The Berlin Stories (45 page)

I hadn’t been in the house for more than quarter of an hour before Natalia had put aside four books for me to take with me when I left—Tonio Kroger, Jacobsen’s stories, a volume of Stefan George, Goethe’s letters. “You are to tell me your truthful opinion,” she warned me.

Suddenly, a maid parted the sliding glass doors at the end of the room, and we found ourselves in the presence of Frau Landauer, a large, pale woman with a mole on her left cheek and her hair brushed back smooth into a knot, seated placidly at the dining-room table, filling glasses from a samovar with tea. There were plates of ham and cold cut wurst and a bowl of those thin wet slippery sausages which squirt you with hot water when their skins are punctured by a fork; as well as cheese, radishes, pumpernickel and bottled beer. “You will drink beer,” Natalia ordered, returning one of the glasses of tea to her mother.

Looking round me, I noticed that the few available wall-spaces between pictures and cupboards were decorated with eccentric life-size figures, maidens with flying hair or oblique-eyed gazelles, cut out of painted paper and fastened down with drawing-pins. They made a comically ineffectual protest against the bourgeois solidity of the mahogany furniture. I knew, without being told, that Natalia must have designed them. Yes, she’d made them and fixed them up there for a party; now she wanted to take them down, but her mother wouldn’t let her. They had a little argument about this—evidently part of the domestic routine. “Oh, but they’re tairrible, I find!” cried Natalia, in English. “I think they’re very pretty,” replied Frau Landauer placidly, in German, without raising her eyes from the plate, her mouth full of pumpernickel and radish.

As soon as we had finished supper, Natalia made it clear that I was to say a formal good-night to Frau Landauer. We then returned to the sitting-room. She began to cross-examine me. Where was my room? How much was I paying for it? When I told her, she said immediately that I’d chosen quite the wrong district (Wilmersdorf was far better), and that I’d been swindled. I could have got exactly the same thing, with running water and central heating thrown in, for the same price. “You should have asked me,” she added, apparently quite forgetting that we’d met that evening for the first time: “I should have found it for you myself.”

“Your friend tells us you are a writer?” Natalia challenged suddenly.

“Not a real writer,” I protested.

“But you have written a book? Yes?”

Yes, I had written a book.

Natalia was triumphant: “You have written a book and you say you are not a writer. You are mad, I think.”

Then I had to tell her the whole history of All the Conspirators, why it had that title, what it was about, when it was published, and so forth.

“You will bring me a copy, please.”

“I haven’t got one,” I told her, with satisfaction, “and it’s out of print.”

This rather dashed Natalia for the moment, then she sniffed eagerly at a new scent: “And this what you will write in Berlin? Tell me, please.”

To satisfy her, I began to tell the story of a story I had written years before, for a college magazine at Cambridge. I improved it as much as possible extempore, as I went along. Telling this story again quite excited me—so much that I began to feel that the idea in it hadn’t been so bad after all, and that I might really be able to rewrite it. At the end of every sentence, Natalia pressed her lips tight together and nodded her head so violently that the hair flopped up and down over her face.

“Yes, yes,” she kept saying. “Yes, yes.”

It was only after some minutes that I realised she wasn’t taking in anything I said. She evidently couldn’t understand my English, for I was talking much faster now, and not choosing my words. In spite of her tremendous devotional effort of concentration, I could see that she was noticing the way I parted my hair, and that my tie was worn shiny at the knot. She even flashed a furtive glance at my shoes. I pre-142 tended, however, not to be aware of all this. It would have been rude to stop short and most unkind to spoil Natalia’s pleasure in the mere fact that I was talking so intimately to her about something which really interested me, although we were practically strangers.

When I had finished, she asked at once: “And it will be ready—how soon?” For she had taken possession of the story, together with all my other affairs. I answered that I didn’t know. I was lazy.

“You are lazy?” Natalia opened her eyes mockingly. “So? Then I am sorry. I can’t help you.”

Presently, I said that I must go. She came with me to the door: “And you will bring me this story soon,” she persisted.

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“Next week,” I feebly promised.

