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

Sally said things like this very seriously and evidently believed she meant them. She was in a curious state of mind, restless and nervy. Often she flew into a temper for no special reason. She talked incessantly about getting work, but made no effort to do so. Her allowance hadn’t been stopped, so far, however, and we were living very cheaply, since Sally no longer cared to go out in the evenings or to see other

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people at all. Once, Fritz came to tea. I left them alone together afterwards to go and write a letter. When I came back Fritz had gone and Sally was in tears:

“That man bores me so!” she sobbed. “I hate him! I should like to kill him!”

But in a few minutes she was quite calm again. I started to mix the inevitable Prairie Oyster. Sally, curled up on the sofa, was thoughtfully smoking:

“I wonder,” she said suddenly, “if I’m going to have a baby.”

“Good God!” I nearly dropped the glass: “Do you really think you are?”

“I don’t know. With me it’s so difficult to tell: I’m so irregular … I’ve felt sick sometimes. It’s probably something I’ve eaten… .”

“But hadn’t you better see a doctor?”

“Oh, I suppose so.” Sally yawned listlessly. “There’s no hurry.”

“Of course there’s a hurry! You’ll go and see a doctor tomorrow!”

“Look here, Chris, who the hell do you think you’re ordering about? I wish now I hadn’t said anything about it at all!” Sally was on the point of bursting into tears again.

“Oh, all right! All right!” I hastily tried to calm her. “Do just what you like. It’s no business of mine.”

“Sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to be snappy. Ill see how I feel in the morning. Perhaps I will go and see that doctor, after all.”

But of course, she didn’t. Next day, indeed, she seemed much brighter: “Let’s go out this evening, Chris. I’m getting sick of this room. Let’s go and see some life!”

“Right you are, Sally. Where would you like to go?”

“Let’s go to the Troika and talk to that old idiot Bobby. Perhaps he’ll stand us a drink—you never know!”

Bobby didn’t stand us any drinks; but Sally’s suggestion proved to have been a good one, nevertheless. For it was

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while sitting at the bar of the Troika that we first got into conversation with Clive.

From that moment onwards we were with him almost continuously; either separately or together. I never once saw him sober. Clive told us that he drank half a bottle of whisky before breakfast, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. He often began to explain to us why he drank so much—it was because he was very unhappy. But why he was so unhappy I never found out, because Sally always interrupted to say that it was time to be going out or moving on to the next place or smoking a cigarette or having another glass of whisky. She was drinking nearly as much whisky as Clive himself. It never seemed to make her really drunk, but sometimes her eyes looked awful, as though they had been boiled. Every day the layer of make-up on her face seemed to get thicker.

Clive was a very big man, goodlooking in a heavy Roman way, and just beginning to get fat. He had about him that sad, American air of vagueness which is always attractive; doubly attractive in one who possessed so much money. He was vague, wistful, a bit lost: dimly anxious to have a good time and uncertain how to set about getting it. He seemed never to be quite sure whether he was really enjoying himself, whether what we were doing was really fun. He had constantly to be reassured. Was this the genuine article? Was this the real guaranteed height of a Good Time? It was? Yes, yes, of course—it was marvellous! It was ‘great! Ha, ha, ha! His big school-boyish laugh rolled out, re-echoed, became rather forced and died away abruptly on that puzzled note of enquiry. He couldn’t venture a step without our support. Yet, even as he appealed to us, I thought I could sometimes detect odd sly flashes of sarcasm. What did he really think of us?

Every morning, Clive sent round a hired car to fetch us to the hotel where he was staying. The chauffeur always brought with him a wonderful bouquet of flowers, ordered

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from the most expensive flower-shop in the Linden. One morning I had a lesson to give and arranged with Sally to join them later. On arriving at the hotel, I found that Clive and Sally had left early to fly to Dresden. There was a note from Clive, apologizing profusely and inviting me to lunch at the hotel restaurant, by myself, as his guest. But I didn’t. I was afraid of that look in the head waiter’s eye. In the evening, when Clive and Sally returned, Clive had brought me a present: it was a parcel of six silk shirts. “He wanted to get you a gold cigarette case,” Sally whispered in my ear, “but I told him shirts would be better. Yours are in such a state… . Besides, we’ve got to go slow at present. We don’t want him to think we’re gold-diggers… .”

I accepted them gratefully. What else could I do? Clive had corrupted us utterly. It was understood that he was going to put up the money to launch Sally upon a stage career. He often spoke of this, in a thoroughly nice way, as though it were a very trivial matter, to be settled, without fuss, between friends. But no sooner had he touched on the subject than his attention seemed to wander off again—his thoughts were as easily distracted as those of a child. Sometimes Sally was very hard put to it, I could see, to hide her impatience. “Just leave us alone for a bit now, darling,” she would whisper to me, “Clive and I are going to talk business.” But however tactfully Sally tried to bring him to the point, she never quite succeeded. When I rejoined them, half an hour later, I would find Clive smiling and sipping his whisky; and Sally also smiling, to conceal her extreme irritation.

“I adore him,” Sally told me, repeatedly and very solemnly, whenever we were alone together. She was intensely earnest in believing this. It was like a dogma in a newly adopted religious creed: Sally adores Clive. It is a veiy solemn undertaking to adore a millionaire. Sally’s features began to assume, with increasing frequency, the rapt expression of the theatrical nun. And indeed, when Clive, with his charming vagueness, gave a particularly flagrant professional beggar a

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twenty-mark note, we would exchange glances of genuine awe. The waste of so much good money affected us both like something inspired, a kind of miracle.

There came an afternoon when Clive seemed more nearly sober than usual. He began to make plans. In a few days we were all three of us to leave Berlin, for good. The Orient Express would take us to Athens. Thence, we should fly to Egypt. From Egypt to Marseilles. From Marseilles, by boat to South America. Then Tahiti. Singapore. Japan. Clive pronounced the names as though they had been stations on the Wannsee railway, quite as a matter of course: he had been there already. He knew it all. His matter-of-fact boredom gradually infused reality into the preposterous conversation. After all, he could do it. I began seriously to believe that he meant to do it. With a mere gesture of his wealth, he could alter the whole course of our lives.

What would become of us? Once started, we should never go back. We could never leave him. Sally, of course, he would marry. I should occupy an ill-defined position: a kind of private secretary without duties. With a flash of vision, I saw myself ten years hence, in flannels and black and white shoes, gone heavier round the jowl and a bit glassy, pouring out a drink in the lounge of a Californian hotel.

“Come and cast an eye at the funeral,” Clive was saying.

“What funeral, darling?” Sally asked, patiently. This was a new kind of interruption.