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

“I beg your pardon, Daddy.”

Arthur smiled, but with a certain exasperation. I wasn’t giving the right answers. He couldn’t find an opening for the topic, whatever it was, which he was thus obscurely trying to broach. After a moment’s hesitation, he tried again.

“Tell me, William, have you ever, in the course of your travels, visited Switzerland?”

“For my sins. I once spent three months trying to learn French at a pension in Geneva.”

“Ah yes, I believe you told me.” Arthur coughed uneasily. “But I was thinking more of the winter sports.”

“No. I’ve been spared those.”

Arthur appeared positively shocked.

“Really, my dear boy, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you carry your disdain of athleticism too far, I do indeed. Far be it from me to disparage the things of the mind. But, remember, you’re still young. I hate to see you depriving yourself of pleasures which you won’t, in any case, be able to indulge in later. Be quite frank; isn’t it all rather a pose?”

I grinned.

“May I ask, with all due respect, what branch of sport you indulged in yourself at the age of twenty-eight?”

“Well—er—as you know, I have always suffered from delicate health. Our cases are not at all the same. Nevertheless, I may tell you that, during one of my visits to Scotland, I became quite an ardent fisherman. In fact, I frequently succeeded in catching those small fish with pretty red and brown markings. Their name escapes me for the moment.”

I laughed and lit a cigarette.

“And now, Arthur, having given such an admirable performance as the fond parent, suppose you tell me what you’re driving at?”

He sighed, with resignation, with exasperation; partly, perhaps, with relief. He was excused from further sham—

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ming. When he spoke again, it was with a complete change of tone.

“After all, William, I don’t know why I should beat about the bush. We’ve known each other long enough now. How long is it, by the way, since we first met?”

“More than two years.”

“Is it? Is it indeed? Let me see. Yes, you’re right. As I was saying, we’ve known each other long enough now for me to be able to appreciate the fact that, although young in years, you’re already a man of the world… .”

“You put it charmingly.”

“I assure you, I’m quite serious. Now, what I have to say is simply this (and please don’t regard it as anything but the very vaguest possibility, because, quite apart from the question of your consent, a very vital question, I know, the whole thing would have to be approved by a third party, who doesn’t, at present, know anything about the scheme) …”

Arthur paused, at the end of this parenthesis, to draw breath, and to overcome his constitutional dislike of laying his cards on the table.

“What I now merely ask you is this: would you, or would you not, be prepared to spend a few days in Switzerland this Christmas, at one or other of the winter sport resorts?”

Having got it out at last, he was covered in confusion, avoided my eye and began fiddling nervously with the cruet-stand. The neural effort required to make this offer appeared to have been considerable. I stared at him for a moment; then burst out laughing in my amazement.

“Well, I’m damned! So that was what you were after, all the time!”

Arthur joined, rather shyly, in my mirth. He was watching my face, shrewdly and covertly, in its various phases of astonishment. At what he evidently considered to be the psychological moment, he added:

“All expenses would be paid, of course.”

“But what on earth …“I began.

“Never mind, William. Never mind. It’s just an idea of

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mine, that’s all. It mayn’t, it very likely won’t, come to anything. Please don’t ask me any more now. All I want to know is: would you be prepared to contemplate such a thing at all, or is it out of the question?”

“Nothing’s out of the question, of course. But there are all sorts of things I should want to know. For instance …”

Arthur held up a delicate white hand.

“Not now, William, I beg.”

“Just this: What should I …”

“I can’t discuss anything now,” interrupted Arthur, firmly. “I simply must not.”

And, as if afraid that he would nevertheless be tempted to do so, he called to the waiter for our bills.

The best part of another week passed without Arthur having made any further allusion to the mysterious Swiss project. With considerable self-control, I refrained from reminding him of it; perhaps, like so many of his other brilliant schemes, it was already forgotten. And there were more important things to be thought of. Christmas was upon us, the year would soon be over; yet he hadn’t, so far as I knew, the ghost of a prospect of raising the money for his escape. When I asked him about it, he was vague. When I urged him to take steps, evasive. He seemed to be getting into a dangerous state of inertia. Evidently he underrated Schmidt’s vindictiveness and power to harm. I did not. I couldn’t so easily forget my last unpleasant glimpse of the secretary’s face. Arthur’s indifference drove me sometimes nearly frantic.

“Don’t worry, dear boy,” he would murmur vaguely, with abstracted, butterfly fingerings of his superb wig. “Sufficient unto the day, you know … Yes.”

“A day will come,” I retorted, “when it’ll be sufficient unto two or three years’ hard.”

Next morning, something happened to confirm my fears.

I was sitting in Arthur’s room, assisting, as usual, at the ceremonies of the toilet, when the telephone bell rang.

“Will you be kind enough to see who it is, dear boy?” said

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Arthur, powder-puff in hand. He never personally answered a call if it could be avoided. I picked up the receiver.

“It’s Schmidt,” I announced, a moment later, not without a certain gloomy satisfaction, covering the mouthpiece with my hand.

“Oh dear!” Arthur could hardly have been more flustered if his persecutor had actually been standing outside the bedroom door. Indeed, his harassed glance literally swept for an instant under the bed, as though measuring the available space for hiding there:

“Tell him anything. Say I’m not at home… .”

“I think,” I said firmly, “that it’d be much better if you were to speak to him yourself. After all, he can’t bite you. He may give you some idea of what he means to do.”

“Oh, very well, if you insist… .” Arthur was quite petulant. “I must say, I should have thought it was very unnecessary.”

Gingerly, holding the powder-puff like a defensive weapon, he advanced to the instrument.

“Yes. Yes.” The dimple in his chin jerked sideways. He snarled like a nervous lion. “No … no, really… . But do please listen one moment … I can’t, I assure you … I can’t… .”

His voice trailed off into a protesting, imploring whisper. He wobbled the hook of the receiver in futile distress.

“William, he’s rung off.”

Arthur’s dismay was so comic that I had to smile.

“What did he teliyou?”

Arthur crossed the room and sat down heavily on the bed. He seemed quite exhausted. The powder-puff fell to the floor from between his limp fingers.

“I’m reminded of the deaf adder, who heareth not the voice of the charmer … What a monster, William! May your life never be burdened by such a fiend… .”

“Do tell me what he said.”

“He confined himself to threats, dear boy. Mostly incoherent. He wanted merely to remind me of his existence, I

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think. And that he’ll need some more money soon. It was very cruel of you to make me speak to him. Now I shall be upset for the rest of the day. Just feel my hand; it’s shaking like a leaf.”