It was a fortnight before I called on the Landauers again. After dinner, when Frau Landauer had left the room, Natalia informed me that we were to go together to the cinema. “We are the guests of my mother.” As we stood up to go, she suddenly grabbed two apples and an orange from the sideboard and stuffed them into my pockets. She had evidently made up her mind that I was suffering from undernourishment. I protested weakly.

“When you say another word, I am angry,” she warned me.

“And you have brought it?” she asked, as we were leaving the house.

Knowing perfectly well that she meant the story, I made my voice as innocent as I could: “Brought what?”

“You know. What you promise.”

“I don’t remember promising anything.”

“Don’t remember?” Natalia laughed scornfully. “Then I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

By the time we got to the cinema, she had forgiven me, however. The big film was a Pat and Patachon. Natalia remarked severely: “You do not like this kind of film, I think? It isn’t something clever enough for you?”

I denied that I only liked “clever” films, but she was sceptical: “Good. We shall see.”

All through the film, she kept glancing at me to see if I was laughing. At first, I laughed exaggeratedly. Then, getting tired of this, I stopped laughing altogether. Natalia got more and more impatient with me. Towards the end of the film, she even began to nudge me at moments when I should laugh. No sooner were the lights turned up, than she pounced: ‘Tou see? I was right. You did not like it, no?”

“I liked it very much indeed.”

“Oh yes, I believe! And now say truthfully.”

“I have told you. I liked it.”

“But you did not laugh. You are sitting always with your face so…” Natalia tried to imitate me, “and not once laughing.”

“I never laugh when I am amused,” I said.

“Oh yes, perhaps! That shall be one of your English customs, not to laugh?”

“No Englishman ever laughs when he’s amused.”

“You wish I believe that? Then I will tell you your Englishmen are mad.”

“That remark is not very original.”

“And must always my remarks be so original, my dear sir?”

“When you are with me, yes.”

“Imbecile!”

We sat for a little in a café near the Zoo Station and ate ices. The ices were lumpy and tasted slightly of potato. Suddenly, Natalia began to talk about her parents: “I do not understand what this modern books mean when they say: the mother and father always must have quarrel with the children. You know, it would be impossible that I can have quarrel with my parents. Impossible.”

Natalia looked hard at me to see whether I believed this. I nodded.

“Absolute impossible,” she repeated solemnly. “Because I know that my father and my mother love me. And so they are thinking always not of themselves but of what is for me the best. My mother, you know, she is not strong. She is having sometimes the most tairrible headaches. And then, of course, I cannot leave her alone. Vairy often, I would like to go out to a cinema or theatre or concert, and my mother, she say nothing, but I look at her and see that she is not well, and so I say No, I have change my mind, I will not go. But never it happens that she say one word about the pain she is suffered. Never.”

(When next I called on the Landauers, I spent two marks fifty on roses for Natalia’s mother. It was worth it. Never once did Frau Landauer have a headache on an evening when I proposed going out with Natalia.)

“My father will always that I have the best of everything,” Natalia continued. “My father will always that I say: My parents are rich, I do not need to think for money.” Natalia sighed: “But I am different than this. I await always that the worst will come. I know how things are in Germany to-day, and suddenly it can be that my father lose all. You know, that is happened once already? Before the War, my father has had a big factory in Posen. The War comes, and my father has to go. Tomorrow, it can be here the same. But my father, he is such a man that to him it is equal. He can start with one pfennig and work and work until he gets all back.”

“And that is why,” Natalia went on, “I wish to leave school and begin to learn something useful, that I can win my bread. I cannot know how long my parents have money. My father will that I make my Abitur and go to the university. But now I will speak with him and ask if I cannot go to Paris and study art. If I can draw and paint I can perhaps make my life; and also I will learn cookery. Do you know that I cannot cook, not the simplest thing?”

“Neither can I.”

“For a man, that is not so important, I find. But a girl must be prepared for all.”

“If I want,” added Natalia earnestly, “I shall go away with the man I love and I shall live with him; even if we cannot become married it will not matter. Then I must be able to do all for myself, you understand? It is not enough to say: I have made my Abitur, I have my degree at the university. He will answer: ‘Please, where is my dinner?’ “

There was a pause.

