The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  We were driving along a street bounded by a high dark wall. Over the top of the wall I suddenly caught sight of an ornamental cross. “Good God!” I said. “Are you taking me to the cemetery?”

  The Baron merely smiled. We had stopped; having arrived, it seemed, at the blackest corner of the night. I stumbled over something, and the Baron obligingly took my arm. He seemed to have been here before. We passed through an archway and into the courtyard. There was light here from several windows, and snatches of gramophone music and laughter. A silhouetted head and shoulders leant out of one of the windows, shouted: “Prosit Neujahr!” and spat vigorously. The spittle landed with a soft splash on the paving-stone just beside my foot. Other heads emerged from other windows. “Is that you Paul, you sow?” someone shouted. “Red Front!” yelled a voice, and a louder splash followed. This time, I think, a beer-mug had been emptied.

  Here one of the anaesthetic periods of my evening supervened. How the Baron got me upstairs, I don’t know. It was quite painless. We were in a room full of people dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, shaking our hands, and thumping us on the back. There was an immense ornamental gasolier, converted to hold electric bulbs and enmeshed in paper festoons. My glance reeled about the room, picking out large or minute objects, a bowl of claret-cup in which floated an empty match-box, a broken bead from a necklace, a bust of Bismarck on the top of a Gothic dresser — holding them for an instant, then losing them again in general coloured chaos. In this manner I caught a sudden startling glimpse of Arthur’s head, its mouth open, the wig jammed down over its left eye. I stumbled about looking for the body and collapsed comfortably on to a sofa, holding the upper half of a girl. My face was buried in dusty-smelling lace cushions. The noise of the party burst over me in thundering waves, like the sea. It was strangely soothing. “Don’t go to sleep, darling,” said the girl I was holding. “No, of course I won’t,” I replied, and sat up, tidying my hair. I felt suddenly quite sober.

  Opposite me, in a big arm-chair, sat Arthur, with a thin, dark, sulky-looking girl on his lap. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat and looked most domestic. He wore gaudily-striped braces. His shirt-sleeves were looped up with elastic bands. Except for a little hair round the base of the skull, he was perfectly bald.

  “What on earth have you done with it?” I exclaimed. “You’ll catch cold.”

  “The idea was not mine, William. Rather a graceful tribute, don’t you think, to the Iron Chancellor?”

  He seemed in much better spirits now than earlier in the evening, and, strangely enough, not at all drunk. He had a remarkably strong head. Looking up, I saw the wig perched rakishly on Bismarck’s helmet. It was too big for him.

  Turning, I saw the Baron sitting beside me on the sofa. “Hullo, Kuno,” I said. “How did you get here?”

  He didn’t answer, but smiled his bright, rigid smile and desperately cocked an eyebrow. He seemed on the very point of collapse. In another moment his monocle would fall out.

  The gramophone burst into loud braying music. Most of the people in the room began to dance. They were nearly all young. The boys were in shirt-sleeves; the girls had unhooked their dresses. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with dust and perspiration and cheap scent. An enormous woman elbowed her way through the crowd, carrying a glass of wine in each hand. She wore a pink silk blouse and a very short pleated white skirt; her feet were jammed into absurdly small high-heeled shoes, out of which bulged pads of silk-stockinged flesh. Her cheeks were waxy pink and her hair dyed tinsel-golden, so that it matched the glitter of the half-dozen bracelets on her powdered arms. She was as curious and sinister as a life-size doll. Like a doll, she had staring china-blue eyes which did not laugh, although her lips were parted in a smile revealing several gold teeth.

  “This is Olga, our hostess,” Arthur explained.

  “Hullo, Baby!” Olga handed me a glass. She pinched Arthur’s cheek: “Well, my little turtle-dove?”

