The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  “I should have thought it would be more accurate to say you knew their throats and ears.”

  Perhaps my German wasn’t quite equal to rendering the sense of this last remark. At all events, the doctor ignored it completely. “I know this type of boy very well,” he repeated. “It is a bad degenerate type. You cannot make anything out of these boys. Their tonsils are almost invariably diseased.”

  There are perpetual little rows going on between Peter and Otto, yet I cannot say that I find living with them actually unpleasant. Just now, I am very much taken up with my new novel. Thinking about it, I often go out for long walks, alone. Indeed, I find myself making more and more frequent excuses to leave them to themselves; and this is selfish, because, when I am with them, I can often choke off the beginnings of a quarrel by changing the subject or making a joke. Peter, I know, resents my desertions. “You’re quite an ascetic,” he said maliciously the other day, “always withdrawing for your contemplations.” Once, when I was sitting in a cafe near the pier, listening to the band, Peter and Otto came past. “So this is where you’ve been hiding!” Peter exclaimed. I saw that, for the moment, he really disliked me.

  One evening, we were all walking up the main street, which was crowded with summer visitors. Otto said to Peter, with his most spiteful grin: “Why must you always look in the same direction as I do?” This was surprisingly acute, for, whenever Otto turned his head to stare at a girl, Peter’s eyes mechanically followed his glance with instinctive jealousy. We passed the photographer’s window, in which, every day, the latest groups snapped by the beach camera-men are displayed. Otto paused to examine one of the new pictures with great attention, as though its subject were particularly attractive. I saw Peter’s lips contract. He was struggling with himself, but he couldn’t resist his own jealous curiosity — he stopped too. The photograph was of a fat old man with a long beard, waving a Berlin flag. Otto, seeing that his trap had been successful, laughed maliciously.

  Invariably, after supper, Otto goes dancing at the Kurhaus or the café by the lake. He no longer bothers to ask Peter’s permission to do this; he has established the right to have his evenings to himself. Peter and I generally go out too, into the village. We lean over the rail of the pier for a long time without speaking, staring down at the cheap jewellery of the Kurhaus lights reflected in the black water, each busy with his own thoughts. Sometimes we go into the Bavarian café and Peter gets steadily drunk — his stern, Puritan mouth contracting slightly with distaste as he raises the glass to his lips. I say nothing. There is too much to say. Peter, I know, wants me to make some provocative remark about Otto which will give him the exquisite relief of losing his temper. I don’t, and drink — keeping up a desultory conversation about books and concerts and plays. Later, when we are returning home, Peter’s footsteps will gradually quicken until, as we enter the house, he leaves me and runs upstairs to his bedroom. Often we don’t get back till half past twelve or a quarter to one, but it is very seldom that we find Otto already there.

  Down by the railway station, there is a holiday home for children from the Hamburg slums. Otto has got to know one of the teachers from this home, and they go out dancing together nearly every evening. Sometimes the girl, with her little troop of children, comes marching past the house. The children glance up at the windows and, if Otto happens to be looking out, indulge in precocious jokes. They nudge and pluck at their young teacher’s arm to persuade her to look up, too.

  On these occasions, the girl smiles coyly and shoots one glance at Otto from under her eyelashes, while Peter, watching behind the curtains, mutters through clenched teeth: “Bitch . . . bitch . . . bitch . . .” This persecution annoys him more than the actual friendship itself. We always seem to be running across the children when we are out walking in the woods. The children sing as they march — patriotic songs about the Homeland — in voices as shrill as birds. From far off, we hear them approaching, and have to turn hastily in the opposite direction. It is, as Peter says, like Captain Hook and the Crocodile.

  Peter has made a scene, and Otto has told his friend that she musn’t bring her troop past the house any more. But now they have begun bathing on our beach, not very far from the fort. The first morning this happened, Otto’s glance kept turning in their direction. Peter was aware of this, of course, and remained plunged in gloomy silence.

  “What’s the matter with you today, Peter?” said Otto. “Why are you so horrid to me?”

