The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  •

  It was only this evening, turning over the pages of a book I have been reading, that I found another note from Otto, slipped between the leaves.

  Please dear Christoph don’t you be angry with me too because you aren’t an idiot like Peter. When you are back in Berlin I shall come and see you because I know where you live; I saw the address on one of your letters and we can have a nice talk.

  Your loving friend,

  Otto.

  I thought, somehow, that he wouldn’t be got rid of quite so easily.

  Actually, I am leaving for Berlin in a day or two, now. I thought I should stay on till the end of August, and perhaps finish my novel, but suddenly, the place seems so lonely. I miss Peter and Otto, and their daily quarrels, far more than I should have expected. And now Otto’s dancing-partners have stopped lingering sadly in the twilight, under my window.

  The Nowaks

  The entrance to the Wassertorstrasse was a big stone archway, a bit of old Berlin, daubed with hammers and sickles and Nazi crosses and plastered with tattered bills which advertised auctions or crimes. It was a deep, shabby cobbled street, littered with sprawling children in tears. Youths in woollen sweaters circled waveringly across it on racing bikes and whooped at girls passing with milk-jugs. The pavement was chalk-marked for the hopping game called Heaven and Earth. At the end of it, like a tall, dangerously sharp, red instrument, stood a church.

  Frau Nowak herself opened the door to me. She looked far iller than when I had seen her last, with big blue rings under her eyes. She was wearing the same hat and mangy old black coat. At first, she didn’t recognize me.

  “Good afternoon, Frau Nowak.”

  Her face changed slowly from po king suspicion to a brilliant, timid, almost girlish smile of welcome:

  “Why, if it isn’t Herr Christoph! Come in, Herr Christoph! Come in and sit down.”

  “I’m afraid you were just going out, weren’t you?”

  “No, no, Herr Christoph — I’ve just come in; just this minute.” She was wiping her hands hastily on her coat before shaking mine: “This is one of my charring days. I don’t get finished till half past two, and it makes the dinner so late.”

  She stood aside for me to enter. I pushed open the door and, in doing so, jarred the handle of the frying-pan on the stove which stood just behind it. In the tiny kitchen there was barely room for the two of us together. A stifling smell of potatoes fried in cheap margarine filled the flat.

  “Come and sit down, Herr Christoph,” she repeated, hastily doing the honours. “I’m afraid it’s terribly untidy. You must excuse that. I have to go out so early and my Grete’s such a lazy great lump, though she’s turned twelve. There’s no getting her to do anything, if you don’t stand over her all the time.”

  The living-room had a sloping ceiling stained with old patches of damp. It contained a big table, six chairs, a sideboard and two large double beds. The place was so full of furniture that you had to squeeze your way into it sideways.

  “Grete!” cried Frau Nowak. “Where are you? Come here this minute!”

  “She’s gone out,” came Otto’s voice from the inner room.

  “Otto! Come and see who’s here!”

  “Can’t be bothered. I’m busy mending the gramophone.”

  “Busy, indeed! You! You good-for-nothing! That’s a nice way to speak to your mother! Come out of that room, do you hear me?”

  She had flown into a rage instantly, automatically, with astonishing violence. Her face became all nose: thin, bitter and inflamed. Her whole body trembled.

  “It doesn’t really matter, Frau Nowak,” I said. “Let him come out when he wants to. He’ll get all the bigger surprise.”

  “A nice son I’ve got! Speaking to me like that.”

  She had pulled off her hat and was unpacking greasy parcels from a string bag: “Dear me,” she fussed. “I wonder where that child’s got to? Always down in the street, she is. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a hundred times. Children have no consideration.”

  “How has your lung been keeping, Frau Nowak?”

  She sighed: “Sometimes it seems to me it’s worse than ever. I get such a burning, just here. And when I finish work it’s as if I was too tired to eat. I come over so bilious . . . I don’t think the doctor’s satisfied either. He talks about sending me to a sanatorium later in the winter. I was there before, you know. But there’s always so many waiting to go . . . Then, the flat’s so damp at this time of year. You see those marks on the ceiling? There’s days we have to put a foot-bath under them to catch the drips. Of course, they’ve no right to let these attics as dwellings at all, really. The inspector’s condemned them time and time again. But what are you to do? One must live somewhere. We applied for a transfer over a year ago and they keep promising they’ll see about it. But there’s a lot of others are worse off still, I dare say . . . My husband was reading out of the newspapers the other day about the English and their Pound. It keeps on falling, they say. I don’t understand such things, myself. I hope you haven’t lost any money, Herr Christoph?”

