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

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lodgers. She has dark, bright, inquisitive eyes and pretty waved brown hair of which she is proud. She must be about fifty-five years old.

Long ago, before the War and the Inflation, she used to be comparatively well off. She went to the Baltic for her summer holidays and kept a maid to do the housework. For the last thirty years she has lived here and taken in lodgers. She started doing it because she liked to have company.

” ‘Lina,’ my friends used to say to me, ‘however can you? How can you bear to have strange people living in your rooms and spoiling your furniture, especially when you’ve got the money to be independent?’ And I’d always give them the same answer. ‘My lodgers aren’t lodgers,’ I used to say. They’re my guests.’

“You see, Herr Issyvoo, in those days I could afford to be very particular about the sort of people who came to live here. I could pick and choose. I only took them really well connected and well educated—proper gentlefolk ( like yourself, Herr Issyvoo ). I had a Freiherr once, and a Rittmeister and a Professor. They often gave me presents—a bottle of cognac or a box of chocolates or some flowers. And when one of them went away for his holidays he’d always send me a card—from London, it might be, or Paris, or Baden-Baden. Ever such pretty cards I used to get… ,”

And now Frl. Schroeder has not even got a room of her own. She has to sleep in the living-room, behind a screen, on a small sofa with broken springs. As in so many of the older Berlin flats, our living-room connects the front part of the house with the back. The lodgers who live on the front have to pass through the living-room on their way to the bathroom,’ so that Frl. Schroeder is often disturbed during the night. “But I drop off again at once. It doesn’t worry me. I’m much too tired.” She has to do all the housework herself and it takes up most of her day. “Twenty years ago, if anybody had told me to scrub my own floors, I’d have slapped his face for him. But you get used to it. You can get used to anything. Why, I remember the time when I’d have sooner

cut off my right hand than empty this chamber… . And now,” says Frl. Schroeder, suiting the action to the word, “my goodness! It’s no more to me than pouring out a cup of tea!”

She is fond of pointing out to me the various marks and stains left by lodgers who have inhabited this room:

“Yes, Herr Issyvoo, I’ve got something to remember each of them by… . Look there, on the rug—I’ve sent it to the cleaners I don’t know how often but nothing will get it out —that’s where Herr Noeske was sick after his birthday party. What in the world can he have been eating, to make a mess like that? He’d come to Berlin to study, you know. His parents lived in Brandenburg—a first-class family; oh, I assure you! They had pots of money! His Herr Papa was a surgeon, and of course he wanted his boy to follow in his footsteps… . What a charming young man! ‘Herr Noeske,’ I used to say to him, ‘excuse me, but you must really work harder— you with all your brains! Think of your Herr Papa and your Frau Mama; it isn’t fair to them to waste their good money like that. Why, if you were to drop it in the Spree it would be better. At least it would make a splash!’ I was like a mother to him. And always, when he’d got himself into some scrape —he was terribly thoughtless—he’d come straight to me: ‘Schroederschen,’ he used to say, ‘please don’t be angry with me… . We were playing cards last night and I lost the whole of this month’s allowance. I daren’t tell Father… .’ And then he’d look at me with those great big eyes of his. I knew exactly what he was after, the scamp! But I hadn’t the heart to refuse. So I’d sit down and write a letter to his Frau Mama and beg her to forgive him just that once and send some more money. And she always would. … Of course, as a woman, I knew how to appeal to a mother’s feelings, although I’ve never had any children of my own… . What are you smiling at, Herr Issyvoo? Well, well! Mistakes will happen, you know!”

“And that’s where the Herr Rittmeister always upset his coffee over the wallpaper. He used to sit there on the couch with his fiancée. ‘Herr Rittmeister,’ I used to say to him, ‘do please drink your coffee at the table. If you’ll excuse my saying so, there’s plenty of time for the other thing afterwards… .’ But no, he always would sit on the couch. And then, sure enough, when he began to get a bit excited in his feelings, over went the coffee-cups… . Such a handsome gentleman! His Frau Mama and his sister came to visit us sometimes. They liked coming up to Berlin. ‘Fräulein Schroeder,’ they used to tell me, ‘you don’t know how lucky you are to be living here, right in the middle of things. We’re only country cousins—we envy you! And now tell us all the latest Court scandals!’ Of course, they were only joking. They had the sweetest little house, not far from Halberstadt, in the Harz. They used to show me pictures of it. A perfect dream!”

“You see those ink-stains on the carpet? That’s where Herr Professor Koch used to shake his fountain-pen. I told him of it a hundred times. In the end, I even laid sheets of blotting-paper on the floor around his chair. He was so absent-minded… . Such a dear old gentleman! And so simple. I was very fond of him. If I mended a shirt for him or darned his socks, he’d thank me with the tears in his eyes. He liked a bit of fun, too. Sometimes, when he heard me coming, he’d turn out the light and hide behind the door; and then he’d roar like a lion to frighten me. Just like a child… .”

Frl. Schroeder can go on like this, without repeating herself, by the hour. When I have been listening to her for some time, I find myself relapsing into a curious trance-like state of depression. I begin to feel profoundly unhappy. Where are all those lodgers now? Where, in another ten years, shall I be, myself? Certainly not here. How many seas and frontiers shall I have to cross to reach that distant day; how far shall I have to travel, on foot, on horseback, by car, push-bike, aeroplane, steamer, train, lift, moving-staircase and tram? How much money shall I need for that enormous journey?

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How much food must I gradually, wearily consume on my way? How many pairs of shoes shall I wear out? How many thousands of cigarettes shall I smoke? How many cups of tea shall I drink and how many glasses of beer? What an awful tasteless prospect! And yet—to have to die. … A sudden vague pang of apprehension grips my bowels and I have to excuse myself in order to go to the lavatory.

Hearing that I was once a medical student, she confides to me that she is very unhappy because of the size of her bosom. She suffers from palpitations and is sure that these must be caused by the strain on her heart. She wonders if she should have an operation. Some of her acquaintances advise her to, others are against it:

“Oh dear, it’s such a weight to have to carry about with you! And just think—Herr Issyvoo: I used to be as slim as you are!”

“I suppose you had a great many admirers, Frl. Schroeder?”

Yes, she has had dozens. But only one Friend. He was a married man, living apart from his wife, who would not divorce him.

“We were together eleven years. Then he died of pneumonia. Sometimes I wake up in the night when it’s cold and wish he was there. You never seem to get really warm, sleeping alone.”

There are four other lodgers in this flat. Next door to me, in the big front-room, is Frl. Kost. In the room opposite, overlooking the courtyard, is Frl. Mayr. At the back, beyond the living-room, is Bobby. And behind Bobby’s room, over the bathroom, at the top of a ladder, is a tiny attic which Frl. Schroeder refers to, for some occult reason, as “The Swedish Pavilion.” This she lets, at twenty marks a month, to a commercial traveller who is out all day and most of the night. I occasionally come upon him on Sunday morn-6