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

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wanted two hundred and fifty marks down before he would make any arrangements at all. In the end, we beat him down to two hundred. Sally wanted the extra fifty, she explained to me later, to get some new nightdresses.

At last, it was spring. The cafés were putting up wooden platforms on the pavement and the ice-cream shops were opening, with their rainbow-wheels. We drove to the nursing-home in an open taxi. Because of the lovely weather, Sally was in better spirits than I had seen her in for weeks. But Frl. Schroeder, though she bravely tried to smile, was on the verge of tears. “The doctor isn’t a Jew, I hope?” Frl. Mayr asked me sternly. “Don’t you let one of those filthy Jews touch her. They always try to get a job of that kind, the beasts!”

Sally had a nice room, clean and cheerful, with a balcony. I called there again in the evening. Lying in bed without her make-up, she looked years younger, like a little girl:

“Hullo, darling… . They haven’t killed me yet, you see. But they’ve been doing their best to. … Isn’t this a funny place? … I wish that pig Klaus could see me… . This is what comes of not understanding his mind. . ‘. .”

She was a bit feverish and laughed a great deal. One of the nurses came in for a moment, as if looking for something, and went out again almost immediately.

“She was dying to get a peep at you,” Sally explained. “You see, I told her you were the father. You don’t mind, do you darling …”

“Not at all. It’s a compliment.”

“It makes everything so much simpler. Otherwise, if there’s no one, they think it so odd. And I don’t care for being sort of looked down on and pitied as the poor betrayed girl who gets abandoned by her lover. It isn’t particularly flattering for me, is it? So I told her we were most terribly in love but fearfully hard up, so that we couldn’t afford to marry, and how we dreamed of the time when we’d both be rich and

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famous and then we’d have a family of ten, just to make up for this one. The nurse was awfully touched, poor girl. In fact, she wept. Tonight, when she’s on duty, she’s going to show me pictures of her young man. Isn’t it sweet?”

Next day, Frl. Schroeder and I went round to the nursing • home together. We found Sally lying flat, with the bedclothes up to her chin:

“Oh, hullo, you two! Won’t you sit down? What time is it?” She turned uneasily in bed and rubbed her eyes; “Where did all these flowers come from?”

“We brought them.”

“How marvellous of you!” Sally smiled vacantly. “Sorry to be such a fool to-day… It’s this bloody chloroform… . My head’s full of it.”

We only stayed a few minutes. On the way home Frl. Schroeder was terribly upset: “Will you believe it, Herr Issyvoo, I couldn’t take it more to heart if it was my own daughter? Why, when I see the poor child suffering like that, I’d rather it was myself lying there in her place—I would indeed!”

Next day Sally was much better. We all went to visit her: Frl. Schroeder, Frl. Mayr, Bobby and Fritz. Fritz, of course, hadn’t the faintest idea what had really happened. Sally, he had been told, was being operated upon for a small internal ulcer. As always is the way with people when they aren’t in the know, he made all kinds of unintentional and startlingly apt references to storks, gooseberry-bushes, perambulators and babies generally; and even recounted a special new item of scandal about a well-known Berlin society lady who was said to have undergone a recent illegal operation. Sally and I avoided each other’s eyes.

On the evening of the next day, I visited her at the nursing-home for the last time. She was to leave in the morning. She

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was alone and we sat together on the balcony. She seemed more or less all right now and could walk about the room.

“I told the Sister I didn’t want to see anybody to-day except you.” Sally yawned languidly. “People make me feel so tired.”

“Would you rather I went away too?”

“Oh no,” said Sally, without much enthusiasm, “if you go, one of the nurses will only come in and begin to chatter; and if I’m not lively and bright with her, they’ll say I have to stay in this hellish place a couple of extra days, and I couldn’t stand that.”

She stared out moodily over the quiet street:

“You know, Chris, in some ways I wish I’d had that kid. … It would have been rather marvellous to have had it. The last day or two, I’ve been sort of feeling what it would be like to be a mother. Do you know, last night, I sat here for a long time by myself and held this cushion in my arms and imagined it was my baby? And I felt a most marvellous sort of shut-off feeling from all the rest of the world. I imagined how it’d grow up and how I’d work for it, and how, after I’d put it to bed at nights, I’d go out and make love to filthy old men to get money to pay for its food and clothes… . It’s all very well for you to grin like that, Chris … I did really!”

“Well, why don’t you marry and have one?”

“I don’t know. … I feel as if I’d lost faith in men. I just haven’t any use for them at all… . Even you, Christopher, if you were to go out into the street now and be run over by a taxi. … I should be sorry in a way, of course, but I shouldn’t really care a damn.”

“Thank you, Sally.”

We both laughed.

“I didn’t mean that, of course, darling—at least, not personally. You mustn’t mind what I say while I’m like this. I get all sorts of crazy ideas into my head. Having babies makes you feel awfully primitive, like a sort of wild animal or something, defending its young. Only the trouble is, I haven’t any

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young to defend. … I expect that’s what makes me so frightfully bad-tempered to everybody just now.”

It was partly as the result of this conversation that I suddenly decided, that evening, to cancel all my lessons, leave Berlin as soon as possible, go to some place on the Baltic and try to start working. Since Christmas, I had hardly written a word.

Sally, when I told her my idea, was rather relieved, I think. We both needed a change. We talked vaguely of her joining me later; but, even then, I felt that she wouldn’t. Her plans were very uncertain. Later, she might go to Paris, or to the Alps, or to the South of France, she said—if she could get the cash. “But probably,” she added, “I shall just stay on here. I should be quite happy. I seem to have got sort of used to this place.”

I returned to Berlin towards the middle of July.

All this time I had heard nothing of Sally, beyond half a dozen postcards, exchanged during the first month of my absence. I wasn’t much surprised to find she’d left her room in our flat:

“Of course, I quite understand her going. I couldn’t make her as comfortable as she’d the right to expect; especially as we haven’t any running water in the bedrooms.” Poor Frl. Schroeder’s eyes had filled with tears. “But it was a terrible disappointment to me, all the same… . Frl. Bowles behaved very handsomely, I can’t complain about that. She insisted on paying for her room until the end of July. I was entitled to the money, of course, because she didn’t give notice until the twenty-first—but I’d never have mentioned it. … She was such a charming young lady–—”

“Have you got her address?”

“Oh yes, and the telephone number. You’ll be ringing her up, of course. She’ll be delighted to see you… . The other

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gentlemen came and went, but you were her real friend, Herr Issyvoo. You know, I always used to hope that you two would get married. You’d have made an ideal couple. You always had such a good steady influence on her, and she used to brighten you up a bit when you got too deep in your books and studies… . Oh yes, Herr Issyvoo, you may laugh— but you never can tell! Perhaps it isn’t too late yet!”