The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  The other evening, I went to call on him during business hours.

  It was still very early, about nine o’clock, when I arrived at the Troika. The place was much larger and grander than I had expected. A commissionaire braided like an archduke regarded my hatless head with suspicion until I spoke to him in English. A smart cloak-room girl insisted on taking my overcoat, which hides the worst stains on my baggy flannel trousers. A page-boy, seated on the counter, didn’t rise to open the inner door. Bobby, to my relief, was at his place behind a blue and silver bar. I made towards him as towards an old friend. He greeted me most amiably:

  “Good evening, Mr Isherwood. Very glad to see you here.”

  I ordered a beer and settled myself on a stool in the corner. With my back to the wall, I could survey the whole room.

  “How’s business?” I asked.

  Bobby’s care-worn, powdered, night-dweller’s face became grave. He inclined his head towards me, over the bar, with confidential flattering seriousness:

  “Not much good, Mr Isherwood. The kind of public we have nowadays . . . you wouldn’t believe it! Why, a year ago, we’d have turned them away at the door. They order a beer and think they’ve got the right to sit here the whole evening.”

  Bobby spoke with extreme bitterness. I began to feel uncomfortable:

  “What’ll you drink?” I asked, guiltily gulping down my beer; and added, lest there should be any misunderstanding: “I’d like a whisky and soda.”

  Bobby said he’d have one, too.

  The room was nearly empty. I looked the few guests over, trying to see them through Bobby’s disillusioned eyes. There were three attractive well-dressed girls sitting at the bar: the one nearest to me was particularly elegant, she had quite a cosmopolitan air. But during a lull in the conversation, I caught fragments of her talk with the other barman. She spoke broad Berlin dialect. She was tired and bored; her mouth dropped. A young man approached her and joined in the discussion; a handsome broad-shouldered boy in a well-cut dinner-jacket, who might well have been an English public-school prefect on holiday.

  “Nee, Nee,” I heard him say. “Bei mir nicht!” He grinned and made a curt, brutal gesture of the streets.

  Over in the corner sat a page-boy, talking to the little old lavatory attendant in his white jacket. The boy said something, laughed and broke off suddenly into a huge yawn. The three musicians on their platform were chatting, evidently unwilling to begin until they had an audience worth playing to. At one of the tables, I thought I saw a genuine guest, a stout man with a moustache. After a moment, however, I caught his eye, he made a little bow and I knew that he must be the manager.

  The door opened. Two men and two women came in. The women were elderly, had thick legs, cropped hair, and costly evening-gowns. The men were lethargic, pale, probably Dutch. Here, unmistakably, was Money. In an instant, the Troika was transformed. The manager, the cigarette-boy, and the lavatory attendant rose simultaneously to their feet. The lavatory attendant disappeared. The manager said something in a furious undertone to the cigarette-boy, who also disappeared. He then advanced, bowing and smiling, to the guests’ table and shook hands with the two men. The cigarette-boy reappeared with his tray, followed by a waiter who hurried forward with the wine-list. Meanwhile, the three-man orchestra struck briskly. The girls at the bar turned on their stools smiling a not-too-direct invitation. The gigolos advanced to them as if to complete strangers, bowed formally, and asked, in cultured tones, for the pleasure of a dance. The page-boy, spruce, discreetly grinning, swaying from the waist like a flower, crossed the room with his tray of cigarettes: “Zigarren! Zigaretten!” His voice was mocking, clear-pitched like an actor’s. And in the same tone, yet more loudly, mockingly, joyfully so that we could all hear, the waiter ordered from Bobby: “Heidsieck Monopol!”

  With absurd, solicitous gravity, the dancers performed their intricate evolutions, showing in their every movement a consciousness of the part they were playing. And the saxophonist, letting his instrument swing loose from the ribbon around his neck, advanced to the edge of the platform with his little megaphone:

  Sie werden lachen,

  Ich lieb’

  Meine eigene Frau . . .