  “As a matter of fact, Frau Nowak, that’s partly why I came down to see you today. I’ve decided to go into a cheaper room and I was wondering if there was anywhere round here you could recommend me?”

  “Oh dear, Herr Christoph, I am sorry!”

  She was quite genuinely shocked: “But you can’t live in this part of the town — a gentleman like you! Oh, no. I’m afraid it wouldn’t suit you at all.”

  “I’m not so particular as you think, perhaps. I just want a quiet, clean room for about twenty marks a month. It doesn’t matter how small it is. I’m out most of the day.”

  She shook her head doubtfully: “Well, Herr Christoph, I shall have to see if I can’t think of something . . .”

  “Isn’t dinner ready yet, mother?” asked Otto, appearing in shirt-sleeves at the doorway of the inner room: “I’m nearly starving!”

  “How do you expect it to be ready when I have to spend the whole morning slaving for you, you great lump of laziness!” cried Frau Nowak, shrilly, at the top of her voice. Then, transposing without the least pause into her ingratiating social tone, she added: “Don’t you see who’s here?”

  “Why . . . it’s Christoph!” Otto, as usual, had begun acting at once. His face was slowly illuminated by a sunrise of extreme joy. His cheeks dimpled with smiles. He sprang forward, throwing one arm around my neck, wringing my hand: “Christoph, you old soul, where have you been hiding all this time?” His voice became languishing, reproachful: “We’ve missed you so much! Why have you never come to see us?”

  “Herr Christoph is a very busy gentleman,” put in Frau Nowak reprovingly: “He’s got no time to waste running after a do-nothing like you.”

  Otto grinned, winked at me: then he turned reproachfully upon Frau Nowak:

  “Mother, what are you thinking of? Are you going to let Christoph sit there without so much as a cup of coffee? He must be thirsty, after climbing all these stairs!”

  “What you mean is, Otto, that you’re thirsty, don’t you? No, thank you, Frau Nowak, I won’t have anything — really. And I won’t keep you from your cooking any longer . . . Look here, Otto, will you come out with me now and help me find a room? I’ve just been telling your mother that I’m coming to live in this neighbourhood . . . You shall have your cup of coffee with me outside.”

  “What, Christoph — you’re going to live here, in Hallesches Tor!” Otto began dancing with excitement: “Oh, mother, won’t that be grand! Oh, I am so pleased!”

  “You may just as well go out and have a look around with Herr Christoph, now,” said Frau Nowak. “Dinner won’t be ready for at least an hour, yet. You’re only in my way here. Not you, Herr Christoph, of course. You’ll come back and have something to eat with us, won’t you?”

  “Well, Frau Nowak, it’s very kind of you indeed, but I’m afraid I can’t today. I shall have to be getting back home.”

  “
Just give me a crust of bread before I go, mother,” begged Otto piteously. “I’m so empty that my head’s spinning round like a top.”

  “All right,” said Frau Nowak, cutting a slice of bread and half throwing it at him in her vexation, “but don’t blame me if there’s nothing in the house this evening when you want to make one of your sandwiches . . . Goodbye, Herr Christoph. It was very kind of you to come and see us. If you really decide to live near here, I hope you’ll look in often . . . though I doubt if you’ll find anything to your liking. It won’t be what you’ve been accustomed to . . .”

  As Otto was about to follow me out of the flat she called him back. I heard them arguing; then the door shut. I descended slowly the five flights of stairs to the courtyard. The bottom of the court was clammy and dark, although the sun was shining on a cloud, in the sky overhead. Broken buckets, wheels off prams and bits of bicycle tyre lay scattered about like things which have fallen down a well.

