The Berlin Stories (29 page)

It is a mere waste of time even pretending to teach Frl. Hippi anything. If she doesn’t know a word, she says it in German. If I correct her, she repeats it in German. I am glad, of course, that she’s so lazy and only afraid that Frau Bernstein may discover how little progress her daughter is making. But this is very unlikely. Most rich people, once they have decided to trust you at all, can be imposed upon to almost any extent. The only real problem for the private tutor is to get inside the front-door.

As for Hippi, she seems to enjoy my visits. From something she said the other day, I gather she boasts to her school friends that she has got a genuine English teacher. We understand each other very well. I am bribed with fruit not to be tiresome about the English language: she, for her part, tells her parents that I am the best teacher she ever had. We gossip in German about the things which interest her. And every three or four minutes, we are interrupted while she plays her pgxt in the family game of exchanging entirely unimportant messages over the house-telephone.

Hippi never worries about the future. Like everyone else in Berlin, she refers continually to the political situation, but only briefly, with a conventional melancholy, as when one speaks of religion. It is quite unreal to her. She means to go to the university, travel about, have a jolly good time and eventually, of course, marry. She already has a great many boy friends. We spend a lot of time talking about them. One has a wonderful car. Another has an aeroplane. Another has fought seven duels. Another has discovered a knack of putting out streetlamps by giving them a smart kick in a certain spot. One night, on the way back from a dance, Hippi and he put out all the streetlamps in the neighbourhood.

To-day, lunch was early at the Bernsteins’; so I was invited to it, instead of giving my “lesson.” The whole family was present: Frau Bernstein, stout and placid; Herr Bernstein, small and shaky and sly. There was also a younger sister, a schoolgirl of twelve, very fat. She ate and ate, quite unmoved by Hippi’s jokes and warnings that she’d burst. They all seem very fond of each other, in their cosy, stuffy way. There was a little domestic argument, because Herr Bernstein didn’t want his wife to go shopping in the car that afternoon. During the last few days, there has been a lot of Nazi rioting in the city.

“You can go in the tram,” said Herr Bernstein. “I will not have them throwing stones at my beautiful car.”

“And suppose they throw stones at me?” asked Frau Bernstein good-humouredly.

“Ach, what does that matter? If they throw stones at you, I will buy you a sticking-plaster for your head. It will cost me only five groschen. But if they throw stones at my car, it will cost me perhaps five hundred marks.”

And so the matter was settled. Herr Bernstein then turned his attention to me: “You can’t complain that we treat you badly here, young man, eh? Not only do we give you a nice dinner, but we pay for you eating it!”

I saw from Hippi’s expression that this was going a “bit far, even for the Bernstein sense of humour; so I laughed and said: “Will you pay me a mark extra for every helping I eat?”

This amused Herr Bernstein very much; but he was careful to show that he knew I hadn’t meant it seriously.

During the last week, our household has been plunged into a terrific row.

It began when Frl. Kost came to Frl. Schroeder and announced that fifty marks had been stolen from her room. She was very much upset; especially, she explained, as this was the money she’d put aside towards the rent and the telephone bill. The fifty-mark note had been lying in the drawer of the cupboard, just inside the door of Frl. Kost’s room.

Frl. Schroeder’s immediate suggestion was, not unnaturally, that the money had been stolen by one of Frl. Kost’s customers. Frl. Kost said that this was quite impossible, as none of them had visited her during the last three days. Moreover, she added, her friends were all absolutely above suspicion. They were well-to-do gentlemen, to whom a miserable fifty-mark note was a mere bagatelle. This annoyed Frl. Schroeder very much indeed: “I suppose she’s trying to make out that one of us did it! Of all the cheek! Why, Herr Issyvoo, will you believe me, I could have chopped her into little pieces!”

“Yes, Frl. Schroeder. I’m sure you could.”