  “Horrid to you?” Peter laughed savagely.

  “Oh, very well then.” Otto jumped up. “I see you don’t want me here.” And, bounding over the rampart of our fort, he began to run along the beach towards the teacher and her children, very gracefully, displaying his figure to the best possible advantage.

  Yesterday evening there was a gala dance at the Kurhaus. In a mood of unusual generosity, Otto had promised Peter not to be later than a quarter to one, so Peter sat up with a book to wait for him. I didn’t feel tired, and wanted to finish a chapter, so suggested that he should come into my room and wait there.

  I worked. Peter read. The hours went slowly by. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was a quarter past two. Peter had dozed off in his chair. Just as I was wondering whether I should wake him, I heard Otto coming up the stairs. His footsteps sounded drunk. Finding no one in his room, he banged my door open. Peter sat up with a start.

  Otto lolled grinning against the doorpost. He made me a half-tipsy salute. “Have you been reading all this time?” he asked Peter.

  “Yes,” said Peter, very self-controlled.

  “Why?” Otto smiled fatuously.

  “Because I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?”

  “You know quite well,” said Peter between his teeth.

  Otto yawned in his most offensive manner. “I don’t know and I don’t care . . . Don’t make such a fuss.”

  Peter rose to his feet. “God, you little swine!” he said, smacking Otto’s face hard with the flat of his hand. Otto didn’t attempt to defend himself. He gave Peter an extraordinarily vindictive look out of his bright little eyes. “Good!” He spoke rather thickly. “Tomorrow I shall go back to Berlin.” He turned unsteadily on his heel.

  “Otto, come here,” said Peter. I saw that, in another moment, he would burst into tears of rage. He followed Otto out on to the landing. “Come here,” he said again, in a sharp tone of command.

  “Oh, leave me alone,” said Otto, “I’m sick of you. I want to sleep now. Tomorrow I’m going back to Berlin.”

  This morning, however, peace has been restored — at a price. Otto’s repentance has taken the form of a sentimental outburst over his family: “Here I’ve been enjoying myself and never thinking of them . . . Poor mother has to work like a dog, and her lungs are so bad . . . Let’s send her some money, shall we, Peter? Let’s send her fifty marks . . .” Otto’s generosity reminded him of his own needs. In addition to the money for Frau Nowak, Peter has been talked into ordering Otto a new suit, which will cost a hundred and eighty, as well as a pair of shoes, a dressing-gown, and a hat.

  In return for this outlay, Otto has volunteered to break off his relations with the teacher. (We now discover that, in any case, she is leaving the island tomorrow.) After supper, she appeared, walking up and down outside the house.

  “Just let her wait till she’s tired,” said Otto. “I’m not going down to her.”

  Presently the girl, made bold by impatience, began to whistle. This sent Otto into a frenzy of glee. Throwing open the window, he danced up and down, waving his arms and making hideous faces at the teacher who, for her part, seemed struck dumb with amazement at this extraordinary exhibition.

  “Get away from here!” Otto yelled. “Get out!”

  The girl turned, and walked slowly away, a rather pathetic figure, into the gathering darkness.

  “I think you might have said goodbye to her,” said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now that he saw his e
nemy routed.

  But Otto wouldn’t hear of it.

  “What’s the use of all those rotten girls, anyhow? Every night they came pestering me to dance with them . . . And you know how I am, Peter — I’m so easily persuaded . . . Of course, it was horrid of me to leave you alone, but what could I do? It was all their fault, really . . .”

  Our life has now entered upon a new phase. Otto’s resolutions were short-lived. Peter and I are alone together most of the day. The teacher has left, and with her, Otto’s last inducement to bathe with us from the fort. He now goes off, every morning, to the bathing-beach by the pier, to flirt and play ball with his dancing-partners of the evening. The little doctor has also disappeared, and Peter and I are free to bathe and loll in the sun as unathletically as we wish.

