The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  Another pause — eight months, this time. And here I was, ringing the bell of Bernhard’s flat. Yes, he was in.

  “This is a great honour, Christopher. And, unfortunately, a very rare one.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I’ve so often meant to come and see you . . . I don’t know why I haven’t . . .”

  “You’ve been in Berlin all this time? You know, I rang up twice at Frl. Schroeder’s, and a strange voice answered and said that you’d gone away to England.”

  “I told Frl. Schroeder that. I didn’t want her to know that I was still here.”

  “Oh, indeed? You had a quarrel?”

  “On the contrary. I told her that I was going to England, because, otherwise, she’d have insisted on supporting me. I got a bit hard up . . . Everything’s perfectly all right again, now,” I added hastily, seeing a look of concern on Bernhard’s face.

  “Quite certain? I am very glad . . . But what have you been doing with yourself, all this time?”

  “Living with a family of five in a two-room attic in Hallesches Tor.”

  Bernhard smiled: “By Jove, Christopher — what a romantic life you lead!”

  “I’m glad you call that kind of thing romantic. I don’t!”

  We both laughed.

  “At any rate,” Bernhard said, “it seems to have agreed with you. You’re looking the picture of health.”

  I couldn’t return the compliment. I thought I had never seen Bernhard looking so ill. His face was pale and drawn; the weariness did not lift from it even when he smiled. There were deep, sallow half-moons under his eyes. His hair seemed thinner. He might have added ten years to his age.

  “And how have you been getting on?” I asked.

  “My existence, in comparison with yours, is sadly hum-drum, I fear . . . Nevertheless, there are certain tragi-comic diversions.”

  “What sort of diversions?”

  “This, for example —” Bernhard went over to his writing-desk, picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to me: “It arrived by post this morning.”

  I read the typed words:

  “Bernhard Landauer, beware. We are going to settle the score with you and your uncle and all other filthy Jews. We give you twenty-four hours to leave Germany. If not, you are dead men.”

  Bernhard laughed: “Bloodthirsty, isn’t it?”

  “It’s incredible . . . Who do you suppose sent it?”

  “An employee who has been dismissed, perhaps. Or a practical joker. Or a madman. Or a hot-headed Nazi schoolboy.”

  “What shall you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Surely you’ll tell the police?”

  “My dear Christopher, the police would very soon get tired of hearing such nonsense. We receive three or four such letters every week.”

  “All the same, this one may quite well be in earnest . . . The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they’re capable of anything. That’s just why they’re so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment . . .”

  Bernhard smiled his tired smile: “I appreciate very much this anxiety of yours on my behalf. Nevertheless, I am quite unworthy of it . . . My existence is not of such vital importance to myself or to others that the forces of the Law should be called upon to protect me . . . As for my uncle he is at present in Warsaw . . .”

  I saw that he wished to change the subject:

  “Have you any news of Natalia and Frau Landauer?”

  “Oh yes, indeed! Natalia is married. Didn’t you know? To a young French doctor . . . I hear that they are very happy.”

  “I’m so glad!”

  “Yes . . . It’s pleasant to think of one’s friends being happy, isn’t it?” Bernhard crossed to the waste-paper basket and dropped the letter into it: “Especially in another country . . .” He smiled, gently, and sadly.

  “And what do you think will happen in Germany, now?” I asked. “Is there going to be a Nazi putsch or a communist revolution?”

  Bernhard laughed: “You have lost none of your enthusiasm, I see! I only wish that this question seemed as momentous to me as it does to you . . .”

  “It’ll seem momentous enough, one of these fine mornings” — the retort rose to my lips: I am glad now that I didn’t utter it. Instead, I asked: “Why do you wish that?”

