The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  It was rather a problem to know what to do with him. I had a pupil coming early. Finally, Frl. Schroeder and I managed, between us, to lug him, still half asleep, into Arthur’s old bedroom and lay him on the bed. He was incredibly heavy. No sooner was he laid on his back than he began to snore. His snores were so loud that you could hear them in my room, even when the door was shut; they continued, audibly, throughout the lesson. Meanwhile, my pupil, a very nice young man who hoped soon to become a schoolmaster, was eagerly adjuring me not to believe the stories, “invented by Jewish emigrants,” about the political persecution.

  “Actually,” he assured me, “these so-called communists are merely a handful of criminals, the scum of the streets. And most of them are not Germans at all.”

  “I thought,” I said politely, “that you were telling me just now that they drew up the Weimar Constitution?”

  This rather staggered him for the moment; but he made a good recovery.

  “No, pardon me, the Weimar Constitution was the work of Marxist Jews.”

  “Ah, the Jews . . . to be sure.”

  My pupil smiled. My stupidity made him feel a bit superior. I think he even liked me for it. A particularly loud snore came from the next room.

  “For a foreigner,” he politely conceded, “German politics are very complicated.”

  “Very,” I agreed.

  Otto woke about tea-time, ravenously hungry. I went out and bought sausages and eggs and Frl. Schroeder cooked him a meal while he washed. Afterwards we sat together in my room. Otto smoked one cigarette after another; he was very nervy and couldn’t sit still. His clothes were getting ragged and the collar of his sweater was frayed. His face was full of hollows. He looked like a grown man now, at least five years older.

  Frl. Schroeder made him take off his jacket. She mended it while we talked, interjecting, at intervals: “Is it possible? The idea . . . how dare they do such a thing! That’s what I’d like to know!”

  Otto had been on the run for a fortnight now, he told us. Two nights after the Reichstag fire, his old enemy, Werner Baldow, had come round, with six others of his storm-troop, to “arrest” him. Otto used the word without irony; he seemed to find it quite natural. “There’s lots of old scores being paid off nowadays,” he added, simply.

  Nevertheless, Otto had escaped, through a skylight, after kicking one of the Nazis in the face. They had shot at him twice, but missed. Since then he’d been wandering about Berlin, sleeping only in the daytime, walking the streets at night, for fear of house-raids. The first week hadn’t been so bad; comrades had put him up, one passing him on to another. But that was getting too risky now. So many of them were dead or in the concentration camps. He’d been sleeping when he could, taking short naps on benches in parks. But he could never rest properly. He had always to be on the watch. He couldn’t stick it any longer. Tomorrow he was going to leave Berlin. He’d try to work his way down to the Saar. Somebody had told him that was the easiest frontier to cross. It was dangerous, of course, but better than being cooped up here.

  I asked what had become of Anni. Otto didn’t know. He’d heard she was with Werner Baldow again. What else could you expect? He wasn’t even bitter; he just didn’t care. And Olga? Oh, Olga was doing fine. That remarkable business woman had escaped the clean-up through the influence of one of her customers, an important Nazi official. Others had begun to go there, now. Her future was assured.

  Otto had heard about Bayer.

  “They say Thälmann’s dead, too. And Renn. Junge, Junge . . .”

  We exchanged rumours about other well-known names. Frl. Schroeder shook her head and murmured over each. She was so genuinely upset that nobody would have dreamed she was hearing most of them for the first time in her life.

  The talk turned naturally to Arthur. We showed Otto the postcards of Tampico which had arrived, for both of us, only a week ago. He examined them with admiration.

  “I suppose he’s carrying on the work there?”

  “What work?”

  “The Party work, of course!”

  “Oh, yes,” I hastily agreed. “Of course he is.”

  “It was a bit of luck that he went away when he did, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes . . . it certainly was.”

  Otto’s eyes shone.

  “We needed more men like old Arthur in the Party. He was a speaker, if you like!”

  His enthusiasm warmed Frl. Schroeder’s heart. The tears stood in her eyes.

  “I always shall say Herr Norris was one of the best and finest and straightest gentlemen I ever knew.”

  We were all silent. In the twilit room we dedicated a grateful, reverent moment to Arthur’s memory. Then Otto continued in a tone of profound conviction:

  “Do you know what I think? He’s working for us out there, making propaganda and raising money; and one day, you’ll see, he’ll come back. Hitler and the rest of them will have to look out for themselves then . . .”

  It was getting dark outside. Frl. Schroeder rose to turn on the light. Otto said he must be going. He’d decided to make a start this evening now that he was feeling rested. By daybreak, he’d be clear of Berlin altogether. Frl. Schroeder protested vigorously. She had taken a great fancy to him.

  “Nonsense, Herr Otto. You’ll sleep here tonight. You need a thorough rest. These Nazis will never find you here. They’d have to cut me into little pieces first.”