  He sang with a knowing leer, including us all in the conspiracy, charging his voice with innuendo, rolling his eyes in an epileptic pantomime of extreme joy. Bobby, suave, sleek, five years younger, handled the bottle. And meanwhile the two flaccid gentlemen chatted to each other, probably about business, without a glance at the night-life they had called into being; while their women sat silent, looking neglected, puzzled, uncomfortable, and very bored.

  Frl. Hippi Bernstein, my first pupil, lives in the Grünewald, in a house built almost entirely of glass. Most of the richest Berlin families inhabit the Grünewald. It is difficult to understand why. Their villas, in all known styles of expensive ugliness, ranging from the eccentric-rococo folly to the cubist flat-roofed steel-and-glass box, are crowded together in this dank, dreary pinewood. Few of them can afford large gardens, for the ground is fabulously dear: their only view is of their neighbour’s backyard, each one protected by a wire fence and a savage dog. Terror of burglary and revolution has reduced these miserable people to a state of siege. They have neither privacy nor sunshine. The district is really a millionaire’s slum.

  When I rang the bell at the garden gate, a young footman came out with a key from the house, followed by a large growling Alsatian.

  “He won’t bite you while I’m here,” the footman reassured me, grinning.

  The hall of the Bernsteins’ house has metal-studded doors and a steamer clock fastened to the wall with bolt-heads. There are modernist lamps, designed to look like pressure-guages, thermometers, and switchboard dials. But the furniture doesn’t match the house and its fittings. The place is like a power station which the engineers have tried to make comfortable with chairs and tables from an old-fashioned, highly respectable boarding-house. On the austere metal walls hang highly varnished nineteenth-century landscapes in massive gold frames. Herr Bernstein probably ordered the villa from a popular avant-garde architect in a moment of recklessness; was horrified at the result and tried to cover it up as much as possible with the family belongings.

  Frl. Hippi is a fat pretty girl, about nineteen years old, with glossy chestnut hair, good teeth, and big cow-eyes. She has a lazy, jolly, self-indulgent laugh and a well-formed bust. She speaks schoolgirl English with a slight American accent, quite nicely, to her own complete satisfaction. She has clearly no intention of doing any work. When I tried weakly to suggest a plan for our lessons, she kept interrupting to offer me chocolates, coffee, cigarettes: “Excuse me a minute, there isn’t some fruit,” she smiled, picking up the receiver of the house-telephone: “Anna, please bring some oranges.”

  When the maid arrived with the oranges, I was forced, despite my protests, to make a regular meal, with a plate, knife, and fork. This destroyed the last pretence of the teacher-pupil relationship. I felt like a policeman being given a meal in the kitchen by an attractive cook. Frl. Hippi sat watching me eat, with her good-natured, lazy smile:

  “Tell me, please, why you come to Germany?”

  She is inquisitive about me, but only like a cow idly poking with its head between the bars of a gate. She doesn’t particularly want the gate to open. I said that I found Germany very interesting:

  “The political and economic situation,” I improvised authoritatively, in my schoolmaster voice, “is more interesting in Germany than in any other European country.

  “Except Russia, of course,” I added experimentally.

  But Frl. Hippi didn’t react. She just blandly smiled:

  “I think it shall be dull for you here? You do not have many friends in Berlin, no?”

  This seemed to please and amuse her:

  “You don’t know some nice girls?”

  Here the buzzer of the house-telephone sounded. Lazily smiling, she picked up the receiver, but appeared not to li
sten to the tiny voice which issued from it. I could hear quite distinctly the real voice of Frau Bernstein, Hippi’s mother, speaking from the next room.

  “Have you left your red book in here?” repeated Frl. Hippi mockingly and smiling at me as though this were a joke which I must share: “No, I don’t see it. It must be down in the study. Ring up Daddy. Yes, he’s working there.” In dumb show, she offered me another orange. I shook my head politely. We both smiled: “Mummy, what have we got for lunch today? Yes? Really? Splendid!”

  She hung up the receiver and returned to her cross-

  examination:

  “Do you know no nice girls?”

  “Any nice girls . . .” I corrected evasively. But Frl. Hippi merely smiled, waiting for the answer to her question.

  “Yes. One,” I had at length to add, thinking of Frl. Kost.