  “Because it would be a sign of something healthier in my own character . . . It is right, nowadays, that one should be interested in such things; I recognize that. It is sane. It is healthy . . . And because all this seems to me a little unreal, a little — please don’t be offended, Christopher — trivial, I know that I am getting out of touch with existence. That is bad, of course . . . One must preserve a sense of proportion . . . Do you know, there are times when I sit here alone in the evenings, amongst these books and stone figures, and there comes to me such a strange sensation of unreality, as if this were my whole life? Yes, actually, sometimes, I have felt a doubt as to whether our firm — that great building packed from floor to roof with all our accumulation of property — really exists at all, except in my imagination . . . And then I have had an unpleasant feeling, such as one has in a dream, that I myself do not exist. It is very morbid, very unbalanced, no doubt . . . I will make a confession to you, Christopher . . . One evening, I was so much troubled by this hallucination of the non-existence of Landauers’ that I picked up my telephone and had a long conversation with one of the night-watchmen, making some stupid excuse for having troubled him. Just to reassure myself, you understand? Don’t you think I must be becoming insane?”

  “I don’t think anything of the kind . . . It could have happened to anyone who has overworked.”

  “You recommend a holiday? A month in Italy, just as the spring is beginning? Yes . . . I remember the days when a month of Italian sunshine would have solved all my troubles. But now, alas, that drug has lost its power. Here is a paradox for you! Landauers’ is no longer real to me, yet I am more than ever its slave! You see the penalty of a life of sordid materialism. Take my nose away from the grindstone, and I become positively unhappy . . . Ah, Christopher, be warned by my fate!”

  He smiled, spoke lightly, half banteringly. I didn’t like to pursue the subject further.

  “You know,” I said, “I really am going to England, now. I’m leaving in three or four days.”

  “I am sorry to hear it. How long do you expect to stay there?”

  “Probably the whole summer.”

  “You are tired of Berlin, at last?”

  “Oh no . . . I feel more as if Berlin had got tired of me.”

  “Then you will come back?”

  “Yes, I expect so.”

  “I believe that you will always come back to Berlin, Christopher. You seem to belong here.”

  “Perhaps I do, in a way.”

  “It is strange how people seem to belong to places — especially to places where they were not born . . . When I first went to China, it seemed to me that I was at home there, for the first time in my life . . . Perhaps, when I die, my spirit will be wafted to Peking.”

  “It’d be better if you let a train waft your body there, as soon as possible!”

  Bernhard laughed: “Very well . . . I will follow your advice! But on two conditions — first, that you come with me; second, that we leave Berlin this evening.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Certainly I do.”

  “What a pity! I should like to have come . . . Unfortunately, I’ve only a hundred and fifty marks in the world.”

  “Naturally, you would be my guest.”

  “Oh, Bernhard, how marvellous! We’d stop a few days in Warsaw, to get the visas. Then on to Moscow, and take the trans-Siberian . . .”

  “So you’ll come?”

  “Of course!”

  “This evening?”

  I pretended to consider: “I’m afraid I can’t, this evening . . . I’d have to get my washing back from the laundry, first . . . What about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is too late.”r />
  “What a pity!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  We both laughed. Bernhard seemed to be specially tickled by his joke. There was even something a little exaggerated in his laughter, as though the situation had some further dimension of humour to which I hadn’t penetrated. We were still laughing when I said goodbye.

  Perhaps I am slow at jokes. At any rate, it took me nearly eighteen months to see the point of this one — to recognize it as Bernhard’s last, most daring and most cynical experiment upon us both. For now I am certain — absolutely convinced — that his offer was perfectly serious.

  When I returned to Berlin, in the autumn of 1932, I duly rang Bernhard up, only to be told that he was away, on business, in Hamburg. I blame myself now — one always does blame oneself afterwards — for not having been more persistent. But there was so much for me to do, so many pupils, so many other people to see; the weeks turned into months; Christmas came — I sent Bernhard a card but got no answer: he was away again, most likely; and then the New Year began.

  Hitler came, and the Reichstag fire, and the mock-elections. I wondered what was happening to Bernhard. Three times I rang him up — from call-boxes, lest I should get Frl. Schroeder into trouble: there was never any reply. Then, one evening early in April, I went round to his house. The caretaker put his head out of the tiny window, more suspicious than ever: at first, he seemed even inclined to deny that he knew Bernhard at all. Then he snapped: “Herr Landauer has gone away . . . gone right away.”

