Christopher and His Kind (15 page)

Christopher's letter concludes:

Heinz is spotty and his moustache is quite luxuriant. To annoy me he refuses to shave. We see each other three times a week and it is always very nice. My novel creeps on and on. Otto is going to have another child. And the Pound. And this strike. And the rain. And no fire. Never mind, this afternoon I shall go to the cinema.

In the elections of November 6, the Nazis lost two million votes and thirty-four seats in the Reichstag, while the Communists gained three quarters of a million votes and eleven seats. Many leftists, including some expert political observers, believed that Hitler would never recover from this setback and had ceased to be a menace. Christopher, wild with joy, wrote to his friends that Berlin was Red. It was—in the sense that the Communists had a majority there of 100,000. But the fact remained that the Nazis were still the largest party in the country.

*   *   *

About this time, Stephen must have written to tell Christopher that he wasn't going to dedicate his book of poems to him, as originally intended. This letter has been lost, but I suppose Stephen argued that, in view of their imperfectly patched-up quarrel, the dedication would be insincere. Christopher answered (November 14):

Of course I quite understand about the dedication. In fact, I'd half thought of writing and suggesting it to you myself.

This afternoon is sad brilliant autumn sunshine, the sort of afternoon we might have chosen for a walk in Grunewald, the sort of afternoon on which Virginia Woolf looks out of her window and suddenly decides to write a novel about the hopeless love of a Pekingese dog for a very beautiful maidenhair fern.

(Despite Christopher's admiration for
Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway,
and
To the Lighthouse
—which was considerable, though not nearly as great as mine is, today—he sometimes used Virginia as an enemy image of the ivory-tower intellectual. For instance, after he and Stephen had been to see
Kameradschaft,
Pabst's film about the coal miners, in 1931, Christopher told Stephen that, when the tunnel caved in and the miners were trapped, he had thought: “That makes Virginia Woolf look pretty silly.” Stephen replied that he had been thinking something similar, though not specifically about Virginia.)

Heinz and I wistfully looked up Malaga on the map and decided that “some day” we would travel—yes really—perhaps even as far as Munich.

(There is some mild bitchery here and in the next paragraph. Stephen is about to leave for Málaga—wandering through the warm lands of escape while Christopher remains shivering and penniless at his post on the Berlin battlefield.)

Today I am moving into the big front room. It is lighter for the winter months and, for some reason, easier to heat. Frl. Thurau is very reproachful because I insist on turning out all her potted plants. Their moist stink when the oven is alight is probably as near as I shall ever get to a tropical forest. I do envy you your winter in the sun. I imagine you bursting into blossoms of health, while here in Berlin I get uglier and more shrivelled every day. My hair is scurfy and drops out, my teeth are bad, my breath smells. However, I do see that it's absolutely necessary for me to stay on here at present. The last part of my novel requires a lot more research to document it.

Please understand, Stephen, that there is nothing for you to apologize for about our time in Berlin. I am an entirely impossible character; unstable, ill-natured, petty and selfish. I don't say this in a mealy-mouthed way. I have the virtues of my defects. But I can't imagine that I ever could or should be able to live intimately with an equal for long.

Christopher may have explained himself further; the next page of the letter is missing. The final page contains a few items of news. Frau Nowak is being sent back to the sanatorium again. Christopher hardly ever sees Otto because he has cut off Otto's money entirely—this may mean that he refuses to contribute to the abortion of Otto's illegitimate embryos. However, he has applied to Wilfrid Israel, who may be able to get Otto a job as errand boy to a publisher. Christopher has been translating a report on the work of the I.A.H, a Communist organization with which Gerald Hamilton was involved. Christopher tells Stephen that he thinks he will become a member of it—“it's the next nearest thing to being a Communist.” Christopher never did join the I.A.H, much less the Communist Party. This was the only time in his life when he came anywhere near to doing so.

*   *   *

John Lehmann's sister Beatrix was now in Berlin and she and Christopher saw each other often. They were much alike in temperament, a natural elder sister and elder brother. Both thought of themselves, rightly or wrongly, as strong people weary of guarding the weak. Both were comedians who made each other laugh continually: Beatrix with her gallows humor, Christopher with his melodramatic clowning. Both, at that period, saw eye to eye politically. Both sincerely admired each other's work. Christopher was astonished by Beatrix's talent as a writer and he loved to watch her act. (A character actress with looks which enabled her to play romantic leads, she was equally capable of becoming Juliet or Juliet's nurse; there might, however, be occasional eerie glimpses of the one within the other.) Both Beatrix and Christopher were psychosomatic types, prone to sudden sicknesses. But here there was a difference between them. While Christopher stayed in bed, Beatrix would go on stage, blazing with fever or nearly voiceless with laryngitis, and soar to her greatest heights.

My last memory of Beatrix in Berlin is that she and Christopher spent New Year's Eve together at a French restaurant, eating Sylvester carp, the traditional New Year's Eve dish. They were so engrossed in their talk that they were unaware of the moment at which 1933 came in. Someone remarked that this would bring them bad luck in the year ahead.

*   *   *

In mid-January, Christopher wrote to Stephen, who had now returned from Spain to England:

I have put off answering you because of the really terrifying reports of the revolution in Barcelona. Did you see much of it? I gathered that the posts and all other communications were suspended, that there was no light and that the streets were full of machine guns. So it seemed useless to write.

(This refers to the rising of Anarchists and Syndicalists which began early in January in Barcelona and spread to other cities. It was suppressed by government troops. Stephen hadn't referred to it in his last letter, being preoccupied with a personal problem. He had been trying to keep the peace between some intensely neurotic individuals, one of whom was an alcoholic. He later made their feuds and agonies well worthwhile by distilling from them his hilarious story, “The Burning Cactus.”)

Beatrix Lehmann leaves on Monday for England, via Hamburg, where she is engaged to appear with some English players, in the title role of Candida. As for Heinz, we get on very well indeed. At the moment, we've just parted for ever, but that is neither here nor there.

Frl. Thurau has a new lodger, a Norwegian film actor with incredibly beautiful blond hair. He plays a card game called Black Peter with Frl. Thurau and the two whores. The loser has some kind of indecent picture—a cunt or penis or bubs—drawn on his cheek with an eyebrow pencil. By the end of the evening they are all black-faced.

The political situation here seems very dull. I expect there is a great deal going on behind the scenes, but one is not aware of it. Papen visits Hindenburg, Hitler visits Papen, Hitler and Papen visit Schleicher, Hugenberg visits Hindenburg and finds he's out. And so forth. There is no longer that slightly exhilarating awareness of crisis in the gestures of beggars and tram-conductors.

Shortly after writing the above, Christopher got his copy of Stephen's poems. The book wasn't dedicated to anybody, but Stephen had inscribed it: “For Christopher in admiration and with love from the writer Jan 10 1933.” (When the second edition appeared in 1934, it was dedicated to Christopher.)

Thanking Stephen, Christopher wrote:

I think the print and binding is perfect. I feel nearly as pleased with the book as if I'd written it myself—and keep taking it out of the shelf and turning over the pages. The blurb is portentous tripe. What idiot wrote it?

(This blurb had already been apologized for by Stephen in an earlier letter: “It seems to have been written out of pure malice and I'm afraid it will annoy Wystan.” Here are some extracts:

If Auden is the satirist of this poetical renascence Spender is its lyric poet. In his work the experimentalism of the last two decades is beginning to find its reward … Technically, these poems appear to make a definite step forward in modern English poetry. Their passionate and obvious sincerity ranks them in a tradition which reaches back to the early Greek lyric poets.)

Christopher continued:

I still stick to my favorites: The Port. Children who were rough. Oh young men. After they have tired. And, above all, The Pylons. The Pylons is the best thing in the book, I think.

