The World in the Evening

by Christopher Isherwood

  ‘But, Gerda, what do you expect them to do? Sit around discussing politics?’

  ‘Politics!’ Gerda’s eyes flashed. I had never seen her so passionately indignant before. ‘People are taken in concentration-camps and beaten and tortured and burned like the garbage in ovens—you call that politics?’

  ‘Not in that sense, no. But all I meant was—’

  ‘And why are such things possible? Because the rich and powerful ones who can stop it—all those in the other countries—what do they do? They sit in their beautiful houses and ignore, and talk of their beautiful private feelings. Until it is too late. This I find heartless, and without love—’

  ‘But, Gerda, listen! You’re being utterly unfair to Elizabeth, when you bring that in. This book isn’t about Hitler and the Nazis—it doesn’t pretend to be.’

  ‘But it is published first in thirty-four. I took specially notice of the date. How could one write then, and not speak of the Nazis? This I do not understand.’

  ‘Well, for one thing, the story’s supposed to take place at least five years earlier. In the late twenties, and—’

  ‘But that was more reason to speak! To show how such events begin and are prepared. Already then, the Nazis were becoming powerful. And you were in Germany and Austria, you tell me? How could Elizabeth not know about them?’

  ‘Of course she knew about them. And she certainly cared. She cared terribly. She hated cruelty as much as anyone possibly could. Far more than most people do. You must have realized that, surely? It’s all there in the book. That whole part about Terence Storrs and Isabel—do you think that was written by someone who was heartless? It’s one of the most horrible descriptions of cruelty I’ve ever read.’

  ‘It is well described, yes. But all this, what the young girl suffers, it is in the feelings, only. It is just something mental—’

  ‘And you think mental cruelty doesn’t matter? You think the only way people really suffer is when they’re hurt physically?’

  ‘You know I do not mean that, Stephen! This is not what I try to say at all—’

  ‘Now look, Gerda—I know what you’re trying to say. I think I understand your point of view, very well; in fact, I partly agree with it. Only I want you to understand Elizabeth’s … It’s hard to put this clearly, but—well, you see, Elizabeth transposed everything she wrote about into her own kind of microcosm. She never dealt directly with world-situations or big-scale tragedies. That wasn’t her way. But she tried to reproduce them in miniature, the essence of them. For instance, her reaction to the news that a million people had been massacred might be to tell a story about two children stoning a cat to death for fun. And she’d put into it all the pain and disgust and horror she felt about the things the Nazis do … I think, instinctively, she was always protesting against the importance the newspapers give to numbers and size. She knew what most of us won’t admit to ourselves, that numbers and size actually make tragedy less real to us. To kill a million people—can you grasp what that means? I can’t. Elizabeth couldn’t. She frankly admitted it, and so she kept to the kind of miniature, subtle effects she knew she could handle. I’m sure she was right, as far as her own talent was concerned. That was the sort of writer she was … As a matter of fact, toward the end of her life, she found herself losing touch with most of the younger writers. Their attitude was very much the same as yours; and some of them wrote articles about it, attacking her work. They didn’t have as much right to as you have, though, because they hadn’t had your experiences. They were awfully priggish and theoretical … Am I making this any clearer?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I think so—’ Gerda smiled at me hesitantly. ‘I have been rather stupid, I find … But you see, Stephen, I myself have lived in such a different condition. Peter and I, when we were young, we did not have this problem. For us, there was always only the fight against what was material—the bad food and houses, and the too small wages, and then the Nazis. And we could not look at these things distantly, or understand another meaning in them, because they were so very close to us. They were our life … So how may I criticize what Elizabeth has written? It is not in my experience.’

  ‘But I’m glad you have. I suppose I really expected you to. What I care about is that you should know the kind of person Elizabeth was. And you’d never do that if you’d been polite about this book. If you could have met, then I wouldn’t even have asked you to read it. It wouldn’t have been necessary. If you’d talked to her for ten minutes, you’d have known she cared about the same things as you do. In her own way … You and Peter fight fascism, but you don’t hold it against Sarah that she believes in non-violence, do you? You don’t feel that you’re on opposite sides?’