  “Do you mean he’s moved from here?” I asked. “Can you give me his address?”

  “He’s gone away,” the caretaker repeated, and slammed the window shut.

  I left it at that — concluding, not unnaturally, that Bernhard was somewhere safe abroad.

  On the morning of the Jewish boycott, I walked round to take a look at Landauers’. Things seemed very much as usual, superficially. Two or three uniformed S.A. boys were posted at each of the big entrances. Whenever a shopper approached, one of them would say: “Remember this is a Jewish business!” The boys were quite polite, grinning, making jokes among themselves. Little knots of passers-by collected to watch the performance — interested, amused or merely apathetic; still uncertain whether or not to approve. There was nothing of the atmosphere one read of later in the small provincial towns, where purchasers were forcibly disgraced with a rubber ink-stamp on the forehead and cheek. Quite a lot of people went into the building. I went in myself, bought the first thing I saw — it happened to be a nutmeg-grater — and strolled out again, twirling my small parcel. One of the boys at the door winked and said something to his companion. I remembered having seen him once or twice at the Alexander Casino, in the days when I was living with the Nowaks.

  In May, I left Berlin for the last time. My first stop was at Prague — and it was there, sitting one evening alone, in a cellar restaurant, that I heard, indirectly, my last news of the Landauer family.

  Two men. were at the next table, talking German. One of them was certainly an Austrian; the other I couldn’t place — he was fat and sleek, about forty-five, and might well have owned a small business in any European capital, from Belgrade to Stockholm. Both of them were undoubtedly prosperous, technically Aryan, and politically neuter. The fat man startled me into attention by saying:

  “You know Landauers’? Landauers’ of Berlin?”

  The Austrian nodded: “Sure I do . . . Did a lot of business with them, one time . . . Nice place they’ve got there. Must have cost a bit . . .”

  “Seen the papers, this morning?”

  “No. Didn’t have time . . . Moving into our new flat, you know. The wife’s coming back.”

  “She’s coming back? You don’t say! Been in Vienna, hasn’t she?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Had a good time?”

  “Trust her! It cost enough, anyway.”

  “Vienna’s pretty dear, these days.”

  “It is that.”

  “Food’s dear.”

  “It’s dear everywhere.”

  “I guess you’re right.” The fat man began to pick his teeth: “What was I saying?”

  “You were saying about Landauers’.”

  “So I was . . . You didn’t read the papers, this morning?”

  “No, I didn’t read them.”

  “There was a bit in about Bernhard Landauer.”

  “Bernhard?” said the Austrian. “Let’s see — he’s the son, isn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t know . . .” The fat man dislodged a tiny fragment of meat with the point of his toothpick. Holding it up to the light, he regarded it thoughtfully.

  “I think he’s the son,” said the Austrian. “Or maybe the nephew . . . No, I think he’s the son.”

  “Whoever he is,” the fat man flicked the scrap of meat on to his plate with a gesture of distaste: “He’s dead.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Heart failure.” The fat man frowned, and raised his hand to cover a belch. He was wearing three gold rings: “That’s what the newspapers said.”

  “Heart failure!” The Austrian shifted uneasily in his chair: “You don’t say!”

  “There’s a lot of heart failure,” said the fat man, “in Germany these days.”

  The Austrian nodded: “You can’t believe all you hear. That’s a fact.”

  “If you ask me,” said the fat man, “anyone’s heart’s liable to fail, if it gets a bullet inside it.”

  The Austrian looked very uncomfortable: “Those Nazis . . .” he began.

  “They mean business.” The fat man seemed rather to enjoy making his friend’s flesh creep. “You mark my words: they’re going to clear the Jews right out of Germany. Right out.”

  The Austrian shook his head: “I don’t like it.”

