Christopher and His Kind

by Christopher Isherwood

  Otto—as he will be called in this book, also—was a child of the borderland. His family came from what was then known as the Polish Corridor, the strip of Germany which had been ceded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles, after World War I. Like many other families in that area, the Nowaks had moved west and settled in Berlin, rather than lose their German nationality. Yet Otto himself seemed Slav rather than German, in his looks and temperament. His sensual nostrils and lips reminded Christopher of a photograph he had once seen of a Russian dancer.

  When Otto was in a good mood, Christopher would be enchanted by his eagerness to enjoy himself. He delighted in watching movies and eating meals and making love. Like Christopher, he was a play actor. In the midst of their lovemaking, he would exclaim, in a swooning tone, “This is how I’d like to die—doing this!” Once, when they had seen a film about a psychopathic killer, he turned to Christopher and said solemnly, “Let’s thank God, Christoph, we’re both normal!” And he told stories, with immense tragic gusto. Of how, for example, he was haunted by a huge spectral black hand. He had seen it twice already, once in childhood, once in his early teens. “One day soon, I’ll see that Hand again—and then it’ll be all over with me.” Otto would say this with his eyes full of tears. And there would be tears in Christopher’s eyes too, from laughing.

  For Christopher, during their first months together, Otto’s physical presence seemed part of the summer itself. Otto was the coming of warmth and color to the drab cold city, bringing the linden trees into leaf, sweating the citizens out of their topcoats, making the bands play outdoors. Christopher rode on the bus with him to the great lake at Wannsee, where they splashed together in the shallow water amidst the holiday crowds, then wandered off into the surrounding woods to find a spot where they could be alone. Otto was the exciting laughter of the crowd and the inviting shadow of the woods. But the crowd and the woods were also full of menace to Christopher; within them lurked those who might lure Otto away from him.

  Otto preferred women to men, but he was a narcissist first and foremost. Therefore, the degree of his lust was largely dependent upon that of his partner. Christopher could compete successfully with most women by showing more lust, more shamelessly, than they would. (Older women were a greater threat than young ones.) “I love the way you look when you’re hot for me,” Otto used to say to him. “Your eyes shine so bright.” Otto was perpetually admiring his body and calling Christopher’s attention to its muscles and golden smoothness—“just feel, Christoph, as smooth as silk!” When winter returned and Otto revealed himself bit by bit as he pulled off layers of thick clothes, his nakedness aroused both of them even more. His body became a tropical island on which they were snugly marooned in the midst of snowbound Berlin.

  Although Otto’s attractiveness was very much a matter of taste—he certainly wasn’t conventionally handsome—Christopher always felt proud to be seen with him in public. When they went to their favorite cabaret, which was also a restaurant, Christopher would keep looking away from the stage to see if people at other tables were admiring Otto. And he loved to watch the performance as it was reflected in Otto’s eyes.

  Christopher spent more money on Otto than he could well afford, but Otto was careful not to go too far in his demands, or rather, wheedlings. When Otto was coaxing Christopher into buying him a new suit, Christopher enjoyed the game in spite of his misgivings. It was a kind of seduction and it always ended erotically as well as financially.

  Certainly, Otto was selfish. But so was Christopher, as is pointed out in Goodbye to Berlin. (I have changed a name and some pronouns from the ones used in the novel, in order not to confuse the reader of this book.)

  Christopher’s selfishness is much less honest, more civilised, more perverse. Appealed to in the right way, he will make any sacrifice, however unreasonable and unnecessary. But when Otto takes the better chair as if by right, then Christopher sees a challenge which he dare not refuse to accept … Christopher is bound to go on fighting to win Otto’s submission. When, at last, he ceases to do so, it will merely mean that he has lost interest in Otto altogether.

  This is an attempt to describe the relationship between Christopher and Otto as it may have appeared to a third party, Stephen Spender. Stephen was then living in Hamburg and they went to visit him there for a few days, that summer. (I remember Stephen’s explosive laugh as he greeted Christopher—the laugh of a small boy who has done something forbidden: “I’ve just written the most marvelous poem!” A pause. Then, with sudden anxiety: “At least, I hope it is.”)

  In Stephen’s presence—and indeed in the presence of any of his English friends—Christopher’s attitude to Otto became one of apology and embarrassment. He felt himself being pulled in two opposite directions. His way of apologizing to Stephen for Otto’s existence was to play the martyred, masochistic victim of a hopeless passion—a character like Maugham’s Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, who becomes the slave of Mildred, the faithless, rapacious teashop waitress. This was deliberate farce. Even when Christopher felt genuinely jealous, genuinely furious with Otto, he continued to play for Stephen’s amusement. Otto, being a natural actor, knew this instinctively and entered into the performance; he didn’t object to taking the unsympathetic role. Here is another scene from Goodbye to Berlin, with names and pronouns changed, as before:

  Suddenly, Christopher slapped Otto hard on both cheeks. They closed immediately and staggered grappling about the room, knocking over the chairs. Stephen looked on, getting out of their way as well as he could. It was funny and, at the same time, unpleasant, because rage made their faces strange and ugly. Presently, Otto got Christopher down on the ground and began twisting his arm: “Have you had enough?” he kept asking. He grinned: at that moment he was really hideous, positively deformed with malice. Stephen knew that Otto was glad to have him there, because his presence was an extra humiliation for Christopher.

  Nevertheless, Otto wanted Christopher’s friends to like him. He tried to approach them by the only method he knew: flirtation. This didn’t usually displease them but it did make them decide that he was a quite ordinary boy of his kind, unworthy of their further curiosity. So they went back to talking English with Christopher. Otto, who didn’t understand the language, was obliged to read their faces, gestures, and tones of voice as an animal does—with the result that he ended by knowing a great deal more about them than they knew about him.

  From time to time, Christopher was apt to become suddenly angered by his own embarrassment over Otto. Then he would blame his friends for it and punish them by exposing them even more mercilessly to the annoyance of Otto’s presence. Those whose ultimatum is “love me, love my dog” are using their pets in the same aggressive manner.

  When defending Otto, I must beware of making Christopher seem too sinister. He was well aware of his masochism and his domineering will; they were part of his survival technique as a writer. He needed to be made to suffer; otherwise, he would have lapsed into indifference and never noticed or cared about anybody or anything. And he needed his will; without it, he would have stopped working and probably have become an alcoholic. His will was a psychological muscle which had been overdeveloped in his struggle with sloth. But too much muscle is better than none at all.

  * * *

  At the end of June, Wystan came out to Berlin on a short visit. He had brought with him a proof copy of his first volume of poems, which was to be published that September. The poems were publicly dedicated to Christopher, and Wystan had also composed a personal dedication to him, in dog German full of private jokes. Christopher later lent the proof copy to Stephen, who accidentally crumpled its flimsy paper jacket. Before returning it, Stephen himself inscribed it: “Written by Wystan, dedicated to Christopher, damaged by Stephen Spender.”

  Wystan wasn’t greatly interested in Otto but he did at least pay Otto the compliment of treating him as a metaphysical concept. In a poem which he wrote for Christopher’s birthday in 1931, Otto is the prize fo
r which Christopher is fighting against the powers of Hell. And Wystan declares—with more politeness, perhaps, than genuine optimism:

  The plants have one whole cycle run

  Since your campaign was first begun,

  Though still the peace-map is not drawn

  It stands recorded

  That most of Otto has been won

  To you awarded.

  * * *

  Edward Upward (who is called Allen Chalmers in Lions and Shadows) also visited Christopher in Berlin in 1930, toward the end of August. Edward was Christopher’s closest heterosexual male friend—they had met at their public school and had become constant companions while up at Cambridge. Their friendship had grown out of their admiration for each other as writers. Since both of them were essentially novelists, they shared the experience of writing more completely than Christopher and Wystan ever did. From Christopher’s point of view, Wystan’s poems were like rabbits he produced from a hat; they couldn’t be talked about before they appeared.

  Because of the difference in their sexual tastes, Edward and Christopher had tended to keep their sex lives in the background of their conversation, to be referred to with apologetic humor. They talked about homosexuality, of course; but Christopher was conscious that Edward trod carefully. When he spoke of “buggers” and “buggery”—these were Christopher’s preferred epithets at that time—he did so in exactly the right tone of voice.

  Here in Berlin, Edward felt himself to be on buggers’ territory and obliged to tread more carefully than ever. He did his best to treat both the Hirschfeld Institute and Otto with respect. When they saw how good-looking Edward was, Karl Giese and his friends archly decided that he and Christopher must once have been lovers, despite Christopher’s denials. As for Otto, he flirted with Edward because Edward was Christopher’s friend. Christopher was uneasily aware that Otto’s presence was spoiling their reunion. Yet his obsession was such that he couldn’t bring himself to tell Otto to disappear until Edward’s visit was over. He was afraid that Otto might disappear altogether.

  Christopher had always regarded Edward as his literary mentor; and now it seemed that he might become Christopher’s political mentor, too. For Edward was now a convert to Marxism, although he hadn’t, as yet, joined the Communist Party. Christopher found no difficulty in responding to Communism romantically, as the brotherhood of man. But he was well aware that Edward’s involvement wasn’t romantic, it was altogether sane and serious; it was a change in his whole way of life. This change implied an austerity which both attracted and scared Christopher. He began to regard Edward as a conventionally pious Catholic might regard a friend who had made up his mind to become a priest.

  Edward returned to England at the end of the month. On September 2, he went to see Kathleen, at her invitation. Formerly, she had disapproved of Edward as a subversive influence on Christopher in college. (She always thought in terms of “influences.”) But now she turned to Edward instinctively, no doubt feeling that, as a heterosexual, he couldn’t be part of Berlin’s influence on Christopher. (“That hateful Berlin,” she exclaimed in her diary, “and all it contains!”)

  Edward reported on the meeting in a letter to Christopher:

  I have betrayed everything, but very diplomatically. My only blunder was letting her know that you were paying for Otto. I was properly trapped. And I’m far from sure that I managed to convince her that buggery isn’t unnatural. However, I insisted that you were more terrific than ever in England.

  * * *

  After Edward’s visit, Christopher became increasingly aware of the kind of world he was living in. Here was the seething brew of history in the making—a brew which would test the truth of all the political theories, just as actual cooking tests the cookery books. The Berlin brew seethed with unemployment, malnutrition, stock-market panic, hatred of the Versailles Treaty, and other potent ingredients. On September 20, a new one was added; in the Reichstag elections, the Nazis won 107 seats as against their previous 12, and became for the first time a major political party.

  * * *

  At the beginning of October, Christopher moved out of his In den Zelten room and went to live with Otto and his family. The Nowaks had a flat in a slum tenement in the Hallesches Tor district: Simeonstrasse 4. (In Goodbye to Berlin, the name of the street is given as the Wassertorstrasse, the Water Gate Street, because Christopher thought it sounded more romantic. The Wassertorstrasse was actually a continuation of the Simeonstrasse.)

  The Nowaks’ flat consisted of a tiny kitchen, a living room, and a small bedroom. The living room contained two large double beds, a dining table, six chairs, and a sideboard. These pieces of furniture must have come from a larger home and a more prosperous period; there was barely space to move around them. The bedroom had two single beds in it.

  Christopher’s arrival caused a rearrangement of sleeping space which, characteristically, inconvenienced everybody in the family but Otto. Otto’s elder brother, Lothar, had to give up his bed in the bedroom to Christopher and move into one of the double beds in the living room, sharing it with their twelve-year-old sister, Grete. Frau Nowak, who had been sleeping with Grete, had to share the other double bed with her husband. Frau Nowak probably didn’t mind this—though she complained of Herr Nowak’s snoring—because Christopher, as a lodger, was bringing extra money for his bed and board into the household. Herr Nowak certainly didn’t mind; he drank enough beer every night to be able to sleep like a hog, regardless of his bedmate. Grete can’t have minded, either; she was at an age when such changes are fun. Lothar probably did mind. He was a serious, hard-working boy of twenty who had been converted to National Socialism; he must therefore have disapproved of Christopher as a degenerate foreigner who had turned him out of his bed in order to have perverse sex with his brother.

  This was one of the attic flats, so it overlooked the rooftops and got plenty of daylight, at least. The lower flats stared at each other across the deep pit of the courtyard and their gloom was perpetual. The Nowaks’ chief disadvantage was that the roof of the building leaked and the rain water seeped through their ceiling. There was only one toilet to every four flats, and the Nowaks had to walk down a flight of stairs to reach theirs, unless they preferred to use the bucket in the kitchen. To wash properly—that is to say, not in the kitchen sink—they had to go to the nearest public baths.

  When the kitchen stove was alight, the flat got smelly and stuffy; when it wasn’t, you shivered. And, no matter what the temperature was, the sink stank. Because of the leaky roof and the overcrowding, the Nowaks had been told by the housing authorities that they mustn’t go on living here. Dozens of other families in this district had been told the same thing; but there was nowhere for them to move to.

  In Goodbye to Berlin, “Isherwood” goes to live with the Nowaks in the autumn of 1931, not 1930. There were two reasons for this falsification. First, from a structural point of view, it seemed better to introduce some of the more important characters—Sally Bowles, Frl. Schroeder, and her lodgers—before the Nowaks. Second, since “Isherwood” is not overtly homosexual, he has to be given another reason for knowing Otto and another motive for going to live with his family. In the novel, “Isherwood” meets Otto through an Englishman named Peter Wilkinson who is Otto’s lover; and the meeting takes place merely because they happen to be staying at the same boarding house in a seaside village (Sellin) on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic. Then Peter goes back to England, having broken with Otto, and Otto and “Isherwood” return to Berlin—but not together.

  In September 1931, the British government was forced to abandon the gold standard, thereby lowering the value of the pound in relation to foreign currencies and impoverishing British nationals who were living abroad on British money. In the novel, this gives “Isherwood” a respectable motive for going to live with the Nowaks; he becomes their lodger because he is poor, not because he wants to share a bedroom with Otto.

  Christopher’s In den Zelten room did cost
a little more than he could easily afford. But when he left it, he didn’t do so because he had suddenly become poorer; his move to the Nowaks’ flat was due to Otto’s coaxing. Otto had decided that it would be fun if they all lived together, and Christopher agreed; such slumming seemed a thrilling adventure. By the time the British pound fell, a year later, Christopher was almost able to balance his loss with the German money he was earning by giving English lessons. He could always have afforded something a little better than the Simeonstrasse.

  Quite aside from the novelty of the experience, Christopher enjoyed living with the Nowaks. He soon became very fond of Frau Nowak. Her cheeks were flushed prettily and the big blue rings under her eyes made her look sick but strangely young for her age; she had tuberculosis. There was something touchingly girlish and gay and even naughty about her—she knew all about his relationship with Otto and, though she never referred to it, Christopher was sure that it didn’t shock her. She loved the excitement of having him as a visitor. Christopher also got along well with Herr Nowak, a sturdy little furniture remover who called him Christoph and slapped him on the back. Grete he found tiresome but endearingly silly. He had done his best to make friends with Lothar and had, several times, tried addressing him with the familiar du (thou). Working-class men would call each other du even when they were strangers. Herr Nowak had said du to Christopher from the beginning, though Frau Nowak had told him that it was no way to speak to a gentleman. But Lothar had quietly snubbed Christopher by replying to him with the formal Sie (you). The flat was uncomfortable, certainly; there was nowhere to put anything down. But, as far as Christopher was concerned, the discomforts were easily bearable, like those of a camping trip which could be brought to an end whenever he wished.

  I doubt if Christopher managed to do any writing while he was with the Nowaks. True, there is a passage in Goodbye to Berlin: