“You set him such a good example.”
We both laughed.
“The old swine might at least have left me with a decent cheque.”
“Never mind, darling. There’s more where he came from.”
“I don’t care,” said Sally. “I’m sick of being a whore. I’ll never look at a man with money again.”
Next morning, Sally felt very ill. We both put it down to the drink. She stayed in bed the whole morning and when she got up she fainted. I wanted her to see a doctor straight away, but she wouldn’t. About tea-time, she fainted again and looked so bad afterwards that Frl. Schroeder and I sent for a doctor without consulting her at all.
The doctor, when he arrived, stayed a long time. Frl. Schroeder and I sat waiting in the living-room to hear his diagnosis. But, very much to our surprise, he left the flat suddenly, in a great hurry, without even looking in to wish us good afternoon. I went at once to Sally’s room. Sally was sitting up in bed, with a rather fixed grin on her face:
“Well, Christopher darling, I’ve been made an April Fool of.”
“What do you mean?”
Sally tried to laugh:
“He says I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh my God!”
“Don’t look so scared, darling! I’ve been more or less expecting it, you know.”
“It’s Klaus’, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“Not have it, of course.” Sally reached for a cigarette. I sat stupidly staring at my shoes.
“Will the doctor . . .”
“No, he won’t. I asked him straight out. He was terribly shocked. I said, ‘My dear man, what do you imagine would happen to the unfortunate child if it was born? Do I look as if I’d make a good mother?’ ”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He seemed to think it was quite beside the point. The only thing which matters to him is his professional reputation.”
“Well then, we’ve got to find someone without a professional reputation, that’s all.”
“I should think,” said Sally, “we’d better ask Frl. Schroeder.”
So Frl. Schroeder was consulted. She took it very well: she was alarmed but extremely practical. Yes, she knew of somebody. A friend of a friend’s friend had once had difficulties. And the doctor was a fully qualified man, very clever indeed. The only trouble was, he might be very expensive.
“Thank goodness,” Sally interjected, “we haven’t spent all that swine Clive’s money!”
“I must say, I think Klaus ought —”
“Look here, Chris. Let me tell you this once for all: if I catch you writing to Klaus about this business, I’ll never forgive you and I’ll never speak to you again!”
“Oh, very well. . . Of course I won’t. It was just a suggestion, that’s all.”
I didn’t like the doctor. He kept stroking and pinching Sally’s arm and pawing her hand. However, he seemed the right man for the job. Sally was to go into his private nursing home as soon as there was a vacancy for her. Everything was perfectly official and above-board. In a few polished sentences the dapper little doctor dispelled the least whiff of sinister illegality. Sally’s state of health, he explained, made it quite impossible for her to undergo the risks of childbirth: there would be a certificate to that effect. Needless to say, the certificate would cost a lot of money. So would the nursing-home and so would the operation itself. The doctor wanted two hundred and fifty marks down before he would make any arrangements at all. In the end, we beat him down to two hundred. Sally wanted the extra fifty, she explained to me later, to get some new nightdresses.
At last it was spring. The cafés were putting up wooden platforms on the pavement and the ice-cream shops were opening, with their rainbow-wheels. We drove to the nursing-home in an open taxi. Because of the lovely weather, Sally was in better spirits than I had seen her in for weeks. But Frl. Schroeder, though she bravely tried to smile, was on the verge of tears. “The doctor isn’t a Jew, I hope?” Frl. Mayr asked me sternly. “Don’t you let one of those filthy Jews touch her. They always try to get a job of that kind, the beasts!”
Sally had a nice room, clean and cheerful, with a balcony. I called there again in the evening. Lying there in bed without her make-up, she looked years younger, like a little girl.
“Hullo, darling . . . They haven’t killed me yet, you see. But they’ve been doing their best to . . . Isn’t this a funny place? . . . I wish that pig Klaus could see me . . . This is what comes of not understanding his mind . . .”
She was a bit feverish and laughed a great deal. One of the nurses came in for a moment, as if looking for something, and went out again almost immediately.
