Those were not their exact words, but, psychologically, it was as simple as that. They had been playing parts, repeating slogans created for them by others. Now they wanted to stop. Christopher felt almost equally surprised by his own statement and by Wystan’s agreement with it. The surprise was mutual. Their agreement made them happy. Now, more than ever, they were allied. Yet their positions were really quite different.
Wystan had been aware of his own change of attitude for some time already. He hadn’t spoken of it to Christopher because he had expected that Christopher would be horrified by it. As I have said earlier, Wystan’s left-wing convictions had always been halfhearted and at odds with his religious feelings. While in Spain, he had been disgusted by the burning of churches and the anti-religious propaganda permitted by the government. Nevertheless, he had believed that the government’s cause was mainly just. He had been willing to fight against Franco. He wasn’t a pacifist and would never become one. Back in England, he had attended meetings and made public statements because he still believed that Franco must be fought, and because he wanted to show his solidarity with left-wing friends he admired and loved. Now, however, he was about to start a new life in another country. His obligations wouldn’t be the same in the States. He wouldn’t be a member of a group. He could express himself freely as an individual.
Christopher had taken longer than Wystan to become aware of his own change of attitude because he was embarrassed by its basic cause: his homosexuality. As a homosexual, he had been wavering between embarrassment and defiance. He became embarrassed when he felt that he was making a selfish demand for his individual rights at a time when only group action mattered. He became defiant when he made the treatment of the homosexual a test by which every political party and government must be judged. His challenge to each one of them was: “All right, we’ve heard your liberty speech. Does that include us or doesn’t it?”
The Soviet Union had passed this test with honors when it recognized the private sexual rights of the individual, in 1917. But, in 1934, Stalin’s government had withdrawn this recognition and made all homosexual acts punishable by heavy prison sentences. It had agreed with the Nazis in denouncing homosexuality as a form of treason to the state. The only difference was that the Nazis called it “sexual Bolshevism” and the Communists “Fascist perversion.”
Christopher—like many of his friends, homosexual and heterosexual—had done his best to minimize the Soviet betrayal of its own principles. After all, he had said to himself, anti-homosexual laws exist in most capitalist countries, including England and the United States. Yes—but if Communists claim that their system is juster than capitalism, doesn’t that make their injustice to homosexuals less excusable and their hypocrisy even viler? He now realized he must dissociate himself from the Communists, even as a fellow traveler. He might, in certain situations, accept them as allies but he could never regard them as comrades. He must never again give way to embarrassment, never deny the rights of his tribe, never apologize for its existence, never think of sacrificing himself masochistically on the altar of that false god of the totalitarians, the Greatest Good of the Greatest Number—whose priests are alone empowered to decide what “good” is.
(Wystan was much more apologetic about his homosexuality than Christopher was, and much less aggressive. His religion condemned it and he agreed that it was sinful, though he fully intended to go on sinning.)
The change in Christopher’s attitude was also related to Heinz and the Nazis. As long as Heinz had been outside their power but menaced by them, Christopher’s attitude to them had been one of uncomplicated hatred. But now Heinz was about to become an unwilling part of the Nazi military machine. Soon he would be wearing Hitler’s uniform. Christopher didn’t for one moment wish him to do otherwise. Heinz had plenty of courage but he wasn’t the type who could be expected to disappear and join the underground, or to take a stand as a pacifist in a country where pacifists would probably be executed.
Suppose, Christopher now said to himself, I have a Nazi Army at my mercy. I can blow it up by pressing a button. The men in that Army are notorious for torturing and murdering civilians—all except for one of them, Heinz. Will I press the button? No—wait: Suppose I know that Heinz himself, out of cowardice or moral infection, has become as bad as they are and takes part in all their crimes? Will I press that button, even so? Christopher’s answer, given without the slightest hesitation, was: Of course not.
That was a purely emotional reaction. But it helped Christopher think his way through to the next proposition. Suppose that Army goes into action and has just one casualty, Heinz himself. Will I press the button now and destroy his fellow criminals? No emotional reaction this time, but a clear answer, not to be evaded: Once I have refused to press that button because of Heinz, I can never press it. Because every man in that Army could be somebody’s Heinz and I have no right to play favorites. Thus Christopher was forced to recognize himself as a pacifist—although by an argument which he could only admit to with the greatest reluctance.
Other thoughts and emotions related themselves to this argument. Remembering those hapless homeless Chinese crowds, pushed helplessly by the war tide, clinging to the roofs of trains or huddled beside the tracks, Christopher felt ashamed of all the militant lectures on China he had been giving, right up to the time he sailed. How could he have dared to suggest that any of these people—or any people anywhere—ought to fight, ought to die in defense of any principles, however excellent? I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.
The above description of Christopher’s reactions is far too lucid, however. What had actually begun to surface in his muddled mind was a conflict of emotions. He felt obliged to become a pacifist, he refused to deny his homosexuality, he wanted to keep as much of his leftism as he could. All he could do for the present was to pick up his ideas one after another and reexamine them, ring them like coins, saying: This one’s counterfeit; this one’s genuine, but I can’t use it; this one I can keep, I think.
Wystan had his mother’s Christianity to fall back on. Christopher had nothing but a negative decision—if war came, he wouldn’t fight. He was aware, of course, that pacifism had its positive obligations—you had to do something instead of fighting. Heard and Huxley were the only two articulate pacifists he could contact. They might be able to restate pacifism for him in terms of reason, instead of emotion. He had been told that they had entangled themselves in some Oriental religion; but he could reject the religion and still adopt their pacifist ideology. He would write to Heard as soon as he landed in New York. Later, perhaps, he would go out to California and consult them both.
* * *
The voyage was stormy. The Champlain seemed very small, slithering down the long gray Atlantic slopes, under a burdened sky. On this voyage, Wystan and Christopher had no literary collaboration to occupy them. Wrapped in rugs, they lay sipping bouillon, or they paced the deck, or drank at the bar, or watched movies in the saloon, where French tapestries flapped out from the creaking, straining walls as the ship rolled. They amused themselves by taking over the puppet show in the children’s playroom and improvising Franco-English dialogue full of private jokes and double meanings. Their audience of children didn’t care what the puppets said, as long as they kept jumping about. Off the coast of Newfoundland, the ship ran into a blizzard. She entered New York harbor looking like a wedding cake.
* * *
At the end of Christopher’s brief visit in 1938, he had felt absolutely confident of one thing, at least. If he did decide to settle in America—and, by America, he meant New York—he would be able to make himself at home there. This, he said to himself, was a setting in which his public personality would function more freely, more successfully than it could ever have functioned in London. Oh, he’d talk faster and louder than any of the natives. He’d pick up their slang and their a
ccent. He’d learn all their tricks. Someone had repeated to him a saying about the city: “Here, you’ll find sympathy in the dictionary and everything else at the nearest drugstore.” This delighted him. He had accepted it as a challenge to be tough.
But now New York, on that bitter winter morning, appeared totally, shockingly transformed from the place he had waved goodbye to, the previous July. Christopher experienced a sudden panicky loss of confidence.
There they stood in the driving snow—the made-in-France Giantess with her liberty torch, which now seemed to threaten, not welcome, the newcomer; and the Red Indian island with its appalling towers. There was the Citadel—stark, vertical, gigantic, crammed with the millions who had already managed to struggle ashore and find a foothold. You would have to fight your way inland from your very first step onto the pier. Already, it was threatening you with its tooting tugboats, daring you to combat.
God, what a terrifying place this suddenly seemed! You could feel it vibrating with the tension of the nervous New World, aggressively flaunting its rude steel nudity. We’re Americans here—and we keep at it, twenty-four hours a day, being Americans. We scream, we grab, we jostle. We’ve no time for what’s slow, what’s gracious, what’s nice, quiet, modest. Don’t you come snooting us with your European traditions—we know the mess they’ve got you into. Do things our way or take the next boat back—back to your Europe that’s falling apart at the seams. Well, make up your mind. Are you quitting or staying? It’s no skin off our nose. We promise nothing. Here, you’ll be on your own.
Christopher, trying hard to think positive thoughts, declared that he was staying. But the Giantess wasn’t impressed. The towers didn’t care. Okay, Buster, suit yourself.
* * *
Now, however, the quarantine launch arrived. On it were Erika and Klaus Mann, come out to welcome them. They were full of liveliness and gossip. And, at once, the Giantess stopped threatening, the towers no longer appalled. Christopher felt himself among friends, cared for, safe. And Vernon would be waiting for him on shore; Christopher had cabled to him from the Champlain. A couple of hours from now, somewhere within the grimness of that icebound Citadel, in a place of warmth and joy, the two of them would be in each other’s arms.
* * *
This is where I leave Christopher, at the rail, looking eagerly, nervously, hopefully toward the land where he will spend more than half of his life. At present, he can see almost nothing of what lies ahead. In the absence of the fortune-telling lady from Brussels, I will allow him and Wystan to ask one question—I can already guess what it is—and I will answer it:
Yes, my dears, each of you will find the person you came here to look for—the ideal companion to whom you can reveal yourself totally and yet be loved for what you are, not what you pretend to be. You, Wystan, will find him very soon, within three months. You, Christopher, will have to wait much longer for yours. He is already living in the city where you will settle. He will be near you for many years without your meeting. But it would be no good if you did meet him now. At present, he is only four years old.
Books by Christopher Isherwood
NOVELS
A Meeting by the River
A Single Man
Down There on a Visit
The World in the Evening
Prater Violet
Goodbye to Berlin
The Last of Mr. Norris
(English title: Mr. Norris Changes Trains)
The Memorial
All the Conspirators
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
My Guru and His Disciple
Christopher and His Kind
Kathleen and Frank
Lions and Shadows
BIOGRAPHY
Ramakrishna and His Disciples
PLAYS (with W. H. Auden)
On the Frontier
The Ascent of F6
The Dog beneath the Skin
TRAVEL
The Condor and the Cows
Journey to a War (with W. H. Auden)
COLLECTION
Exhumations
TRANSLATIONS
The Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire
(and the following with Swami Prabhavananda)
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination
The Bhagavad-Gita
Copyright © 1976 by Christopher Isherwood
All rights reserved
Library of Congress catalog card number: 76-42228
Published in Canada by Collins Publishers, Toronto
eISBN 9781466853294
First eBook edition: August 2013
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