Frl. Schroeder then developed the theory that the money hadn’t been stolen at all and that this was just a trick of Frl. Kost’s to avoid paying the rent. She hinted so much to Frl. Kost, who was furious. Frl. Kost said that, in any case, she’d raise the money in a few days: which she already has. She also gave notice to leave her room at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, I have discovered, quite by accident, that Frl. Kost has been having an affair with Bobby. As I came in, one evening, I happened to notice that there was no light in Frl. Kost’s room. You can always see this, because there is a frosted glass pane in her door to light the hall of the flat. ~ ater, as I lay in bed reading, I heard Frl. Kost’s door open and Bobby’s voice, laughing and whispering. After much creaking of boards and muffled laughter, Bobby tiptoed out of the flat, shutting the door as quietly as possible behind him. A moment later, he re-entered with a great deal of noise and went straight through into the living-room, where I heard him wishing Frl. Schroeder good-night.

If Frl. Schroeder doesn’t actually know of this, she at least suspects it. This explains her fury against Frl. Kost: for the truth is, she is terribly jealous. The most grotesque and embarrassing incidents have been taking place. One morning, when I wanted to visit the bathroom, Frl. Kost was using it already. Frl. Schroeder rushed to the door before I could stop her and ordered Frl. Kost to come out at once: and when Frl. Kost naturally didn’t obey, Frl. Schroeder began, despite my protests, hammering on the door with her fists. “Come out of my bathroom!” she screamed. “Come out this minute, or I’ll call the police to fetch you out!”

After this she burst into tears. The crying brought on palpitations. Bobby had to carry her to the sofa, gasping and sobbing. While we were all standing round, rather helpless, Frl. Mayr appeared in the doorway with a face like a hangman and said, in a terrible voice, to Frl. Kost: “Think yourself lucky, my girl, if you haven’t murdered her!” She then took complete charge of the situation, ordered us all out of the room and sent me down to the grocer’s for a bottle of Baldrian Drops. When I returned, she was seated beside the sofa, stroking Frl. Schroeder’s hand and murmuring, in her most tragic tones: “Lina, my poor little child… what have they done to you?”

SALLY BOWLES

One afternoon, early in October, I was invited to black coffee at Fritz Wendel’s flat. Fritz always invited you to “black coffee,” with emphasis on the black. He was very proud of his coffee. People used to say that it was the strongest in Berlin.

Fritz himself was dressed in his usual coffee-party costume—a very thick white yachting sweater and very light blue flannel trousers. He greeted me with his full-lipped, luscious smile: “‘lo, Chris!”

“Hullo, Fritz. How are you?”

“Fine.” He bent over the coffee-machine, his sleek black hair unplastering itself from his scalp and falling in richly scented locks over his eyes. “This darn thing doesn’t go,” he added.

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Lousy and terrible.” Fritz grinned richly. “Or I pull off a new deal in the next month or I go as a gigolo.”

“Either… or…,” I corrected, from force of professional habit.

“I’m speaking a lousy English just now,” drawled Fritz, with great self-satisfaction. “Sally says maybe shell give me a few lesson’s.”

“Who’s Sally?”

“Why, I forgot. You don’t know Sally. Too bad of me. Eventually she’s coming around here this afternoon.”

“Is she nice?”

Fritz rolled his naughty black eyes, handing me a rum-moistened cigarette from his patent tin: “Marvellous!” he drawled. “Eventually I believe I’m getting crazy about her.”

“And who is she? What does she do?”

“She’s an English girl, an actress: sings at the Lady Windermere—hot stuff, believe me!”

“That doesn’t sound much like an English girl, I must say.”

“Eventually she’s got a bit of French in her. Her mother was French.”

A few minutes later, Sally herself arrived.

“Am I terribly late, Fritz darling?”

“Only half of an hour, I suppose,” Fritz drawled, beaming with proprietary pleasure. “May I introduce Mr. Isherwood—Miss Bowles? Mr. Isherwood is commonly known as Chris.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Fritz is about the only person who’s ever called me Chris in my life.”

Sally laughed. She was dressed in black silk, with a small cape over her shoulders and a little cap like a page-boy’s stuck jauntily on one side of her head: “Do you mind if I use your telephone, sweet?”

