr Norris’s tone was petulant but meek. “You’ll excuse me, my dear boy, a moment? I hate to keep my guests waiting, but this little matter is rather urgent.”

  He hurried across the sitting-room and disappeared through a third door, followed by Schmidt. Schmidt was going to tell him the details of the row, of course. I considered the possibility of eavesdropping, but decided that it would be too risky. Anyhow, I should be able to get it out of Mr Norris one day, when I knew him better. Mr Norris did not give one the impression of being a discreet man.

  I looked around me and found that the room in which I had all this time been standing was a bedroom. It was not very large, and the available space was almost entirely occupied by a double bed, a bulky wardrobe and an elaborate dressing-table with a winged mirror, on which were ranged bottles of perfume, lotions, antiseptics, pots of face cream, skin food, powder, and ointment enough to stock a chemist’s shop. I furtively opened a drawer in the table. I found nothing in it but two lipsticks and an eyebrow pencil. Before I could investigate further, I heard the door into the sitting-room open.

  Mr Norris re-entered fussily. “And now, after this most regrettable interlude, let us continue our personally conducted tour of the royal apartments. Before you, you behold my chaste couch; I had it specially made for me in London. German beds are so ridiculously small, I always think. It’s fitted with the best spiral springs. As you observe, I’m conservative enough to keep to my English sheets and blankets. The German feather-bags give me the most horrible nightmares.”

  He talked rapidly with a great show of animation, but I saw at once that the conversation with his secretary had depressed him. It seemed more tactful not to refer again to the stranger’s visit. Mr Norris evidently wanted the subject to be dropped. Fishing a key out of his waistcoat pocket, he unlocked and threw open the door of the wardrobe.

  “I’ve always made it a rule to have a suit for every day of the week. Perhaps you’ll tell me I’m vain, but you’d be surprised if you knew what it had meant to me, at critical moments of my life, to be dressed exactly in accordance with my mood. It gives one such confidence, I think.”

  Beyond the bedroom was a dining-room.

  “Please admire the chairs,” said Mr Norris, and added — rather strangely, as I thought at the time: “I may tell you that this suite has been valued at four thousand marks.”

  From the dining-room, a passage led to the kitchen, where I was introduced to a dour-faced young man who was busy preparing the tea.

  “This is Hermann, my major-domo. He shares the distinction, with a Chinese boy I had years ago in Shanghai, of being the best cook I have ever employed.”

  “What were you doing in Shanghai?”

  Mr Norris looked vague. “Ah. What is one ever doing anywhere? Fishing in troubled waters, I suppose one might call it. Yes . . . I’m speaking now, mind you, of nineteen hundred and three. Things are very different nowadays, I’m told.”

  We returned to the sitting-room, followed by Hermann with the tray.

  “Well, well,” observed Mr Norris, taking his cup, “we live in stirring times; tea-stirring times.”

  I grinned awkwardly. It was only later, when I knew him better, that I realized that these aged jokes (he had a whole repertoire of them) were not even intended to be laughed at. They belonged merely to certain occasions in the routine of his day. Not to have made one of them would have been like omitting to say a grace.

  Having thus performed his ritual, Mr Norris relapsed into silence. He must be worrying about the noisy caller again. As usual, when left to my own devices, I began studying his wig. I must have been staring very rudely, for he looked up suddenly and saw the direction of my gaze. He startled me by asking simply:

  “Is it crooked?”

  I blushed scarlet. I felt terribly embarrassed.

  “Just a tiny bit, perhaps.”

  Then I laughed outright. We both laughed. At that moment I could have embraced him. We had referred to the thing at last, and our relief was so great that we were like two people who have just made a mutual declaration of love.

  “It wants to go a shade more to the left,” I said, reaching out a helpful hand. “May I . . .”

  But this was going too far. “My God, no!” cried Mr Norris, drawing back with involuntary dismay. An instant later he was himself again, and smiled ruefully.

  “I’m afraid that this is one of those — er — mysteries of the toilet which are best performed in the p
rivacy of the boudoir. I must ask you to excuse me.”

  “I’m afraid this one doesn’t fit very well,” he continued, returning from his bedroom some minutes later. “I’ve never been fond of it. It’s only my second best.”

  “How many have you got, then?”

  “Three altogether.” Mr Norris examined his fingernails with a modest proprietary air.

  “And how long do they last?”

  “A very short time, I’m sorry to say. I’m obliged to get a new one every eighteen months or so, and they’re exceedingly expensive.”

  “How much, roughly?”

  “Between three and four hundred marks.” He was seriously informative. “The man who makes them for me lives in Köln and I’m obliged to go there myself to get them fitted.”

