The Berlin Stories

by Christopher Isherwood

  Pieps lived together with his two friends, Gerhardt and Kurt, in a cellar on the canal-bank, near the station of the overhead railway. The cellar belonged to Gerhardt’s aunt, an elderly Friedrichstrasse whore, whose legs and arms were tattooed with snakes, birds and flowers. Gerhardt was a tall boy with a vague, silly, unhappy smile. He did not pick pockets, but stole from the big department-stores. He had never yet been caught, perhaps because of the lunatic brazenness of his thefts. Stupidly grinning, he would stuff things into his pockets right under the noses of the shop-assistants. He gave everything he stole to his aunt, who cursed him for his laziness and kept him very short of money. One day, when we were together, he took from his pocket a brightly coloured lady’s leather belt: “Look, Christoph, isn’t it pretty?”

  “Where did you get it from?”

  “From Landauers’,” Gerhardt told me. “Why . . . what are you smiling at?”

  “You see, the Landauers are friends of mine. It seems funny — that’s all.”

  At once, Gerhardt’s face was the picture of dismay: “You won’t tell them, Christoph, will you?”

  “No,” I promised. “I won’t.”

  Kurt came to the Alexander Casino less often than the others. I could understand him better than I could understand Pieps or Gerhardt, because he was consciously unhappy. He had a reckless, fatal streak in his character, a capacity for pure sudden flashes of rage against the hopelessness of his life. The Germans call it Wut. He would sit silent in his corner, drinking rapidly, drumming with his fists on the table, imperious and sullen. Then, suddenly, he would jump to his feet, exclaim: “Ach, Scheiss!” and go striding out. In this mood, he picked quarrels deliberately with the other boys, fighting them three or four at a time, until he was flung out into the street, half stunned and covered with blood. On these occasions even Pieps and Gerhardt joined against him as against a public danger: they hit him as hard as anyone else and dragged him home between them afterwards without the least malice for the black eyes he often managed to give them. His behaviour did not appear to surprise them in the least. They were all good friends again next day.

  By the time I arrived back Herr and Frau Nowak had probably been asleep for two or three hours. Otto generally arrived later still. Yet Herr Nowak, who resented so much else in his son’s behaviour, never seemed to mind getting up and opening the door to him, whatever the time of night. For some strange reason, nothing would induce the Nowaks to let either of us have a latchkey. They couldn’t sleep unless the door was bolted as well as locked.

  In these tenements each lavatory served for four flats. Ours was on the floor below. If, before retiring, I wished to relieve nature, there was a second journey to be made through the living-room in the dark to the kitchen, skirting the table, avoiding the chairs, trying not to collide with the head of the Nowaks’ bed or jolt the bed in which Lothar and Grete were sleeping. However cautiously I moved, Frau Nowak would wake up: she seemed to be able to see me in the dark, and embarrassed me with polite directions: “No, Herr Christoph — not there, if you please. In the bucket on the left, by the stove.”

  Lying in bed, in the darkness, in my tiny corner of the enormous human warren of the tenements, I could hear, with uncanny precision, every sound which came up from the courtyard below. The shape of the court must have acted as a gramophone-horn. There was someone going downstairs: our neighbour, Herr Müller, probably: he had a night-shift on the railway. I listened to his steps getting fainter, flight by flight; then they crossed the court, clear and sticky on the wet stone. Straining my ears, I heard, or fancied I heard, the grating of the key in the lock of the big street door. A moment later, the door closed with a deep, hollow boom. And now, from the next room, Frau Nowak had an outburst of coughing. In the silence which followed it, Lothar’s bed creaked as he turned over muttering something indistinct and threatening in his sleep. Somewhere on the other side of the court a baby began to scream, a window was slammed to, something very heavy, deep in the innermost recesses of the building, thudded dully against a wall. It was alien and mysterious and uncanny, like sleeping out in the jungle alone.

