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

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a giant piston. If Arthur didn’t do something to stop it, it seemed probable that the entire staircase would collapse.

At this critical moment, the door of the office opened. It was Bayer himself, come out to see what all the noise was about. His smiling eyes took in the scene with the amusement of a tolerant schoolmaster. The uproar did not disconcert him in the least; he was used to it. Smiling, he shook hands with the scared and embarrassed Arthur, laying a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “Ludwig!” roared the onlookers. “Ludwig! Arthur! Speech!” Bayer laughed at them and made a good-humoured gesture of salute and dismissal. Then he turned, escorting Arthur and myself into the office. The noise outside gradually subsided into singing and shouted jokes. In the outer office the typists were doing their best to carry on work amidst groups of eagerly arguing men and women. The walls were plastered with news-sheets displaying the election results. We elbowed our way into Bayer’s little room. Arthur sank at once into a chair and began fanning himself with his recovered hat.

“Well, well … dear me! I feel quite carried away, as it were, in the whirl of history; distinctly battered. This is indeed a red-letter day for the Cause.”

Bayer’s eyes regarded him with vivid, faintly amused interest.

“It surprises you, eh?”

“Well—er—I must admit that hardly, in my most sanguine dreams, had I dared to expect such a very decisive—er— victory.”

Bayer nodded encouragingly.

“It is good, yes. But it will be unwise, I think, to exaggerate the importances of this success. Many factors have contributed to it. It is, how do you call, symptomic?”

“Symptomatic,” Arthur corrected, with a little cough. His blue eyes shifted uneasily over the litter of papers on Bayer’s writing-table. Bayer gave him a brilliant smile.

“Ah, yes. Symptomatic. It is symptomatic of the phase through which we are at present passing. We are not yet

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ready to cross the Wilhelmstrasse.” He made a humorous gesture of his hand, indicating, through the window, the direction of the Foreign Office and Hindenburg’s residence. “No. Not quite yet.”

“Do you think,” I asked, “that this means the Nazis are done for?”

He shook his head with decision. “Unfortunately, no. We may not be so optimistic. This reverse is for them of a temporary character only. You see, Mr. Bradshaw, the economic situation is in their favour. We shall hear much more of our friends, I think.”

“Oh, please don’t say anything so unpleasant,” murmured Arthur, fidgeting with his hat. His eyes continued furtively to explore the writing-table. Bayer’s glance followed them.

“You do not like the Nazis, eh, Norris?”

His tone was rich with amusement. He appeared to find Arthur extremely funny at this precise moment. I was at a loss to understand why. Moving over to the table, he began, as if abstractedly, to handle the papers which lay there.

“Really!” protested Arthur, in shocked tones. “How can you ask? Naturally, I dislike them. Odious creatures… .”

“Ah, but you should not!” With great deliberation, Bayer took a key from his pocket, unlocked a drawer in the writing-table, and drew from it a heavy sealed packet. His red-brown eyes sparkled teasingly. “This outlook is quite false. The Nazi of to-day can be the communist of tomorrow. When they have seen where their leaders’ programme has brought them, they may not be so very difficult to convince. I wish all opposition could be thus overcome. There are others, you see, who will not listen to such arguments.”

Smiling, he turned the packet in his hands. Arthur’s eyes were fastened upon it, as if in unwilling fascination; Bayer seemed to be amusing himself by exerting his hypnotic powers. At all events, Arthur was plainly most uncomfortable.

“Er—yes. Well … you may be right… ,”

There was a curious silence. Bayer was smiling to himself,

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subtly, with the corners of his lips. I had never seen him in this mood before. Suddenly, he appeared to become aware of what he was holding.

“Why, of course, my dear Norris … These are the documents I had promised to show you. Can you be so kind as to let me have them tomorrow again? We have to forward them, you know, as quickly as possible.”

“Certainly. Of course… .” Arthur had fairly jumped out of his seat to receive the packet. He was like a dog which has been put on trust for a lump of sugar. “I’ll take the greatest care of them, I assure you.”

Bayer smiled, but said nothing.

Some minutes later, he escorted us affably out of the premises by the back staircase which led down into the courtyard. Arthur thus avoided another encounter with his admirers.

As we walked away along the street, he seemed thoughtful and vaguely unhappy. Twice he sighed.

“Feeling tired?” I asked.

“Not tired, dear boy. No … I was merely indulging in my favourite vice of philosophizing. When you get to my age you’ll see more and more clearly how very strange and complex life is. Take this morning, for instance. The simple enthusiasm of all those young people; it touched me very deeply. On such occasions, one feels oneself so unworthy. I suppose there are individuals who do not suffer from a conscience. But I am not one of them.”

The strangest thing about this odd outburst was that Arthur obviously meant what he said. It was a genuine fragment of a confession, but I could make nothing of it.

“Yes,” I encouraged experimentally, “I sometimes feel like that myself.”

Arthur didn’t respond. He merely sighed for the third time. A sudden shadow of anxiety passed over his face; hastily he fingered the bulge in his pocket made by the papers which Bayer had given him. They were still there. He breathed relief.

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November passed without much event. I had more pupils again, and was busy. Bayer gave me two long manuscripts to translate.

There were rumours that the K.P.D. would be forbidden; soon, in a few weeks. Otto was scornful. The Government would never dare, he said. The Party would fight. All the members of his cell had revolvers. They hung them, he told me, by strings from the bars of a cellar-grating in their Lokal, so that the police shouldn’t find them. The police were very active these days. Berlin, we heard, was to be cleaned up. Plain-clothes men had paid several unexpected calls on Olga, but had failed, so far, to find anything. She was being very careful.

We dined with Kuno several times and had tea at his flat. He was sentimental and preoccupied by turns. The intrigues which were going on within the Cabinet probably caused him a good deal of worry. And he regretted the freedom of his earlier bohemian existence. His public responsibilities debarred him from the society of the young men I had met at his Mecklenburg villa. Only their photographs remained to console him now, bound in a sumptuous album which he kept locked away in an obscure cupboard. Kuno showed it to me one day when we were alone.

“Sometimes, in the evenings, I like to look at them, you see? And then I make up a story to myself that we are all living on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. Excuse me, you don’t think this very silly, I hope?”

“Not at all,” I assured him.

“You see, I knew you’d understand.” Encouraged, he proceeded shyly to further confessions. The desert island fantasy was nothing new. He had been cherishing it for months already; it had developed gradually into a private cult. Under its influence he had acquired a small library of stories for boys, most of them in English, which dealt with this particular kind of adventure. He had told his bookseller that he wanted them for a nephew in London. Kuno had found most