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

Well, the mischief was done, now. There was only one thing for it, and that was to forget the whole affair. And of course it would be impossible for me ever to see Sally again.

It must have been about ten days after this that I was visited, one morning, by a smaltpale dark-haired young man

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who spoke American fluently with a slight foreign accent. His name, he told me, was George P. Sandars. He had seen my English-teaching advertisement in the B.Z am Mittag.

“When would you like to begin?” I asked him.

But the young man shook his head hastily. Oh no, he hadn’t come to take lessons, at all. Rather disappointed, I waited politely for him to explain the reason of his visit. He seemed in no hurry to do this. Instead, he accepted a cigarette, sat down and began to talk chattily about the States. Had I ever been to Chicago? No? Well, had I heard of James L. Schraube? I hadn’t? The young man uttered a faint sigh. He had the air of being very patientwith me, and with the world in general. He had evidently been over the same ground with a good many other people already. James L. Schraube, he explained, was a very big man in Chicago: he owned a whole chain of restaurants and several cinemas. He had two large country houses and a yacht on Lake Michigan. And he possessed no less than four cars. By this time, I was beginning to drum with my fingers on the table. A pained expression passed over the young man’s face. He excused himself for taking up my valuable time; he had only told me about Mr. Schraube, he said, because he thought I might be interested—his tone implied a gentle rebuke—and because Mr. Schraube, had I known him, would certainly have vouched for his friend Sandars’ respectability. However … it couldn’t be helped … well, would I lend him two hundred marks? He needed the money in order to start a business; it was a unique opportunity, which he would miss altogether if he didn’t find the money before tomorrow morning. He would pay me back within three days. If I gave him the money now he would return that same evening with papers to prove that the whole thing was perfectly genuine.

No? Ah well… . He didn’t seem unduly surprised. He rose to go at once, like a business man who has wasted a valuable twenty minutes on a prospective customer: the loss, he contrived politely to imply, was mine, not his. Already at

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the door, he paused for a moment: Did I happen, by any chance, to know some film actresses? He was travelling, as a sideline, in a new kind of face-cream specially invented to keep the skin from getting dried up by the studio lights. It was being used by all the Hollywood stars already, but in Europe it was still quite unknown. If he could find half a dozen actresses to use and recommend it, they should have free sample jars and permanent supplies at half-price.

After a moment’s hesitation, I gave him Sally’s address. I don’t know quite why I did it. Partly, of course, to get rid of the young man, who showed signs of wishing to sit down again and continue our conversation. Partly, perhaps, out of malice. It would do Sally no harm to have to put up with his chatter for an hour or two: she had told me that she liked men with ambition. Perhaps she would even get a jar of the face-cream—if it existed at all. And if he touched her for the two hundred marks—well, that wouldn’t matter so very much, either. He couldn’t deceive a baby.

“But whatever you do,” I warned him, “don’t say that I sent you.”

He agreed to this at once, with a slight smile. He must have had his own explanation of my request, for he didn’t appear to find it in the least strange. He raised his hat politely as he went downstairs. By the next morning, I had forgotten about his visit altogether.

A few days later, Sally herself rang me up. I had been called away in the middle of a lesson to answer the telephone and was very ungracious.

“Oh, is that you, Christopher darling?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

“I say, can you come round and see me at once?”

“No.”

“Oh… .” My refusal evidently gave Sally a shock. There was a little pause, then she continued, in a tone of unwonted humility: “I suppose you’re most terribly busy?”

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“Yes. I am.”

“Well … would you mind frightfully if I came round to see you?”

“What about?”

“Darling”—Sally sounded positively desperate—“I can’t possibly explain to you over the telephone… . It’s something really serious.”

“Oh, I see”—I tried to make this as nasty as possible— “another magazine article, I suppose?”

Nevertheless, as soon as I’d said it, we both had to laugh.

“Chris, you are a brute!” Sally tinkled gaily along the wire: then checked herself abruptly: “No, darling—this time I promise you: it’s most terribly serious, really and truly it is.” She paused; then impressively added: “And you’re the only person who can possibly help.”

“Oh, all right. …” I was more than half melted already. “Come in an hour.”

“Well, darling, I’ll begin at the very beginning, shall I? … Yesterday morning, a man rang me up and asked if he could come round and see me. He said it was on very important business; and as he seemed to know my name and everything of course I said: Yes, certainly, come at once. … So he came. He told me his name was Rakowski—Paul Rakowski—and that he was a European agent of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and that he’d come to make me an offer. He said they were looking out for an English actress who spoke German to act in a comedy film they were going to shoot on the Italian Riviera. He was most frightfully convincing about it all; he told me who the director was and the camera-man and the art-director and who’d written the script. Naturally, I hadn’t heard of any of them before. But that didn’t seem so surprising: in fact, it really made it sound much more real, because most people would have chosen one of the names you see in the newspapers… . Anyhow, he said that, now he’d seen me, he was sure I’d be just the person for the part,

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and he could practically promise it to me, as long as the test was all right … so of course I was simply thrilled and I asked when the test would be and he said not for a day or two, as he had to make arrangements with the Ufa people. . So then we began to talk about Hollywood and he told me all kinds of stories—I suppose they could have been things he’d read in fan magazines, but somehow I’m pretty sure they weren’t—and then he told me how they make sound-effects and how they do the trick-work; he was really most awfully interesting and he certainly must have been inside a great many studios… . Anyhow, when we’d finished talking about Hollywood, he started to tell me about the rest of America and the people he knew, and about the gangsters and about New York. He said he’d only just arrived from there and all his luggage was still in the customs at Hamburg. As a matter of fact, I had been thinking to myself that it seemed rather queer he was so shabbily dressed; but after he said that, of course, I thought it was quite natural… . Well—now you must promise not to laugh at this part of the story, Chris, or I simply shan’t be able to tell you— presently he started making the most passionate love to me. At first I was rather angry with him, for sort of mixing business with pleasure; but then, after a bit, I didn’t mind so much: he was quite attractive, in a Russian kind of way… . And the end of it was, he invited me to have dinner with him; so we went to Horcher’s and had one of the most marvellous dinners I’ve ever had in my life (that’s one consolation); only, when the bill came, he said ‘Oh, by the way, darling, could you lend me three hundred marks until tomorrow? I’ve only got dollar bills on me, and I’ll have to get them changed at the Bank.’ So, of course, I gave them to him: as bad luck would have it, I had quite a lot of money on me, that evening… . And then he said: ‘Let’s have a bottle of champagne to celebrate your film contract.’ So I agreed, and I suppose by that time I must have been pretty tight because when he asked me to spend the night with him, I said Yes. We went to one of those little hotels in the Augs-69