  ‘I love Sarah very much.’ Gerda smiled. ‘And if the Nazis came to arrest her and I had a gun, I would first shoot as many as I could.’

  ‘With her trying to stop you! Exactly! Well, then, you see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, Stephen. One cannot judge people in any other way, I think. Each must do what he thinks right. Or there cannot be true friendship.’

  ‘I believe you do an awful lot of judging, don’t you, Gerda? You know, it scares me, sometimes. I keep wondering when you’re going to pass sentence on me.’

  Gerda laughed. ‘Oh, you I judge! Most severely. But now you are a poor invalid. I must be kind, until you are well.’

  ‘That’s right. You be kind to me. I need a lot of kindness.’

  ‘Oh, you! People will always be kind to you, Stephen. You can make them feel sorry for you, with your look like a little boy. But that is bad, also. Because you know quite well what it is you are doing to them. I think perhaps it is you who are heartless.’

  ‘You don’t really, do you, Gerda?’

  ‘I am not sure. I am not sure that I understand you at all. Sometimes you are too nice. It is not quite real. I would like to see you be mean and bad and not charming. Then I would understand better what you are.’

  ‘I wish I knew what I was.’

  ‘You do not?’

  ‘Not exactly. Do you know what you are?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I do not worry myself about such questions.’

  ‘No—I guess you wouldn’t. Any more than Sarah would. That’s one of the things that make you such a wonderful person.’

  Gerda blushed. ‘Do not be silly, Stephen. I am not wonderful. You think this only because you become tired to be so clever. And you like it in me, that I am quite stupid.’

  There were nights when I felt very sorry for myself. Nights when it was hot, and my body itched in unscratchable places inside the cast or teased me with its little aches and pains. I hated the cast, then. It wasn’t part of me and my condition. It was just an alien, senseless lump of plaster.

  I used to try, selfishly, to delay Gerda’s leaving me. I knew she had to get up early in the morning, but I didn’t care. I coaxed her into telling and retelling me stories about her home and her parents in Hamburg, and her life as a little girl. Over and over again, I made her describe how she’d first met Peter at the youth rally, how they’d gone swimming and sailing on the Alster, and read books together and had long political discussions, and how he’d told her that he loved her, in a boat one summer evening, with accordions playing in the distance along the shore. In my maudlin mood, I gloated over their love like a movie fan, with tears in my eyes. While Gerda talked, I would reach out for her hand and hold it. She let me do this as though I were a child. And then, sometimes, she sang me to sleep with saccharine-sad German folksongs—Kommt ein Vogel geflogen and Weisst Du wieviel Sternlein stehen?—singing them in a small clear voice, very softly, so as not to disturb Sarah or start Saul (who loathed music) howling.

  But more often she left me still awake. And then, when she’d gone, there was nothing but the night; the night that was like a long voyage on which you could feel the body labouring its way through life—the heart beating, the blood circulating, the lungs expanding and contracting—just as you are aware of the pounding of t
he engines and the straining of the hull of a ship at sea. A passenger isn’t supposed to concern himself with the running of the ship; that is being taken care of by the crew, anonymous creatures down in the engine-room or up on deck, whom he never meets. But, in this case, I wasn’t really a passenger. I was like a lazy or scared or drunken captain lying shut in his cabin when he ought to be on the bridge, giving orders. Sooner or later, I would have to come out and assume command and decide where we were going.

  But not yet, I told the crew. You don’t need me yet. Can’t you see I’m sick? You’re doing all right without me. Sure, I’ll come, when we get near land. Just let me lie here a little longer. Leave me alone, can’t you? Let me sleep.