  The gesture was so perfunctory that it reminded me of a vet with a horse. Arthur giggled: “Hardly what one would call a strikingly well-chosen epithet, is it? A turtle-dove. What do you say to that, Anni?” He addressed the dark girl on his knee. “You’re very silent, you know. You don’t sparkle this evening. Or does the presence of the extremely handsome young man opposite distract your thoughts? William, I believe you’ve made a conquest. I do indeed.”

  Anni smiled at this, a slight self-possessed whore’s smile.

  Then she scratched her thigh and yawned. She wore a smartly-cut little black jacket and a black skirt. On her legs were a pair of long black boots, laced up to the knee. They had a curious design in gold running round the tops. They gave to her whole costume the effect of a kind of uniform.

  “Ah, you’re admiring Anni’s boots,” said Arthur with satisfaction. “But you ought to see her other pair. Scarlet leather with black heels. I had them made for her myself. Anni won’t wear them in the street; she says they make her look too conspicuous. But sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly energetic, she puts them on when she comes to see me.”

  Meanwhile, several of the girls and boys had stopped dancing. They stood round us, their arms interlaced, their eyes fixed on Arthur’s mouth with the naïve interest of savages, as though they expected to see the words jump visibly out of his throat. One of the boys began to laugh. “Oh, yes,” he mimicked. “I spik you Englisch, no?”

  Arthur’s hand was straying abstractedly over Anni’s thigh. She raised herself and smacked it sharply, with the impersonal viciousness of a cat.

  “Oh, dear, I’m afraid you’re in a very cruel mood this evening! I see I shall be corrected for this. Anni is an exceedingly severe young lady.” Arthur sniggered loudly: continued conversationally in English: “Do you think it’s an exquisitely beautiful face? Quite perfect in its way. Like a Raphael Madonna. The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni’s beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that’s original? Is it? Please laugh.”

  “I think it’s very good indeed.”

  “Only sin-deep. I’m glad you like it. My first thought was, I must tell that to William. You positively inspire me, you know. You make me sparkle. I always say that I only wish to have three sorts of people as my friends, those who are very rich, those who are very witty, and those who are very beautiful. You may, my dear William, belong to the second category.”

  I could guess to which category Baron von Pregnitz belonged, and looked round to see whether he had been listening. But the Baron was otherwise engaged. He reclined upon the farther end of the sofa in the embrace of a powerful youth in a boxer’s sweater, who was gradually forcing a mugful of beer down his throat. The Baron protested feebly; the beer was spilling all over him.

  I became aware that I had my arm round a girl. Perhaps she had been there all the time. She snuggled against me, while from the other side a boy was amateurishly trying to pick my pocket. I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Why make a scene at the end of such an enjoyable evening? He was welcome to my money. I only had three marks left at the most. The Baron would pay for everything, anyhow. At that moment I saw his face with almost microscopic distinctness. He had, as I noticed now for the first time, been taking artificial sunlight treatment. The skin round his nose was just beginning to peel. How nice he was! I raised my glass to him. His fish-eye gleamed faintly over the boxer’s arm and he made a slight movement of his head. He was beyond speech. When I turned round, Arthur and Anni had disappeared.

  With the vague intention of going to look for them, I staggered to my feet, only to become involved in the dancing which had broken out again with renewed vigour. I was seized round the waist, round the neck, kissed, hugged, tickled, half undressed; I danced with girls, with boys, with two or three people at the same time. It may have been five or ten minutes before I reached the door at the further end of the room. Beyond the door was a pitch-dark passage with a crack of light at the end of it. The passage was crammed so full of furniture that one could only edge on
e’s way along it sideways. I had wriggled and shuffled about half the distance when an agonized cry came from the lighted room ahead of me.

  “Nein, nein! Mercy! Oh dear! Hilfe! Hilfe!”

  There was no mistaking the voice. They had got Arthur in there, and were robbing him and knocking him about, I might have known it. We were fools ever to have poked our noses into a dark place like this. We had only ourselves to thank. Drink made me brave. Struggling forward to the door, I pushed it open.