  After supper, the ritual of Otto’s preparations for the dance begins. Sitting in my bedroom, I hear Peter’s footsteps cross the landing, light and springy with relief — for now comes the only time of the day when Peter feels himself altogether excused from taking any interest in Otto’s activities. When he taps on my door, I shut my book at once. I have been out already to the village to buy half-a-pound of peppermint creams. Peter says goodbye to Otto, with a vain lingering hope that, perhaps tonight, he will, after all, be punctual: “Till half past twelve, then . . .”

  “Till one,” Otto bargains.

  “All right,” Peter concedes. “Till one. But don’t be late.”

  “No, Peter, I won’t be late.”

  As we open the garden gate and cross the road into the wood, Otto waves to us from the balcony. I have to be careful to hide the peppermint creams under my coat, in case he should see them. Laughing guiltily, munching the peppermints, we take the woodland path to Baabe. We always spend our evenings in Baabe, nowadays. We like it better than our own village. Its single sandy street of low-roofed houses among the pine-trees has a romantic, colonial air; it is like a ramshackle, lost settlement somewhere in the backwoods, where people come to look for a nonexistent gold mine and remain, stranded, for the rest of their lives.

  In the little restaurant, we eat strawberries and cream, and talk to the young waiter. The waiter hates Germany and longs to go to America. “Hier ist nichts los.” During the season, he is allowed no free time at all, and in the winter he earns nothing. Most of the Baabe boys are Nazis. Two of them come into the restaurant sometimes and engage us in good-humoured political arguments. They tell us about their field-exercises and military games.

  “You’re preparing for war,” says Peter indignantly. On these occasions — although he has really not the slightest interest in politics — he gets quite heated.

  “Excuse me,” one of the boys contradicts, “that’s quite wrong. The Führer does not want war. Our programme stands for peace, with honour. All the same . . .” he adds wistfully, his face lighting up, “war can be fine, you know! Think of the ancient Greeks!”

  “The ancient Greeks,” I object, “didn’t use poison gas.”

  The boys are rather scornful at this quibble. One of them answers loftily, “That’s a purely technical question.”

  At half past ten we go down, with most of the other inhabitants, to the railway station, to watch the arrival of the last train. It is generally empty. It goes clanging away through the dark woods, sounding its harsh bell. At last it is late enough to start home; this time, we take the road. Across the meadows, you can see the illuminated entrance of the café by the lake, where Otto goes to dance.

  “The lights of Hell are shining brightly this evening,” Peter is fond of remarking.

  Peter’s jealousy has turned into insomnia. He has begun taking sleeping-tablets, but admits that they seldom have any effect. They merely make him feel drowsy next morning, after breakfast. He often goes to sleep for an hour or two in our fort, on the shore.

  This morning the weather was cool and dull, the sea oyster-grey. Peter and I hired a boat, rowed out beyond the pier, then let ourselves drift, gently, away from the land. Peter lit a cigarette. He said abruptly:

  “I wonder how much longer this will go on . . .”

  “As long as you let it, I suppose.”

  “Yes . . . We seem to have got into a pretty static condition, don’t we? I suppose there’s no particular reason why Otto and I should ever stop behaving to each other as we do at present . . .” He paused, added: “Unless, of course, I stop giving him money.”

  “What do you think would happen then?”

  Peter paddled idly in the water with his fingers. “He’d leave me.”

  The boat drifted on for several minutes. I asked: “You don’t think he cares for you, at all?”

  “At the beginning he did, perhaps . . . Not now. There’s nothing between us now but my cash.”

  “Do you still care for him?”

  “No . . . I don’t know. Perhaps . . . I still hate him, sometimes — if that’s a sign of caring.”

  “It might be.”

  There was a long pause. Peter dried his fingers on his handkerchief. His mouth twitched nervously.

  “Well,” he said at last, “what do you advise me to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Peter’s mouth gave another twitch.

  “I suppose, really, I want to leave him.”

  “Then you’d better leave him.”

  “At once?”

  “The sooner the better. Give him a nice present and send him back to Berlin this afternoon.” Peter shook his head, smiled sadly:

  “I can’t.”