  Sunday was a long day at the Nowaks. There was nowhere to go in this wretched weather. We were all of us at home. Grete and Herr Nowak were making a trap for sparrows which Herr Nowak had made and fixed up in the window. They sat there, hour by hour, intent upon it. The string which worked the trap was in Grete’s hand. Occasionally, they giggled at each other and looked at me. I was sitting on the opposite side of the table, frowning at a piece of paper on which I had written:

  “But, Edward, can’t you see?” I was trying to get on with my novel. It was about a family who lived in a large country house on unearned incomes and were very unhappy. They spent their time explaining to each other why they couldn’t enjoy their lives; and some of the reasons — though I say it myself — were most ingenious. Unfortunately I found myself taking less and less interest in my unhappy family: the atmosphere of the Nowak household was not very inspiring. Otto, in the inner room with the door open, was amusing himself by balancing ornaments on the turntable of an old gramophone, which was now minus sound-box and tone-arm, to see how long it would be before they flew off and smashed. Lothar was filing keys and mending locks for the neighbours, his pale sullen face bent over his work in obstinate concentration. Frau Nowak, who was cooking, began a sermon about the Good and the Worthless Brother: “Look at Lothar. Even when he’s out of a job he keeps himself occupied. But all you’re good for is to smash things. You’re no son of mine.”

  Otto lolled sneering on his bed, occasionally spitting out an obscene word or making a farting noise with his lips. Certain tones of his voice were maddening: they made one want to hurt him — and he knew it. Frau Nowak’s shrill scolding rose to a scream:

  “I’ve a good mind to turn you out of the house! What have you ever done for us? When there’s any work going you’re too tired to do it; but you’re not too tired to go gallivanting about half the night — you wicked unnatural good-for-nothing . . .”

  Otto sprang to his feet, and began dancing about the room with cries of animal triumph. Frau Nowak picked up a piece of soap and flung it at him. He dodged, and it smashed the window. After this Frau Nowak sat down and began to cry. Otto ran to her at once and began to soothe her with noisy kisses. Neither Lothar nor Herr Nowak took much notice of the row. Herr Nowak seemed even rather to have enjoyed it: he winked at me slyly. Later, the hole in the window was stopped with a piece of cardboard. It remained unmended; adding one more to the many draughts in the attic.

  During supper, we were all jolly. Herr Nowak got up from the table to give imitations of the different ways in which Jews and Catholics pray. He fell down on his knees and bumped his head several times vigorously on the ground, gabbling nonsense which was supposed to represent Hebrew and Latin prayers: “Koolyvotchka, koolyvotchka, koolyvotchka. Amen.” Then he told stories of executions, to the horror and delight of Grete and Frau Nowak: “William the First — the old William — never signed a death-warrant; and do you know why? Because once, quite soon after he’d come to the throne, there was a celebrated murder-case and for a long time the judges couldn’t agree whether the prisoner was guilty or innocent, but at last they condemned him to be executed. They put him on the scaffold and the executioner took his axe — so; and swung it — like this; and brought it down: Kernack! (They’re all trained men of course: you or I couldn’t cut a man’s head off with one stroke, if they gave us a thousand marks.) And the head fell into the basket — flop!” Herr Nowak rolled up his eyes again, let his tongue hang out from the corner of his mouth and gave a really most vivid and disgusting imitation of the decapitated head: “And then the head spoke, all by itself, and said: ‘I am innocent!’ (Of course, it was only the nerves; but it spoke, just as plainly as I’m speaking now.) ‘I am innocent!’ it said . . . And a few months later, another man confessed on his death-bed that he’d been the real murderer. So, after that, William never signed a death-warra
nt again!”

  In the Wassertorstrasse one week was much like another. Our leaky stuffy little attic smelt of cooking and bad drains. When the living-room stove was alight, we could hardly breathe; when it wasn’t we froze. The weather had turned very cold. Frau Nowak tramped the streets, when she wasn’t at work, from the clinic to the board of health offices and back again: for hours she waited on benches in draughty corridors or puzzled over complicated application-forms. The doctors couldn’t agree about her case. One was in favour of sending her to a sanatorium at once. Another thought she was too far gone to be worth sending at all — and told her so. Another assured her that there was nothing serious the matter: she merely needed a fortnight in the Alps. Frau Nowak listened to all three of them with the greatest respect and never failed to impress upon me, describing these interviews, that each was the kindest and cleverest professor to be found in the whole of Europe.

