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

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comfortable. I excused myself and got away as soon as I could.

• • •

Overheard in a café: a young Nazi is sitting with his girl; they are discussing the future of the Party. The Nazi is drunk.

“Oh, I know we shall win, all right,” he exclaims impatiently, “but that’s not enough!” He thumps the table with his fist: “Blood must flow!”

The girl strokes his arm reassuringly. She is trying to get him to come home. “But, of course, it’s going to flow, darling,” she coos soothingly, “the Leader’s promised that in our programme.”

To-day is “Silver Sunday.” The streets are crowded with shoppers. All along the Tauentzienstrasse, men, women and boys are hawking postcards, flowers, song-books, hair-oil, bracelets. Christmas-trees are stacked for sale along the central path between the tramlines. Uniformed S.A. men rattle their collecting-boxes. In the side-streets, lorry-loads of police are waiting; for any large crowd, nowadays, is capable of turning into a political riot. The Salvation Army have a big illuminated tree on the Wittenbergplatz, with a blue electric star. A group of students were standing round it, making sarcastic remarks. Among them I recognized Werner, from the “communist” café.

“This time next year,” said Werner, “that star will have changed its colour!” He laughed violently—he was in an excited, slightly hysterical mood. Yesterday, he told me, he’d had a great adventure: “You see, three other comrades and myself decided to make a demonstration at the Labour Exchange in Neukölln. I had to speak, and the others were to see I wasn’t interrupted. We went round there at about half-past ten, when the bureau’s most crowded. Of course, we’d planned it all beforehand—each of the comrades had to hold one of the doors, so that none of the clerks in the office could get out. There they were, cooped up like rabbits… . Of course, we couldn’t prevent their telephoning for the

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Police, we knew that. We reckoned we’d got six or seven minutes … Well, as soon as the doors were fixed, I jumped on to a table. I just yelled out whatever came into my head —I don’t know what I said. They liked it, anyhow… . In half a minute I had them so excited I got quite scared. I was afraid they’d break into the office and lynch somebody. There was a fine old shindy, I can tell you! But just when things were beginning to look properly lively, a comrade came up from below to tell us the Police were there already—just getting out of their car. So we had to make a dash for it. … I think they’d have got us, only the crowd was on our side, and wouldn’t let them through until we were out by the other door, into the street… .” Werner finished breathlessly. “I tell you, Christopher,” he added, “the capitalist system can’t possibly last much longer now. The workers are on the move!”

Early this evening I was in the Biilowstrasse. There had been a big Nazi meeting at the Sportpalast, and groups of men and boys were just coming away from it, in their brown or black uniforms. Walking along the pavement ahead of me were three S.A. men. They all carried Nazi banners on their shoulders, like rifles, rolled tight round the staves—the banner-staves had sharp metal points, shaped into arrowheads.

All at once, the three S.A. men came face to face with a youth of seventeen or eighteen, dressed in civilian clothes, who was hurrying along in the opposite direction. I heard one of the Nazis shout: “That’s him!” and immediately all three of them flung themselves upon the young man. He uttered a scream, and tried to dodge, but they were too quick for him. In a moment they had jostled him into the shadow of a house entrance, and were standing over him, kicking him and stabbing at him with the sharp metal points of their banners. All this happened with such incredible speed that I could hardly believe my eyes—already, the three S.A. men had left their victim, and were barging their way through

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the crowd; they made for the stairs which led up to the station of the Overhead Railway.

Another passer-by and myself were the first to reach the doorway where the young man was lying. He lay huddled crookedly in the corner, like an abandoned sack. As they picked him up, I got a sickening glimpse of his face—his left eye was poked half out, and blood poured from the wound. He wasn’t dead. Somebody volunteered to take him to the hospital in a taxi.

By this time, dozens of people were looking on. They seemed surprised, but not particularly shocked—this sort of thing happens too often, nowadays. “Allerhand… .” they murmured. Twenty yards away, at the Potsdamerstrasse corner, stood a group of heavily armed policemen. With their chests out, and their hands on their revolver belts, they magnificently disregarded the whole affair.

Werner has become a hero. His photograph was in the Rote Fahne a few days ago, captioned: “Another victim of the Police blood-bath.” Yesterday, which was New Year’s day, I went to visit him in hospital.

Just after Christmas, it seems, there was a streetfight near the Stettiner Bahnhof. Werner was on the edge of the crowd, not knowing what the fight was about. On the off-chance that it might be something political, he began yelling: “Red Front!” A policeman tried to arrest him. Werner kicked the policeman in the stomach. The policeman drew his revolver and shot Werner three times through the leg. When he had finished shooting, he called another policeman, and together they carried Werner into a taxi. On the way to the police-station, the policemen hit him on the head with their truncheons, until he fainted. When he has sufficiently recovered, he will, most probably, be prosecuted.

He told me all this with the greatest satisfaction, sitting up in bed surrounded by his admiring friends, including Rudi and Inge, in her Henry the Eighth hat. Around him,

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on the blanket, lay his press-cuttings. Somebody had carefully underlined each mention of Werner’s name with a red pencil.

To-day, January 22nd, the Nazis held a demonstration on the Biilowplatz, in front of the Karl Liebknecht House. For the last week the communists have been trying to get the demonstration forbidden: they say it is simply intended as a provocation—as, of course, it was. I went along to watch it with Frank, the newspaper correspondent.

As Frank himself said afterwards, this wasn’t really a Nazi demonstration at all, but a Police demonstration—there were at least two policemen to every Nazi present. Perhaps General Schleicher only allowed the march to take place in order to show who are the real masters of Berlin. Everybody says he’s going to proclaim a military dictatorship.

But the real masters of Berlin are not the Police, or the Army, and certainly not the Nazis. The masters of Berlin are the workers—despite all the propaganda I’ve heard and read, all the demonstrations I’ve attended, I only realized this, for the first time to-day. Comparatively few of the hundreds of people in the streets round the Biilowplatz can have been organized communists, yet you had the feeling that every single one of them was united against this march. Somebody began to sing the “International,” and, in a moment, everyone had joined in—even the women with their babies, watching from top-storey windows. The Nazis slunk past, marching as fast as they knew how, between their double rows of protectors. Most of them kept their eyes on the ground, or glared glassily ahead: a few attempted sickly, furtive grins. When the procession had passed, an elderly fat little S.A. man, who had somehow got left behind, came panting along at the double, desperately scared at finding himself alone, and trying vainly to catch up with the rest. The whole crowd roared with laughter.