“You are not shocked at what I say just now,” asked Natalia suddenly. “That I would live with a man without that we were married?”

“No, of course not.”

“Do not misunderstand me, please. I do not admirate the women who is going always from one man to another—that is all so,” Natalia made a gesture of distaste, “so degenerated, I find.”

“You don’t think that women should be allowed to change their minds?”

“I do not know. I do not understand such questions… But it is degenerated.”

I saw her home. Natalia had a trick of leading you right up on to the doorstep, and then, with extraordinary rapidity, shaking hands, whisking into the house and slamming the door in your face.

“You ring me up? Next week? Yes?” I can hear her voice now. And then the door slammed and she was gone without waiting for an answer.

Natalia avoided all contacts, direct and indirect. Just as she wouldn’t stand chatting with me on her own doorstep, she preferred always, I noticed, to have a table between us if we sat down. She hated me to help her into her coat: “I am not yet sixty years, my dear sir!” If we stood up to leave a café or a restaurant and she saw my eye moving towards the peg from which her coat hung, she would pounce instantly upon it and carry it off with her into a corner, like an animal guarding its food.

One evening, we went into a café and ordered two cups of chocolate. When the chocolate came, we found that the waitress had forgotten to bring Natalia a spoon. I’d already sipped my cup and had stirred it with my spoon after sipping it. It seemed quite natural to offer my spoon to Natalia, and I was surprised and a little impatient when she refused it with an expression of slight distaste. She declined even this indirect contact with my mouth.

Natalia got tickets for a concert of Mozart concertos. The evening was not a success. The severe Corinthian hall was chilly, and my eyes were uncomfortably dazzled by the classic brilliance of the electric lights. The shiny wooden chairs were austerely hard. The audience plainly regarded the concert as a religious ceremony. Their taut, devotional enthusiasm oppressed me like a headache; I couldn’t, for a moment, lose consciousness of all those blind, half-frowning, listening heads. And, despite Mozart, I couldn’t help feeling: What an extraordinary way this is of spending an evening!

On the way home, 1 was tired and sulky, and this resulted in a little tiff with Natalia. She began it by talking about Hippi Bernstein. It was Natalia who had got me my job with the Bernsteins: she and Hippi went to the same school. A couple of days before, I had given Hippi her first English lesson.

“And how do you like her?” Natalia asked.

“Very much. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I also… But she’s got two bad faults. I think you will not have notice them yet?”

As I didn’t rise to this, she added solemnly: “You know, I wish you would tell me truthfully what are my faults?”

In another mood, I should have found this amusing, and even rather touching. As it was, I only thought: “She’s fishing,” and snapped: “I don’t know what you mean by ‘faults.’ I don’t judge people on a haif-term-report basis. You’d better ask one of your teachers.”

This shut Natalia up for the moment. But, presently, she started again. Had I read any of the books she’d lent me?

I hadn’t, but said: Yes, I’d read Jacobsen’s Frau Marie Grubbe.

And what did I think of it?

“It’s very good,” I said, peevish because guilty.

Natalia looked at me sharply: “I’m afraid you are vairy insincere. You do not give your real meaning.”

I was suddenly, childishly cross: “Of course I don’t. Why should I? Arguments bore me. I don’t intend to say anything which you’re likely to disagree with.”

“But if that is so,” she was really dismayed, “then it is no use for us to speak of anything seriously.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

“Then shall we not talk at all?” asked poor Natalia.

“The best of all,” I said, “would be for us to make noises like farmyard animals. I like hearing the sound of your voice but I don’t care a bit what you’re saying. So it’d be far better if we just said Bow-wow and Baa and Meaow.”

Natalia flushed. She was bewildered and deeply hurt. Presently, after a long silence, she said: “Yes. I see.”

As we approached her house, I tried to patch things up and turn the whole business into a joke, but she didn’t respond. I went home feeling very much ashamed of myself.

Some days after this, however, Natalia rang up of her own accord and asked me to lunch. She opened the door herself—she had evidently been waiting to do so—and greeted me by exclaiming: “Bow-wow! Baa! Meaow!”