The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  Tears stood in Frl. Schroeder’s eyes. I was afraid she was going to break down.

  “And he pays you regularly?”

  “On the moment, Herr Bradshaw. He couldn’t be more punctual if it was you yourself. I’ve never known anybody to be so particular. Why, do you know, he won’t even let me run up a monthly bill for milk! He settles it by the week. I don’t like to feel that I owe anyone a pfennig, he says . . . I wish there was more like him.”

  That evening, when I suggested eating at the usual restaurant, Arthur, to my surprise, objected:

  “It’s so noisy there, dear boy. My sensitive nerves revolt against the thought of an evening of jazz. As for the cooking, it is remarkable, even in this benighted town, for its vileness. Let’s go to the Montmartre.”

  “But, my dear Arthur, it’s so terribly expensive.”

  “Never mind. Never mind. In this brief life, one cannot always be counting the cost. You’re my guest this evening. Let’s forget the cares of this harsh world for a few hours and enjoy ourselves.”

  “It’s very kind of you.”

  At the Montmartre, Arthur ordered champagne.

  “This is such a peculiarly auspicious event that I feel we may justifiably relax our rigid revolutionary standards.”

  I laughed: “Business seems to be flourishing with you, I must say.”

  Arthur squeezed his chin cautiously between finger and thumb.

  “I can’t complain, William. At the moment. No. But I fear I see breakers ahead.”

  “Are you still importing and exporting?”

  “Not exactly that . . . No . . . Well, in a sense, perhaps.”

  “Have you been in Paris all this time?”

  “More or less. On and off.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  Arthur glanced uneasily round the luxurious little restaurant; smiled with great charm:

  “That’s a very leading question, my dear William.”

  “Were you working for Bayer?”

  “Er — partly. Yes.” A vagueness had come into Arthur’s eyes. He was trying to edge away from the subject.

  “And you’ve been seeing him since you got back to Berlin?”

  “Of course.” He looked at me with sudden suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. When I saw you last, you didn’t seem very pleased with him, that’s all.”

  “Bayer and I are on excellent terms.” Arthur spoke with emphasis, paused and added:

  “You haven’t been telling anybody that I’ve quarrelled with him, have you?”

  “No, of course not, Arthur. Who do you suppose I’d tell?”

  Arthur was unmistakably relieved.

  “I beg your pardon, William. I might have known that I could rely on your admirable discretion. But if, by any chance, the story were to get about that Bayer and I were not friendly, it might be exceedingly awkward for me, you understand?”

  I laughed.

  “No, Arthur. I don’t understand anything.”

  Smiling, Arthur raised his glass.

  “Have patience with me, William. You know, I always like to have my little secrets. No doubt the time will come when I shall be able to give you an explanation.”

  “Or to invent one.”

  “Ha ha. Ha ha. You’re as cruel as ever, I see . . . which reminds me that I thoughtlessly made an appointment with Anni for ten o’clock . . . so that perhaps we ought to be getting on with our dinner.”

  “Of course. You mustn’t keep her waiting.”

  For the rest of the meal Arthur questioned me about London. The cities of Berlin and Paris were tactfully avoided.

  Arthur had certainly transformed the daily routine of life at Frl. Schroeder’s. Because he insisted on a hot bath every morning, she had to get up an hour earlier, in order to stoke the little old-fashioned boiler. She didn’t complain of this. Indeed, she seemed to admire Arthur for the trouble he caused her.