  Otto smiled and thanked her warmly, but he wasn’t to be persuaded. We had to let him go. Frl. Schroeder filled his pockets with sandwiches. I gave him three handkerchiefs, an old penknife, and a map of Germany printed on a postcard which had been slipped in through our letter-box to advertise a firm of bicycle manufacturers. Even this would be better than nothing, for Otto’s geography was alarmingly weak. Unguided, he would probably have found himself heading for Poland. I wanted to give him some money, too. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, and I had to resort to the disingenuous argument that we were brother communists. “Besides,” I added craftily, “you can pay me back.” We shook hands solemnly on this.

  He was astonishingly cheerful at parting. From his manner you would have supposed that it was we who needed encouragement, not he.

  “Cheer up, Willi. Don’t you worry . . . Our time will come.”

  “Of course it will. Goodbye, Otto. Good luck.”

  We watched him set off, from my window. Frl. Schroeder had begun to sniff.

  “Poor boy . . . Do you think he’s got a chance, Herr Bradshaw? I declare I shan’t sleep the whole night, thinking about him. It’s as if he were my own son.”

  Otto turned once to look back; he waved his hand jauntily and smiled. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and strode rapidly away, with the heavy agile gait of a boxer, down the long dark street and into the lighted square, to be lost amidst the sauntering crowds of his enemies.

  I never saw or heard of him again.

  Three weeks later I returned to England.

  I had been in London nearly a month, when Helen Pratt came round to see me. She had arrived back from Berlin the day before, having triumphantly succeeded, with a series of scalding articles, in getting the sale of her periodical forbidden throughout Germany. Already she’d been offered a much better job in America. She was sailing within a fortnight to attack New York.

  She exuded vitality, success, and news. The Nazi Revolution had positively given her a new lease on life. To hear her talk, you might have thought she had spent the last two months hiding in Dr Goebbels’ writing-desk or under Hitler’s bed. She had the details of every private conversation and the low-down on every scandal. She knew what Schacht had said to Norman, what von Papen had said to Meissner, what Schleicher might shortly be expected to say to the Crown Prince. She knew the amounts of Thyssen’s cheques. She had new stories about Röhm, about Heines, about Göring and his uniforms. “My God, Bill, what a racket!” She talked for hours.

  Exhausted at last of all the misdeeds of the great, she
started on the lesser fry.

  “I suppose you heard all about the Pregnitz affair, didn’t you?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “Gosh, you are behind the times!” Helen brightened at the prospect of yet another story. “Why, that can’t have been more than a week after you left. They kept it fairly quiet, of course, in the papers. A pal of mine on the New York Herald gave me all the dope.”

  But, on this occasion, the dope wasn’t all on Helen’s side. Naturally, she didn’t know everything about van Hoorn. The temptation to fill out the gaps in her story, or, at least, to betray my knowledge of them, was considerable. Thank goodness, I didn’t yield to it. She was no more to be trusted with news than a cat with a saucer of milk. And, indeed, I was astonished how much her resourceful colleague had found out on his own account.

  The police must have been keeping Kuno under observation ever since our Swiss visit. Their patience had certainly been remarkable, because, for three whole months, he had done absolutely nothing to arouse their suspicions. Then, quite suddenly, at the beginning of April, he had got into communication with Paris. He was ready, he said, to reconsider the business they had discussed. His first letter was short and carefully vague; a week later, under pressure from van Hoorn, he wrote a much longer one, giving explicit details of what he proposed to sell. He sent it by special messenger, taking all due precautions and employing a code. Within a few hours, the police had deciphered every word.

  They went round to arrest him that afternoon at his flat. Kuno was out, having tea with a friend. His manservant had just time to telephone to him a guarded warning before the detectives took possession. Kuno seems to have lost his head completely. He did the worst thing possible: jumped into a taxi and drove straight to the Zoo Station. The plainclothes men there recognized him at once. They’d been supplied with his description that very morning, and who could mistake Kuno? Cruelly enough, they let him buy a ticket for the next available train; it happened to be going to Frankfurt-on-the-Oder. As he went up the steps to the platform, two detectives came forward to arrest him; but he was ready for that, and bolted down again. The exits were all guarded, of course. Kuno’s pursuers lost him in the crowd; caught sight of him again as he ran through the swing doors into the lavatory. By the time they had elbowed their way through the people, he had already locked himself into one of the closets. (“The newspapers,” said Helen, scornfully, “called it a telephone-box.”) The detectives ordered him to come out. He wouldn’t answer. Finally they had to clear the whole place and get ready to break down the door. It was then that Kuno shot himself.

  “And he couldn’t even make a decent job of that,” Helen added. “Fired crooked. Nearly blew his eye out; bled like a pig. They had to take him to hospital to finish him off.”

  “Poor devil.”

  Helen looked at me curiously.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish, I should have said.”

  “You see,” I apologetically confessed, “I knew him, slightly . . .”

  “Well, I’m blowed! Did you? Sorry. I must say, Bill, you’re a nice little chap, but you do have some queer friends. Well, this ought to interest you, then. You knew Pregnitz was a fairy, of course?”

  “I rather guessed something of the kind.”

  “Well, my pal got on to the inside story of why Pregnitz went in for this treason racket at all. He needed cash quickly, you see, because he was being blackmailed. And who, do you think, was doing the blackmailing? None other than the secretary of another dear old friend of yours, Harris.”