  “Only one?” She raised her eyebrows in comic surprise. “And tell me, please, do you find German girls different than English girls?”

  I blushed. “Do you find German girls . . .” I began to correct her and stopped, realizing just in time that I wasn’t absolutely sure whether one says different from or different to.

  “Do you find German girls different than English girls?” she repeated, with smiling persistence.

  I blushed deeper than ever. “Yes. Very different,” I said boldly.

  “How are they different?”

  Mercifully the telephone buzzed again. This was somebody from the kitchen, to say that lunch would be an hour earlier than usual. Herr Bernstein was going to the city that afternoon.

  “I am so sorry,” said Frl. Hippi, rising, “but for today we must finish. And we shall see us again on Friday? Then goodbye, Mr Isherwood. And I thank you very much.”

  She fished in her bag and handed me an envelope which I stuck awkwardly into my pocket and tore open only when I was out of sight of the Bernsteins’ house. It contained a five-mark piece. I threw it into the air, missed it, found it after five minutes’ hunt, buried in sand, and ran all the way to the tramstop, singing and kicking stones about the road. I felt extraordinarily guilty and elated, as though I’d successfully committed a small theft.

  It is a mere waste of time even pretending to teach Frl. Hippi anything. If she doesn’t know a word, she says it in German. If I correct her, she repeats it in German. I am glad, of course, that she’s so lazy and only afraid that Frau Bernstein may discover how little progress her daughter is making. But this is very unlikely. Most rich people, once they have decided to trust you at all, can be imposed upon to almost any extent. The only real problem for the private tutor is to get inside the front door.

  As for Hippi, she seems to enjoy my visits. From something she said the other day, I gather she boasts to her school friends that she has got a genuine English teacher. We understand each other very well. I am bribed with fruit not to be tiresome about the English language: she, for her part, tells her parents that I am the best teacher she ever had. We gossip in German about the things which interest her. And every three or four minutes, we are interrupted while she plays her part in the family game of exchanging entirely unimportant messages over the house-telephone.

  Hippi never worries about the future. Like everyone else in Berlin, she refers continually to the political situation, but only briefly, with a conventional melancholy, as when one speaks of religion. It is quite unreal to her. She means to go to the university, travel about, have a jolly good time and eventually, of course, marry. She already has a great many boy friends. We spend a lot of time talking about them. One has a wonderful car. Another has an aeroplane. Another has fought seven duels. Another has discovered a knack of putting out street-lamps by giving them a smart kick in a certain spot. One night, on the way back from a dance, Hippi and he put out all the street-lamps in the neighbourhood.

  Today, lunch was early at the Bernsteins’; so I was invited to it, instead of giving my “lesson.” The whole family was present: Frau Bernstein, stout and placid; Herr Bernstein, small and shaky and sly. There was also a younger sister, a schoolgirl of twelve, very fat. She ate and ate, quite unmoved by Hippi’s jokes and warnings that she’d burst. They all seem very fond of each other, in their cosy, stuffy way. There was a little domestic argument, because Herr Bernstein didn’t want his wife to go shopping in the car that afternoon. During the last few days, there has been a lot of Nazi rioting in the city.

  “You can go in the tram,” said Herr Bernstein. “I will not have them throwing stones at my beautiful car.”

  “And suppose they throw stones at me?” asked Frau Bernstein good-humouredly.

  “Ach, what does that matter? If they throw stones at you, I will buy you a sticking-plaster for your head. It will cost me only five groschen. But if they throw stones at my car, it will cost me perhaps five hundred marks.”

  And so the matter was settled. Herr Bernstein then turned his attention to me:

  “You can’t complain that we treat you badly here, young man, eh? Not only do we give you a nice dinner, but we pay you for eating it!”

  I saw from Hippi’s expression that this was going a bit far, even for the Bernstein sense of humour; so I laughed and said:

  “Will you pay me a mark extra for every helping I eat?”

  This amused Herr Bernstein very much: but he was careful to show that he knew I hadn’t meant it seriously.

  During the last week, our household has been plunged into a terrific row.