  4

  ELIZABETH AND I were married early in February 1927 at a registrar’s office in Chelsea, with Sarah and the registrar’s clerk as the only witnesses. Sarah, I knew, would have loved a Quaker wedding; but that was out of the question. Even if I had been a Friend in good standing, I could hardly have subjected Elizabeth to the formalities required by the Discipline: the written announcement of ‘intention’ to the Monthly Meeting and the investigation by the committee of two which had to present it with a ‘certificate of clearness’. We were in such a hurry to get the whole business settled.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Elizabeth had said, ‘but I simply can’t think of you as a fiancé’. I knew exactly what she meant. The very idea of our being ‘engaged’ to each other seemed ridiculous. And Sarah, in her innocence, made it more so by starting to treat Elizabeth as though she had suddenly become much younger and were a girl in need of a chaperone. If Sarah had ever been married herself, she would certainly have felt it her duty to have a private talk with Elizabeth on the facts of life; as it was, she confined herself to giving Elizabeth all kinds of information about my favourite dishes, my habits, and my likes and dislikes. Elizabeth took this wonderfully. She listened gravely to everything Sarah told her, admitted she couldn’t darn socks, and submitted, in spite of my protests, to several sewing-lessons. ‘But why ever shouldn’t I, Stephen?’ she said. ‘I really want to learn. I want to be quite, quite different from now on. That’s what makes this all so exciting. Don’t you love fresh starts? Don’t you want me to be a proper wife to you? I told you I’m being completely old-fashioned about us. Sarah understands me much better than you do.’

  We reacted to the approaching ceremony in the same way, by developing a violent kind of ’flu which made our throats so sore that we could hardly swallow. On the morning of the wedding, we were so sick that Sarah begged us to postpone it. We refused, of course. ‘Though it’ll probably be the death of us,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Oh, darling—what a perfect announcement for The Times: Mr and Mrs Monk celebrated a very quiet Liebestod, with neither of them able to sing a note!’ We drove to the registrar’s office muffled up to the ears, and made the necessary statements, laughing at each other’s croaky voices. We had arranged to leave that afternoon on the boat-train for France, and we did. The alternative, as Elizabeth said, was too embarrassing to be thought of. ‘Imagine the two of us tucked up in the nuptial sickbed, with Sarah bringing us our medicine!’ Twenty-four hours later, in Paris, we found ourselves mysteriously and entirely cured. But poor Sarah, left behind in London, caught our ’flu and was very sick with it for the next week; a fact she never mentioned in her letters, and which I only found out later from the charlady.

  My own wish had been that we should have an enormously long honeymoon. I wanted to carry Elizabeth away with me like a stolen treasure, far out of reach of everybody—to take her to Africa, or India, or right around the world. Elizabeth smiled when I talked of these plans and seemed to consider them seriously. ‘Do you know, darling, one of my childhood dreams was actually to live on an elephant? I wanted to have a howdah that was really a tiny house, all made of ivory and diamonds, with very rich crimson and gold silk window-curtains. Wouldn’t you love that? Of course, it would have to be an awfully big elephant; and I don’t quite know how one could manage about a bathroom—’ But I soon realized that she was vetoing the idea by turning it into a fantasy. She didn’t want to go far away, yet. This was only to be a holiday. The manuscript of her novel was waiting for her return.

  I had talked to myself very sternly about that novel. I knew—at least with the reasonable part of my mind—that I must never let myself get jealous of Elizabeth’s work. I could never own that. I was lucky enough to have any of her at all. And so, without further prompting, I decided that we should only be away for a couple of weeks.

  In Paris, we stayed at an hotel on the Quai Voltaire, in a room overlooking the river with a sideways view of the towers of Notre-Dame. ‘This place is all gilt and red plush and speckled mirrors,’ Elizabeth wrote to Cecilia. ‘An authentic shrine to the Nineties—particularly, somehow, the English-in-Paris Nineties. I’m sure Beardsley must have lived here, and Dowson and Theo Marzials and Henry Harland; and I expect they still have unpaid bills of Oscar Wilde’s. And now—us! What a comedown! Not one drop of absinthe have we ordered, not one puff of opium have we smoked. And, horror of horrors, we’re legally married. The ghosts must be wringing their hands in despair. What have English writers sunk to?’