  There was another long pause. Then Peter said: “I’m sorry, Christopher . . . You’re absolutely right, I know. If I were in your place, I’d say the same thing . . . But I can’t. Things have got to go on as they are — until something happens. They can’t last much longer, anyhow . . . Oh, I know I’m very weak . . .”

  “You needn’t apologize to me,” I smiled, to conceal a slight feeling of irritation: “I’m not one of your analysts!”

  I picked up the oars and began to row back towards the shore. As we reached the pier, Peter said:

  “It seems funny to think of now — when I first met Otto, I thought we should live together for the rest of our lives.”

  “Oh, my God!” The vision of a life with Otto opened before me, like a comic inferno. I laughed out loud. Peter laughed, too, wedging his locked hands between his knees. His face turned from pink to red, from red to purple. His veins bulged. We were still laughing when we got out of the boat.

  •

  In the garden the landlord was waiting for us. “What a pity!” he exclaimed. “The gentlemen are too late!” He pointed over the meadows, in the direction of the lake. We could see the smoke rising above the line of poplars, as the little train drew out of the station: “Your friend was obliged to leave for Berlin, suddenly, on urgent business. I hoped the gentlemen might have been in time to see him off. What a pity!”

  This time, both Peter and I ran upstairs. Peter’s bedroom was in a terrible mess — all the drawers and cupboards were open. Propped up on the middle of the table was a note, in Otto’s cramped, scrawling hand:

  Dear Peter. Please forgive me I couldn’t stand it any longer here so I am going home.

  Love from Otto.

  Don’t be angry.

  (Otto had written it, I noticed, on a fly-leaf torn out of one of Peter’s psychology books: Beyond the Pleasure-Principle.)

  “Well . . .!” Peter’s mouth began to twitch. I glanced at him nervously, expecting a violent outburst, but he seemed fairly calm. After a moment, he walked over to the cupboards and began looking through the drawers. “He hasn’t taken much,” he announced, at the end of his search. “Only a couple of my ties, three shirts — lucky my shoes don’t fit him! — and, let’s see . . . about two hundred marks . . .” Peter started to laugh, rather hysterically: “Very moderate, on the whole!”

  “Do you think he decided to leave quite suddenly?” I asked, for the sake of saying something.

  “Probably he
did. That would be just like him . . . Now I come to think of it, I told him we were going out in that boat, this morning — and he asked me if we should be away for long . . .”

  “I see . . .”

  I sat down on Peter’s bed — thinking, oddly enough, that Otto has at last done something which I rather respect.

  Peter’s hysterical high spirits kept him going for the rest of the morning; at lunch he turned gloomy, and wouldn’t say a word.

  “Now I must go and pack,” he told me when we had finished.

  “You’re off, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “To Berlin?”

  Peter smiled. “No, Christopher. Don’t be alarmed! Only to England . . .”

  “Oh . . .”

  “There’s a train which’ll get me to Hamburg late tonight. I shall probably go straight on . . . I feel I’ve got to keep travelling until I’m clear of this bloody country . . .”

  There was nothing to say. I helped him pack, in silence. As Peter put his shaving-mirror into the bag, he asked: “Do you remember how Otto broke this, standing on his head?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  When we had finished, Peter went out on to the balcony of his room: “There’ll be plenty of whistling outside here, tonight,” he said.

  I smiled: “I shall have to go down and console them.”

  Peter laughed: “Yes. You will!”

  I went with him to the station. Luckily, the engine-driver was in a hurry. The train only waited a couple of minutes.

  “What shall you do when you get to London?” I asked.

  Peter’s mouth curved down at the corners; he gave me a kind of inverted grin: “Look round for another analyst, I suppose.”

  “Well, mind you beat down his prices a bit!”

  “I will.”

  As the train moved out, he waved his hand: “Well, goodbye, Christopher. Thank you for all your moral support!”

  Peter never suggested that I should write to him, or visit him at home. I suppose he wants to forget this place, and everybody concerned with it. I can hardly blame him.