  “Concentration camps,” said the fat man, lighting a cigar. “They get them in there, make them sign things . . . Then their hearts fail.”

  “I don’t like it,” said the Austrian. “It’s bad for trade.”

  “Yes,” the fat man agreed. “It’s bad for trade.”

  “Makes everything so uncertain.”

  “That’s right. Never know who you’re doing business with.” The fat man laughed. In his own way, he was rather macabre: “It might be a corpse.”

  The Austrian shivered a little: “What about the old man, old Landauer? Did they get him, too?”

  “No, he’s all right. Too smart for them. He’s in Paris.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “I reckon the Nazis’ll take over the business. They’re doing that, now.”

  “Then old Landauer’ll be ruined, I guess?”

  “Not him!” The fat man flicked the ash from his cigar, contemptuously. “He’ll have a bit put by, somewhere. You’ll see. He’ll start something else. They’re smart, those Jews . . .”

  “That’s right,” the Austrian agreed. “You can’t keep a Jew down.”

  The thought seemed to cheer him, a little. He brightened: “That reminds me! I knew there was something I wanted to tell you . . . Did you ever hear the story about the Jew and the Goy girl, with the wooden leg?”

  “No.” The fat man puffed at his cigar. His digestion was working well, now. He was in the right after-dinner mood: “Go ahead . . .”

  A Berlin Diary

  Winter 1932–3

  Tonight, for the first time this winter, it is very cold. The dead cold grips the town in utter silence, like the silence of intense midday summer heat. In the cold the town seems actually to contract, to dwindle to a small black dot, scarcely larger than hundreds of other dots, isolated and hard to find, on the enormous European map. Outside, in the night, beyond the last new-built blocks of concrete flats, where the streets end in frozen allotment gardens, are the Prussian plains. You can feel them all round you, tonight, creeping in upon the city, like an immense waste of unhomely ocean — sprinkled with leafless copses and ice-lakes and tiny villages which are remembered only as the
outlandish names of battlefields in half-forgotten wars. Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold: it is my own skeleton aching. I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the frost in the girders of the overhead railway, in the iron-work of balconies, in bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards, latrines. The iron throbs and shrinks, the stone and the bricks ache dully, the plaster is numb.

  Berlin is a city with two centres — the cluster of expensive hotels, bars, cinemas, shops round the Memorial Church, a sparkling nucleus of light, like a sham diamond, in the shabby twilight of the town; and the self-conscious civic centre of buildings round the Unter den Linden, carefully arranged. In grand international styles, copies of copies, they assert our dignity as a capital city — a parliament, a couple of museums, a State bank, a cathedral, an opera, a dozen embassies, a triumphal arch; nothing has been forgotten. And they are all so pompous, so very correct — all except the cathedral, which betrays in its architecture, a flash of that hysteria which flickers always behind every grave, grey Prussian façade. Extinguished by its absurd dome, it is, at first sight, so startlingly funny that one searches for a name suitably preposterous — the Church of the Immaculate Consumption.

  But the real heart of Berlin is a small damp black wood — the Tiergarten. At this time of the year, the cold begins to drive the peasant boys out of their tiny unprotected villages into the city, to look for food, and work. But the city, which glowed so brightly and invitingly in the night sky above the plains, is cold and cruel and dead. Its warmth is an illusion, a mirage of the winter desert. It will not receive these boys. It has nothing to give. The cold drives them out of its streets, into the wood which is its cruel heart. And there they cower on benches, to starve and freeze, and dream of their far-away cottage stoves.

  Frl. Schroeder hates the cold. Huddled in her furlined velvet jacket, she sits in the corner with her stockinged feet on the stove. Sometimes she smokes a cigarette, sometimes she sips a glass of tea, but mostly she just sits, staring dully at the stove tiles in a kind of hibernation-doze. She is lonely, nowadays. Frl. Mayr is away in Holland, on a cabaret-tour. So Frl. Schroeder has nobody to talk to, except Bobby and myself.