  “How tiresome for you.”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Tell me just one more thing. However do you manage to make it stay on?”

  “There’s a small patch with glue on it.” Mr Norris lowered his voice a little, as though this were the greatest secret of all: “Just here.”

  “And you find that’s sufficient?”

  “For the ordinary wear and tear of daily life, yes. All the same, I’m bound to admit that there have been various occasions in my chequered career, occasions which I blush to think of, when all has been lost.”

  After tea, Mr Norris showed me his study, which lay behind the door on the other side of the sitting-room.

  “I’ve got some very valuable books here,” he told me. “Some very amusing books.” His tone coyly underlined the words. I stopped to read the titles: The Girl with the Golden Whip. Miss Smith’s Torture-Chamber. Imprisoned at a Girls’ School, or The Private Diary of Montague Dawson, Flagellant. This was my first glimpse of Mr Norris’s sexual tastes.

  “One day I’ll show you some of the other treasures of my collection,” he added archly, “when I feel I know you well enough.”

  He led the way through into a little office. This, I realized, was where the unwelcome visitor must have been waiting at the time of my own arrival. It was strangely bare. There was a chair, a table, a filing cabinet, and, on the wall, a large map of Germany. Schmidt was nowhere to be seen.

  “My secretary has gone out,” Mr Norris explained, his uneasy eyes wandering over the walls with a certain distaste, as if this room had unpleasant associations for him. “He took the typewriter to be cleaned. This was what he wanted to see me about, just now.”

  This lie seemed so entirely pointless that I felt rather offended. I didn’t expect him to confide in me yet; but he needn’t treat me like an imbecile. I felt absolved from any lingering scruples about asking pointed questions, and said, with frank inquisitiveness:

  “What is it, exactly, that you export and import?”

  He took it quite calmly. His smile was disingenuous and bland.

  “My dear boy, what in my time, have I not exported? I think I may claim to have exported everything which is — er —

  exportable.”

  He pulled out one of the drawers of the filing cabinet with the gesture of a house agent. “The latest model, you see.”

  The drawer was quite empty. “Tell me one of the things you export,” I insisted, smiling.

  Mr Norris appeared to consider.

  “Clocks,” he said at length.

  “And where do you export them to?”

  He rubbed his chin with a nervous, furtive movement. This time my teasing had succeeded in its object. He was flustered and mildly vexed.

  “Really, my dear boy, if you want to go into a lot of technical explanations, you must ask my secretary. I haven’t the time to attend to them. I leave all the more — er — sordid details entirely in his hands. Yes . . .”

  Chapter Three

  A few days after Christmas I rang up Arthur (we called each other by our Christian names now) and suggested that we should spend Silvesterabend together.

  “My dear William, I shall be delighted, of course. Most delighted . . . I can imagine no more charming or auspicious company in which to celebrate the birth of this peculiarly ill-omened New Year. I’d ask you to have dinner with me, but unfortunately I have a previous engagement. Now where do you suggest we shall meet?”

  “What about the Troika?”

  “Very well, my dear boy. I put myself in your hands entirely. I fear I shall feel rather out of place amidst so many young faces. A greybeard with one foot in the tomb . . . Somebody say No, no! Nobody does. How cruel Youth is. Never mind. Such is Life . . .”

  When once Arthur had started telephoning it was difficult to stop him. I used often to lay the receiver on the table for a few minutes knowing that when I picked it up again he would still be talking away as fast as ever. Today, however, I had a pupil waiting for an English lesson and had to cut him short.

  “Very well. In the Troika. At eleven.”

  “That will suit me admirably. In the meantime, I shall be careful what I eat, go to bed early, and generally prepare myself to enjoy an evening of Wein, Weib, und Gesang. More particularly Wein. Yes. God bless you, dear boy. Goodbye.”

  On New Year’s Eve I had supper at home with my landlady and the other lodgers. I must have been already drunk when I arrived at the Troika, because I remember getting a shock when I looked into the cloakroom mirror and found that I was wearing a false nose. The place was crammed. It was difficult to say who was dancing and who was merely standing up. After hunting about for some time, I came upon Arthur in a corner. He was sitting at a table with another rather younger gentleman who wore an eyeglass and had sleek dark hair.

  “Ah, here you are, William. We were beginning to fear that you’d deserted us. May I introduce two of my most valued friends, to each other? Mr Bradshaw — Baron von Pregnitz.”

  The Baron, who was fishy and suave, inclined his head. Leaning towards me, like a cod swimming up through water, he asked:

  “Excuse me. Do you know Naples?”

  “No. I’ve never been there.”

  “Forgive me. I’m sorry. I had the feeling that we’d met each other before.”