  The first person I saw was Anni. She was standing in the middle of the room. Arthur cringed on the floor at her feet. He had removed several more of his garments, and was now dressed, lightly but with perfect decency, in a suit of mauve silk underwear, a rubber abdominal belt and a pair of socks. In one hand he held a brush and in the other a yellow shoe-rag. Olga towered behind him, brandishing a heavy leather whip.

  “You call that clean, you swine!” she cried in a terrible voice. “Do them again this minute! And if I find a speck of dirt on them I’ll thrash you till you can’t sit down for a week.”

  As she spoke she gave Arthur a smart cut across the buttocks. He uttered a squeal of pain and pleasure, and began to brush and polish Anni’s boots with feverish haste.

  “Mercy! Mercy!” Arthur’s voice was shrill and gleeful, like a child’s when it is shamming. “Stop! You’re killing me.”

  “Killing’s too good for you,” retorted Olga, administering another cut. “I’ll skin you alive!”

  “Oh! Oh! Stop! Mercy! Oh!”

  They were making such a noise that they hadn’t heard me bang open the door. Now they saw me, however. My presence did not seem to disconcert any of them in the least. Indeed, it appeared to add spice to Arthur’s enjoyment.

  “Oh dear! William, save me! You won’t? You’re as cruel as the rest of them. Anni, my love! Olga! Just look how she treats me. Goodness knows what they won’t be making me do in a minute!”

  “Come in, Baby,” cried Olga with tigerish jocularity. “Just you wait! It’s your turn next. I’ll make you cry for Mummy!”

  She made a playful slash at me with the whip which sent me in headlong retreat down the passage, pursued by Arthur’s delighted and anguished cries.

  Several hours later I woke to find myself lying curled up on the floor, with my face pressed against the leg of the sofa. I had a head like a furnace, and pains in every bone. The party was over. Half a dozen people lay insensible about the dismantled room, sprawling in various attitudes of extreme discomfort. Daylight gleamed through the slats of the venetian blinds.

  After making sure that neither Arthur nor the Baron were among the fallen, I picked my way over their bodies, out of the flat, downstairs, across the courtyard and into the street. The whole building seemed to be full of dead drunks. I met nobody.

  I found myself in one of the back streets near the canal, not far from the Möckernbrücke Station, about half an hour from my lodgings. I had no money for the electric train. And, anyhow, a walk would do me good. I limped home, along dreary streets where paper streamers hung from the sills of damp, blank houses, or were entangled in the clammy twigs of the trees. When I arrived, my landlady greeted me with the news that Arthur had rung up already three times to know how I was.

  “Such a nice-spoken gentleman, I always think. And so considerate.”

  I agreed with her, and went to bed.

  Chapter Four

  Frl. schroeder, my landlady, was very fond of Arthur. Over the telephone she always addressed him as Herr Doktor, her highest mark of esteem.

  “Ah, is that you, Herr Doktor? But of course I recognize your voice; I should know it in a million. You sound very tired this morning. Another of your late nights? Na, Na, you can’t expect an old woman like me to believe that; I know what gentlemen are when you go out on the spree . . . What’s that you say? Stuff and nonsense! You flatterer! Well, well, you men are all alike; from seventeen to seventy . . . Pfui! I’m surprised at you . . . No, I most certainly shall not! Ha, ha! You want to speak to Herr Bradshaw? Why, of course, I’d forgotten. I’ll call him at once.”

  When Arthur came to tea with me, Frl. Schroeder would put on her black velvet dress, which was cut low at the neck, and her string of Woolworth pearls. With her cheeks rouged and her eyelids darkened, she would open the door to him, looking like a caricature of Mary Queen of Scots. I remarked on this to Arthur, who was delighted.

  “Really, William, you’re most unkind. You say such sharp things. I’m beginning to be afraid of your tongue. I am indeed.”

  After this he usually referred to Frl. Schroeder as Her Majesty. La divine Schroeder was another favourite epithet.

  No matter how much of a hurry he was in, he always found time for a few minutes’ flirtation with her, brought her flowers, sweets, cigarettes, and sympathized with every fluctuation in the delicate health of Hanns, her canary. When Hanns finally died and Frl. Schroeder shed tears, I thought Arthur was going to cry, too. He was genuinely upset. “Dear, dear,” he kept repeating. “Nature is really very cruel.”

  My other friends were less enthusiastic about Arthur. I introduced him to Helen Pratt, but the meeting was not a success. At that time Helen was Berlin correspondent to one of the London political weeklies, and supplemented her income by making translations and giving English lessons. We sometimes passed on pupils to each other. She was a pretty, fair-haired, fragile-looking girl, hard as nails, who had been educated at the University of London and took Sex seriously. She was accustomed to spending her days and nights in male society and had little use for the company of other girls. She could drink most of the English journalists under the table, and sometimes did so, but more as a matter of principle than because she enjoyed it. The first time she met you, she called you by your Christian name and informed you that her parents kept a tobacco and sweet shop in Shepherd’s Bush. This was her method of “testing” character; your reaction to the news damned or saved you finally in her estimation. Above all else, Helen loathed being reminded that she was a woman; except in bed.

  Arthur, as I saw too late, had no technique whatsoever for dealing with her sort. From the first moment he was frankly scared of her. She brushed aside all the little polished politenesses which shielded his timid soul. “Hullo, you two,” she said, casually reaching out a hand over the newspaper she was reading. (We had met by appointment in a small restaurant behind the Memorial Church.)

  Arthur gingerly took the hand she offered. He lingered uneasily beside the table, fidgeted, awaiting the ritual to which he was accustomed. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat, coughed:

  “Will you allow me to take a seat?”

  Helen, who was about to read something aloud from the newspaper, glanced up at him as though she’d forgotten his existence and was surprised to find him still there.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Aren’t there enough chairs?”

  We got talking, somehow, about Berlin night life. Arthur giggled and became arch. Helen, who dealt in statistics and psycho-analytical terms, regarded him in puzzled disapproval. At length Arthur made a sly reference to “the speciality of the Kaufhaus des Westens.”

  “Oh, you mean those whores on the corner there,” said Helen in the bright matter-of-fact tone of a schoolmistress giving a biology lesson, “who dress up to excite the boot-fetishists?”

  “Well, upon my soul, ha ha, I must say,” Arthur sniggered, coughed and rapidly fingered his wig, “seldom have I met such an extremely, if you’ll allow me to say so, er — advanced, or shall I say, er — modern young lady. . .”

  “My God!” Helen threw back her head and laughed

  unpleasantly. “I haven’t been called a young lady since the days when I used to help mother with the shop on Saturday afternoons.”

  “Have you — er — been in this city long?” asked Arthur hastily. Vaguely aware that he had made a mistake, he imagined that he ought to change the subject. I saw the look Helen gave him and knew that all was over.

  “If you
take my advice, Bill,” she said to me, the next time we met, “you won’t trust that man an inch.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Oh, I know you. You’re soft, like most men. You make up romances about people instead of seeing them as they are. Have you noticed his mouth?”

  “Frequently.”

  “Ugh, it’s disgusting. I could hardly bear to look at it. Beastly and flabby like a toad’s.”

  “Well,” I said, laughing, “I suppose I’ve got a weakness for toads.”

  Not daunted by this failure, I tried Arthur on Fritz Wendel. Fritz was a German-American, a young man about town, who spent his leisure time dancing and playing bridge. He had a curious passion for the society of painters and writers, and had acquired a status with them by working at a fashionable art dealer’s. The art dealer didn’t pay him anything, but Fritz could afford this hobby, being rich. He had an aptitude for gossip which amounted to talent, and might have made a first-class private detective.