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

The little doctor fairly revels in this atmosphere. Nearly every morning he arrives, on a missionary visit) to our fort. “You really ought to come round to the other beach,” he tells us. “It’s much more amusing there. I’d introduce you to some nice girls. The young people here are a magnificent lot! I, as a doctor, know how to appreciate them. The other day I was over at Hiddensee. Nothing but Jews! It’s a pleasure to get back here and see real Nordic types!”

“Let’s go to the other beach,” urged Otto. “It’s so dull here. There’s hardly anyone about.”

“You can go if you like,” Peter retorted with angry sarcasm: Tm afraid I should be rather out of place. I had a grandmother who was partly Spanish.”

But the little doctor won’t let us alone. Our opposition and more or less openly expressed dislike seem actually to fascinate him. Otto is always betraying us into his hands. One day, when the doctor was speaking enthusiastically about Hitler, Otto said, “It’s no good your talking like that to Christoph, Herr Doktor. He’s a communist!”

This seemed positively to delight the doctor. His ferrety blue eyes gleamed with triumph. He la,id his hand affectionately on my shoulder.

“But you can’t be a communist! You tantl”

“Why can’t I?” I asked coldly, moving away. I hate him to touch me.

“Because there isn’t any such thing as communism. It’s just

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an hallucination. A mental disease. People only imagine that they’re communists. They aren’t really.”

“What are they, then?”

But he wasn’t listening. He fixed me with his triumphant, ferrety smile.

“Five years ago I used to think as you do. But my work at the clinic has convinced me that communism is a mere hallucination. What people need is discipline, self-control. I can tell you this as a doctor. I know it from my own experience.”

This morning we were all together in my room, ready to start out to bathe. The atmosphere was electric, because Peter and Otto were still carrying on an obscure quarrel which they had begun before breakfast, in their own bedroom. I was turning over the pages of a book, not paying much attention to them. Suddenly Peter slapped Otto hard on both cheeks. They closed immediately and staggered grappling about the room, knocking over the chairs. I looked on, getting out of their way as well as I could. It was funny, and, at the same time, unpleasant, because rage made their faces strange and ugly. Presently Otto got Peter down on the ground and began twisting his arm: “Have you had enough?” he kept asking. He grinned: at that moment he was really hideous, positively deformed with malice. I knew that Otto was glad to have me there, because my presence was an extra humiliation for Peter. So I laughed, as though the whole thing were a joke, and went out of the room. I walked through the woods to Baabe, and bathed from the beach beyond. I felt I didn’t want to see either of them again for several hours.

If Otto wishes to humiliate Peter, Peter in his different way, also wishes to humiliate Otto. He wants to force Otto into making a certain kind of submission to his will, and this submission Otto refuses instinctively to make. Otto is naturally and healthily selfish, like an animal. If there are two chairs in a room, he will take the more comfortable one with-87

out hesitation, because it never even occurs to him to consider Peter’s comfort. Peter’s selfishness is much less honest, more civilised, more perverse. Appealed to in the right way, he will make any sacrifice, however unreasonable and unnecessary. But when Otto takes the better chair as if by right, then Peter immediately sees a challenge which he dare not refuse to accept. I suppose that—given their two natures—there is no possible escape from this situation. Peter is bound to go on fighting to win Otto’s submission. When, at last, he ceases to do so, it will merely mean that he has lost interest in Otto altogether.

The really destructive feature of their relationship is its inherent quality of boredom. It is quite natural for Peter often to feel bored with Otto—they have scarcely a single interest in common—but Peter, for sentimental reasons, will never admit that this is so. When Otto, who has no such motives for pretending, says, “It’s so dull here!” I invariably see Peter wince and looked pained. Yet Otto is actually far less often bored than Peter himself; he finds Peter’s company genuinely amusing, and is quite glad to be with him most of the day. Often, when Otto has been chattering rubbish for an hour without stopping, I can see that Peter really longs for him to be quiet and go away. But to admit this would be, in Peter’s eyes, a total defeat, so he only laughs and rubs his hands, tacitly appealing to me to support him in his pretence of finding Otto inexhaustibly delightful and funny.

On my way back through the woods, after my bathe, I saw the ferrety little blond doctor advancing to meet me. It was too late to turn back. I said “Good Morning” as politely and coldly as possible. The doctor was dressed in running-shorts and a sweater; he explained that he had been taking a “Waldlauf.” “But I think I shall turn back now,” he added. “Wouldn’t you like to run with me a little?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said rashly, “you see, I twisted my ankle a bit yesterday.”

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I could have bitten my tongue out as I saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes. “Ah, you’ve sprained your ankle? Please let me look at it!” Squirming with dislike, I had to submit to his prodding fingers. “But it is nothing, I assure you. You have no cause for alarm.”

As we walked the doctor began to question me about Peter and Otto, twisting his head to look up at me, as he delivered each sharp, inquisitive little thrust. He was fairly consumed with curiosity.

“My work in the clinic has taught me that it is no use trying to help this type of boy. Your friend Peter is very generous and very well meaning, but he makes a great mistake. This type of boy always reverts. From a scientific point of view, I find him exceedingly interesting.”

As though he were about to say something specially momentous, the doctor suddenly stood still in the middle of the path, paused a moment to engage my attention, and smilingly announced:

“He has a criminal head!”

“And you think that people with criminal heads should be left to become criminals?”

“Certainly not. I believe in discipline. These boys ought to be put into labour-camps.”

“And what are you going to do with them when you’ve got them there? You say that they can’t be altered, anyhow, so I suppose you’d keep them locked up for the rest of their lives?”

The doctor laughed delightedly, as though this were a joke against himself which he could, nevertheless, appreciate. He laid a caressing hand on my arm:

“You are an idealist! Do not imagine that I don’t understand your point of view. But it is unscientific, quite unscientific. You and your friend do not understand such boys as Otto. I understand them. Every week, one or two such boys come to my clinic, and I must operate on them for adenoids, or mastoid, or poisoned tonsils. So, you see, I know them through and through!”

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“I should have thought it would be more accurate to say you knew their throats and ears.”

Perhaps my German wasn’t quite equal to rendering the sense of this last remark. At all events, the doctor ignored it completely. “I know this type of boy very well,” he repeated, “It is a bad degenerate type. You cannot make anything out of these boys. Their tonsils are almost invariably diseased.”

There are perpetual little rows going on between Peter and Otto, yet I cannot say that I find living with them actually unpleasant. Just now, I am very much taken up ‘with my new novel. Thinking about it, I often go out for long walks, alone. Indeed, I find myself making more and more frequent excuses to leave them to themselves; and this is selfish, because, when I am with them, I can often choke off the beginnings of a quarrel by changing the subject or making a joke. Peter, I know, resents my desertions. “You’re quite an ascetic,” he said maliciously the other day, “always withdrawing for your contemplations.” Once, when I was sitting in a café near the pier, listening to the band, Peter and Otto came past. “So this is where you’ve been hiding!” Peter exclaimed. I saw that, for the moment, he really disliked me.