The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  During the early part of that winter, I saw a good deal of Bernhard. I cannot say that I got to know him much better through these evenings spent together. He remained curiously remote from me — his face impassive with exhaustion under the shaded lamplight, his gentle voice moving on through sequences of mildly humorous anecdotes. He would describe, for instance, a lunch with some friends who were very strict Jews. “Ah,” Bernhard had said, conversationally, “so we’re having lunch out of doors today? How delightful! The weather’s still so warm for the time of year, isn’t it? And your garden’s looking lovely.” Then, suddenly, it had occurred to him that his hosts were regarding him rather sourly, and he remembered, with horror, that this was the Feast of Tabernacles.

  I laughed. I was amused. Bernhard told stories very well. But, all the time, I was aware of feeling a certain impatience. Why does he treat me like a child? I thought. He treats us all as children — his uncle and aunt, Natalia and myself. He tells us stories. He is sympathetic, charming. But his gestures, offering me a glass of wine or a cigarette, are clothed in arrogance, in the arrogant humility of the East. He is not going to tell me what he is really thinking or feeling, and he despises me because I do not know. He will never tell me anything about himself, or about the things which are most important to him. And because I am not as he is, because I am the opposite of this, and would gladly share my thoughts and sensations with forty million people if they cared to read them, I half admire Bernhard but also half dislike him.

  We seldom talked about the political condition of Germany, but, one evening, Bernhard told me a story of the days of the civil war. He had been visited by a student friend who was taking part in the fighting. The student was very nervous and refused to sit down. Presently he confessed to Bernhard that he had been ordered to take a message through to one of the newspaper office-buildings which the police were besieging; to reach this office, it would be necessary to climb and crawl over roofs which were exposed to machine-gun fire. Naturally, he wasn’t anxious to start. The student was wearing a remarkably thick overcoat, which Bernhard pressed him to take off, for the room was well heated and his face was literally streaming with sweat. At length, after much hesitation, the student did so, revealing, to Bernhard’s intense alarm, that the lining of the coat was fitted with inside pockets stuffed full of hand-grenades. “And the worst of it was,” said Bernhard, “that he’d made up his mind not to take any more risks, but to leave the overcoat with me. He wanted to put it into the bath and turn on the cold-water tap. At last I persuaded him that it would be much better to take it out after dark and to drop it into the canal — and this he ultimately succeeded in doing . . . He is now one of the most distinguished professors in a certain provincial university. I am sure that he has long since forgotten this somewhat embarrassing escapade . . .”

  “Were you ever a communist, Bernhard?” I asked.

  At once — I saw it in his face — he was on the defensive. After a moment, he said slowly:

  “No, Christopher. I’m afraid I was always constitutionally incapable of bringing myself to the required pitch of enthusiasm.”

  I felt suddenly impatient with him; angry, even: “— ever to believe in anything?”

  Bernhard smiled faintly at my violence. It may have amused him to have roused me like this.

  “Perhaps . . .” Then he added, as if to himself: “No . . . that is not quite true . . .”

  “What do you believe in, then?” I challenged.

  Bernhard was silent for some moments, considering this — his beaky delicate profile impassive, his eyes half-closed. At last he said: “Possibly I believe in discipline.”

  “In discipline?”

  “You don’t understand that, Christopher? Let me try to explain . . . I believe in discipline for myself, not necessarily for others. For others, I cannot judge. I know only that I myself must have certain standards which I obey and without which I am quite lost . . . Does that sound very dreadful?”

  “No,” I said — thinking: He is like Natalia.

  “You must not condemn me too harshly, Christopher.” The mocking smile was spreading over Bernhard’s face. “Remember that I am a cross-breed. Perhaps, after all, there is one drop of pure Prussian blood in my polluted veins. Perhaps this little finger,” he held it up to the light, “is the finger of a Prussian drill-sergeant . . . You, Christopher, with your centuries of Anglo-Saxon freedom behind you, with your Magna Carta engraved upon your heart, cannot understand that we poor barbarians need the stiffness of a uniform to keep us standing upright.”

