Christopher and His Kind

by Christopher Isherwood

  * * *

  When the two of them were traveling, they caused much curiosity and laughter. Wystan had a woolen cap and an immense shapeless topcoat, with carpet slippers to appease his corns. Christopher had a beret, a turtleneck sweater, and oversized riding boots which gave him blisters. Wystan dressed in the way that was natural to him. Christopher was in masquerade as a war correspondent.

  He may have looked the part—correspondents can be a bit absurd—but he must often have betrayed his amateur status by his nervousness. The threat of air raids kept him keyed up, especially when he was on a train. If they were ordered to leave it and take cover, he couldn’t restrain himself from hurrying. Wystan never hurried. At Tungkwan, when their train had to pass a place where some Japanese guns were mounted on the opposite side of the Yellow River, Christopher was the one who took precautions; he insisted on opening the window lest its glass should be blown in by an explosion.

  Christopher was always more apt to be troubled by the threat of danger than by danger itself. When he first saw an air raid, he felt awe rather than fear—awe followed by exhilaration. He was awed by being in the presence of absolute, impersonal hostility. These planes had come simply to destroy.

  The searchlights criss-crossed and suddenly there they were, flying close together and high up. It was as if a microscope had brought into focus the bacilli of a fatal disease.

  Then, as the antiaircraft guns crashed out, the tracer bullets shot upward, buildings flamed, and the punching concussions of the bombs made Christopher catch his breath, he was aware only of a violent physical excitement; “something inside me was flapping about like a fish.” He describes the spectacle as “wrong, an insult to Nature” but admits that it was also “as tremendous as Beethoven.”

  On such occasions, Wystan would say: “Nothing’s going to happen, I know it won’t, nothing like that ever happens to me.” His bland irrational assurance irritated Christopher. Yet Christopher did find an equally irrational sense of safety in their being together. Their relationship seemed at all times more real than their surroundings—this country and this war. So much so that he could almost imagine they were invulnerable—just as Martians are sometimes said to be, in tales about their visits to our world.

  * * *

  Were the two of them ever in serious danger of being killed? Two or three times, perhaps. A shell might just possibly have hit their compartment when the train was passing Tungkwan; the Japanese often fired on the trains, though they seldom did them much damage. Then there was a daytime air battle over Hankow which Wystan and Christopher watched lying on their backs on the lawn of the British consulate. (This was Wystan’s idea, to avoid getting a stiff neck.) During the battle, some sort of missile did hit the ground quite close to them. And then there was their visit to the front, at Han Chwang. The Chinese started to bombard the Japanese lines and the Japanese fired back. Wystan and Christopher were told by their hosts that they must leave. As they were crossing a large empty field, just behind the trenches, several Japanese planes appeared and circled low overhead. The soldier who was escorting Wystan and Christopher urged them to lie down, although there was absolutely no cover. They were now subject to the whim of the Japanese pilots and might well have been machine-gunned. But all that happened was that Wystan took photographs, telling Christopher: “You look wonderful, with your great nose cleaving the summer air.” After which he shuffled his carpet slippers impatiently, wanting to ignore the planes and hurry on to the village where their lunch was waiting.

  * * *

  This Chinese journey was the longest continuous confrontation which Wystan and Christopher were ever to have in the course of their lives. Here they were, nakedly exposed to each other, day after day. But they only became conscious of this when there was friction between them.

  Wystan accused Christopher of sulking whenever his will was crossed. Christopher’s despotism and sulks sometimes irritated Wystan. But more often he endured them good-naturedly and with humor, as he had been enduring them for years:

  Who is that funny-looking young man, so squat with a top-heavy head,

  A cross between a cavalry major and a rather prim landlady,

  Sitting there sipping a cigarette?

  If absolutely the whole universe fails to bow to your command,

  How you stamp your bright little shoe,

  How you pout,

  House-proud old landlady.

  At times I could shake you.

  (These are extracts from a poem—basically affectionate in tone—which Wystan had written in a book he gave Christopher, the year before. The book was D. H. Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts and Flowers; hence Wystan’s imitation of Lawrence’s style.)

  Wystan was well aware of the sinister side of Christopher’s character, and he didn’t deny that it fascinated him more than it repelled him. Christopher writes that “Wystan once told me, almost admiringly, that I was the cruellest and most unscrupulous person he had ever met.” It seems to me that Wystan was incapable of cruelty but that he had a streak of masochism in him which could invite it from others.

  After their return to England, Christopher wrote in his diary:

  In China I sometimes found myself really hating him—hating his pedantic insistence on “objectivity,” which was really a reaction from my own woolly-mindedness. I was meanly jealous of him, too. Jealous of his share of the limelight; jealous because he’ll no longer play the role of dependent, admiring younger brother. Indeed, I got such a physical dislike of him that I deliberately willed him to get ill; which he did.

  Then, in New York and on the Atlantic crossing, we had these extraordinary scenes—Wystan in tears, telling me that no one would ever love him, that he would never have my sexual success. That flattered my vanity; but still my sadism wasn’t appeased. And actually—believe it or not—when we got back to England I wouldn’t have him to stay the night, because I was jealous of him and wanted to stage the Returning Hero act all by myself … Of course, I’m well aware that these confessions sound far worse than they are. My essential feeling for Wystan is untouched by all this, and will remain so.

  Most of their arguments in China were games which they played with each other, to pass the time. It was only when they got onto metaphysics that they ceased to be playful. Then Christopher’s “woolly-mindedness” clashed with Wystan’s “pedantic objectivity,” as Christopher declared passionately that he knew he hadn’t got a soul.

  According to Christopher’s diary:

  The more I think about myself, the more I’m persuaded that, as a person, I really don’t exist. That is one of the reasons why I can’t believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My “character” is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my “feelings” are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.

  Christopher did well to call himself woolly-minded. All he has actually stated here is that he can’t believe in his own individuality as something absolute and eternal; the word “soul” is introduced, quite improperly, as a synonym for “person.”

  A year later, when Christopher was in California, he would have long talks on this subject with Gerald Heard. (Gerald Heard and Chris Wood, together with Aldous and Maria Huxley, had left England for the States in April 1937.) As the result of his talks with Gerald and with Gerald’s friend and teacher, the Hindu monk Prabhavananda, Christopher would find himself able to believe—as a possibility, at least—that an eternal impersonal presence (call it “the soul” if you like) exists within all creatures and is other than the mutable non-eternal “person.” He would then feel that all his earlier difficulties had been merely semantic; that he could have been converted to this belief at any time in his life, if only someone had used the right words to explain it to him. Now, I doubt this. I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.

  But, although Christopher wasn�
�t yet aware that he needed such a belief, he may have been feeling the need subconsciously. This would explain his recently increased hostility toward what he thought of as “religion”—the version of Christianity he had been taught in his childhood. Perhaps he was afraid that he would be forced to accept it, at last, after nearly fifteen years of atheism.

  When Christopher raged against religion, Wystan would laugh and say, “Careful, careful, my dear—if you keep going on like that, you’ll have such a conversion, one of these days!” If Christopher did indeed hate Wystan at moments, it was because of the smugness of Wystan’s Christian dogmatism.

  During their arguments, Christopher sometimes invoked the example of Forster: Morgan, he said, was incapable of having any truck with “such Fascist filth.” I wonder, now, if Wystan then believed what he stated in a letter to Christopher many years later, in explanation of Forster’s declared agnosticism: “As I see him, Morgan is a person who is so accustomed to the Presence of God that he is unaware of it; he has never known what it feels like when that Presence is withdrawn.” If Wystan did already believe this in 1938, he wisely kept his mouth shut. I can imagine the yell of protest Christopher would have uttered, on hearing such an outrageous accusation against his Master.

  * * *

  On May 25, they reached Shanghai. This was the last stop on their Chinese journey. They had been invited by the British ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, and his wife, to stay at their house in the International Settlement. The four of them had first met in Hong Kong and again in Hankow. Archie was a big handsome humorous Scot, a pipe smoker with a collection of thirty-two pipes to choose from. Tita Clark-Kerr was a beautiful tiny blond Chilean, who read detective stories.

  The house, with its columns and clipped lawns, its vases and lacquered screens, its Chinese servants in lemon silk jackets, was every inch a Residence. Archie and Tita didn’t even pretend to feel at home in it. Their daytime lives were lived almost entirely in public, passing from one diplomatic or social duty to another, while many sharp eyes and ears interpreted their least gesture and lightest word. No doubt, it gave them some slight relaxation to entertain two guests who weren’t official personages. Archie referred to Wystan and Christopher as the Poets, and the Poets did their best to reciprocate by behaving as poetically as good manners permitted. Still, it was a strain. And, all too often, when they had got Archie to themselves in his study and were laughing and joking, a secretary would enter to announce that it was time he left for some conference. Then the tall doors would be thrown open, an order would be barked out, the guard on the staircase outside would crash to attention, and Archie, now His Excellency, would slowly, gravely descend the stairs. Before their very eyes, he became the British Empire.

  Within the International Settlement, the two extremes of the human condition almost touched each other. Here were the mansions and the banks, the elegant shops, the luxury restaurants, and the nightclub at the top of a tower, from which guests had watched the Japanese attack on the outer city, a few months earlier. And here were the refugee camps and the dozens of factories in which children were being literally worked to death by their employers. The refugees were packed into huts with triple tiers of shelves: one shelf for each family to cook, eat, and sleep on. The perimeter of the Settlement was guarded by a mixed force of foreign troops, confronting the Japanese troops who guarded their conquered territory of deserted ruins.

  All this Wystan and Christopher dutifully inspected, described, photographed. They had seen ugly sights during their Chinese journey—wounded soldiers stranded at railway stations, without medical aid, some of them stinking of gas gangrene; mutilated corpses after an air raid. But misery in Shanghai seemed more miserable than elsewhere, because its victims were trapped between their Western or Chinese exploiters and their Japanese conquerors, without any apparent hope of escape.

  Toward the end of their visit, Wystan and Christopher began taking afternoon holidays from their social consciences in a bathhouse where you were erotically soaped and massaged by young men. You could pick your attendants, and many of them were beautiful. Those who were temporarily disengaged would watch the action, with giggles, through peepholes in the walls of the bathrooms. What made the experience pleasingly exotic was that tea was served to the customer throughout; even in the midst of an embrace, the attendant would disengage one hand, pour a cupful, and raise it, tenderly but firmly, to the customer’s lips. If you refused the tea at first, the attendant went on offering it until you accepted. It was like a sex fantasy in which a naked nurse makes love to the patient but still insists on giving him his medicine punctually, at the required intervals.

  Every evening, when they met Archie and Tita for pre-dinner cocktails, Archie would ask what they had been doing that afternoon. If they had been to the bathhouse, they had to invent something. Archie accepted their lies without comment, but a certain gleam in his eye made them wonder if he was playing a game with them. Probably, they said to each other, they were followed whenever they went out, as a routine security measure, and a police report of their movements was placed on Archie’s desk. Of one thing they felt certain: if Archie did know about the bathhouse, he wouldn’t be in the least shocked.

  * * *

  Wystan and Christopher had deliberately kept their travel plans vague, choosing one route rather than another as local circumstances suggested. Having now decided that they wanted to return to England by way of New York, they went to the U.S. authorities in Shanghai to ask for transit visas. It never occurred to them that they would have the least difficulty in getting these.

  But it so happened that the official on duty that day was in a bad humor. He had just been harassed by an obstinate flock of White Russians who wanted to emigrate to the States and wouldn’t take nyet for an answer. Having dismissed them with understandable but unnecessary brusqueness, he turned impatiently to Wystan and Christopher. They told him their business. He answered that they should have applied for the visas in England before they started. Could they prove to him that it was absolutely necessary for them to pass through New York? No? Then let them cross Canada and sail home from Halifax, as British subjects should.

  As they turned to leave, frustrated and furious, the official ungraciously asked them what they were doing in Shanghai. Perhaps he suspected them of being undesirables who should be deported from the Settlement. Delighted at this chance to hit back at him, they replied demurely: “Staying with the British ambassador.”

  Tableau. The official’s manner changed with indecent suddenness. They were granted special visas which allowed them to visit the States as many times as they cared to, during the next twelve months.

  * * *

  The ship on which they were to cross the Pacific would call at three ports in Japan. So now they were about to visit what they had come to regard as an enemy country. In China, the Japanese had been the Enemy, the bomb droppers, and as such non-human. They had seen only two at close quarters, as human beings—both of them prisoners. One was a loutish, pathetically scared youth, tied up with rope like a parcel. All they could do for him was to put a cigarette between his lips. The other was an ex-schoolmaster who answered questions in English with a sad natural dignity.

  Then, in the International Settlement, they talked to a delegation of Japanese civilians, on a so-called fact-finding mission. These were either the blandest of hypocrites or the most childish of wishful thinkers. They declared that they loved the Chinese people and felt absolutely no bitterness toward them. This war was such a pity; it could have been avoided so easily, Japan’s demands were very reasonable. They hoped that Wystan and Christopher had had no inconvenience while traveling. “Only from your aeroplanes,” Christopher answered, and got a seemingly hearty laugh.

  * * *

  They sailed from Shanghai on June 12. Their Canadian Pacific liner was comfortable and old-fashioned, with an open coal-burning fireplace in the lounge. Her name evoked the days of Victorian imperial megalomania: Empress of Asia. />
  Two days later, they saw their first seaport on the Japanese coast. Christopher’s immediate reaction was to exclaim: “Ibsen!” The psychological climate of the little town seemed Scandinavian; it looked so sad and drab and clean. The temple in its park made him think of a municipal office. He missed China’s gaudy dirty picturesqueness. This was Nagasaki, seven years before the atomic bomb.

  In Kobe, all the shops were lighted but the street lamps weren’t—in case of air raids, they were told. But surely the Chinese were incapable of bombing Japan? The precaution seemed absurd; perhaps it was actually an attempt to encourage Japanese war-mindedness.

  On the train to Tokyo, the car porter annoyed Wystan by flicking continually around his feet with brush and dustpan, collecting his cigarette ash. This was a vicious circle, since Wystan kept dropping it, out of more or less deliberate aggression. They were lucky enough to get a calming glimpse of benign Mount Fuji lit by the setting sun, before the night clouds closed around it. But, when they arrived in Tokyo:

  A raving screaming mob with banners was seeing a troop train out of the station to the front. The sight so shocked poor Wystan that he dropped and broke his only pair of glasses, and so will travel blind to New York. [Wystan, being nearsighted, would still be able to read, however.]

  They spent the night of June 17–18 at the Imperial Hotel. I have a memory connected with this which I suspect. It isn’t recorded in Christopher’s diary and it is rather too symbolic to be strictly true:

  While Christopher is sitting waiting for Wystan in the lobby of the hotel, next morning, he witnesses a ceremonious meeting between two officers in uniform, a Nazi and a Japanese—the Berlin–Tokyo Axis personified. They exchange Nazi salutes, then bow Japanese-style, then shake hands. They are standing beneath a big chandelier; and, as they greet each other, the chandelier begins to sway. It is Christopher’s first, very slight, earthquake.