  “Norris?”

  “That’s right. Well, it seems that this precious secretary . . . what was his name, by the way?”

  “Schmidt.”

  “Was it? I dare say. Just suits him . . . Schmidt had got hold of a lot of letters Pregnitz had written to some youth. God alone knows how. Pretty hot stuff they must have been, if Pregnitz was prepared to risk his skin to pay for them. Shouldn’t have thought it was worth it myself. Rather face the music. But these people never have any guts . . .”

  “Did your friend find out what happened to Schmidt afterwards?” I asked.

  “Don’t suppose so, no. Why should he? What does happen to these creatures? He’s probably abroad somewhere, blowing the cash. He’d got quite a lot out of Pregnitz already, it seems. As far as I’m concerned, he’s welcome to it. Who cares?”

  “I know one person,” I said, “who might be interested.”

  A few days after this, I got a letter from Arthur. He was in Mexico City now, and hating it.

  Let me advise you, my dear boy, with all the solemnity of which I am capable, never to set foot in this odious town. On the material plane, it is true, I manage to provide myself with most of my accustomed comforts. But the complete lack of intelligent society, at least, as I understand the term, afflicts me deeply.

  Arthur didn’t say much about his business affairs; he was more guarded than of old.

  “Times are very bad, but, on the whole, I can’t complain,” was his only admission. On the subject of Germany, he let himself go, however:

  It makes me positively tremble with indignation to think of the workers delivered over to these men, who, whatever you may say, are nothing more or less than criminals.

  And, a little farther down the page:

  It is indeed tragic to see how, even in these days, a clever and unscrupulous liar can deceive millions.

  In conclusion, he paid a handsome tribute to Bayer:

  A man I always admired and respected. I feel proud to be able to say that I was his friend.

  I next heard of Arthur in June, on a postcard from California.

  I am basking here in the sunshine of Santa Monica. After Mexico, this is indeed a Paradise. I have a little venture on foot, not unconnected with the film

  industry. I think and hope it may turn out quite profitably. Will write again soon.

  He did write, and sooner, no doubt, than he had originally intended. By the next mail, I got another postcard, dated a day later.

  The very worst has happened. Am leaving for Costa Rica tonight. All details from there.

  This time I got a short letter.

  If Mexico was Purgatory, this is the Inferno itself.

  My California idyll was rudely cut short by the appearance of schmidt!!! The creature’s ingenuity is positively superhuman. Not only had he followed me there, but he had succeeded in finding out the exact nature of the little deal I was hoping to put through. I was entirely at his mercy. I was compelled to give him most of my hard-earned savings and depart at once.

  Just imagine, he even had the insolence to suggest that I should employ him, as before!!

  I don’t know yet whether I have succeeded in throwing him off my track. I hardly dare so hope.

  At least, Arthur wasn’t left long in doubt. A postcard soon followed the letter.

  The monster has arrived!!! May try Peru.

  Other glimpses of this queer journey reached me from time to time. Arthur had no luck in Lima.

  Schmidt turned up within the week. From there, the chase proceeded to Chile.

  “An attempt to exterminate the reptile failed miserably,” he wrote from Valparaiso. “I succeeded only in arousing its venom.”

  I suppose this is Arthur’s ornate way of saying he had tried to get Schmidt murdered.

  In Valparaiso a truce seems, however, to have been at last declared. For the next postcard, announcing a train journey to the Argentine, indicated a new state of affairs.

  We leave this afternoon, together, for Buenos Aires. Am too depressed to write more now.

  At present, they are in Rio. Or were when I last heard. It is impossible to predict their movements. Any day Schmidt may set off for fresh hunting-grounds, dragging Arthur after him, a protesting employer-prisoner. Their new partnership won’t be so easy to dissolve as their old one. Henceforward, they are doomed to walk the Earth together. I often think about them and wonder what I should do, if, by any unlucky chance, we wer
e to meet. I am not particularly sorry for Arthur. After all, he no doubt gets his hands on a good deal of money. But he is very sorry for himself.

  “Tell me, William,” his last letter concluded, “what have I done to deserve all this?”

  THE END

  Goodbye to Berlin

  to John & Beatrix Lehmann

  A Berlin Diary

  Autumn 1930

  From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied façades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scroll-work and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and secondhand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.

  I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.

  At eight o’clock in the evening the house-doors will be locked. The children are having supper. The shops are shut. The electric sign is switched on over the night-bell of the little hotel on the corner, where you can hire a room by the hour. And soon the whistling will begin. Young men are calling their girls. Standing down there in the cold, they whistle up at the lighted windows of warm rooms where the beds are already turned down for the night. They want to be let in. Their signals echo down the deep hollow street, lascivious and private and sad. Because of the whistling, I do not care to stay here in the evenings. It reminds me that I am in a foreign city, alone, far from home. Sometimes I determine not to listen to it, pick up a book, try to read. But soon a call is sure to sound, so piercing, so insistent, so despairingly human, that at last I have to get up and peep through the slats of the Venetian blind to make quite sure that it is not — as I know very well it could not possibly be — for me.