  She returned home, coughing and shivering, with sodden shoes, exhausted and semi-hysterical. No sooner was she inside the flat than she began scolding at Grete or at Otto, quite automatically, like a clockwork doll unwinding its spring:

  “You mark my words — you’ll end in prison! I wish I’d packed you off to a reformatory when you were fourteen. It might have done you some good . . . And to think that, in my whole family, we’ve never had anybody before who wasn’t respectable and decent!”

  “You respectable!” Otto sneered. “When you were a girl you went around with every pair of trousers you could find.”

  “I forbid you to speak to me like that! Do you hear? I forbid you! Oh, I wish I’d died before I bore you, you wicked, unnatural child!”

  Otto skipped around her, dodging her blows, wild with glee at the row he had started. In his excitement he pulled hideous grimaces.

  “He’s mad!” exclaimed Frau Nowak. “Just look at him now, Herr Christoph. I ask you, isn’t he a raving madman? I must take him to the hospital to be examined.”

  This idea appealed to Otto’s romantic imagination. Often, when we were alone together, he would tell me with tears in his eyes:

  “I shan’t be here much longer, Christoph. My nerves are breaking down. Very soon they’ll come and take me away. They’ll put me in a strait-waistcoat and feed me through a rubber tube. And when you come to visit me, I shan’t know who you are.”

  Frau Nowak and Otto were not the only ones with “nerves.” Slowly but surely the Nowaks were breaking my powers of resistance. Every day I found the smell from the kitchen sink a little nastier: every day Otto’s voice when quarrelling seemed harsher and his mother’s a little shriller. Grete’s whine made me set my teeth. When Otto slammed a door I winced irritably. At nights I couldn’t get to sleep unless I was half drunk. Also, I was secretly worrying about an unpleasant and mysterious rash: it might be due to Frau Nowak’s cooking, or worse.

  I now spent most of my evenings at the Alexander Casino. At a table in the corner by the stove I wrote letters, talked to Pieps and Gerhardt or simply amused myself watching the other guests. The place was usually very quiet. We all sat round or lounged at the bar, waiting for something to happen. No sooner came the sound of the outer door than a dozen pairs of eyes were turned to see what new visitor would emerge from behind the leather curtain. Generally, it was only a biscuit-seller with his basket, or a Salvation Army girl with her collecting-box and tracts. If the biscuit-seller had been doing good business or was drunk he would throw dice with us for packets of sugar-wafers. As for the Salvation Army girl, she rattled her way drably round the room, got nothing and departed, without making us feel in the least uncomfortable. Indeed, she had become such a part of the evening’s routine that Gerhardt and Pieps did not even make jokes about her when she was gone. Then an old man would shuffle in, whisper something to the barman and retire with him into the room behind the bar. He was a cocaine-addict. A moment later he reappeared, raised his hat to all of us with a vague courteous gesture, and shuffled out. The old man had a nervous tic and kept shaking his head all the time, as if saying to Life: No. No. No.

  Sometimes the police came, looking for wanted criminals or escaped reformatory boys. Their visits were usually expected and prepared for. At any rate you could always, as Pieps explained to me, make a last-minute exit through the lavatory window into the courtyard at the back of the house: “But you must be careful Christoph,” he added. “Take a good big jump. Or you’ll fall down the coal-shoot and into the cellar. I did, once. And Hamburg Werner, who was coming after me, laughed so much that the bulls caught him.”

