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

“You see, Chris, it happened to be quite true–—”

“True!” •

“Yes, darling.” Now, for the first time, Sally was really

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embarrassed: she began speaking very fast: “I simply couldn’t tell you this morning: after everything that’s happened, it would have sounded too idiotic for words… . He asked me to marry him while we were at the restaurant, and I said Yes… . You see, I thought that, being in films, he was probably quite used to quick engagements, like that: after all, in Hollywood, it’s quite the usual thing… . And, as he was an American, I thought we could get divorced again easily, any time we wanted to. … And it would have been a good thing for my career—I mean, if he’d been genuine— wouldn’t it? … We were to have got married to-day, if it could have been managed. … It seems funny to think of, now–—”

“But Sally!” I stood still. I gaped at her. I had to laugh: “Well really … You know, you’re the most extraordinary creature I ever met in my life!”

Sally giggled a little, like a naughty child which has unintentionally succeeded in amusing the grown-ups:

“I always told you I was a bit mad, didn’t I? Now perhaps you’ll believe it–—”

It was more than a week before the police could give us any news. Then, one morning, two detectives called to see me. A young man answering to our description had been traced and was under observation. The police knew his address, but wanted me to identify him before making the arrest. Would I come round with them at once to a snackbar in the Kleiststrasse? He was to be seen there, about this time, almost every day. I should be able to point him out to them in the crowd and leave again at once, without any fuss or unpleasantness.

I didn’t like the idea much, but there was no getting out of it now. The snackbar, when we arrived, was crowded, for this was the lunch-hour. I caught sight of the young man almost immediately: he was standing at the counter, by the tea-urn, cup in hand. Seen thus, alone and off his guard, he

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seemed rather pathetic: he looked shabbier and far younger —a mere boy. I very nearly said: “He isn’t here.” But what would have been the use? They’d have got him, anyway. “Yes, that’s him.” I told the detectives. “Over there.” They nodded. I turned and hurried away down the street, feeling guilty and telling myself: I’ll never help the police again.

A few days later, Sally came round to tell me the rest of the story: “I had to see him, of course. … I felt an awful brute; he looked so wretched. All he said was: ‘I thought you were my friend.’ I’d have told him he could keep the money, but he’d spent it all, anyway… . The police said he really had been to the States, but he isn’t American; he’s a Pole. … He won’t be prosecuted, that’s one comfort. The doctor’s seen him and he’s going to be sent to a home. I hope they treat him decently there… .”

“So he was a loony, after all?”

“I suppose so. A sort of mild one… .” Sally smiled. “Not very flattering to me, is it? Oh, and Chris, do you know how old he was? You’d never guess!”

“Round about twenty, I should think.”

“Sixteen!”

“Oh, rot!”

“Yes, honestly… . The case would have to have been tried in the Children’s Court!”

We both laughed. “You know, Sally,” I said, “what I really like about you is that you’re so awfully easy to take in. People who never get taken in are so dreary.”

“So you still like me, Chris darling?”

“Yes, Sally. I still like you.”

“I was afraid you’d be angry with me—about the other day.”

“I was. Very.”

“But you’re not, now?”

“No… I don’t think so.”

‘It’s no good my trying to apologize, or explain, or any—

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thing. … I get like that, sometimes. … I expect you understand, don’t you, Chris?” “Yes,” I said. “I expect I do.”

I have never seen her since. About a fortnight later, just when I was thinking I ought really to ring her up, I got a postcard from Paris: “Arrived here last night. Will write properly tomorrow. Heaps of love.” No letter followed. A month after this, another postcard arrived from Rome, giving no address: “Am writing in a day or two,” it said. That was six years ago.

So now I am writing to her.

When you read this, Sally—if you ever do—please accept it as a tribute, the sincerest I can pay, to yourself and to our friendship.

And send me another postcard.

ON RUECEN ISLAND

(Summer 1931)

I wake early and go out to sit on the verandah in my pyjamas. The wood casts long shadows over the fields. Birds call with sudden uncanny violence, like alarm-clocks going off. The birch-trees hang down laden over the rutted, sandy earth of the country road. A soft bar of cloud is moving up from the line of trees along the lake. A man with a bicycle is watching his horse graze on a patch of grass by the path; he wants to disentangle the horse’s hoof from its tether-rope.

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He pushes the horse with both hands, but it won’t budge. And now an old woman in a shawl comes walking with a little boy. The boy wears a dark sailor suit; he is very pale and his neck is bandaged. They soon turn back. A man passes on a bicycle and shouts something to the man with the horse. His voice rings out, quite clear yet unintelligible, in the morning, stillness. A cock crows. The creak of the bicycle, going past. The dew on the white table and chairs in the garden arbour, and dripping from the heavy lilac. Another cock crows, much louder and nearer. And I think I can hear the sea, or very distant bells.

The village is hidden in the woods, away up to the left. It consists almost entirely of boarding-houses, in various styles of seaside architecture—sham Moorish, old Bavarian, Taj Mahal, and the rococo doll’s house, with white fretwork balconies. Behind the woods is the sea. You can reach it without going through the village, by a zig-zag path, which brings you out abruptly to the edge of some sandy cliffs, with the beach below you, and the tepid shallow Baltic lying almost at your feet. This end of the bay is quite deserted; the official bathing-beach is round the corner of the headland. The white onion-domes of the Strand Restaurant at Baabe wobble in the distance, behind fluid waves of heat, a kilometre away.

In the wood are rabbits and adders and deer. Yesterday morning I saw a roe being chased by a Borzoi dog, right across the fields and in amongst the trees. The dog couldn’t catch the roe, although it seemed to be going much the faster of the two, moving in long graceful bounds, while the roe went bucketing over the earth with wild rigid jerks, like a grand piano bewitched.

There are two people staying in this house, besides myself. One of them is an Englishman, named Peter Wilkinson, about my own age. The other is a German working-class boy from Berlin, named Otto Nowak. He is sixteen or seventeen years old.

Peter—as I already call him; we got rather tight the first

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evening, and quickly made friends—is thin and dark and nervous. He wears horn-rimmed glasses. When he gets excited, he digs his hands down between his knees and clenches them together. Thick veins stand out at the sides of his temples. He trembles all over with suppressed, nervous laughter, until Otto, rather irritated, exclaims : “Mensch, reg’ Dich bloss nicht so auf!”

Otto has a face like a very ripe peach. His hair is fair and thick, growing low on his forehead. He has small sparkling eyes, full of naughtiness, and a wide, disarming grin, which is much too innocent to be true. When he grins, two large dimples appear in his peach-bloom cheeks. At present, he makes up to me assiduously, flattering me, laughing at my jokes, never missing an opportunity of giving me a crafty, understanding wink. I think he looks upon me as a potential ally in his dealings with Peter.