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

“Otto, how dare you!” Quick as fury, Frau Nowak’s hand grabbed up the lid of a saucepan. I jumped back a pace to be out of range, tripped over a chair and sat down hard. Grete uttered an affected little shriek of joy and alarm. The door opened. It was Herr Nowak, come back from his work.

He was a powerful, dumpy little man, with pointed moustache, cropped hair and bushy eyebrows. He took in the scene with a long grunt which was half a belch. He did not appear to understand what had been happening; or perhaps he merely did not care. Frau Nowak said nothing to enlighten him. She hung the saucepan-lid quietly on a hook. Grete jumped up from her chair and ran to him with outstretched arms: “Pappi! Pappi!”

Herr Nowak smiled down at her, showing two or three nicotine-stained stumps of teeth. Bending, he picked her up, carefully and expertly, with a certain admiring curiosity, like a large valuable vase. By profession he was a furniture-remover. Then he held out his hand—taking his time about it, gracious, not fussily eager to please:

“Servus, Herr!”

“Aren’t you glad that Herr Christoph’s come to live with us, Pappi?” chanted Grete, perched on her father’s shoulder, in her sugary sing-song tones. At this Herr Nowak, as if suddenly acquiring new energy, began shaking my hand again, much more warmly, and thumping me on the back:

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“Glad? Yes, of course I’m glad!” He nodded his head in vigorous approval. “Englisch Man? Anglais, eh? Ha, ha. That’s right! Oh, yes, 1 talk French, you see. Forgotten most of it now. Learnt in the war. I was Feldwebel—on the West Front. Talked to lots of prisoners. Good lads. All the same as us. …” •

“You’re drunk again, father!” exclaimed Frau Nowak in disgust. “Whatever will Herr Christoph think of you!”

“Christoph doesn’t mind; do you, Christoph?” Herr Nowak patted my shoulder.

“Christoph, indeed! He’s Herr Christoph to you! Can’t you tell a gentleman when you see one?”

“I’d much rather you called me Christoph,” I said.

“That’s right! Christoph’s right! We’re all the same flesh and blood… . Argent, money—all the same! Ha, ha!”

Otto took my other arm: “Christoph’s quite one of the family, already!”

Presently we sat down to an immense meal of lung hash, black bread, malt coffee and boiled potatoes. In the first recklessness of having so much money to spend ( I had given her ten marks in advance for the week’s board ) Frau Nowak had prepared enough potatoes for a dozen people. She kept shovelling them on to my plate from a big saucepan, until I thought I should suffocate:

“Have some more, Herr Christoph. You’re eating nothing-“

“I’ve never eaten so much in my whole life, Frau Nowak.”

“Christoph doesn’t like our food,” said Herr Nowak. “Never mind, Christoph, you’ll get used to it. Otto was just the same when he came back from the seaside. He’d got used to all sorts of fine ways, with his Englishman… .”

“Hold your tongue, father!” said Frau Nowak warningly. “Can’t you leave the boy alone? He’s old enough to be able to decide for himself what’s right and wrong—more shame to him!”

We were still eating when Lothar came in. He threw his cap on the bed, shook hands with me politely but silently,

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with a little bow, and took his place at the table. My presence did not appear, to surprise or interest him in the least: his glance barely met mine. He was, I knew, only twenty; but he might well have been years older. He was a man already. Otto seemed almost childish beside him. He had a lean, bony, peasant’s face, soured by racial memory of barren fields.

“Lothar’s going to night-school,” Frau Nowak told me with pride. “He had a job in a garage, you know; and now he wants to study engineering. They won’t take you in anywhere nowadays, unless you’ve got a diploma of some sort. He must show you his drawings, Herr Christoph, when you’ve got time to look at them. The teacher said they were very good indeed.”

“I should like to see them.”

Lothar didn’t respond. I sympathised with him and felt rather foolish. But Frau Nowak was determined to show him off:

“Which nights are your classes, Lothar?”

“Mondays and Thursdays.” He went on eating, deliberately, obstinately, without looking at his mother. Then perhaps to show that he bore me no ill-will, he added: “From eight to ten-thirty.” As soon as he had finished, he got up without a word, shook hands with me, making the same small bow, took his cap and went out.

Frau Nowak looked after him and sighed: “He’s going round to his Nazis, I suppose. I often wish he’d never taken up with them at all. They put all kinds of silly ideas into his head. It makes him so restless. Since he joined them he’s been a different boy altogether… . Not that I understand these politics myself. What I always say is—why can’t we have the Kaiser back? Those were the good times, say what you like.”

“Ach, to hell with your old Kaiser,” said Otto. “What we want is a communist revolution.”

“A communist revolution!” Frau Nowak snorted. “The idea! The communists are all good-for-nothing lazybones like you, who’ve never done an honest day’s work in their lives.”

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“Christoph’s a communist,” said Otto. “Aren’t you, Christoph?”

‘Not a proper one, I’m afraid.”

Frau Nowak smiled: “What nonsense will you be telling us next! How could Herr Christoph be a communist? He’s a gentleman.” ,

“What I say is–—.” Herr Nowak put down his knife and

fork and wiped his moustache carefully on the back of his hand: “we’re all equal as God made us. You’re as good as me; I’m as good as you. A Frenchman’s as good as an Englishman; an Englishman’s as good as a German. You understand what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Take the war, now–—.” Herr Nowak pushed back his

chair from the table: “One day I was in a wood. All alone, you understand. Just walking through the wood by myself, as I might be walking down the street… . And suddenly— there before me, stood a Frenchman. Just as if he’d sprung out of the earth. He was no further away from me than you are now.” Herr Nowak sprang to his feet as he spoke. Snatching up the bread-knife from the table he held it before him, in a posture of defence, like a bayonet. Tie glared at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows, re-living the scene: “There we stand. We look at each other. That Frenchman was as pale as death. Suddenly he cries: ‘Don’t shoot me!’ Just like that.” Herr Nowak clasped his hands in a piteous gesture of entreaty. The bread-knife was in the way now: he put it down on the tabje. ” ‘Don’t shoot me! I have five children.’ (He spoke French, of course: but I could understand him. I could speak French perfectly in those days; but I’ve forgotten some of it now. ) Well, I look at him and he looks at me. Then I say: ‘Ami.’ (That means Friend.) And then we shake hands.” Herr Nowak took my hand in both of his and pressed it with great emotion. “And then we begin to walk away from each other—backwards; I didn’t want him to shoot me in the back.” Still glaring in front of him Herr Nowak began cautiously retreating backwards, step by step,

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until he collided violently with the sideboard. A framed photograph fell off it. The glass smashed.

“Pappi! Pappil” cried Grete in delight. “Just look what you’ve done!”

“Perhaps that’ll teach you to stop your fooling, you old clown!” exclaimed Frau Nowak angrily. Grete began loudly and affectedly laughing, until Otto slapped her face and she set up her stagey whine. Meanwhile, Herr Nowak had restored his wife’s good temper by kissing her and pinching her cheek.