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

“All right, I’ll try.”

“Oh, marvellous!”

“How soon do you want it done?”

“You see, darling, that’s the whole point. I must have it at once… . Otherwise it’s no earthly use, because I promised it four days ago and I simply must give it him this evening. … It needn’t be very long. About five hundred words.”

“Well, I’ll do my best… .”

“Good. That’s wonderful. … Sit down wherever you like. Here’s some paper. You’ve got a pen? Oh, and here’s a dictionary, in case there’s a word you can’t spell… . I’ll just be having my bath.”

When, three-quarters of an hour later, Sally came in dressed for the day, I had finished. Frankly, I was rather pleased with my effort.

She read it through carefully, a slow frown gathering between her beautifully pencilled eyebrows. When she had finished, she laid down the manuscript with a sigh:

“I’m sorry, Chris. It won’t do at all.”

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“Won’t do?” I was genuinely taken aback.

“Of course, I dare say it’s very good from a literary point of view, and all that… .”

“Well then, what’s wrong with it?”

“Its not nearly snappy enough.” Sally was quite final. “It’s not the kind of thing this man wants, at all.”

I shrugged my shoulders: “I’m sorry, Sally. I did my best. But journalism isn’t really in my line, you know.”

There was a resentful pause. My vanity was piqued.

“My goodness, I know who’ll do it for me if I ask him!” cried Sally, suddenly jumping up. “Why on earth didn’t I think of him before?” She grabbed the telephone and dialled a number: “Oh, hilloo, Kurt darling… .”

In three minutes, she had explained all about the article. Replacing the receiver on its stand, she announced triumphantly: “That’s marvellous! He’s going to do it at once… .” She paused impressively and added: “That was Kurt Rosenthal.”

“Who’s he?”

“You’ve never heard of him?” This annoyed Sally; she pretended to be immensely surprised: “I thought you took an interest in the cinema? He’s miles the best young scenario writer. He earns pots of money. He’s only doing this as a favour to me, of course… . He says he’ll dictate it to his secretary while he’s shaving and then send it straight round to the editor’s flat… . He’s marvellous!”

“Are you sure it’ll be what the editor wants, this time?”

“Of course it will! Kurt’s an absolute genius. He can do anything. Just now, he’s writing a novel in his spare time. He’s so fearfully busy, he can only dictate it while he’s having breakfast. He showed me the first few chapters, the other day. Honestly, I think it’s easily the best novel I’ve ever read.”

“Indeed?”

“That’s the sort of writer I admire,” Sally continued. She was careful to avoid my eye. “He’s terribly ambitious and he works the whole time; and he can write anything—anything you like: scenarios, novels, plays, poetry, advertise—

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ments… . He’s not a bit stuck-up about it either. Not like these young men who, because they’ve written one book, start talking about Art and imagining they’re the most wonderful authors in the world… . They make me sick… ,”

Irritated as I was with her, I couldn’t help laughing:

“Since when have you disapproved of me so violently, Sally?”

“I don’t disapprove of you”—but she couldn’t look me in the face—“not exactly.”

“I merely make you sick?”

“I don’t know what it is. … You seem to have changed, somehow… .”

“How have I changed?”

“It’s difficult to explain… . You don’t seem to have any energy or want to get anywhere. You’re so dilettante. It annoys me.”

“I’m sorry.” But my would-be facetious tone sounded rather forced. Sally frowned down at her tiny black shoes.

“You must remember I’m a woman, Christopher. All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect. … If you ever care for a woman, I don’t advise you to let her see that you’ve got no ambition. Otherwise she’ll get to despise you.”

“Yes, I see… . And that’s the principle on which you choose your friends—your new friends?”

She flared up at this:

“It’s very easy for you to sneer at my friends for having good business heads. If they’ve got money, it’s because they’ve worked for it. … I suppose you consider yourself better than they are?”

“Yes, Sally, since you ask me—if they’re at all as I imagine them—I do.”

“There you go, Christopher! That’s typical of you. That’s what annoys me about you : you’re conceited and lazy. If you say things like that, you ought to be able to prove them.”

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“How does one prove that one’s better than somebody else? Besides, that’s not what I said. I said I considered myself better—it’s simply a matter of taste.”

Sally made no reply. She lit a cigarette, slightly frowning.

“You say I seem to have changed,” I continued. “To be quite frank, I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.”

Sally didn’t seem surprised: “Have you, Christopher? Perhaps you’re right. I don’t know. … Or perhaps we’ve neither of us changed. Perhaps we’re just seeing each other as we really are. We’re awfully different in lots of ways, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”

“I think,” said Sally, smoking meditatively, her eyes on her shoes, “that we may have sort of outgrown each other, a bit.”

“Perhaps we have. …” I smiled: Sally’s real meaning was so obvious: “At any rate, we needn’t quarrel about it, need we?”

“Of course not, darling.”

There was a pause. Then I said that I must be going. We were both rather embarrassed, now, and extra polite.

“Are you certain you won’t have a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks awfully.”

“Have some tea? It’s specially good. I got it as a present.”

“No, thanks very much indeed, Sally. I really must be getting along.”

“Must you?” She sounded, after all, rather relieved. “Be sure and ring me up some time soon, won’t you?”

“Yes, rather.”

It wasn’t until I had actually left the house and was walking quickly away up the street that I realized how angry and ashamed I felt. What an utter little bitch she is, I thought. After all, I told myself, it’s only what I’ve always known she was like—right from the start. No, that wasn’t true: I hadn’t known it. I’d flattered myself—why not be frank about it?— that she was fond of me. WŤHT I’d been wrong, it seemed;

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but could I blame her for that? Yet I did blame her, I was furious with her; nothing would have pleased me more, at that moment, than to see her soundly whipped. Indeed, I was so absurdly upset that I began to wonder whether I hadn’t, all this time, in my own peculiar way, been in love with Sally myself.

But no, it wasn’t love either—it was worse. It was the cheapest, most childish kind of wounded vanity. Not that I cared a curse what she thought of my article—well, just a little, perhaps, but only a very little; my literary self-conceit was proof against anything she could say—it was her criticism of myself. The awful sexual flair women have for taking the stuffing out of a man! It was no use telling myself that Sally had the vocabulary and mentality of a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, that she was altogether comic and preposterous; it was no use—I only knew that I’d been somehow made to feel a sham. Wasn’t I a bit of a sham anyway—though not for her ridiculous reasons—with my arty talk to lady pupils and my newly-acquired parlour-socialism? Yes, I was. But she knew nothing about that. I could quite easily have impressed her. That was the most humiliating part of the whole business; I had mis-managed our interview from the very beginning. I had blushed and squabbled, instead of being wonderful, convincing, superior, fatherly, mature. I had tried to compete with her beastily little Kurt on his own ground; just the very thing, of course, which Sally had wanted and expected me to do! After all these months, I had made the one really fatal mistake—I had let her see that I was not only incompetent but jealous. Yes, vulgarly jealous. I could have kicked myself. The mere thought made me prickly with shame from head to foot.