  It began when Frl. Kost came to Frl. Schroeder and announced that fifty marks had been stolen from her room. She was very much upset; especially, she explained, as this was the money she’d put aside towards the rent and the telephone bill. The fifty-mark note had been lying in the drawer of the cupboard, just inside the door of Frl. Kost’s room.

  Frl. Schroeder’s immediate suggestion was, not unnaturally, that the money had been stolen by one of Frl. Kost’s customers. Frl. Kost said that this was quite impossible, as none of them had visited her during the last three days. Moreover, she added, her friends were all absolutely above suspicion. They were well-to-do gentlemen, to whom a miserable fifty-mark note was a mere bagatelle. This annoyed Frl. Schroeder very much indeed:

  “I suppose she’s trying to make out that one of us did it! Of all the cheek! Why, Herr Issyvoo, will you believe it, I could have chopped her into little pieces!”

  “Yes, Frl. Schroeder. I’m sure you could.”

  Frl. Schroeder then developed the theory that the money hadn’t been stolen at all and that this was just a trick of Frl. Kost’s to avoid paying the rent. She hinted so much to Frl. Kost, who was furious. Frl. Kost said that, in any case, she’d raise the money in a few days: which she already has. She also gave notice to leave her room at the end of the month.

  Meanwhile, I have discovered, quite by accident, that Frl. Kost has been having an affair with Bobby. As I came in, one evening, I happened to notice that there was no light in Frl. Kost’s room. You can always see this, because there is a frosted glass pane in her door to light the hall of the flat. Later, as I lay in bed reading, I heard Frl. Kost’s door open and Bobby’s voice, laughing and whispering. After much creaking of boards and muffled laughter, Bobby tip-toed out of the flat, shutting the door as quietly as possible behind him. A moment later, he re-entered with a great deal of noise and went straight through into the living-room, where I heard him wishing Frl. Schroeder good night.

  If Frl. Schroeder doesn’t actually know of this, she at least suspects it. This explains her fury against Frl. Kost: for the truth is, she is terribly jealous. The most grotesque and embarrassing incidents have been taking place. One morning, when I wanted to visit the bathroom, Frl. Kost was using it already. Frl. Schroeder rushed to the door before I could stop her and ordered Frl. Kost to come out at once: and when Frl. Kost naturally didn’t obey, Frl. Schroeder began, despite my protests, hammering on the door with her fists. “Come out of my bathroom!” she screamed. “Come out this minute, or I’ll call the police to fetch you o
ut!”

  After this she burst into tears. The crying brought on palpitations. Bobby had to carry her to the sofa, gasping and sobbing. While we were all standing round, rather helpless, Frl. Mayr appeared in the doorway with a face like a hangman and said, in a terrible voice, to Frl. Kost: “Think yourself lucky, my girl, if you haven’t murdered her!” She then took complete charge of the situation, ordered us all out of the room and sent me down to the grocer’s for a bottle of Baldrian Drops. When I returned, she was seated beside the sofa, stroking Frl. Schroeder’s hand and murmuring, in her most tragic tones: “Lina, my poor little child . . . what have they done to you?”

  Sally Bowles

  One afternoon, early in October, I was invited to black coffee at Fritz Wendel’s flat, Fritz always invited you to “black coffee,” with emphasis on the black. He was very proud of his coffee. People used to say that it was the strongest in Berlin.

  Fritz himself was dressed in his usual coffee-party costume — a very thick white yachting sweater and very light blue flannel trousers. He greeted me with his full-lipped, luscious smile:

  “ ’lo, Chris!”

  “Hullo, Fritz. How are you?”

  “Fine.” He bent over the coffee-machine, his sleek black hair unplastering itself from his scalp and falling in richly scented locks over his eyes. “This darn thing doesn’t go,” he added.

  “How’s business?” I asked.

  “Lousy and terrible.” Fritz grinned richly. “Or I pull off a new deal in the next month or I go as a gigolo.”

  “Either . . . or . . .” I corrected, from force of professional habit.

  “I’m speaking a lousy English just now,” drawled Fritz, with great self-satisfaction. “Sally says maybe she’ll give me a few lessons.”