  “Perhaps so,” I said politely, wondering how he could smile without dropping his eyeglass. It was rimless and ribbonless and looked as though it had been screwed into his pink, well-shaven face by means of some horrible surgical operation.

  “Perhaps you were at Juan-les-Pins last year?”

  “No, I’m afraid I wasn’t?”

  “Yes, I see.” He smiled in polite regret. “In that case I must beg your pardon.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. We both laughed very heartily. Arthur, evidently pleased that I was making a good impression on the Baron, laughed too. I drank a glass of champagne off at a gulp. A three-man band was playing: Grüss’ mir mein Hawai, ich bleib’ Dir treu, ich hab’ Dich gerne. The dancers, locked frigidly together, swayed in partial-paralytic rhythms under a huge sunshade suspended from the ceiling and oscillating gently through cigarette smoke and hot rising air.

  “Don’t you find it a trifle stuffy in here?” Arthur asked

  anxiously.

  In the windows were bottles filled with coloured liquids brilliantly illuminated from beneath, magenta, emerald, vermilion. They seemed to be lighting up the whole room. The cigarette smoke made my eyes smart till the tears ran down my face. The music kept dying away, then surging up fearfully loud. I passed my hand down the shiny black oil-cloth curtains in the alcove behind my chair. Oddly enough, they were quite cold. The lamps were like alpine cowbells. And there was a fluffy white monkey perched above the bar. In another moment, when I had drunk exactly the right amount of champagne, I should have a vision. I took a sip. And now, with extreme clarity, without passion or malice, I saw what Life really is. It had something, I remember, to do with the revolving sunshade. Yes, I murmured to myself, let them dance. They are dancing. I am glad.

  “You know, I like this place. Extraordinarily,” I told the Baron with enthusiasm. He did not seem surprised.

&nbs
p; Arthur was solemnly stifling a belch.

  “Dear Arthur, don’t look so sad. Are you tired?”

  “No, not tired, William. Only a little contemplative, perhaps. Such an occasion as this is not without its solemn aspect. You young people are quite right to enjoy yourselves. I don’t blame you for a moment. One has one’s memories.”

  “Memories are the most precious things we have,” said the Baron with approval. As intoxication proceeded, his face seemed slowly to disintegrate. A rigid area of paralysis formed round the monocle. The monocle was holding his face together. He gripped it desperately with his facial muscles, cocking his disengaged eyebrow, his mouth sagging slightly at the corners, minute beads of perspiration appearing along the parting of his thin, satin-smooth dark hair. Catching my eye, he swam up towards me, to the surface of the element which seemed to separate us.

  “Excuse me, please. May I ask you something?”

  “By all means.”

  “Have you read Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “And tell me, please, how did you like it?”

  “Very much indeed.”

  “Then I am very glad. Yes, so did I. Very much.”

  And now we were all standing up. What had happened? It was midnight. Our glasses touched.

  “Cheerio,” said the Baron with the air of one who makes a particularly felicitous quotation.

  “Allow me,” said Arthur, “to wish you both every success and happiness in nineteen thirty-one. Every success . . .” His voice trailed off uneasily into silence. Nervously he fingered the heavy fringe of hair. A tremendous crash exploded from the band. Like a car which has slowly, laboriously reached the summit of the mountain railway, we plunged headlong downwards into the New Year.

  The events of the next two hours were somewhat confused. We were in a small bar, where I remember only the ruffled plumes of a paper streamer, crimson, very beautiful, stirring like seaweed in the draught from an electric fan. We wandered through streets crowded with girls who popped teasers in our faces. We ate ham and eggs in the first-class restaurant of the Friedrichstrasse Station. Arthur had disappeared. The Baron was rather mysterious and sly about this; though I couldn’t understand why. He had asked me to call him Kuno, and explained how much he admired the character of the English upper class. We were driving in a taxi, alone. The Baron told me about a friend of his, a young Etonian. The Etonian had been in India for two years. On the morning after his return he had met his oldest school friend in Bond Street. Although they hadn’t seen each other for so long, the school friend had merely said: “Hello. I’m afraid I can’t talk to you now. I have to go shopping with my mother.” “And I find this so very nice,” the Baron concluded. “It is your English self-control, you see.” The taxi crossed several bridges and passed a gas-works. The Baron pressed my hand and made me a long speech about how wonderful it is to be young. He had become rather indistinct and his English was rapidly deteriorating. “You see, excuse me, I’ve been watching your reactions the whole evening. I hope you are not offended?” I found my false nose in my pocket and put it on. It had got a bit crumpled. The Baron seemed impressed. “This is all so very interesting for me, you see.” Soon after this I had to stop the taxi under a lamp-post in order to be sick.