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

“Tomorrow is too late.”

“What a pity!”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

We both laughed. Bernhard seemed to be specially tickled by his joke. There was even something a little exaggerated in his laughter, as though the situation had some further dimen—

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sion of humour to which I hadn’t penetrated. We were still laughing when I said goodbye.

Perhaps I am slow at jokes. At any rate, it took me nearly eighteen months to see the point of this one—to recognize it as Bernhard’s last, most daring and most cynical experiment upon us both. For now I am certain—absolutely convinced —that his offer was perfectly serious.

When I returned to Berlin, in the autumn of 1932,1 duly rang Bernhard up, only to be told that he was away, on business, in Hamburg. I blame myself now—one always does blame oneself afterwards—for not having been more persistent. But there was so much for me to do, so many pupils, so many other people to see; the weeks turned into months; Christmas came—I sent Bernhard a card but got no answer: he was away again, most likely; and then the New Year began.

Hitler came, and the Reichstag fire, and the mock-elections. I wondered what was happening to Bernhard. Three times I rang him up—from call-boxes, lest I should get Frl. Schroeder into trouble: there was never any reply. Then, one evening early in April, I went round to his house. The caretaker put his head out of the tiny window, more suspicious than ever: at first, he seemed even inclined to deny that he knew Bernhard at all. Then he snapped: “Herr Landauer has gone away … gone right away.”

“Do you mean he’s moved from here?” I asked. “Can you give me his address?”

“He’s gone away,” the caretaker repeated, and slammed the window shut.

I left it at that—concluding, not unnaturally, that Bernhard was somewhere safe abroad.

On the morning of the Jewish boycott, I walked round to take a look at Landauers’. Things seemed very much as usual,

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superficially. Two or three uniformed S.A. boys were posted at each of the big entrances. Whenever a shopper approached, one of them would say: “Remember this is a Jewish business!” The boys were quite polite, grinning, making jokes among themselves. Little knots of passers-by collected to watch the performance—interested, amused or merely apathetic; still uncertain whether or not to approve. There was nothing of the atmosphere one read of later in the smaller provincial towns, where purchasers were forcibly disgraced with a rubber ink-stamp on the forehead and cheek. Quite a lot of people went into the building. I went in myself, bought Łhe first thing I saw—it happened to be a nutmeg-grater—and strolled out again, twirling my small parcel. One of the boys at the door winked and said something to his companion. I remembered having seen him once or twice at the Alexander Casino, in the days when I was living with the Nowaks.

In May, I left Berlin for the last time. My first stop was at Prague—and it was there, sitting one evening alone, in a cellar restaurant, that I heard, indirectly, my last news of the Landauer family.

Two men were at the next table, talking German. One of them was certainly an Austrian; the other I couldn’t place —he was fat and sleek, about forty-five, and might well have owned a small business in any European capital, from Belgrade to Stockholm. Both of them were undoubtedly prosperous, technically Aryan, and politically neuter. The fat man startled me into attention by saying:

“You know Landauers’? Landauers’ of Berlin?”

The Austrian nodded: “Sure, I do… . Did a lot of business with them, one time… . Nice place they’ve got there. Must have cost a bit …”

“Seen the papers, this morning?”

“No. Didn’t have time… . Moving into our new flat, you know. The wife’s coming back.”

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“She’s coming back? You don’t say! Been in Vienna, hasn’t she?”

‘That’s right.”

“Had a good time?”

“Trust her! It cost enough, anyway.”

“Vienna’s pretty dear, these days.”

“It is that.”

“Food’s dear.”

“It’s dear everywhere.”

“I guess you’re right.” The fat man began to pick his teeth: “What was I saying?”

“You were saying about Landauers’.”

“So I was… . You didn’t read the papers, this morning?”

“No, I didn’t read them.”

“There was a bit in about Bernhard Landauer.”

“Bernhard?” said the Austrian. “Let’s see—he’s the son, isn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know… .” The fat man dislodged a tiny fragment of meat with the point of his toothpick. Holding it up to the light, he regarded it thoughtfully.

“I think he’s the son,” said the Austrian. “Or maybe the nephew… . No, I think he’s the son.”

“Whoever he is,” the fat man flicked the scrap of meat on to his plate with a gesture of distaste: “He’s dead.”

“You don’t say!”

“Heart failure.” The fat man frowned, and raised his hand to cover a belch. He was wearing three gold rings: “That’s what the newspapers said.”

“Heart failure!” The Austrian shifted uneasily in his chair: “You don’t say!”

“There’s a lot of heart failure,” said the fat man, “in Germany these days.”

The Austrian nodded: “You can’t believe all you hear. That’s a fact.”

“If vou ask me,” said the fat man, “anyone’s heart’s liable to fail, if it gets a bullet inside it.”

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The Austrian looked very uncomfortable: “Those Nazis …” he began.

“They mean business.” The fat man seemed rather to enjoy making his friend’s flesh creep. “You mark my words : they’re going to clear the Jews right out of Germany. Right out.”

The Austrian shook his head: “I don’t like it.”

“Concentration camps,” said the fat man, lighting a cigar. “They get them in there, make them sign things… . Then their hearts fail.”

“I don’t like it,” said the Austrian. “It’s bad for trade.”

“Yes,” the fat man agreed. “It’s bad for trade.”

“Makes everything so uncertain.”

“That’s right. Never know who you’re doing business with.” The fat man laughed. In his own way, he was rather macabre: “It might be a corpse.”

The Austrian shivered a little: “What about the old man, old Landauer? Did they get him, too?”

“No, he’s all right. Too smart for them. He’s in Paris.”

“You don’t say!”

“I reckon the Nazis’ll take over the business. They’re doing that, now.”

“Then old Landauer’ll be ruined, I guess?”

“Not him!” The fat man flicked the ash from his cigar, contemptuously. “He’ll have a bit put by, somewhere. You’ll

see. He’ll start something else. They’re smart, those

Jť ews… .

“That’s right,” the Austrian agreed. “You can’t keep a Jew down.”

The thought seemed to cheer him, a little. He brightened: “That reminds me! I knew there was something I wanted to tell you… . Did you ever hear the story about the Jew and the Goy girl with the wooden leg?”

“No.” The fat man puffed at his cigar. His digestion was working well, now. He was in the right after-dinner mood: “Go ahead… .”

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A BERLIN DIARY

(Winter 1932-3)

Tonight, for the first time this winter, it is very cold. The dead cold grips the town in utter silence, like the silence of intense midday summer heat. In the cold the town seems actually to contract, to dwindle to a small black dot, scarcely larger than hundreds of other dots, isolated and hard to find, on the enormous European map. Outside, in the night, beyond the last new-built blocks of concrete flats, where the streets end in frozen allotment gardens, are the Prussian plains. You can feel them all round you, tonight, creeping in upon the city, like an immense waste of unhomely ocean— sprinkled with leafless copses and ice-lakes and tiny villages which are remembered only as the outlandish names of battlefields in half-forgotten wars. Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold: it is my own skeleton aching. I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the frost in the girders of the overhead railway, in the ironwork of balconies, in bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards, latrines. The iron throbs and shrinks, the stone and the bricks ache dully, the plaster is numb.