  It was a minute or two before Otto came clattering down the stairs to join me:

  “Mother didn’t like to ask you,” he told me, breathless. “She was afraid you’d be annoyed . . . But I said that I was sure you’d far rather be with us, where you can do just what you like and you know everything’s clean, than in a strange house full of bugs . . . Do say yes, Christoph, please! It’ll be such fun! You and I can sleep in the back room. You can have Lothar’s bed — he won’t mind. He can share the double-bed with Grete . . . And in the mornings you can stay in bed as long as ever you like. If you want, I’ll bring your breakfast . . . You will come, won’t you?”

  And so it was settled.

  My first evening as a lodger at the Nowaks’ was something of a ceremony. I arrived with my two suitcases soon after five o’clock, to find Frau Nowak already cooking the evening meal. Otto whispered to me that we were to have lung hash, as a special treat.

  “I’m afraid you won’t think very much of our food,” said Frau Nowak, “after what you’ve been used to. But we’ll do our best.” She was all smiles, bubbling over with excitement. I smiled and smiled, feeling awkward and in the way. At length, I clambered over the living-room furniture and sat down on my bed. There was no space to unpack in, and nowhere, apparently, to put my clothes. At the living-room table, Grete was playing with her cigarette-cards and transfers. She was a lumpish child of twelve years old, pretty in a sugary way, but round-shouldered and too fat. My presence made her very self-conscious. She wriggled, smirked and kept calling out, in an affected, sing-song, “grown-up” voice:

  “Mummy! Come and look at the pretty flowers!”

  “I’ve got no time for your pretty flowers,” exclaimed Frau Nowak at length, in great exasperation: “Here am I with a daughter the size of an elephant, having to slave all by myself, cooking the supper!”

  “Quite right, mother!” cried Otto, gleefully joining in. He turned upon Grete, righteously indignant: “Why don’t you help her, I should like to know? You’re fat enough. You sit around all day doing nothing. Get off that chair this instant, do you hear! And put those filthy cards away, or I’ll burn them!”

  He grabbed at the cards with one hand and gave Grete a slap across the face with the other. Grete, who obviously wasn’t hurt, at once set up a loud theatrical wail: “Oh, Otto, you’ve hurt me!” She covered her face with her hands and peeped at me between the fingers.

  “Will you leave that child alone!” cried Frau Nowak shrilly from the kitchen. “I should like to know who you are, to talk about laziness! And you, Grete, just you stop that howling — or I’ll tell Otto to hit you properly, so that you’ll have something to cry for. You two between you, you drive me distracted.”

  “But, mother!” Otto ran into the kitchen, took her round the waist and began kissing her: “Poor little Mummy, little Mutti, little Muttchen,” he crooned, in tones of the most mawkish solicitude. “You have to work so hard and Otto’s so horrid to you. But he doesn’t mean to be, you know — he’s just stupid . . . Shall I fetch the coal up for you tomorrow, Mummy? Would you like that?”

  “Let go of me, you great humbug!” cried Frau Nowak, laughing and struggling. “I don’t want any of your soft soap! Much you care for your poor old mother! Leave me to get on with my work in peace.”

  “Otto’s not a bad boy,” she continued to me, when he had let go of her at last, “but he’s such a scatterbrain. Quite the opposite of my Lothar — there’s a model son for you! He’s not too proud to do any job, whatever it is, and when he’s scraped a few groschen together, instead of spending them on himself he comes straight to me and says: ‘Here you are, mother. Just buy yourself a pair of warm house-shoes for the winter.’ ” Frau Nowak held out her hand to me with the gesture of giving money. Like Otto, she had the trick of acting every scene she described.

  “Oh, Lothar this, Lothar that,” Otto interrupted crossly: “it’s always Lothar. But tell me this, mother, which of us was it that gave you a twenty-mark note the other day? Lothar couldn’t earn twenty marks in a month of Sundays. Well, if that’s how you talk, you needn’t expect to get any more; not if you come to me on your knees.”

  “You wicked boy,” she was up in arms again in an instant, “have you no more shame than to speak of such things in front of Herr Christoph! Why, if he knew where that twenty marks came from — and plenty more besides — he’d disdain to stay in the same house with you another minute; and quite right, too! And the cheek of you — saying you gave me that money! You know very well that if your father hadn’t seen the envelope . . .”

  “That’s right!” shouted Otto, screwing up his face at her like a monkey and beginning to dance with excitement. “That’s just what I wanted! Admit to Christoph that you stole it! You’re a thief! You’re a thief!”

