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

Frl. Hippi is a fat pretty girl, about nineteen years old, with glossy chestnut hair, good teeth and big cow-eyes. She has a lazy, jolly, self-indulgent laugh and a well-formed bust. She speaks schoolgirl English with a slight American accent, quite nicely, to her own complete satisfaction. She has clearly no intention of doing any work. When I tried weakly to suggest a plan for our lessons, she kept interrupting to offer me chocolates, coffee, cigarettes: “Excuse me a minute, there isn’t some fruit,” she smiled, picking up the receiver of the house-telephone: “Anna, please bring some oranges.”

When the maid arrived with the oranges, I was forced, despite my protests, to make a regular meal, with a plate, knife and fork. This destroyed the last pretence of the teacher-pupil relationship. I felt like a policeman being given a meal in the kitchen by an attractive cook. Frl. Hippi sat watching me eat, with her good-natured, lazy smile:

“Tell me, please, why you come to Germany?”

She is inquisitive about me, but only like a cow idly poking with its head between the bars of a gate. She doesn’t particularly want the gate to open. I said that I found Germany very interesting:

“The political and economic situation,” I improvised authoritatively, in my schoolmaster voice, “is more interesting in Germany than in any other European country.”

“Except Russia, of course,” I added experimentally.

But Frl. Hippi didn’t react. She just blandly smiled:

“I think it shall be dull for you here? You do not have many friends in Berlin, no?”

“No. Not many.”

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This seemed to please and amuse her:

“You don’t know some nice girls?”

Here the buzzer of the house-telephone sounded. Lazily smiling, she picked up the receiver, but appeared not to listen to the tinny voice which issued from it. I could hear quite distinctly the real voice of Frau Bernstein, Hippi’s mother, speaking from the next room.

“Have you left your red book in here?” repeated Frl. Hippi mockingly and smiling at me as though this were a joke which I must share: “No, I don’t see it. It must be down in the study. Ring up Daddy. Yes, he’s working there.” In dumb show, she offered me another orange. I shook my head politely. We both smiled: “Mummy, what have we got for lunch to-day? Yes? Really? Splendid!”

She hung up the receiver and returned to her crossexamination:

“Do you not know no nice girls?”

“Any nice girls. …” I corrected evasively. But Frl. Hippi merely smiled, waiting for the answer to her question.

“Yes. One,” I had at length to add, thinking of Frl. Kost.

“Only one?” She raised her eyebrows in comic surprise. “And tell me please, do you find German girls different than English girls?”

I blushed. “Do you find German girls …” I began to correct her and stopped, realizing just in time that I wasn’t absolutely sure whether one says different from or different to.

“Do you find German girls different than English girls?” she repeated, with smiling persistence.

I blushed deeper than ever. “Yes. Very different,” I said boldly.

“How are they different?”

Mercifully the telephone buzzed again. This was somebody from the kitchen, to say that lunch would be an hour earlier than usual. Herr Bernstein was going to the city that afternoon.

“I am so sorry,” said Frl. Hippi, rising, “but for to-day we

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must finish. And we shall see us again on Friday? Then goodbye, Mr. Isherwood. And I thank you very much.”

She fished in her bag and handed me an envelope which I stuck awkwardly into my pocket and tore open only when I was out of sight of the Bernsteins’ house. It contained a five-mark piece. I threw it into the air, missed it, found it after five minutes’ hunt, buried in sand, and ran all the way to the tram-stop, singing and kicking stones about the road. I felt extraordinarily guilty and elated, as though I’d successfully committed a small theft.

It is a mere waste of time even pretending to teach Frl. Hippi anything. If she doesn’t know a word, she says it in German. If I correct her, she repeats it in German. I am glad, of course, that she’s so lazy and only afraid that Frau Bernstein may discover how little progress her daughter is making. But this is very unlikely. Most rich people, once they have decided to trust you at all, can be imposed upon to almost any extent. The only real problem for the private tutor is to get inside the front-door.

As for Hippi, she seems to enjoy my visits. From something she said the other day, I gather she boasts to her school friends that she has got a genuine English teacher. We understand each other very well. I am bribed with fruit not to be tiresome about the English language: she, for her part, tells her parents that I am the best teacher she ever had. We gossip in German about the things which interest her. And every three or four minutes, we are interrupted while she plays her pgxt in the family game of exchanging entirely unimportant messages over the house-telephone.

Hippi never worries about the future. Like everyone else in Berlin, she refers continually to the political situation, but only briefly, with a conventional melancholy, as when one speaks of religion. It is quite unreal to her. She means to go to the university, travel about, have a jolly good time and eventually, of course, marry. She already has a great many

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boy friends. We spend a lot of time talking about them. One has a wonderful car. Another has an aeroplane. Another has fought seven duels. Another has discovered a knack of putting out streetlamps by giving them a smart kick in a certain spot. One night, on the way back from a dance, Hippi and he put out all the streetlamps in the neighbourhood.

To-day, lunch was early at the Bernsteins’; so I was invited to it, instead of giving my “lesson.” The whole family was present: Frau Bernstein, stout and placid; Herr Bernstein, small and shaky and sly. There was also a younger sister, a schoolgirl of twelve, very fat. She ate and ate, quite unmoved by Hippi’s jokes and warnings that she’d burst. They all seem very fond of each other, in their cosy, stuffy way. There was a little domestic argument, because Herr Bernstein didn’t want his wife to go shopping in the car that afternoon. During the last few days, there has been a lot of Nazi rioting in the city.

“You can go in the tram,” said Herr Bernstein. “I will not have them throwing stones at my beautiful car.”

“And suppose they throw stones at me?” asked Frau Bernstein good-humouredly.

“Ach, what does that matter? If they throw stones at you, I will buy you a sticking-plaster for your head. It will cost me only five groschen. But if they throw stones at my car, it will cost me perhaps five hundred marks.”

And so the matter was settled. Herr Bernstein then turned his attention to me:

“You can’t complain that we treat you badly here, young man, eh? Not only do we give you a nice dinner, but we pay for you eating it!”

I saw from Hippi’s expression that this was going a “bit far, even for the Bernstein sense of humour; so I laughed and said:

“Will you pay me a mark extra for every helping I eat?”

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This amused Herr Bernstein very much; but he was careful to show that he knew I hadn’t meant it seriously.

During the last week, our household has been plunged into a terrific row.

It began when Frl. Kost came to Frl. Schroeder and announced that fifty marks had been stolen from her room. She was very much upset; especially, she explained, as this was the money she’d put aside towards the rent and the telephone bill. The fifty-mark note had been lying in the drawer of the cupboard, just inside the door of Frl. Kost’s room.