  “Why do you always make fun of me, Bernhard?”

  “Make fun of you, my dear Christopher! I shouldn’t dare!”

  Yet, perhaps, on this occasion, he told me a little more than he had intended.

  I had long meditated the experiment of introducing Natalia to Sally Bowles. I think I knew beforehand what the result of their meeting would be. At any rate, I had the sense not to invite Fritz Wendel.

  We were to meet at a smart café in the Kurfürstendamm. Natalia was the first to arrive. She was a quarter of an hour late — probably because she’d wanted to have the advantage of coming last. But she had reckoned without Sally: she hadn’t the nerve to be late in the grand manner. Poor Natalia! She had tried to make herself look more grown-up — with the result that she appeared merely rather dowdy. The long townified dress she’d put on didn’t suit her at all. On the side of her head, she had planted a little hat — an unconscious parody of Sally’s page-boy cap. But Natalia’s hair was much too fuzzy for it: it rode the waves like a half-swamped boat on a rough sea.

  “How do I look?” she immediately asked, sitting down opposite to me, rather flurried.

  “You look very nice.”

  “Tell me, please, truthfully, what will she think of me?”

  “She’ll like you very much.”

  “How can you say that?” Natalia was indignant. “You do not know!”

  “First you want my opinion, and then you say I don’t know!”

  “Imbecile! I do not ask for compliments!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you do ask for.”

  “Oh no?” cried Natalia scornfully. “You do not understand? Then I am sorry. I can’t help you!”

  At this moment, Sally arrived.

  “Hilloo, darling,” she exclaimed, in her most cooing accents, “I’m terribly sorry I’m late — can you forgive me?” She sat down daintily, enveloping us in wafts of perfume, and began, with languid miniature gestures, to take off her gloves: “I’ve been making love to a dirty old Jew producer. I’m hoping he’ll give me a contract — but no go, so far . . .”

  I kicked Sally hastily, under the table, and she stopped short, with an expression of absurd dismay — but now, of course, it was too late. Natalia froze before our eyes. All I’d said and hinted beforehand, in hypothetic pre-excuse of Sally’s conduct, was instantly made void. After a moment’s glacial pause, Natalia asked me if I’d seen Sous les Toits de Paris. She spoke German. She wasn’t going to give Sally a chance of laughing at her English.

  Sally immediately chipped in, however, quite unabashed. She’d seen the film, and thought it was marvellous, and wasn’t Prejean marvellous, and did we remember the scene where a train goes past in the background while they’re starting to fight? Sally’s German was so much more than usually awful that I wondered whether she wasn’t deliberately exaggerating it in order, somehow, to make fun of Natalia.

  During the rest of the interview I suffered mental pins and needles. Natalia hardly spoke at all. Sally prattled on in her murderous German, making what she imagined to be light general conversation, chiefly about the English film industry. But as every anecdote involved explaining that somebody was someone else’s mistress, that this one drank and that one took drugs, this didn’t make the atmosphere any more agreeable. I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with both of them — with Sally for her endless silly pornographic talk; with Natalia for being such
a prude. At length, after what seemed an eternity but was, in fact, barely twenty minutes, Natalia said that she must be going.

  “My God, so must I!” cried Sally, in English. “Chris, darling, you’ll take me as far as the Eden, won’t you?”

  In my cowardly way, I glanced at Natalia, trying to convey my helplessness. This, I knew only too well, was going to be regarded as a test of my loyalty — and, already, I had failed it. Natalia’s expression showed no mercy. Her face was set. She was very angry indeed.

  “When shall I see you?” I ventured to ask.

  “I don’t know,” said Natalia — and she marched off down the Kurfürstendamm as if she never wished to set eyes on either of us again.

  Although we had only a few hundred yards to go, Sally insisted that we must take a taxi. It would never do, she explained, to arrive at the Eden on foot.

  “That girl didn’t like me much, did she?” she remarked, as we were driving off.

  “No, Sally. Not much.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know why . . . I went out of my way to be nice to her.”