“She was dying to get a peep at you,” Sally explained. “You see, I told her you were the father. You don’t mind, do you, darling . . .”
“Not at all. It’s a compliment.”
“It makes everything so much simpler. Otherwise, if there’s no one, they think it so odd. And I don’t care for being sort of looked down on and pitied as the poor betrayed girl who gets abandoned by her lover. It isn’t particularly flattering for me, is it? So I told her we were most terribly in love but fearfully hard up, so that we couldn’t afford to marry, and how we dreamed of the time when we’d both be rich and famous and then we’d have a family of ten, just to make up for this one. The nurse was awfully touched, poor girl. In fact, she wept. Tonight, when she’s on duty, she’s going to show me pictures of her young man. Isn’t it sweet?”
Next day, Frl. Schroeder and I went round to the nursing-home together. We found Sally lying flat, with the bedclothes up to her chin:
“Oh, hullo, you two! Won’t you sit down? What time is it?” She turned uneasily in bed and rubbed her eyes: “Where did all these flowers come from?”
“We brought them.”
“How marvellous of you!” Sally smiled vacantly. “Sorry to be such a fool today . . . It’s this bloody chloroform . . . My head’s full of it.”
We only stayed a few minutes. On the way home, Frl. Schroeder was terribly upset: “Will you believe it, Herr Issyvoo, I couldn’t take it more to heart if it was my own daughter? Why, when I see the poor child suffering like that, I’d rather it was myself lying there in her place — I would indeed!”
Next day Sally was much better. We all went to visit her: Frl. Schroeder, Frl. Mayr, Bobby and Fritz. Fritz, of course, hadn’t the faintest idea what had really happened. Sally, he had been told, was being operated upon for a small internal ulcer. As always is the way with people when they aren’t in the know, he made all kinds of unintentional and startlingly apt references to storks, gooseberry-bushes, perambulators and babies generally; and even recounted a special new item of scandal about a well-known Berlin society lady who was said to have undergone a recent illegal operation. Sally and I avoided each other’s eyes.
On the evening of the next day, I visited her at the nursing-home for the last time. She was to leave in the morning. She was alone and we sat together on the balcony. She seemed more or less all right now and could walk about the room.
“I told the Sister I didn’t want to see anybody today except you.” Sally yawned languidly. “People make me feel so tired.”
“Would you rather I went away too?”
“Oh no,” said Sally, without much enthusiasm. “If you go, one of the nurses will only come in and begin to chatter; and if I’m not lively and bright with her, they’ll say I have to stay in this hellish place a couple of extra days, and I couldn’t stand that.”
She stared out moodily over the quiet street:
“You know, Chris, in some ways I wish I’d had that kid . . . It would have been rather marvellous to have had it. The last day or two, I’ve been sort of feeling what it would be like to be a mother. Do you know, last night, I sat here for a long time by myself and held this cushion in my arms and imagined it was my baby. And I felt a most marvellous sort
of shut-off feeling from all the rest of the world. I imagined how it’d grow up and how I’d work for it, and how, after I’d put it to bed at nights, I’d go out and make love to filthy old men to get money to pay for its food and clothes . . . It’s all very well for you to grin like that, Chris . . . I did really!”
“Well, why don’t you marry and have one?”
“I don’t know . . . I feel as if I’d lost faith in men. I just haven’t any use for them at all . . . Even you, Christopher, if you were to go out into the street now and be run over by a taxi. . . I should be sorry in a way, of course, but I shouldn’t really care a damn.”
“Thank you, Sally.”
We both laughed.
“I didn’t mean that, of course, darling — at least, not personally. You mustn’t mind what I say while I’m like this. I get all sorts of crazy ideas into my head. Having babies makes you feel awfully primitive, like a sort of wild animal or something, defending its young. Only the trouble is, I haven’t any young to defend. . . I expect that’s what makes me so frightfully bad-tempered to everybody just now.”