  On Saturday and Sunday evenings the Alexander Casino was full. Visitors from the West End arrived, like ambassadors from another country. There were a good number of foreigners — Dutchmen mostly, and Englishmen. The Englishmen talked in loud, high, excited voices. They discussed communism and Van Gogh and the best restaurants. Some of them seemed a little scared: perhaps they expected to be knifed in this den of thieves. Pieps and Gerhardt sat at their tables and mimicked their accents, cadging drinks and cigarettes. A stout man in horn spectacles asked: “Were you at that delicious party Bill gave for the Negro singers?” And a young man with a monocle murmured: “All the poetry in the world is in that face.” I knew what he was feeling at that moment: I could sympathize with, even envy him. But it was saddening to know that, two weeks hence, he would boast about his exploits here, to a select party of clubmen or dons — warmed discreet smilers around a table furnished with historic silver and legendary port. It made me feel older.

  At last the doctors made up their minds: Frau Nowak was to be sent to the sanatorium after all: and quite soon — shortly before Christmas. As soon as she heard this she ordered a new dress from the tailor. She was as excited and pleased as if she had been invited to a party: “The matrons are always very particular, you know, Herr Christoph. They see to it that we keep ourselves neat and tidy. If we don’t we get punished — and quite right, too . . . I’m sure I shall enjoy being there,” Frau Nowak sighed, “if only I can stop myself worrying about the family. What they’ll do when I’m gone, goodness only knows. They’re as helpless as a lot of sheep . . .” In the evenings she spent hours stitching warm flannel underclothes, smiling to herself, like a woman who is expecting a child.

  On the afternoon of my departure Otto was very depressed.

  “Now you’re going, Christoph, I don’t know what’ll happen to me. Perhaps, six months from now, I shan’t be alive at all.”

  “You got on all right before I came, didn’t you?”

  “Yes . . . but now mother’s going, too. I don’t suppose father’ll give me anything to eat.”

  “What rubbish!”

  “Take me with you, Christoph. Let me be your servant. I could be very useful, you know. I could cook for you and mend your clothes and open the door for your pupils . . .” Otto’s eyes brightened as he admired himself in this new role. “I’d wear a little white jacket — or perhaps blue would be better, with silver buttons.”

  “I’m afraid you’re a luxury I can’t afford.”

  “Oh, but, Christoph, I shouldn’t want any wages, of course.” Otto paused feeling that this offer had been a bit too generous. “That is,” he added cautiously, “only a mark or two to go dancing, now and then.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  We were interrupted by the return of Frau Nowak. She had come home early to cook me a farewell meal. Her string-bag was full of things she had bought; she had tired herself out carrying it. She shut the kitchen-door behind her with a sigh and began to bustle about at once, her nerves on edge, ready for a row.

  “Why, Otto, you’ve let the stove go out! After I specially told you to keep an eye on it! Oh, dear, can’t I rely on anybody in this house to help me with a single thing?”

  “Sorry, mother,” said Otto. “I forgot.”

  “Of course you forgot! Do you ever remember anything? You forgot!” Frau Nowak screamed at him, her features puckered into a sharp little stabbing point of fury: “I’ve worked myself into my
grave for you, and that’s my thanks. When I’m gone I hope your father’ll turn you out into the streets. We’ll see how you like that! You great, lazy, hulking lump! Get out of my sight, do you hear? Get out of my sight!”

  “All right. Christoph, you hear what she says?” Otto turned to me, his face convulsed with rage; at that moment the resemblance between them was quite startling; they were like creatures demoniacally possessed. “I’ll make her sorry for it as long as she lives!”

  He turned and plunged into the inner bedroom, slamming the rickety door behind him. Frau Nowak turned at once to the stove and began shovelling out the cinders. She was trembling all over and coughing violently. I helped her, putting firewood and pieces of coal into her hands; she took them from me, blindly, without a glance or a word. Feeling, as usual, that I was only in the way, I went into the living-room and stood stupidly by the window, wishing that I could simply disappear. I had had enough. On the window-sill lay a stump of pencil. I picked it up and drew a small circle on the wood, thinking: I have left my mark. Then I remembered how I had done exactly the same thing, years ago, before leaving a boarding-house in North Wales. In the inner room all was quiet. I decided to confront Otto’s sulks. I had still got my suitcases to pack.