Unknown - Isherwood, Christopher (The Berlin Stories - The Last of Mr Norris - Goodbye to Berlin) (TXT)

“The enemy fortress,” said Arthur, “into which poor little I have got to venture, all alone.”

“Remember David and Goliath.”

“Oh, dear. I’m afraid the Psalmist and I have very little in common this morning. I feel more like a beetle about to be squashed by a steam-roller… . It’s a curious fact that, since my earliest years, I have had an instinctive dislike of the police. The very cut of their uniforms offends me, and the German helmets are not only hideous but somehow rather sinister. Merely to see one of them filling in an official form in that inhuman copy-book handwriting gives me a sinking feeling in the stomach.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

Arthur brightened a little.

“I’m very glad I’ve got you with me, William. You have such a sympathetic manner. I could wish for no better companion on the morning of my execution. The very opposite of that odious Schmidt, who simply gloats over my misfortune. Nothing makes him happier than to be in a position to say— ‘I told you so.’ “

“After all, there’s nothing very much they can do to you in there. They only knock workmen about. Remember, you belong to the same class as their masters. You must make them feel that.”

“I’ll try,” said Arthur doubtfully.

“Have another cognac?”

“Perhaps I will, yes.”

The second cognae worked wonders. We emerged from the

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restaurant into the still, clammy autumn morning, laughing, arm in arm.

“Be brave, Comrade Norris. Think of Lenin.”

“I’m afraid, ha, ha, I find some inspiration in the Marquis de Sade.”

But the atmosphere of the police headquarters sobered him considerably. Increasingly apprehensive and depressed, we wandered along vistas of stone passages with numbered doors, were misdirected up and down flights of stairs, collided with hurrying officials who carried bulging dossiers of crimes. At length we came out into a courtyard, overlooked by windows with heavy iron bars.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” moaned Arthur. “We’ve put our heads into the trap this time, I’m afraid.”

At this moment a piercing whistle sounded from above.

“Hullo, Arthur!”

Looking down from one of the barred windows high above was Otto.

“What did they get you for?” he shouted, jocularly. Before either of us could answer, a figure in uniform appeared beside him at the window and hustled him away. The apparition was as brief as it was disconcerting.

“They seem to have rounded up the whole gang,” I said, grinning.

“It’s certainly very extraordinary,” said Arthur, much perturbed. “I wonder if …”

We passed under an archway, up more stairs, into a honeycomb of little rooms and dark passages. On each floor were wash-basins, painted a sanitary green. Arthur consulted his Vorladung and found the number of the room in which he was to present himself. We parted in hurried whispers.

“Goodbye, Arthur. Good luck. I’ll wait for you here.”

“Thank you, dear boy… . And supposing the worst comes to the worst, and I emerge from this room in custody, don’t speak to me or make any sign that you know me unless I speak to you. It may be advisable not to involve you… . Here’s Bayer’s address; in case you have to go there alone.”

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“I’m certain I shan’t.”

“There’s one more thing I wanted to say to you.” Arthur had the manner of one who mounts the steps of the scaffold. “I’m sorry if I was a little hasty over the telephone this mom-ing. I was very much upset. … If this ware to be our last meeting for some time, I shouldn’t like you to remember it against me.”

“What rubbish, Arthur. Of course I shan’t. Now run along, and let’s get this over.”

He pressed my hand, knocked timidly at the door and went in.

I sat down to wait for him, under a blood-red poster advertising the reward for betraying a murderer. My bench was shared by a fat Jewish slum-lawyer and his client, a tearful little prostitute.

“All you’ve got to remember,” he kept telling her, “is that you never saw him again after (he night of the sixth.”

“But they’ll get it out of me somehow,” she sobbed. “I know they will. It’s the way they look at you. And then they ask you a question so suddenly. You’ve no time to think.”

It was nearly an hour before Arthur reappeared. I could see at once from his face that the interview hadn’t been so bad as he’d anticipated. He was in a great hurry.

“Come along, William. Come along. I don’t care to stay here any longer than I need.”

Outside in the street, he hailed a taxi and told the chauffeur to drive to the Hotel Kaiserhof, adding, as he nearly always did:

“There’s no need to drive too fast.”

“The Kaiserhof!” I exclaimed. “Are we going to pay a call on Hitler?”

“No, William. We are not … although, I admit, I derive a certain pleasure from dallying in the camp of the enemy. Do you know, I have lately made a point of being manicured there? They have a very good man. To-day, however, I have a quite different object. Bayer’s office is also in the Wilhelm—

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strasse. It didn’t seem altogether discreet to drive directly from here to there.”

Accordingly, we performed the comedy of entering the hotel, drinking a cup of coffee in the lounge and glancing through the morning papers. To my disappointment, we didn’t see Hitler or any of the other Nazi leaders. Ten minutes later, we came out again into the street. I found myself squinting rapidly to right and left, in search of possible detectives. Arthur’s police-obsession was exceedingly catching.

Bayer inhabited a large untidy flat on the top floor of one of the shabbier houses beyond the Zimmerstrasse. It was certainly a striking enough contrast to what Arthur called “the camp of the enemy,” the padded, sombre, luxurious hotel we had just left. The door of the flat stood permanently ajar. Inside, the walls were hung with posters in German and Russian, notices of mass meetings and demonstrations, anti-war cartoons, maps of industrial areas and graphs to illustrate the dimensions and progress of strikes. There were no carpets on the bare unpainted floorboards. The rooms echoed to the rattle of typewriters. Men and women of all ages wandered in and out or sat chatting on upturned sugar-boxes waiting for interviews; patient, good-humoured, quite at home. Everybody seemed to know everybody; a newcomer was greeted almost invariably by his or her Christian name. Even strangers were addressed as Thou. Cigarette smoking was general. The floors were littered with crushed-out stubs.

In the midst of this informal, cheerful activity, we found Bayer himself, in a tiny shabby room, dictating a letter to the girl whom I had seen on the platform at the meeting in Neukölln. He seemed pleased but not especially surprised to see Arthur.

“Ah, my dear Norris. And what can I do for you?”

He spoke English with great emphasis and a strong foreign accent. I thought I had never seen anybody with such beautiful teeth.

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“You have been already to see them?” he added.

“Yes,” said Arthur. “We’ve just come from there.”

The girl secretary got up and went out, closing the door behind her. Arthur, his elegantly gloved hands resting demurely in his lap, began to describe his interview with the officials at the Polizeipraesidium. Bayer sat back in his chair and listened. He had extraordinarily vivid animal eyes of a dark reddish brown. His glance was direct, challenging, brilliant as if with laughter, but his lips did not even smile. Listening to Arthur, his face and body became quite still. He did not once nod, or shift his position, or fidget with his hands. His mere repose suggested a force of concentration which was hypnotic in its intensity. Arthur, I could see, felt this also; he squirmed uneasily on his seat and carefully avoided looking Bayer in the eyes.