  “He’s so particular, Herr Bradshaw. More like a lady than a gentleman. Everything in his room has its place, and I get into trouble if it isn’t all just as he wants it. I must say, though, it’s a pleasure to wait on anybody who takes such care of his things. You ought to see some of his shirts, and his ties. A perfect dream! And his silk underclothes! ‘Herr Norris,’ I said to him once, ‘you should let me wear those; they’re too fine for a man.’ I was only joking, of course. Herr Norris does enjoy a joke. He takes in four daily papers, you know, not to mention the weekly illustrateds, and I’m not allowed to throw any of them away. They must all be piled up in their proper order, according to the dates, if you please, on top of the cupboard. It makes me wild, sometimes, when I think of the dust they’re collecting. And then, every day, before he goes out, Herr Norris gives me a list as long as your arm of messages I’ve got to give to people who ring up or call. I have to remember all their names, and which ones he wants to see, and which he doesn’t. The door-bell’s for ever ringing, nowadays, with telegrams for Herr Norris, and express letters and air mail and I don’t know what else. This last fortnight it’s been specially bad. If you ask me, I think the ladies are his little weakness.”

  “What makes you think that, Frl. Schroeder?”

  “Well, I’ve noticed that Herr Norris is always getting telegrams from Paris. I used to open them, at first, thinking it might be something important which Herr Norris would like to know at once. But I couldn’t make head or tail of them. They were all from a lady named Margot. Very affectionate some of them were, too. ‘I am sending you a hug,’ and ‘last time you forgot to enclose kisses.’ I must say I should never have the nerve to write such things myself; fancy the clerks at the post office reading them! These French girls must be a shameless lot. From my experience when a woman makes a parade of her feelings like that, she’s not worth much . . . And then she wrote such a lot of nonsense besides.”

  “What sort of nonsense?”

  “Oh, I forget half of it. Stuff about teapots and kettles and bread and butter and cake.”

  “How very queer.”

  “You’re right, Herr Bradshaw. It is queer . . . I’ll tell you what I think.” Frl. Schroeder lowered her voice and glanced towards the door; perhaps she had caught the trick from Arthur. “I believe it’s a kind of secret language. You know? Every word has a double meaning.”

  “A code?”

  “Yes, that’s it.” Frl. Schroeder nodded mysteriously.

  “But why should this girl write telegrams to Herr Norris in code, do you suppose? It seems so pointless.”

  Frl. Schroeder smiled at my innocence.

  “Ah, Herr Bradshaw, you don’t know everything, although you’re so clever and learned. It takes an old woman like me to understand little mysteries of that sort. It’s perfectly plain: this Margot, as she calls herself (I don’t suppose it’s her real name), must be going to have a baby.”

  “And you think that Herr Norris . . .”

  Frl. Schroeder nodded her head vigorously.

  “It’s as clear as the nose on your face.”

  “Really, I must say, I hardly think . . .”

  “Oh, it’s all very well for you to laugh, Herr Bradshaw, but I’m right, you see if I’m not. After all, Herr Norris is still in the prime of life. I’ve known gentlemen have families who were old enough to be his father. And, besides, what other reason could she have for writing messages like that?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “You see?” cried Frl. Schroeder triumphantly. “You don’t know. Neither do I.”

  Every morning Frl. Schroeder would come shuffling through the flat at express speed, like a little steam-engine, screaming:

  “Herr Norris! Herr Norris! Your bath is ready! If you don’t come quick the boiler will explode!”

  “Oh dear!” exclaimed Arthur, in English. “Just let me clap on my wig.”

  He was afraid to go into the bathroom until the water had been turned on and all danger of an explosion was over. Frl. Schroeder would rush i
n heroically, with face averted and, muffling her hand in a towel, wrench at the hot tap. If the bursting-point was already very near, this would at first emit only clouds of steam, while the water in the boiler boiled with a noise like thunder. Arthur, standing in the doorway, watched Frl. Schroeder’s struggles with a nervous snarling grimace, ready at any moment to bolt for his life.

  After the bath came the barber’s boy, who was sent up daily from the hairdresser’s at the corner to shave Arthur and to comb his wig.

  “Even in the wilds of Asia,” Arthur once told me, “I have never shaved myself when it could possibly be avoided. It’s one of those sordid annoying operations which put one in a bad humour for the rest of the day.”

  When the barber had gone, Arthur would call to me:

  “Come in, dear boy, I’m visible now. Come and talk to me while I powder my nose.”

