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

160

of coming last. But she had reckoned without Sally: she hadn’t the nerve to be late in the grand manner. Poor Natalia! She had tried to make herself look more grown up—with the result that she appeared merely rather dowdy. The long townified dress she’d put on didn’t suit her at all. On the side of her head, she had planted a little hat—an unconscious parody of Sally’s page-boy cap. But Natalia’s hair was much too fuzzy for it: it rode the waves like a half-swamped boat on a rough sea.

“How do I look?” she immediately asked, sitting down opposite to me, rather flurried.

“You look very nice.”

“Tell me, please, truthfully, what will she think of me?”

“She’ll like you very much.”

“How can you say that?” Natalia was indignant. “You do not know!”

“First you want my opinion, and then you say I don’t know!”

“Imbecile! I do not ask for compliments!”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you do ask for.”

“Oh no?” cried Natalia scornfully. “You do not understand? Then I am sorry. I can’t help you!”

At this moment, Sally arrived.

“Hilloo, darling,” she exclaimed, in her most cooing accents, “I’m terribly sorry I’m late—can you forgive me?” She sat down daintily, enveloping us in wafts of perfume, and began, with languid miniature gestures, to take off her gloves: “I’ve been making love to a dirty old Jew producer. I’m hoping he’ll give me a contract—but no go, so far… .”

I kicked Sally hastily, under the table, and she stopped short, with an expression of absurd dismay—but now, of course, it was too late. Natalia froze before our eyes. All I’d said and hinted beforehand, in hypothetic pre-excuse of Sally’s conduct, was instantly made void. After a moment’s glacial pause, Natalia asked me if I’d seen Sous les Toits de Paris. She spoke German. She wasn’t going to give Sally a chance of laughing at her English.

161

Sally immediately chipped in, however, quite unabashed. She’d seen the film, and thought it was marvellous, and wasn’t Prejean marvellous, and did we remember the scene where a train goes past in the background while they’re starting to fight? Sally’s German was so much more than usually awful that I wondered whether she wasn’t deliberately exaggerating it in order, somehow, to make fun of Natalia.

During the rest of the interview I suffered mental pins and needles. Natalia hardly spoke at all. Sally prattled on in her murderous German, making what she imagined to be light general conversation, chiefly about the English film industry. But as every anecdote involved explaining that somebody was someone else’s mistress, that this one drank and that one took drugs, this didn’t make the atmosphere any more agreeable. I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with both of them—with Sally for her endless silly pornographic talk; with Natalia for being such a prude. At length, after what seemed an eternity but was, in fact, barely twenty minutes, Natalia said that she must be going.

“My God, so must I!” cried Sally, in English. “Chris, darling, you’ll take me as far as the Eden, won’t you?”

In my cowardly way, I glanced at Natalia, trying to convey my helplessness. This, I knew only too well, was going to be regarded as a test of my loyalty—and, already, I had failed it. Natalia’s expression showed no mercy. Her face was set. She was very angry, indeed.

“When shall I see you?” I ventured to ask.

“I don’t know,” said Natalia—and she marched off down the Kurfürstendamm as if she never wished to set eyes on either of us again.

Although we had only a tew hundred yards to go, Sally insisted that we must take a taxi. It would never do, she explained, to arrive at the Eden on foot.

“That girl didn’t like me much, did she?” she remarked, as we were driving off.

“No, Sally. Not much.”

162

“I’m sure I don’t know why. … I went out of my way to be nice to her.”

“If that’s what you call being nice … !” I laughed, in spite of my vexation.

“Well, what ought I to have done?”

“It’s more a question of what you ought not to have done… . Haven’t you any small-talk except adultery?”

“People have got to take me as I am,” retorted Sally, grandly.

“Finger-nails and all?” I’d noticed Natalia’s eyes returning to them again and again, in fascinated horror.

Sally laughed: “To-day, I specially didn’t paint my toe-nails.”

“Oh, rot, Sally! Do you really?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“But what on earth’s the point? I mean, nobody–—” I

corrected myself, “very few people can see them… .”

Sally gave me her most fatuous grin: “I know, darling… . But it makes me feel so marvellously sensual… .”

From this meeting, I date the decline of my relations with Natalia. Not that there was ever any open quarrel between us, or definite break. Indeed, we met again only a few days later; but at once I was aware of a change in the temperature of our friendship. We talked, as usual, of art, music, books— carefully avoiding the personal note. We had been walking about the Tiergarten for the best part of an hour, when Natalia abruptly asked:

“You like Miss Bowles vairy much?” Her eyes, fixed on the leaf-strewn path, were smiling maliciously.

“Of course I do… . We’re going to be married, soon.”

“Imbecile!”

We marched on for several minutes in silence.

“You know,” said Natalia suddenly, with the air of one who makes a surprising discovery: “I do not like your Miss Bowles?”

163

“I know you don’t.”

My tone vexed her—as I intended that it should: “What I think, it is not of importance?”

“Not in the least.” I grinned teasingly.

“Only your Miss Bowles, she is of importance?”

“She is of great importance.”

Natalia reddened and bit her lip. She was getting angry: “Some day, you will see that I am right.”

“I’ve no doubt I shall.”

We walked all the way back to Natalia’s home without exchanging a single word. On the doorstep, however, she asked, as usual: “Perhaps you will ring me up, one day …” then paused, delivered her parting shot: “if your Miss Bowles permits?”

I laughed: “Whether she permits or not, I shall ring you up very soon.” Almost before I had finished speaking, Natalia had shut the door in my face.

Nevertheless, I didn’t keep my word. It was a month before I finally dialled Natalia’s number. I had half intended to do so, many times, but, always, my disinclination had been stronger than my desire to see her again. And when, at length, we did meet, the temperature had dropped several degrees lower still; we seemed mere acquaintances. Natalia was convinced, I suppose, that Sally had become my mistress, and I didn’t see why I should correct her mistake—doing so would only have involved a long heart-to-heart talk for which I simply wasn’t in the mood. And, at the end of all the explanations, Natalia would probably have found herself quite as much shocked as she was at present, and a good deal more jealous. I didn’t flatter myself that Natalia had ever wanted me as a lover, but she had certainly begun to behave towards me, as a kind of bossy elder sister, and it was just this role—absurdly enough—which Sally had stolen from her. No, it was a pity, but on the whole, I decided, things were better as they were. So I played up to Natalia’s indirect questions and insinuations, and even let drop a few hints of domestic bliss: “When Sally and I were having breakfast

164

together, this morning …” or “How do you like this tie? Sally chose it… .” Poor Natalia received them in glum silence; and, as so often before, I felt guilty and unkind. There were two more meetings, equally unsuccessful. Then, towards the end of February, I rang up her home, and was told that she’d gone abroad.