  “If that’s what you call being nice . . .!” I laughed, in spite of my vexation.

  “Well, what ought I to have done?”

  “It’s more a question of what you ought not to have done . . . Haven’t you any small-talk except adultery?”

  “People have got to take me as I am,” retorted Sally, grandly.

  “Finger-nails and all?” I’d noticed Natalia’s eyes returning to them again and again, in fascinated horror.

  Sally laughed: “Today, I specially didn’t paint my toe-nails.”

  “Oh, rot, Sally! Do you really?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “But what on earth’s the point? I mean, nobody —” I corrected myself, “very few people can see them . . .”

  Sally gave me her most fatuous grin: “I know, darling . . . But it makes me feel so marvellously sensual . . .”

  From this meeting, I date the decline of my relations with Natalia. Not that there was ever any open quarrel between us, or definite break. Indeed, we met again only a few days later; but at once I was aware of a change in the temperature of our friendship. We talked, as usual, of art, music, books — carefully avoiding the personal note. We had been walking about the Tiergarten for the best part of an hour, when Natalia abruptly asked:

  “You like Miss Bowles vairy much?” Her eyes, fixed on the leaf-strewn path, were smiling maliciously.

  “Of course I do . . . We’re going to be married, soon.”

  “Imbecile!”

  We marched on for several minutes in silence.

  “You know,” said Natalia suddenly, with the air of one who makes a surprising discovery: “I do not like your Miss Bowles?”

  “I know you don’t.”

  My tone vexed her — as I intended that it should: “What I think, it is not of importance?”

  “Not in the least,” I grinned teasingly.

  “Only your Miss Bowles, she is of importance?”

  “She is of great importance.”

  Natalia reddened and bit her lip. She was getting angry: “Some day, you will see that I am right.”

  “I’ve no doubt I shall.”

  We walked all the way back to Natalia’s home without exchanging a single word. On the doorstep, however, she asked, as usual: “Perhaps you will ring me up, one day . . .” then paused, delivered her parting shot: “if your Miss Bowles permits?”

  I laughed: “Whether she permits or not, I shall ring you up very soon.” Almost before I had finished speaking, Natalia had shut the door in my face.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t keep my word. It was a month before I finally dialled Natalia’s number. I had half intended to do so, many times, but, always, my disinclination had been stronger than my desire to see her again. And when, at length, we did meet, the temperature had dropped several degrees lower still; we seemed mere acquaintances. Natalia was convinced, I suppose, that Sally had become my mistress, and I didn’t see why I should correct her mistake — doing so would only have involved a long heart-to-heart talk for which I simply wasn’t in the mood. And, at the end of all the explanations, Natalia would probably have found herself quite as much shocked as she was at present, and a good deal more jealous. I didn’t flatter myself that Natalia had ever wanted me as a lover, but she had certainly begun to behave towards me as a kind of bossy elder sister, and it was just this rôle — absurdly enough — which Sally had stolen from her. No, it was a pity, but on the whole, I decided, things were better as they were. So I played up to Natalia’s indirect questions and insinuations, and even let drop a few hints of domestic bliss: “When Sally and I were having breakfast together, this morning . . .” or “How do you like this tie? Sally chose it . . .” Poor Natalia received them in glum silence; and, as so often before, I felt guilty and unkind. Then, towards the end of February, I rang up her home, and was told that she’d gone abroad.

  Bernhard, too, I hadn’t seen for some time. Indeed, I was quite surprised to hear his voice on the telephone one morning. He wanted to know if I would go with him that evening “into the country” and spend the night. This sounded very mysterious, and Bernhard only laughed when I tried to get out of him where we were going and why.

  He called for me about eight o’clock, in a big closed car with a chauffeur. The car, Bernhard explained, belonged to the business. Both he and his uncle used it. It was typical, I thought, of the patriarchal simplicity in which the Landauers lived that Natalia’s parents had no private car of their own, and that Bernhard even seemed inclined to apologize to me for the existence of this one. It was a complicated simplicity, the negation of a negation. Its roots were entangled deep in the awful guilt of possession. Oh dear, I sighed to myself, shall I ever get to the bottom of these people, shall I ever understand them? The mere act of thinking about the Landauers’ psychic make-up overcame me, as always, with a sense of absolute, defeated exhaustion.