  “Otto, how dare you!” Quick as fury, Frau Nowak’s hand grabbed up the lid of the saucepan. I jumped back a pace to be out of range, tripped over a chair and sat down hard. Grete uttered an affected little shriek of joy and alarm. The door opened. It was Herr Nowak, come back from his work.

  He was a powerful, dumpy little man, with pointed moustache, cropped hair and bushy eyebrows. He took in the scene with a long grunt which was half a belch. He did not appear to understand what had been happening; or perhaps he merely did not care. Frau Nowak said nothing to enlighten him. She hung the saucepan-lid quietly on a hook. Grete jumped up from her chair and ran to him with outstretched arms: “Pappi! Pappi!”

  Herr Nowak smiled down at her, showing two or three nicotine-stained stumps of teeth. Bending, he picked her up, carefully and expertly, with a certain admiring curiosity, like a large valuable vase. By profession he was a furniture remover. Then he held out his hand — taking his time about it, gracious, not fussily eager to please:

  “Servus, Herr!”

  “Aren’t you glad that Herr Christoph’s come to live with us, Pappi?” chanted Grete, perched on her father’s shoulder, in her sugary sing-song tones. At this Herr Nowak, as if suddenly acquiring new energy, began shaking my hand again, much more warmly, and thumping me on the back:

  “Glad? Yes, of course I’m glad!” He nodded his head in vigorous approval. “Englisch man? Anglais, eh? Ha, ha. That’s right? Oh, yes, I talk French, you see. Forgotten most of it now. Learnt in the war. I was Feldwebel — on the West Front. Talked to lots of prisoners. Good lads. All the same as us . . .”

  “You’re drunk again, father!” exclaimed Frau Nowak in disgust. “Whatever will Herr Christoph think of you!”

  “Christoph doesn’t mind; do you, Christoph?” Herr Nowak patted my shoulder.

  “Christoph, indeed! He’s Herr Christoph to you! Can’t you tell a gentleman when you see one?”

  “I’d much rather you called me Christoph,” I said.

  “That’s right! Christoph’s right! We’re all the same flesh and blood . . . Argent, money — all the same! Ha, ha!”

  Otto took my other arm: “Christoph’s quite one of the family, already!”

  Presently we sat down to an immense
meal of lung hash, black bread, malt coffee and boiled potatoes. In the first recklessness of having so much money to spend (I had given her ten marks in advance for the week’s board) Frau Nowak had prepared enough potatoes for a dozen people. She kept shovelling them on to my plate from a big saucepan, until I thought I should suffocate: “Have some more, Herr Christoph. You’re eating nothing.”

  “I’ve never eaten so much in my whole life, Frau Nowak.”

  “Christoph doesn’t like our food,” said Herr Nowak. “Never mind, Christoph, you’ll get used to it. Otto was just the same when he came back from the seaside. He’d got used to all sorts of fine ways, with his Englishman . . .”

  “Hold your tongue, father!” said Frau Nowak warningly. “Can’t you leave the boy alone? He’s old enough to be able to decide for himself what’s right and wrong — more shame to him!”

  We were still eating when Lothar came in. He threw his cap on the bed, shook hands with me politely but silently, with a little bow, and took his place at the table. My presence did not appear to surprise or interest him in the least: his glance barely met mine. He was, I knew, only twenty; but he might well have been years older. He was a man already. Otto seemed almost childish beside him. He had a lean, bony, peasant’s face, soured by racial memory of barren fields.

  “Lothar’s going to night-school,” Frau Nowak told me with pride. “He had a job in a garage, you know; and now he wants to study engineering. They won’t take you in anywhere nowadays, unless you’ve got a diploma of some sort. He must show you his drawings, Herr Christoph, when you’ve got time to look at them. The teacher said they were very good indeed.”

  “I should like to see them.”

  Lothar didn’t respond. I sympathized with him and felt rather foolish. But Frau Nowak was determined to show him off:

  “Which nights are your classes, Lothar?”

  “Mondays and Thursdays.” He went on eating, deliberately, obstinately, without looking at his mother. Then perhaps to show that he bore me no ill-will, he added: “From eight to ten-thirty.” As soon as we had finished, he got up without a word, shook hands with me, making the same small bow, took his cap and went out.