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

One morning, about a week after this, I went into Sally’s room and found her holding a letter in her hand. I recognized Klaus’ handwriting at once.

“Good morning, Chris darling.”

“Good morning, Sally.”

“How did you sleep?” Her tone was unnaturally bright and chatty.

“All right, thanks. How did you?”

“Fairly all right… . Filthy weather, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I walked over to the window to look. It -was.

Sally smiled conversationally: “Do you know what this swine’s gone and done?”

“What swine?” I wasn’t going to be caught out.

“Oh Chris! For God’s sake, don’t be so dense!”

“I’m very sorry. I’m afraid I’m a bit slow in the uptake this morning.”

“I can’t be bothered to explain, darling.” Sally held out the letter. “Here, read this, will you? Of all the blasted im—

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pudence! Read it aloud. I want to hear how it sounds.”

“Mein liebes, armes Kind,” the letter began. Klaus called Sally his poor dear child because, as he explained, he was afraid that what he had to tell her would make her terribly unhappy. Nevertheless, he must say it: he must tell her that he had come to a decision. She mustn’t imagine that this had been easy for him: it had been very difficult and painful. All the same, he knew he was right. In a word, they must part.

“I see now,” wrote Klaus, “that I behaved very selfishly. I thought only of my own pleasure. But now I realize that I must have had a bad influence on you. My dear little girl, you have adored me too much. If we should continue to be together, you would soon have no will and no mind of your own.” Klaus went on to advise Sally to live for her work. “Work is the only thing which matters, as I myself have found.” He was very much concerned that Sally shouldn’t upset herself unduly: “You must be brave, Sally, my poor darling child.”

Right at the end of the letter, it all came out:

“I was invited a few nights ago to a party at the house of Lady Klein, a leader of the English aristocracy. I met there a very beautiful and intelligent young English girl named Miss Gore-Eckersley. She is related to an English lord whose name I couldn’t quite hear—you will probably know which one I mean. We have met twice since then and had wonderful conversations about many things. I do not think I have ever met a girl who could understand my mind so well as she does-T-“

“That’s a new one on me,” broke in Sally bitterly, with a short laugh: “I never suspected the boy of having a mind at all.”

At this moment we were interrupted by Frl. Schroeder who had come, sniffing secrets, to ask if Sally would like a bath. I left them together to make the most of the occasion.

“I can’t be angry with the fool,” said Sally, later in the day, pacing up and down the room and furiously smoking:

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“I just feel sorry for him in a motherly sort of way. But what on earth’ll happen to his work, if he chucks himself at these women’s heads, I can’t imagine.”

She made another turn of the room:

“I think if he’d been having a proper affair with another woman, and had only told me about it after it’d been going on for a long time, I’d have minded more. But this girl! Why, I don’t suppose she’s even his mistress.”

“Obviously not,” I agreed. “I say, shall we have a Prairie Oyster?”

“How marvellous you are, Chris! You always think of just the right thing. I wish I could fall in love with you. Klaus isn’t worth your little finger.”

“I know he isn’t.”

“The blasted cheek,” exclaimed Sally, gulping the Worcester sauce and licking her upper lip, “of his saying I adored him! … The worst of it is, I did!”

That evening I went into her room and found her with pen and paper before her:

“I’ve written about a million letters to him and torn them all up.”

“It’s no good, Sally. Let’s go to the cinema.”

“Right you are, Chris darling.” Sally wiped her eyes with the corner of her tiny handkerchief: “It’s no use bothering, is it?”

“Not a bit of use.”

“And now I jolly well will be a great actress—just to show him!”

“That’s the spirit!”

We went to a little cinema in the Bülowstrasse, where they were showing a film about a girl who sacrificed her stage career for the sake of a Great Love, Home and Children. We laughed so much that we had to’ leave before the end.

“I feel ever so much better now,” said Sally, as we were coming away.

“I’m glad.”

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“Perhaps, after all, I can’t have been properly in love with him… . What do you think?”

“It’s rather difficult for me to say.”

“I’ve often thought I was in love with a man, and then I found I wasn’t. But this time,” Sally’s voice was regretful, “I really did feel sure of it. … And now, somehow, everything seems to have got a bit confused… .”

“Perhaps you’re suffering from shock,” I suggested.

Sally was very pleased with this idea: “Do you know, I expect I am! … You know, Chris, you do understand women most marvellously: better than any man I’ve ever met… . I’m sure that some day you’ll write the most marvellous novel which’ll sell simply millions of copies.”

“Thank you for believing in me, Sally!”

“Do you believe in me, too, Chris?”

“Of course I do.”

“No, but honestly?”

“Well … I’m quite certain you’ll make a terrific success at something—only I’m not sure what it’ll be. … I mean, there’s so many things you could do if you tried, aren’t there?”

“I suppose there are.” Sally became thoughtful. “At least, sometimes I feel like that. … And sometimes I feel I’m no damn’ use at anything… . Why, I can’t even keep a man faithful to me for the inside of a month.”

“Oh, Sally, don’t let’s start all that again!”

“All right, Chris—we won’t start all that. Let’s go and have a drink.”

During the weeks that followed, Sally and I were together most of the day. Curled up on the sofa in the big dingy room, she smoked, drank Prairie Oysters, talked endlessly of the future. When the weather was fine, and I hadn’t any lessons to give, we strolled as far as the Wittenbergplatz and sat on a bench in the sunshine, discussing the people who

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went past. Everybody stared at Sally, in her canary yellow beret and shabby fur coat, like the skin of a mangy old dog.

“I wonder,” she was fond of remarking, “what they’d say if they knew that we two old tramps were going to be the most marvellous novelist and the greatest actress in the world.”

“They’d probably be very much surprised.”

“I expect we shall look back on this time when we’re driving about in our Mercedes, and think: After all, it wasn’t such bad fun!”

“It wouldn’t be such bad fun if we had that Mercedes now.”

We talked continually about wealth, fame, huge contracts for Sally, record-breaking sales for the novels I should one day write. “I think,” said Sally, “it must be marvellous to be a novelist. You’re frightfully dreamy and unpractical and unbusinesslike, and people imagine they can fairly swindle you as much as they want—and then you sit down and write a book about them which fairly shows them what swine they all are, and it’s the most terrifie success and you make pots of money.”

“I expect the trouble with me is that I’m not quite dreamy enough… .”

“… if only I could get a really rich man as my lover. Let’s see … I shouldn’t want more than three thousand a year, and a flat and a decent car. I’d do anything, just now, to get rich. If you’re rich you can afford to stand out for a really good contract; you don’t have to snap up the first offer you get. … Of course, I’d be absolutely faithful to the man who kept me—”