  Elizabeth spent quite a lot of time, during her stay, writing to all her friends and acquaintances. She didn’t show me any of those letters and postcards then, and it was strange and painful to be reading them now. In nearly all of them, I could detect a note of apology. There were mock-formal announcements, in which this apologetic attitude took the tone of strained, embarrassing facetiousness: ‘E. Rydal, female authoress, begs to declare her marriage with S. Monk, gent. No gifts or floral tributes, by request.’ There were announcements in the form of postscripts to letters which spoke only of books, literary gossip and the weather: ‘PS. I’m here with my very first husband, recently acquired. His name is Stephen Monk. You shall meet him when we get back.’ There was an exaggeratedly casual note to the editor of one of the weekly magazines: ‘Can you send me the proofs of my story to the above address? Send them to Mrs Stephen Monk—that’s my name now, and the only one the hotel people know. We’re here on our honeymoon, but I promise to find time to correct them and post them back to you by return.’

  Only one letter seemed entirely frank and natural. It was written to Elizabeth’s old friend Mary Scriven:

  ‘Mary darling, I have some extraordinary news for you. I hardly know how to begin to tell it properly, so here it is, plumped right in your friendly lap. I am married—less than a week ago. My husband’s name is Stephen Monk. You don’t know him. He’s twelve years younger than I am. We met last November. There!

  ‘I find I’m on the defensive already, as I tell you this. Why? Certainly not because I imagine you’ll disapprove of him. Even if he were not the angel I increasingly suspect him of being, you just aren’t the disapproving kind. But whatever will you think of this step I’ve taken? “Step”, I call it! No, it’s a great breathless jump from the highest of towers into empty air. I feel like some pioneer of aviation—perhaps that man who jumped with the wings Leonardo designed. Only my wings aren’t going to collapse, I tell myself. I shall soar. I shall circle above the town, with all of you looking up at me and exclaiming “Who’d have thought the old girl could fly!”

  ‘Ah no, Mary dear, that’s what’s really worrying me. I don’t want you to be a spectator, standing far below. I don’t want to keep up aloft. I want to come down gently and safely to earth and share this with you and the very few others I truly love. That’s where you must help me—you must help both of us.

  ‘How stupid and egotistical this sounds, as I write it. I talk as if nobody had ever been married before in the entire history of the world. I talk as if this were my problem alone, and not Stephen’s too. (Well, in a sense, perhaps it is. Because he’s so young and accepts all this so trustingly. And he hasn’t been out in the great woods, as I have. Do you know what I mean by that? Once you’ve been out there, once you’ve been truly and utterly
alone—oh, it’s so hard to come back. Not that you pine for freedom. Not that this isn’t a far greater happiness and peace. But it’s hard to come back to this other life, the life of the human hearth. There’s a chill in your blood which has to be warmed out of it, very very slowly.)

  ‘I realize, Mary, that I’ve never talked to you properly about your own marriage. I know it wasn’t happy, but I’ve never felt that you were bitter about it, or regretted anything. So will you, when we get back to London, sit down with me and tell me all about it? I feel I have the right to ask you to do this for me, now. It isn’t just curiosity. I do so need your wisdom.

  ‘One more thing. Perhaps I have no need to say this, but I’d better. Will you be, could you be hurt because I didn’t tell you in advance about Stephen and myself? Believe me, I told nobody—not even Cecilia; though, in any case, the news wouldn’t have reached her yet. And this wasn’t because of a lack of trust or friendship on my part toward you. It was a lack of faith in myself, in my own star. Yes, I can smile and admit it now—but the truth is, I’ve been desperately afraid. Afraid the spell would break, the mirror crack from side to side. Afraid that Stephen would suddenly remember he was an angel, not a human being, and unfold his wings and vanish. (I haven’t told him that, yet; and I doubt if I ever shall.)

  ‘Seriously, I feel a deep truth, now, in all those old fairy-tales and legends where the hero is forbidden to speak, on pain of losing the princess or the treasure. Silence is a tremendous magic. Well, I followed the wizard’s instructions, and now I have my reward. I can breathe freely again, though I’m still shaken, thinking what I might so easily have lost. If I had lost it—but no, it’s morbid to dwell on that. I only know this: I could never have gone back to the woods.