“Sure. Go right ahead.” Fritz caught my eye. “Come into the other room, Chris. I want to show you something.” He was evidently longing to hear my first impressions of Sally, his new acquisition.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t leave me alone with this man!” she exclaimed. “Or he’ll seduce me down the telephone. He’s most terribly passionate.”

As she dialled the number, I noticed that her finger-nails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette-smoking and as dirty as a little girl’s. She was dark enough to be Fritz’s sister. Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.

“Hilloo,” she cooed, pursing her brilliant cherry lips as though she were going to kiss the mouthpiece: “Ist dass Du, mein Liebling?” Her mouth opened in a fatuously sweet smile. Fritz and I sat watching her, like a performance at the theatre. “Was wollen wir machen, Morgen Abend? Oh, wie wunderbar… Nein, nein, ich werde bleiben Heute Abend zu Hause. Ja, ja, ich werde wirklich bleiben zu Hause… Auf Wiedersehen, mein Liebling…”

She hung up the receiver and turned to us triumphantly.

“That’s the man I slept with last night,” she announced. “He makes love marvellously. He’s an absolute genius at business and he’s terribly rich—” She came and sat down on the sofa beside Fritz, sinking back into the cushions with a sigh: “Give me some coffee, will you, darling? I’m simply dying of thirst.”

And soon we were on to Fritz’s favourite topic: he pronounced it Larve.

“On the average,” he told us, “I’m having a big affair every two years.”

“And how long is it since you had your last?” Sally asked.

“Exactly one year and eleven months!” Fritz gave her his naughtiest glance.

“How marvellous!” Sally puckered up her nose and laughed a silvery little stage-laugh: “Doo tell me—what was the last one like?”

This, of course, started Fritz off on a complete autobiography. We had the story of his seduction in Paris, details of a holiday flirtation at Las Palmas, the four chief New York romances, a disappointment in Chicago and a conquest in Boston; then back to Paris for a little recreation, a very beautiful episode in Vienna, to London to be consoled and, finally, Berlin.

“You know, Fritz darling,” said Sally, puckering up her nose at me, “I believe the trouble with you is that you’ve never really found the right woman.”

“Maybe that’s true—” Fritz took this idea very seriously. His black eyes became liquid and sentimental: “Maybe I’m still looking for my ideal….”

“But you’ll find her one day, I’m absolutely certain you will.” Sally included me, with a glance, in the game of laughing at Fritz.

“You think so?” Fritz grinned lusciously, sparkling at her.

“Don’t you think so?” Sally appealed to me.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Because I’ve never been able to discover what Fritz’s ideal is.”

For some reason, this seemed to please Fritz. He took it as a kind of testimonial: “And Chris knows me pretty well,” he chimed in. “If Chris doesn’t know, well, I guess no one does.”

Then it was time for Sally to go.

“I’m supposed to meet a man at the Adlon at five,” she explained. “And it’s six already! Never mind, it’ll do the old swine good to wait. He wants me to be his mistress, but I’ve told him I’m damned if I will till he’s paid all my debts. Why are men always such beasts?” Opening her bag, she rapidly retouched her lips and eyebrows: “Oh, by the way, Fritz darling, could you be a perfect angel and lend me ten marks? I haven’t got a bean for a taxi.”

“Why sure!” Fritz put his hand into his pocket and paid up without hesitation, like a hero.

Sally turned to me: “I say, will you come and have tea with me sometime? Give me your telephone number. I’ll ring you up.”

I suppose, I thought, she imagines I’ve got cash. Well, this will be a lesson to her, once for all. I wrote my number in her tiny leather book. Fritz saw her out.

“Well!” he came bounding back into the room and gleefully shut the door: “What do you think of her, Chris? Didn’t I tell you she was a goodlooker?”

“You did indeed!”

“I’m getting crazier about her each time I see her!” With a sigh of pleasure, he helped himself to a cigarette: “More coffee, Chris?”

“No, thank you very much.”

“You know, Chris, I think she took a fancy to you, too!”

“Oh, rot!”