It was partly as the result of this conversation that I suddenly decided, that evening, to cancel all my lessons, leave Berlin as soon as possible, go to some place on the Baltic and try to start working. Since Christmas, I had hardly written a word.
Sally, when I told her my idea, was rather relieved, I think. We both needed a change. We talked vaguely of her joining me later; but even then, I felt that she wouldn’t. Her plans were very uncertain. Later, she might go to Paris, or to the Alps, or to the South of France, she said — if she could get the cash. “But probably,” she added, “I shall just stay on here. I should be quite happy. I seem to have got sort of used to this place.”
I returned to Berlin towards the middle of July.
All this time I had heard nothing of Sally, beyond half a dozen postcards, exchanged during the first month of my absence. I wasn’t much surprised to find she’d left her room in our flat.
“Of course, I quite understand her going. I couldn’t make her as comfortable as she’d the right to expect; especially as we haven’t any running water in the bedrooms.” Poor Frl. Schroeder’s eyes had filled with tears. “But it was a terrible disappointment to me, all the same . . . Frl. Bowles behaved very handsomely, I can’t complain about that. She insisted on paying for her room until the end of July. I was entitled to the money, of course, because she didn’t give notice until the twenty-first — but I’d never have mentioned it. . . She was such a charming young lady —”
“Have you got her address?”
“Oh yes, and the telephone number. You’ll be ringing her up, of course. She’ll be delighted to see you . . . The other gentlemen came and went, but you were her real friend, Herr Issyvoo. You know, I always used to hope that you two would get married. You’d have made an ideal couple. You always had such a good steady influence on her, and she used to brighten you up a bit when you got too deep in your books and studies . . . Oh yes, Herr Issyvoo, you may laugh — but you never can tell! Perhaps it isn’t too late yet!”
•
Next morning, Frl. Schroeder woke me in great excitement:
“Herr Issyvoo, what do you think! They’ve shut the Darmstädter und National! There’ll be thousands ruined, I shouldn’t wonder! The milkman says we’ll have civil war in a fortnight! Whatever do you say to that!”
As soon as I’d got dressed, I went down into the street. Sure enough, there was a crowd outside the branch bank on the Nollendorfplatz corner, a lot of men with leather satchels and women with string-bags — women like Frl. Schroeder herself. The iron lattices were drawn down over the bank windows. Most of the people were staring intently and rather stupidly at the locked door. In the middle of the door was fixed a small notice, beautifully printed in Gothic type, like a page from a classic author. The notice said that the Reichs-president had guaranteed the deposits. Everything was quite all right. Only the bank wasn’t going to open.
A little boy was playing with a hoop amongst the crowd. The hoop ran against a woman’s legs. She flew out at him at once: “Du, sei bloss nicht so frech! Cheeky little brat! What do you want here!” Another woman joined in, attacking the scared boy: “Get out! You can’t understand it, can you?” And another asked, in furious sarcasm: “Have you got your money in the bank too, perhaps?” The boy fled before their pent-up, exploding rage.
In the afternoon it was very hot. The details of the new emergency decrees were in the early evening papers — terse, governmentally inspired. One alarmist headline stood out boldly, barred with blood-red ink: “Everything Collapses!” A Nazi journalist reminded his readers that tomorrow, the fourteenth of July, was a day of national rejoicing in France; and doubtless, he added, the French would rejoice with especial fervour this year, at the prospect of Germany’s downfall. Going into an outfitters, I bought myself a pair of ready-made flannel trousers for twelve marks fifty — a gesture of confidence by England. Then I got into the Underground to go and visit Sally.
She was living in a block of three-room flats, designed as an Artists’ Colony, not far from the Breitenbachplatz. When I rang the bell, she opened the door to me herself:
“Hillooo, Chris, you old swine!”
“Hullo, Sally darling!”
“How are you? . . . Be careful, darling, you’ll make me untidy. I’ve got to go out in a few minutes.”
I had never seen her all in white before. It suited her. But her face looked thinner and older. Her hair was cut in a new way and beautifully waved.