  “You are tired?” Bernhard asked, solicitous, at my elbow.

  “Oh no . . .” I roused myself. “Not a bit.”

  “You will not mind if we call first at the house of a friend of mine? There is somebody else coming with us, you see . . . I hope you don’t object.”

  “No, of course not,” I said politely.

  “He is very quiet. An old friend of the family.” Bernhard, for some reason, seemed amused. He chuckled faintly to himself.

  The car stopped outside a villa in the Fasanenstrasse. Bernhard rang the bell and was let in: a few moments later, he reappeared, carrying in his arms a Skye terrier. I laughed.

  “You were exceedingly polite,” said Bernhard, smiling. “All the same, I think I detected a certain uneasiness on your part . . . Am I right?”

  “Perhaps . . .”

  “I wonder whom you were expecting? Some terribly boring old gentleman, perhaps?” Bernhard patted the terrier. “But I fear, Christopher, that you are far too well bred ever to confess that to me now.”

  The car slowed down and stopped before the toll-gate of the Avus motor-road.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “I wish you’d tell me!”

  Bernhard smiled his soft expansive Oriental smile: “I’m very mysterious, am I not?”

  “Very.”

  “Surely it must be a wonderful experience for you to be driving away into the night, not knowing whither you are bound? If I tell you that we are going to Paris, or to Madrid, or to Moscow, then there will no longer be any mystery and you will have lost half your pleasure . . . Do you know, Christopher, I quite envy you because you do not know where we are going?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, certainly . . . But, at any rate, I know already we aren’t going to Moscow. We’re driving in the opposite direction.”

  Bernhard laughed: “You are very English sometimes, Christopher. Do you realize that, I wonder?”

  “You bring out the English side of me, I think,” I answered and immediately felt a lit
tle uncomfortable, as though this remark were somehow insulting. Bernhard seemed aware of my thought.

  “Am I to understand that as a compliment, or as a reproof?”

  “As a compliment, of course.”

  The car whirled along the black Avus, into the immense darkness of the winter countryside. Giant reflector signs glittered for a moment in the headlight beams, expired like burnt-out matches. Already Berlin was a reddish glow in the sky behind us, dwindling rapidly beyond a converging forest of pines. The searchlight on the Funkturm swung its little ray through the night. The straight black road roared headlong to meet us, as if to its destruction. In the upholstered darkness of the car, Bernhard was patting the restless dog upon his knees.

  “Very well, I will tell you . . . We are going to a place on the shores of the Wannsee which used to belong to my father. What you call in England a country cottage.”

  “A cottage? Very nice . . .”

  My tone amused Bernhard. I could hear from his voice that he was smiling:

  “I hope you won’t find it uncomfortable?”

  “I’m sure I shall love it.”

  “It may seem a little primitive, at first . . .” Bernhard laughed quietly to himself: “Nevertheless, it is amusing . . .”

  “It must be . . .”

  I suppose I had been vaguely expecting a hotel, lights, music, very good food. I reflected bitterly that only a rich, decadently over-civilized town-dweller would describe camping out for the night in a poky, damp country cottage in the middle of the winter as “amusing.” And how typical that he should drive me to that cottage in a luxurious car! Where would the chauffeur sleep? Probably in the best hotel in Potsdam . . . As we passed the lamps of the toll-house at the far end of the Avus, I saw that Bernhard was still smiling to himself.

  The car swung to the right, downhill, along a road through silhouetted trees. There was a feeling of nearness to the big lake lying invisibly behind the woodland on our left. I had hardly realized that the road had ended in a gateway and a private drive: we pulled up at the door of a large villa.

  “Where’s this?” I asked Bernhard, supposing confusedly that he must have something else to call for — another terrier, perhaps. Bernhard laughed gaily: