Christopher and His Kind

by Christopher Isherwood

  Christopher felt on safe ground here. After remarking severely that his mother wasn’t in the habit of exploiting illegal alien labor—a rebuke which didn’t seem to abash them in the least—he added that Heinz was in no need of employment; he had enough money of his own.

  They had been waiting for him to say this. Instantly, a second letter was played like a trump card: “Was this written by you, Mr. Isherwood?” With a sick shock, Christopher recognized it as the letter of instructions he had sent to Heinz in Berlin. He had neglected to tell Heinz to destroy it, so Heinz had brought it along with him. And when the examiners, who had already become suspicious, had asked for proof that the money was really his, he had shown them the letter. This wasn’t mere stupidity. It was perhaps a subconscious bitchery which develops in people who have become accustomed to do exactly what they are told. In the military profession it has sometimes caused famous acts of heroism costing ninety percent casualties. Heinz’s not to reason why.

  (“If they ask how you got the money,” the letter said, “tell them your grandmother gave it to you. That’ll sound better. They can’t prove she didn’t. And it’s yours, anyhow.”)

  “I presume you’re aware, Mr. Isherwood, that this could be construed as an attempt to deceive His Majesty’s Immigration Service?”

  This was from the man who had asked most of the questions. He was small, bright-eyed, smiling.

  “I don’t see it makes any difference who gave him the money. I did, as it happens.”

  “Rather a generous gift, wasn’t it? It couldn’t by any chance have been just a loan?”

  “I’ve told you once already—”

  “And then this letter of yours. A bit curious, isn’t it, the way it’s written?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  But Christopher did see, only too clearly. He had written that he was counting the days until Heinz’s arrival, that he’d been so lonely without him. Nothing stronger than that. But far too much, under the circumstances.

  “You don’t?” The voice was teasing, playful. “I’d say it was the sort of letter that, well, a man might write to his sweetheart.”

  Christopher glared at him in helpless amazement. How dare he? And he looked Christopher straight in the eyes, smiling.

  The examiners consulted together for a moment. In a daze, he heard them telling him that Heinz wouldn’t be granted permission to enter the United Kingdom. He would have to leave by the next boat. Christopher was incredulous. How could this be happening, when they hadn’t proved their case? Then he realized that they didn’t have to prove anything. An alien has no rights whatsoever; he can’t force anybody to receive him. “I shall appeal,” Christopher said, and was told that that was certainly his privilege; he could write to the Home Secretary, if he wished. “But I think you’ll find, sir, that he’ll endorse our decision. He gives us pretty wide powers.”

  When all the miserable arrangements had been made and a sad leave had been taken of Heinz and they were back in the train on their way to London, Wystan said: “As soon as I saw that bright-eyed little rat, I knew we were done for. He understood the whole situation at a glance—because he’s one of us.”

  * * *

  Christopher hated having to tell people what had happened at Harwich, even in a strictly censored version. Richard was an exception, of course—Christopher could tell him anything. But Richard lacked experience; he couldn’t always feel what Christopher had felt. Kathleen’s obstinate, one-sided love grasped nothing but the fact that Christopher was unhappy. For this she blamed both the immigration officials and Heinz; Heinz more than them, since he had caused all the trouble by being, so tiresomely, a foreigner and working-class.

  And now Christopher had to return to work on Little Friend. A former theatrical colleague of Viertel’s—Christopher’s diary refers to her only as Frau G.—was visiting him and helping him revise the screenplay. She was a brisk cheerful Viennese Jewess, full of energy and ideas. Christopher didn’t in the least resent the intrusion of this new broom, even when it swept away some of his favorite scenes. Although he had written them, literally speaking, he always thought of Viertel as their author.

  But, at this particular moment, Frau G. was more than unwelcome. For Christopher had to explain to Viertel in her presence what had become of the German friend whose arrival he had unwisely announced beforehand. This embarrassed him so acutely that he broke off in the middle and ran into the next room, where he threw himself down on a couch and shed tears of rage, shame, and self-pity. Frau G. followed him without the least hesitation, in her thick-skinned motherly way, and tried to comfort him. To her, he had become a child, with a childish, touching, but funny sorrow. Christopher hated her a little for this; hated Viertel as well. These Jews were certainly more aware of suffering than the insensitive Gentile masses around them; but it had to be suffering of their own brand, for their own exclusive cause. Civilized liberals that they were, they no doubt deplored the cruelty of their Book of Leviticus, which set the world an example in 500 B.C.: punishing homosexual lust by death. Homosexual lust they could laugh at, now, and tolerate in a sophisticated manner. Homosexual love they put to death by denial; like Kathleen, they refused to admit that it existed. For the next few days, Christopher could barely endure being with them. It was like a lack of oxygen; his nature gasped for the atmosphere of his fellow tribesmen. As never before, he realized that they were all his brothers—yes, even those who denied their brotherhood and betrayed it—even that man at Harwich.

  (In 1935, during a visit to England, Christopher met Viertel again for the first time since the filming of Little Friend. Christopher then became aware that Viertel’s attitude had greatly changed, perhaps because of the influence of Beatrix Lehmann. There was no need for a confession. Viertel showed that he knew all about Christopher’s sex life and that he was prepared to treat it with respect.

  Thus they began to become really friends; the tension between them on this subject eased. It had almost ceased to exist by the time Christopher settled in California, in 1939. Walking together on the beach at Santa Monica, they would sometimes play a game: Viertel would point out the boys he guessed Christopher might find attractive. He enjoyed doing this, though he was seldom right.)

  * * *

  On January 20, after the screenplay had been revised and delivered to the studio, Christopher left for Berlin. He was determined to get Heinz out of Germany again as soon as possible. As usual, his concern was mixed with aggression against Kathleen. She had to be shown that Heinz was the one whose safety he put before every other consideration. Her England—the England of Nearly Everybody—had rejected Heinz. Before long, he would be rejecting her England.

  He brought Heinz from Berlin to lodgings in Amsterdam, where Heinz was to live until Little Friend was finished. Christopher stayed there with him for ten days. Then it was time to return to London.

  Despite his separation from Heinz, Christopher wholeheartedly enjoyed himself throughout the next two months, while Little Friend was being filmed. He missed Heinz but he no longer had the worry of knowing that he was in Germany, and there were many distractions which kept him from thinking of Heinz for more than a few moments at a time. He was unwilling to admit to Kathleen how much fun he was having, but she must have been well aware of it, for they were on good terms again and he used to amuse her with stories of the latest studio intrigues and crises every morning at breakfast before he left for work.

  The beginning of the filming brought an end to Christopher’s life as Viertel’s victim, imprisoned in his flat. But their move to Gaumont-British didn’t separate them. They were now thrown even more closely together, as allies against the Others. Their relationship, while they were on the set, was in the nature of a performance. When they walked into a corner to confer in German, the actors and crew watched them with curiosity, wondering what decisions they might be making. They were public figures, director and dialogue director, emperor and courtier. The Emperor regarded himself as being in
the midst of enemies. Some of these were real, most were imaginary. Christopher had to take his side against both kinds and did so enthusiastically. He felt a loyalty to the Emperor which he had never felt to the Clown.

  One of the Gaumont-British executives took a strong dislike to Viertel, because of some clash of temperaments between them. Thus Christopher got a lesson in the subtleties of racism. The executive exclaimed angrily to Christopher that Viertel wasn’t a Jew at all but one of these mongrel Ashkenazim, mixed-up scum from Poland or God knows where. The only real Jews were the Sephardim, to whom the executive’s family belonged. They were all aristocrats. In Spain, his family had had a fine mansion with a balcony. And when they emigrated to England, the Jewish community had been exclusively Sephardic. The Ashkenazim had pushed themselves in later, disgracing the Jews by their un-Jewish ways.

  The executives ate their lunch at the Kensington Palace Hotel. This was a grand dull expensive place. Viertel, as Emperor, insisted on going there often because, as he said, “the animals must see their tamer.” When he and Christopher entered the dining room, he would glance sharply around him, as if on the lookout for plotters against his regime. The two of them sat at a table apart. If anyone ventured to greet Viertel, he bowed grimly.

  Christopher much preferred lunching at a pub near the studio called the Goldhawk. It was cheaper and its customers were friendlier and more interesting. Robert Flaherty, white-haired, ruddy-faced, and patriarchal, often came there; he was getting his latest picture, Man of Aran, ready for screening. Viertel admired him greatly, sometimes calling him Neptune (because he had ruled over this film which featured 300-foot-high Atlantic waves) and sometimes “The Last Romantic” (because, according to Viertel, he began by falling in love with a primitive culture in a remote place, then visited it and was disappointed, then made a picture about it as he had expected it to be). Flaherty told Christopher: “The film is the longest distance between two points”—a statement which I still sometimes ponder over and interpret in various ways.

  Christopher loved the world of filmmaking and felt at home in it at once. Psychologically, its technicians were old-fashioned craftsmen, not modern employees. These cameramen, electricians, and carpenters reveled in the precision with which they had to work on camera angles, lighting, and the details of construction. It was their dedication to precision which made their work a game, not a job. Being thus dedicated, they belonged to a higher caste than their employers, the businessmen who ran the commerce of the studio; and they knew it. They feuded with each other, they grumbled about being overworked and underpaid, but their lives were spent in the happy absorption of children at play. Their jokes were about their game.

  A different kind of joke was unintentionally contributed by Christopher. Felicity, the Little Friend girl, has been given a present, a big mysterious box—which is later found to contain a puppy. Trying to guess what is inside this box, Felicity exclaims: “It doesn’t rattle and it doesn’t smell—oh, Mummy, what is it?” Yes, he, Christopher, had actually written that line! It was only when he heard it spoken that he realized how ridiculously obscene it sounded and joined in the roar of laughter which went up from the crew. They continued to quote it for several weeks.

  Viertel had no real enemies on the set, despite his frequent eruptions of fury. “Stubborn monkeys!” he yelled. “No—not monkeys! Donkeys!” Forgetting his liberalism, which anyhow ill befitted an emperor, he would say with relish: “In Russia they would all be shot.” But the crew didn’t resent any of this. They accepted him as a player in their game; his behavior only made the game more exciting. I think many of them were fond of him.

  Viertel talked as if the entire studio were an antiquated death trap. According to him, every take was made at the risk of disaster: lamps falling from the catwalk, sets collapsing and bursting into flames, cables electrocuting the unwary. “This morning, they are going to attempt a technical maneuver of extreme peril: Connie Veidt will walk right across the set with the camera following him. No doubt there will be several dead.”

  Conrad Veidt was then playing in the film of Feuchtwanger’s Jew Suss. Whenever Christopher had the opportunity, he would watch. Two memories remain. My first is of a scene in which Veidt had to read a letter of bad news and, at a certain point, burst into tears. There were three successive takes and in each one—despite the intermediate fussings of the technicians and the makeup man—Veidt wept right on cue, the great drops rolling down his cheeks as if released from a tap … My second memory is of the beginning of the scene of Suss’s execution. Veidt sat in a cart, his hands manacled, on his way to death—a wealthy and powerful man ruined, alone. However, just as the filming was about to begin, something went wrong with the lights. There was to be a delay of five minutes. Veidt stayed in the cart. And now a stenographer came up to him and offered him a piece of candy. The gesture was perhaps deliberately saucy. Some stars would have been annoyed by it because they were trying to concentrate on their role and remain “in character.” They would have ignored the stenographer. Others would have chatted and joked with her, welcoming this moment of relaxation. Veidt did neither. He remained Suss, and through the eyes of Suss he looked down from the cart upon this sweet Christian girl, the only human being in this cruel city who had the heart and the courage to show kindness to a condemned Jew. His eyes filled with tears. With his manacled hands he took the candy from her and tried to eat it—for her sake, to show his gratitude to her. But he couldn’t. He was beyond hunger, too near death. And his emotion was too great. He began to sob. He turned his face away.

  * * *

  Christopher now acquired a new status among his friends. He was “in the movies” and therefore enviable but a trifle declassed. This wasn’t the kind of situation which most of them could even imagine themselves being involved in. Christopher was amused and flattered by their reaction and he didn’t contradict them when they took it for granted that he was earning a huge sum of money. (I forget how much his salary was; certainly nothing remarkable.) He, who had been apt to beg from his friends and be stingy during the Berlin days, now enjoyed paying for taxis and picking up the bills in restaurants, saying, “I’m immensely rich.”

  He tried to get Beatrix Lehmann the part of the mother in the film. First he took Viertel to see her play the young Elizabeth on stage in The Tudor Wench. Viertel was enormously impressed. Then he arranged for them to meet. Beatrix arrived dressed—or so my memory assures me—in an incredible femme-fatale outfit consisting largely of green feathers. She can’t seriously have thought that this was the costume of a mother, even an erring one. More likely, it was one of her curious satirical impersonations—film vamp meeting Hollywood director. Anyhow, her instinct was correct. Viertel was charmed. Almost at once, they were intimate. As they laughed together, they looked strangely alike; perhaps it was the tribal resemblance of two tragicomedians. (Viertel did give her a part, not in Little Friend, but in his next film, The Passing of the Third Floor Back. She played an embittered spinster and made herself hideous as only she knew how.)

  When the filming started, Christopher was able to invite his friends to the studio and treat them to the fascinating spectacle of Viertel directing a scene. This is described in Prater Violet:

  It isn’t necessary to look at the set; the whole scene is reflected in his face … He seems to control every gesture, every intonation, by a sheer effort of hypnotic power. His lips move, his face relaxes and contracts, his body is thrust forward or drawn back in its seat, his hands rise and fall to mark the phases of the action. Now he is coaxing her from the window, now warning against too much haste, now encouraging her father, now calling for more expression, now afraid the pause will be missed, now delighted with the tempo, now anxious again, now really alarmed, now reassured, now touched, now pleased, now very pleased, now cautious, now disturbed, now amused … When it is all over, he sighs, as if awakening from sleep. Softly, lovingly, he breathes the word “Cut.”

  Among the visitors to the set was
Forster. Viertel made some remark about Forster’s eyes. Christopher later passed it on to Forster, who replied in a letter:

  The fact that he praised my eyes is very reassuring, because one’s eyes are always with one, they do not vary from day to day like the complexion or the intelligence. Let him gaze his fill …

  Then, referring to the studio:

  It is a milieu—so energetic, friendly, and horrible. I can’t believe everything isn’t going to crash when such a waggon gets so many stars hitched behind. Every film I ever see will now appear incredibly good …

  * * *

  When Little Friend was released, in the summer of 1934, it did quite well at the English box office. It also got a much better reception in the United States than most British films of that period. The New York Times said that it was “very close to being a masterpiece of its kind” and Film Daily believed that it “should find a warm welcome from American women of all ages and degrees.”

  Some of Christopher’s friends were indulgent. They declared that the film was really quite good—far better than one could have expected. Others, less impressed, took it for granted that he couldn’t be held responsible for the film in its final form, since, obviously, the Gaumont-British vulgarians must have altered every word of his screenplay. The least charitable assumed that he had written the film they saw and heard on the screen. But they excused him because they regarded him as an amusingly cynical whore. (On a later occasion, speaking of Christopher’s movie writing in the States, Auden told him: “You, at least, sell dear what is most dear.”)