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

As a final test, I tried to look Arthur in the eyes. But no, this time-honoured process didn’t work. Here were no windows to the soul. They were merely part of his face, light-blue jellies, like naked shell-fish in the crevices of a rock. There was nothing to hold the attention; no sparkle, no inward gleam. Try as I would, my glance wandered away to more interesting features; the soft, snout-like nose, the concertina chin. After three or four attempts, I gave it up. It was no good. There was nothing for it but to take Arthur at his word.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My journey with Kuno to Switzerland resembled the honeymoon trip which follows a marriage of convenience. We were polite, mutually considerate and rather shy. Kuno was a model of discreet attentiveness. With his own hands, he arranged my luggage in the rack, ran out at the last moment to buy me magazines, discovered by roundabout inquiries that I preferred the upper sleeping-car berth to the lower, and retired into the corridor to wait until I was undressed. When I got tired of reading, there he was, affable and informative, waiting to tell me the names of the mountains. We chatted with great animation in five-minute spasms, relapsing into sudden, abstracted silence. Both of us had plenty to think about. Kuno, I suppose, was worrying over the sinister manoeuvres of German politics or dreaming about his island of the seven boys: I had leisure to review the Margot conundrum in all its aspects. Did he really exist? Well, there above my head was a brand-new pigskin suitcase containing a dinner-jacket delivered from the tailor only the day before. Arthur had been positively lordly with our employer’s money. “Get whatever you want, dear boy. It would never do for you to be shabby. Besides, what a chance …” After some hesitation, I had doubtfully followed his advice, though not to the reckless extent which he urged. Arthur even went so far in his interpretation of “travelling expenses” as to press upon me a set of gold cufflinks, a wrist-watch, and a fountain-pen. “After all, William, business is business. You don’t know these people as I do.” His tone, when speaking of Margot, had become remarkably

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bitter: “If you asked him to do anything for you he wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze you to the last penny.”

On Boxing Day, our first morning, I awoke to the tinny jingle of sleigh-bells from the snowy street below, and a curious clicking noise, also metallic, which proceeded from the bathroom. Through the half-open door Kuno was to be seen, in a pair of gym shorts, doing exercises with a chest-expander. He was straining himself terribly; the veins in his neck bulged and his nostrils arched and stiffened with each desperate effort. He was obviously unaware that he was not alone. His eyes, bare of the monocle, were fixed in a short-sighted, visionary stare which suggested that he was engaged in a private religious rite. To speak to him would have been as intrusive as to disturb a man at his prayers. I turned over in bed and pretended to be asleep. After a few moments, I heard the bathroom door softly close.

Our rooms were on the first floor of the hotel, looking out over the houses of the village scattered along the frozen lake to the sparkling ski-ing slopes, massive and smooth as the contours of an immense body under blankets, crossed by the black spider-line of the funicular which climbed to the start of the toboggan runs. It seemed a curious background for an international business transaction. But, as Arthur had rightly said, I knew nothing of the ways of financiers. I got dressed slowly, thinking about my invisible host. Was Mar-got here already? The hotel was full up, the manager had told us. To judge from my glimpse of the guests, last night, in the huge dining-room, there must be several hundred of them staying here.

Kuno joined me for breakfast. He was dressed, with scrupulous informality, in grey flannel trousers, a blazer and the knotted silk scarf of his Oxford college colours.

“You slept well, I hope?”

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“I, not so well.” He smiled, flushed, slightly abashed. “It doesn’t matter. In the night-time I had something to read, you see?”

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Bashfully he let me see the title of the book he was holding in his hand. It was called Billy the Castaway.

“Is it good?” I asked.

“There is one chapter which is very nice, I find . . ,”

Before I could hear the contents of the nice chapter, however, a waiter appeared with our breakfast on a little wheeled car. We reverted at once to our self-conscious honeymoon manners.

“May I give you some cream?”

“Just a little, please.”

“Is this how you like it?”

“Thank you, that’s delicious.”

Our voices sounded so absurd that I could have laughed out loud. We were like two unimportant characters in the first act of a play, put there to make conversation until it is time for the chief actor to appear.

By the time we had finished breakfast, the immense white slopes were infested already with tiny figures, some skimming and criss-crossing like dragon-flies, some faltering and collapsing like injured ants. The skaters were out in dozens on the lake. Within a roped enclosure, an inhumanly agile creature in black tights performed wonders before an attentive audience. Knapsacked, helmeted and booted, some of the more active guests were starting out on long, dangerous tours of the upper heights, like soldiers from a luxury barracks. And here and there, amidst the great army, the wounded were to be seen, limping on sticks or with their arms in slings, taking a painful convalescent promenade.

Attentive as ever, Kuno took it for granted that he was to teach me to ski. I should have much preferred to mess about alone, but my attempts at polite dissuasion were in vain. He regarded it as his duty; there was no more to be said. So we spent two perspiring hours on the beginners’ slope; I slithering and stumbling, Kuno admonishing and supporting. “No, excuse me, this is again not quite correct … you hold yourself in too stiff a manner, you see?” His patience seemed inexhaustible. I longed for lunch.

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About the middle of the morning, a young man came circling expertly among the novices in our neighbourhood. He stopped to watch us; perhaps my awkwardness amused him. His presence rather annoyed me; I didn’t want an audience. Half by accident, half by design, I made a sudden swerve at him when he least expected it and knocked him clean off his feet. Our mutual apologies were profuse. He helped me to get up and even brushed some of the snow off me with his hand.

“Allow me … van Hoorn.”

His bow, skis and all, was so marvellously stiff that he might have been challenging me to a duel.

“Bradshaw … very pleased.”

I tried to parody it and promptly fell forward on my face, to be raised this time by Kuno himself. Somewhat less formally, I introduced them.

After this, to my relief, Kuno’s interest in my instruction considerably decreased. Van Hoorn was a tall, fair boy, handsome in the severe Viking manner, though he had rather spoilt his appearance by shaving off most of his hair. The bald back of his head was sunburnt to an angry scarlet. He had studied for three semesters, he told us, at the University of Hamburg. He was furiously shy and blushed crimson whenever Kuno, with his discreetly flattering smile, addressed him.

Van Hoorn could do a turn which interested Kuno extremely. They went off for some distance to demonstrate and practise it. Presently, it was time for lunch. On our way down to the hotel, the young man introduced us to his uncle, a lively, plump little Dutchman, who was cutting figures on the ice with great skill. The elder Mr. van Hoorn was a contrast to his grave nephew. His eyes twinkled merrily, he seemed delighted to make our acquaintance. His face was brown as an old boot and he was quite bald. He wore side-whiskers and a little pointed beard.