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

“Get away from me, you great lout!” she protested laughing; coyly pleased that I was present: “Let me alone, you stink of beer!”

At that time, I had a great many lessons to give. I was out most of the day. My pupils were scattered about the fashionable suburbs of the west—rich, well-preserved women of Frau Nowak’s age, but looking ten years younger; they liked to make a hobby of a little English conversation on dull afternoons when their husbands were away at the office. Sitting on silk cushions in front of open fireplaces, we discussed Point Counter Point and Lady Chatteriey’s Lover. A manservant brought in tea with buttered toast. Sometimes, when they got tired of literature, I amused them by descriptions of the Nowak household. I was careful, however, not to say that I lived there: it would have been bad for my business to admit that I was really poor. The ladies paid me three marks an hour; a little reluctantly, having done their best to beat me down to two marks fifty. Most of them also tried, deliberately or subconsciously, to cheat me into staying longer than my time. I always had to keep my eye on the clock.

Fewer people wanted lessons in the morning; and so it happened that I usually got up much later than the rest of the Nowak family. Frau Nowak had her charring, Herr Nowak went off to his job at the fumiture-removers, Lothar,

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who was out of work, was helping a friend with a paper-round, Grete went to school. Only Otto kept me company; except on the mornings when, with endless nagging, he was driven out to the labour-bureau by his mother, to get his card stamped.

After fetching our breakfast, a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and dripping, Otto would strip off his pyjamas and do exercises, shadow-box or stand on his head. He flexed his muscles for my admiration. Squatting on my bed, he told me stories:

“Did I ever tell you, Christoph, how I saw the Hand?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, listen… . Once, when I was very small, I was lying in bed at night. It was very dark and very late. And suddenly I woke up and saw a great big black hand stretching over the bed. I was so frightened I couldn’t even scream. I just drew my legs up under my chin and stared at it. Then, after a minute or two, it disappeared and I yelled out. Mother came running in and I said: ‘Mother, I’ve seen the Hand.’ But she only laughed. She wouldn’t believe it.”

Otto’s innocent face, with its two dimples, like a bun, had become very solemn. He held me with his absurdly small bright eyes, concentrating all his narrative powers:

“And then, Christoph, several years later, I had a job as apprentice to an upholsterer. Well, one day—it was in the middle of the morning, in broad daylight—I was sitting working on my stool. And suddenly it seemed to go all dark in the room and I looked up and there was the Hand, as near to me as you are now just closing over me. I felt my arms and legs turn cold and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t cry out. The master saw how pale I was and he said: ‘Why, Otto, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well?’ And as he spoke to me it seemed as if the Hand drew right away from me again, getting smaller and smaller, until it was just a little black speck. And when I looked up again the room was quite light, just as it always was, and where I’d seen the black speck there was a big fly crawling across the ceiling.

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But I was so ill the whole day that the master had to send me home.”

Otto’s face had gone quite pale during this recital and, for a moment, a really frightening expression of fear had passed over his features. He was tragic now; his little eyes bright with tears:

“One day I shall see the Hand again. And then I shall die.”

“Nonsense,” I said, laughing. “We’ll protect you.”

Otto shook his head very sadly:

“Let’s hope so, Christoph. But I’m afraid not. The Hand will get me in the end.”

“How long did you stay with the upholsterer?” I asked.

“Oh, not long. Only a few weeks. The master was so unkind to me. He always gave me the hardest jobs to do—and I was such a little chap then. One day I got there five minutes late. He made a terrible row; called me a verfluchter Hund. And do you think I put up with that?” Otto leant forward, thrust his face, contracted into a dry monkey-like leer of malice, towards me. “Nee, nee! Bei mir nicht!” His little eyes focussed upon me for a moment with an extraordinary intensity of simian hatred; his puckered-up features became startlingly ugly. Then they relaxed. I was no longer the upholsterer. He laughed gaily and innocently, throwing back his hair, showing his teeth: “I pretended I was going to hit him. I frightened him, all right!” He imitated the gesture of a scared middle-aged man avoiding a blow. He laughed.

“And then you had to leave?” I asked.

Otto nodded. His face slowly changed. He was turning melancholy again.

“What did your father and mother say to that?”

“Oh, they’ve always been against me. Ever since I was small. If there were two crusts of bread, mother would always give the bigger one to Lothar. Whenever I complained they used to say: ‘Go and work. You’re old enough. Get your own food. Why should we support you?’ ” Otto’s eyes moistened with the most sincere self-pity: “Nobody under-113

stands me here. Nobody’s good to me. They all hate me really. They wish I was dead.”

“How can you talk such rubbish, Otto! Your mother certainly doesn’t hate you.”

“Poor mother!” agreed Otto. He had changed his tone at once, seeming utterly unaware of what he had just said: “It’s terrible. I can’t bear to think of her working like that, every day. You know, Christoph, she’s very, very ill. Often, at night, she coughs for hours and hours. And sometimes she spits out blood. I lie awake wondering if she’s going to die.”

I nodded. In spite of myself I began to smile. Not that I disbelieved what he had said about Frau Nowak. But Otto himself, squatting there on the bed, was so animally alive, his naked brown body so sleek with health, that his talk of death seemed ludicrous, like the description of a funeral by a painted clown. He must have understood this, for he grinned back, not in the least shocked at my apparent callousness. Straightening his legs he bent forward without effort and grasped his feet with his hands : “Can you do that, Christoph?”

A sudden notion pleased him: “Christoph, if I show you something, will you swear not to tell a single soul?”

“All right.”

He got up and rummaged under his bed. One of the floorboards was loose in the corner by the window: lifting it, he fished out a tin box which had once contained biscuits. The tin was full of letters^ and photographs. Otto spread them out on the bed:

“Mother would burn these if she found them… . Look, Christoph, how do you like her? Her name’s Hilde. I met her at the place where I go dancing… . And this is Marie. Hasn’t she got beautiful eyes? She’s wild about me—all the other boys are jealous. But she’s not really my type.” Otto shook his head seriously: “You know, it’s a funny thing, but as soon as I know that a girl’s keen on me, I lose interest in her. I wanted to break with her altogether; but she came round here and made such a to-do in front of mother. So I

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have to see her sometimes to keep her quiet… . And here’s Trude—honestly, Christoph, would you believe she was twenty-seven? It’s a fact! Hasn’t she a marvellous figure? She lives in the West End, in a flat of her own! She’s been divorced twice. I can go there whenever I like. Here’s a photo her brother took of her. He wanted to take some of us two together, but I wouldn’t let him. I was afraid he’d sell them, afterwards—you can be arrested for it, you know… .” Otto smirked, handed me a packet of letters: “Here, read these; they’ll make you laugh. This one’s from a Dutchman. He’s got the biggest car I ever saw in my life. I was with him in the spring. He writes to me sometimes. Father got wind of it, and now he watches out to see if there’s any money in the envelopes—the dirty dog! But I know a trick worth two of that! I’ve told all my friends to address their letters to the bakery on the corner. The baker’s son is a pal of mine… .”