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

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Sennerin Abschied von der Alm, which, after claret cup and a bottle of very inexpensive cognac, so exactly suited my mood that I shed a few tears. We all joined in the repeats and the final, ear-splitting Juch-he! Then Sally sang “I’ve got those Little Boy Blues” with so much expression that Bobby’s mixer colleague, taking it personally, seized her round the waist and had to be restrained by Bobby, who reminded him firmly that it was time to be getting along to business.

Sally and I went with them to the Troika, where we met Fritz. With him was Klaus Linke, the young pianist who used to accompany Sally when she sang at the Lady Windermere. Later, Fritz and I went off alone. Fritz seemed rather depressed: he wouldn’t tell me why. Some girls did classical figure-tableaux behind gauze. And then there was a big dancing-hall with telephones on the tables. We had the usual kind of conversations: “Pardon me, Madame, I feel sure from your voice that you’re a fascinating little blonde with long black eyelashes—just my type. How did I know? Aha, that’s my secret! Yes—quite right: I’m tall, dark, broad-shouldered, military appearance, and the tiniest little moustache… . You don’t believe me? Then come and see for yourself!” The couples were dancing with hands on each other’s hips, yelling in each other’s faces, streaming with sweat. An orchestra in Bavarian costume whooped and drank and perspired beer. The place stank like a zoo. After this, I think I strayed off alone and wandered for hours and hours through a jungle of paper streamers. Next morning, when I woke, the bed was full of them.

I had been up and dressed for some time when Sally returned home. She came straight into my room, looking tired but very pleased with herself.

“Hullo, darling! What time is it?”

“Nearly lunch-time.”

“I say, is it really? How marvellous! I’m practically starving. I’ve had nothing for breakfast but a cup of coffee… .” She paused expectantly, waiting for my next question.

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“Where have you been?” I asked.

“But, darling,” Sally opened her eyes very wide in affected surprise: “I thought you knew!”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“Nonsense!”

“Really I haven’t, Sally.”

“Oh, Christopher darling, how can you be such a liar! Why, it was obvious that you’d planned the whole thing! The way you got rid of Fritz—he looked so cross! Klaus and I nearly died of laughing.”

All the same, she wasn’t quite at her ease. For the first time, I saw her blush.

“Have you got a cigarette, Chris?”

I gave her one and lit the match. She blew out a long cloud of smoke and walked slowly to the window:

“I’m most terribly in love with him.”

She turned, frowning slightly; crossed to the sofa and curled herself up carefully, arranging her hands and feet: “At least, I think I am,” she added.

I allowed a respectful pause to elapse before asking: “And is Klaus in love with you?”

“He absolutely adores me.” Sally was very serious indeed. She smoked for several minutes: “He says he fell in love with me the first time we met, at the Lady Windermere. But as long as we were working together, he didn’t dare to say anything. He was afraid it might put me off my singing… . He says that, before he met me, he’d no idea what a marvellously beautiful thing a woman’s body is. He’s only had about three women before, in his life …”

I lit a cigarette.

“Of course, Chris, I don’t suppose you really understand… . It’s awfully hard to explain… .”

“I’m sure it is.”

“I’m seeing him again at four o’clock.” Sally’s tone was slightly defiant.

“In that case, you’d better get some sleep. I’ll ask Frl.

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Schroeder to scramble you some eggs; or I’ll do them myself if she’s still too drunk. You get into bed. You can eat them there.”

“Thanks, Chris darling. You are an angel.” Sally yawned. “What on earth I should do without you, I don’t know.”

After this, Sally and Klaus saw each other every day. They generally met at our house; and, once, Klaus stayed the whole night. Frl. Schroeder didn’t say much to me about it, but I could see that she was rather shocked. Not that she disapproved of Klaus: she thought him very attractive. But she regarded Sally as my property, and it shocked her to see me standing so tamely to one side. I am sure, however, that if I hadn’t known about the affair, and if Sally had really been deceiving me, Frl. Schroeder would have assisted at the conspiracy with the greatest relish.

Meanwhile, Klaus and I were a little shy of each other. When we happened to meet on the stairs, we bowed coldly, like enemies.

About the middle of January, Klaus left suddenly, for England. Quite unexpectedly he had got the offer of a very good job, synchronizing music for the films. The afternoon he came to say goodbye there was a positively surgical atmosphere in the flat, as though Sally were undergoing a dangerous operation. Frl. Schroeder and Frl. Mayr sat in the living-room and laid cards. The results, Frl. Schroeder later assured me, couldn’t have been better. The eight of clubs had appeared three times in a favourable conjunction.

Sally spent the whole of the next day curled up on the sofa in her room, with pencil and paper on her lap. She was writing poems. She wouldn’t let me see them. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, and mixed Prairie Oysters, but re—

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fused to eat more than a few mouthfuls of Frl. Schroeder’s omelette.

“Can’t I bring you something in, Sally?”

“No thanks, Chris darling. I just don’t want to eat anything at all. I feel all marvellous and ethereal, as if I was a kind of most wonderful saint, or something. You’ve no idea how glorious it feels… . Have a chocolate, darling? Klaus gave me three boxes. If I eat any more, I shall be sick.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. It would ruin our careers. You see, Christopher, he adores me so terribly that it wouldn’t be good for him to always have me hanging about.”

“You might marry after you’re both famous.”

Sally considered this:

“No… . That would spoil everything. We should be trying all the time to live up to our old selves, if you know what I mean. And we should both be different. … He was so marvellously primitive: just like a faun. He made me feel like a most marvellous nymph, or something, miles away from anywhere, in the middle of the forest.”

The first letter from Klaus duly arrived. We had all been anxiously awaiting it; and Frl. Schroeder woke me up specially early to tell me that it had come. Perhaps she was afraid that she would never get a chance of reading it herself and relied on me to tell her the contents. If so, her fears were groundless. Sally not only showed the letter to Frl. Schroeder, Frl. Mayr, Bobby and myself, she even read selections from it aloud in the presence of the porter’s wife, who had come up to collect the rent.

From the first, the letter left a nasty taste in my mouth. Its whole tone was egotistical and a bit patronizing. Klaus didn’t like London, he said. He felt lonely there. The food disagreed with him. And the people at the studio treated him with lack of consideration. He wished Sally were with him:

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she could have helped him in many ways. However, now that he was in England, he would try to make the best of it. He would work hard and earn money; and Sally was to work hard too. Work would cheer her up and keep her from getting depressed. At the end of the letter came various endearments, rather too slickly applied. Reading them, one felt: he’s written this kind of thing several times before.

Sally was delighted, however. Klaus’ exhortation made such an impression upon her that she at once rang up several film companies, a theatrical agency and half a dozen of her “business” acquaintances. Nothing definite came of all this, it is true; but she remained very optimistic throughout the next twenty-four hours—even her dreams, she told me, had been full of contracts and four-figure cheques: “It’s the most marvellous feeling, Chris. I know I’m going right ahead now and going to become the most wonderful actress in the world.”