  Seated before the dressing-table in a delicate mauve wrap, Arthur would impart to me the various secrets of his toilet. He was astonishingly fastidious. It was a revelation to me to discover, after all this time, the complex preparations which led up to his every appearance in public. I hadn’t dreamed, for example, that he spent ten minutes three times a week in thinning his eyebrows with a pair of pincers. (“Thinning, William; not plucking. That is a piece of effeminacy which I abhor.”) A massage-roller occupied another fifteen minutes daily of his valuable time; and then there was a thorough manipulation of his cheeks with face cream (seven or eight minutes) and a little judicious powdering (three or four). Pedicure, of course, was an extra; but Arthur usually spent a few moments rubbing ointment on his toes to avert blisters and corns. Nor did he ever neglect a gargle and mouthwash. (“Coming into daily contact, as I do, with members of the proletariat, I have to defend myself against positive onslaughts of microbes.”) All this is not to mention the days on which he actually made up his face. (“I felt I needed a dash of colour this morning; the weather’s so depressing.”) Or the great fortnightly ablution of his hands and wrists with depilatory lotion. (“I prefer not to be reminded of our kinship with the larger apes.”)

  After these tedious exertions, it was no wonder that Arthur had a healthy appetite for his breakfast. He had succeeded in coaching Frl. Schroeder as a toast-maker; nor did she once, after the first few days, bring him an unduly hard-boiled egg. He had home-made marmalade, prepared by an English lady who lived in Wilmersdorf and charged nearly double the market price. He used his own special coffee-pot, which he had brought with him from Paris, and drank a special blend of coffee, which had to be sent direct from Hamburg. “Little things in themselves,” as Arthur said, “which I have come, through long and painful experience, to value more than many of the over-advertised and overrated luxuries of life.”

  At half past ten he went out, and I seldom saw him again until the evening. I was busy with my teaching. After lunch he made a habit of coming home and lying down for an hour on his bed. “Believe me or not, William, I am able to make my mind an absolute blank for whole minutes at a time. It’s a matter of practice, of course. Without my siesta, I should quickly become a nervous wreck.”

  Three nights a week, Frl. Anni came; and Arthur indulged in his singular pleasures. The noise was perfectly audible in the living-room, where Frl. Schroeder sat sewing.

  “Dear, dear!” she said to me once, “I do hope Herr Norris won’t injure himself. He ought to be more careful at his time of life.”

  One afternoon, about a week after my arrival, I happened to be in the flat alone. Even Frl. Schroeder had gone out. The door-bell rang. It was a telegram for Arthur, from Paris.

  The temptation was simply not to be resisted! and I didn’t even struggle against it. To make things easier for me, the envelope had not been properly stuck down; it came open in my hand.

  “Am very thirsty,” I read, “hope another kettle will boil soon kisses are for good boys.— Margot.”

  I fetched a bottle of glue from my room and fixed the envelope down carefully. Then I left it on Arthur’s table and went out to the cinema.

  At dinner, that evening, Arthur was visibly depressed. Indeed, he seemed to have no appetite, and sat staring in front of him with a bilious frown.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Things in general, dear boy. The state of this wicked world. A touch of Weltschmerz, that’s all.”

  “Cheer up. The course of true love never did run smooth, you know.”

  But Arthur didn’t react. He didn’t even ask me what I meant. Towards the end of our meal, I had to go to the back of the restaurant to make a telephone call. As I returned I saw that he was absorbed in reading a piece of paper which he stuffed hastily into his pocket as I approached. He wasn’t quick enough. I had recognized the telegram.

  Chapter Ten

  Arthur looked up at me with eyes which were a little too innocent.

  “By the way, William,” his tone was carefully casual, “do you happen to be doing anything next Thursday evening?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “Excellent. Then may I invite you to a little dinner party?”

  “That sounds very nice. Who else is coming?”

  “Oh, it’s to be a very small affair. Just ourselves and Baron von Pregnitz.”

  Arthur had brought out the name in the most offhand manner possible.