“You’re very smart,” I said.
“Am I?” Sally smiled her pleased, dreamy, self-conscious smile. I followed her into the sitting-room of the flat. One wall was entirely window. There was some cherry-coloured wooden furniture and a very low divan with gaudy fringed cushions. A fluffy white miniature dog jumped to its feet and yapped. Sally picked it up and went through the gestures of kissing it, just not touching it with her lips:
“Freddi, mein Liebling, Du bist soo süss!”
“Yours?” I asked, noticing the improvement in her German accent.
“No. He belongs to Gerda, the girl I share this flat with.”
“Have you known her long?”
“Only a week or two.”
“What’s she like?”
“Not bad. As stingy as hell. I have to pay for practically everything.”
“It’s nice here.”
“Do you think so? Yes, I suppose it’s all right. Better than that hole in the Nollendorfstrasse, anyhow.”
“What made you leave? Did you and Frl. Schroeder have a row?”
“No, not exactly. Only I got so sick of hearing her talk. She nearly talked my head off. She’s an awful bore, really.”
“She’s very fond of you.”
Sally shrugged her shoulders with a slight impatient listless movement. Throughout this conversation, I noticed that she avoided my eyes. There was a long pause. I felt puzzled and vaguely embarrassed. I began to wonder how soon I could make an excuse to go.
Then the telephone bell rang. Sally yawned, pulled the instrument across on to her lap:
“Hilloo, who’s there? Yes, it’s me . . . No . . . No . . . I’ve really no idea . . . Really I haven’t! I’m to guess?” Her nose wrinkled: “Is it Erwin? No? Paul? No? Wait a minute . . . Let me see . . .
“And now, darling, I must fly!” cried Sally, when, at last, the conversation was over: “I’m about two hours late already!”
“Got a new boyfriend?”
But Sally ignored my grin. She lit a cigarette with a faint expression of distaste.
“I’ve got to see a man on business,” she said briefly.
“And when shall we meet again?”
“I’ll have to see, darling . . . I’ve got such a lot on, just at present. . . I shall be out in the country all day tomorrow, and probably the day after . . . I’ll let you know . . . I may be going to Frankfurt quite soon.”
“Have you got a
job there?”
“No. Not exactly.” Sally’s voice was brief, dismissing this subject. “I’ve decided not to try for any film work until the autumn, anyhow. I shall take a thorough rest.”
“You seem to have made a lot of new friends.”
Again, Sally’s manner became vague, carefully casual:
“Yes, I suppose I have . . . It’s probably a reaction from all those months at Frl. Schroeder’s, when I never saw a soul.”
“Well,” I couldn’t resist a malicious grin, “I hope for your sake that none of your new friends have got their money in the Darmstädter und National.”
“Why?” She was interested at once. “What’s the matter with it?”
“Do you really mean to say you haven’t heard?”
“Of course not. I never read the papers, and I haven’t been out today, yet.”
I told her the news of the crisis. At the end of it, she was looking quite scared.
“But why on earth,” she exclaimed impatiently, “didn’t you tell me all this before? It may be serious.”
“I’m sorry, Sally. I took it for granted that you’d know already . . . especially as you seem to be moving in financial circles, nowadays —”
But she ignored this little dig. She was frowning, deep in her own thoughts:
“If it was very serious, Leo would have rung up and told me . . .” she murmured at length. And this reflection appeared to ease her mind considerably.
We walked out together to the corner of the street, where Sally picked up a taxi.
“It’s an awful nuisance living so far off,” she said. “I’m probably going to get a car soon.
“By the way,” she added just as we were parting, “what was it like on Ruegen?”
“I bathed a lot.”
“Well, goodbye darling. I’ll see you sometime.”
“Goodbye, Sally. Enjoy yourself.”
About a week after this, Sally rang me up:
“Can you come round at once, Chris? It’s very important. I want you to do me a favour.”
This time, also, I found Sally alone in the flat.
The Berlin Stories Page 27