  “Kuno!” I exclaimed.

  “You seem very surprised, William, not to say displeased.” He was the picture of innocence. “I always thought you and he were such good friends?”

  “So did I, until the last time we met. He practically cut me dead.”

  “Oh, my dear boy, if you don’t mind my saying so I think that must have been partly your imagination. I’m sure he’d never do a thing like that; it doesn’t sound like him at all.”

  “You don’t suggest I dreamed it, do you?”

  “I’m not doubting your word for an instant, of course. If he was, as you say, a little brusque, I expect he was worried by his many duties. As you probably know, he has a post under the new administration.”

  “I think I did read about it in the newspapers, yes.”

  “And anyhow, even if he did behave a little strangely on the occasion you mention, I can assure you that he was acting under a misapprehension which has since been removed.”

  I smiled.

  “You needn’t make such a mystery out of it, Arthur. I know half the story already, so you may as well tell me the other half. Your secretary had something to do with it, I think?”

  Arthur wrinkled his nose up with a ridiculously fastidious expression.

  “Don’t call him that, William, please. Just say Schmidt. I don’t care to be reminded of the association. Those who are foolish enough to keep snakes as pets usually have cause to regret it, sooner or later.”

  “All right, then, Schmidt . . . Go on.”

  “I see that, as usual, you’re better informed than I’d supposed,” Arthur sighed. “Well, well, if you want to hear the whole melancholy truth, you must, painful as it is for me to dwell on. As you know, my last weeks at the Courbierestrasse were spent in a state of excruciating financial anxiety.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Well, without going into a lot of sordid details, which are neither here nor there, I was compelled to try and raise money. I cast about in all sorts of likely and unlikely directions. And, as a last desperate resort when the wolf was literally scratching at the door, I put my pride in my pocket . . .”

  “And asked Kuno to lend you some?”

  “Thank you, dear boy. With your customary consideration for my feelings, you help me over the most painful part of the story . . . Yes, I sank so low. I violated one of my most sacred principles — never to borrow from a friend. (For I may say I did regard him as a friend, a dear friend.) Yes . . .”

  “And he refused? The stingy brute!”

  “No, William. There you go too fast. You misjudge him. I have no reason to suppose that he would have refused. Quite the contrary. This
was the first time I had ever approached him. But Schmidt got to know of my intentions. I can only suppose he had been systematically opening all my letters. At any rate, he went straight to Pregnitz and advised him not to advance me the money; giving all sorts of reasons, most of which were the most monstrous slanders. Despite all my long experience of human nature, I should hardly have believed such treachery and ingratitude possible . . .”

  “Whatever made him do it?”

  “Chiefly, I think, pure spite. As far as one can follow the workings of his foul mind. But, undoubtedly, the creature was afraid that, in this case, he would be deprived of his pound of flesh. He usually arranged these loans himself, you know, and subtracted a percentage before handing over the money at all . . . It humbles me to the earth to have to tell you this.”

  “And I suppose he was right? I mean, you weren’t going to give him any, this time, were you?”

  “Well, no. After his villainous behaviour over the sitting-room carpet, it was hardly to be expected that I should. You remember the carpet?”

  “I should think I did.”

  “The carpet incident was, so to speak, the declaration of war between us. Although I still endeavoured to meet his demands with the utmost fairness.”

  “And what did Kuno have to say to all this?”

  “He was, naturally, most upset, and indignant. And, I must add, rather unnecessarily unkind. He wrote me a most unpleasant letter. Quite gentlemanly, of course; he is always that. But frigid. Very frigid.”

  “I’m surprised that he took Schmidt’s word against yours.”

  “No doubt Schmidt had ways and means of convincing him. There are some incidents in my career, as you doubtless know, which are very easily capable of misinterpretation.”

  “And he brought me into it, as well?”

  “I regret to say that he did. That pains me more than anything else in the whole affair; to think that you should have been dragged down into the mud in which I was already wallowing.”