(I don't agree with the majority of Christopher's choices, now. He was charmed by Stephen's left-wing romanticism, with its accent on Comrades. I prefer the explosive egotistic artlessness of the “Marston” poems; as I read them, I can hear the young Stephen's voice, blurting them out. This book also contained: “I think continually of those who were truly great…,” which ends with what was to be one of Spender's most quoted lines: “And left the vivid air signed with their honour.” I find that I still want to boast of the fact that, when Stephen showed Christopher his original draft of this poem, it ended: “And left the air signed with their vivid honour.” It was Christopher who urged the transposition of “vivid.”)

Here it is very cold and snowing. I am writing with a rug round my knees. Uncle has sent my allowance. So London will not see me for three more months, at least. Heinz cooked a schnitzel here last night. God knows what he did to it. He made it smell like an Airedale dog.

At the end of January, John Lehmann came to Berlin to see Christopher. This was his second visit. His first had been a brief one, during October 1932. Lehmann had now, after much self-searching, left the Hogarth Press and gone to live in Vienna, in order that John the Poet could function without obligations and restraints. It was with John the Poet that Christopher became friends. When they were together, Christopher felt inspired to improvise sex fantasies of indefinite length—episode leading into episode, Arabian Nights style, sometimes for hours at a stretch. His affection for John the Poet became so firmly established that, when John the Editor later reappeared, Christopher was able to work for him, admire his ability, and feel awed by his energy, while still finding his personality comic. John the Poet was always there in the background, sharing Christopher's amusement.

*   *   *

On January 30, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler to be the new Chancellor of Germany. A huge torchlight procession of singing Nazis celebrated this triumph of backstairs intrigue and manipulation of the gaga old President. Christopher wrote to Stephen:

As you will have seen, we are having a new government, with Charlie Chaplin and Father Christmas in the ministry. All words fail.

By “Father Christmas,” Christopher may have meant either Hindenburg himself or Alfred Hugenberg, the Nationalist Party leader, Hitler's temporary ally. Hugenberg was then nearly seventy, so he qualified for the role … Christopher, like other optimistic ill-wishers, kept repeating that this appointment was a blessing in disguise; Hitler would now have to cope with the economic mess, he would reveal himself as an incompetent windbag, he would be forced to resign, and the Nazis would be forever discredited.

I don't blame Christopher the amateur observer for his lack of foresight. I do condemn Christopher the novelist for not having taken a psychological interest, long before this, in the members of the Nazi high command. Even as late as 1932, it would have been possible for him to meet them personally. Goebbels, the party propagandist, was obliged to make himself available to the foreign press. And it wasn't too difficult to arrange interviews with Goering or even Hitler. Christopher wasn't Jewish, he belonged to the Nazis' favorite foreign race, he spoke German fluently, he was a writer and could easily have been accepted as a freelance journalist whom they might hope to convert to their philosophy … What inhibited him? His principles? His inertia? Neither is an excuse. He missed what would surely have been one of the most memorable experiences of his Berlin life.

*   *   *

On February 27, the Nazis caused the Reichstag building to be set on fire. Then, accusing the Communists of having done it as a signal for an uprising, they declared a state of emergency and began making mass arrests. “Charlie Chaplin” had ceased to be funny.

*   *   *

Stephen wrote (March 1):

The news from Germany is awful. [A big deletion.] No, perhaps I had better not say anything that might conceivably get you into trouble. Or is this a ridiculous fear?

Stephen was back in London, suffering from a tapeworm which he had picked up in Spain. The problem, in removing a tapeworm, is to get rid of its head, which hooks itself to the lining of the alimentary canal and hangs on, even when the entire chain of segments attached to it has been evacuated. Sometimes the head can't be found in the stool so the doctor doesn't know if it has been lost or is still inside the patient. Christopher bought a particularly repulsive postcard photograph of the head of Goebbels and sent it to Stephen, inscribed: “Can
this
be it?!!!”

I have been in bed four days receiving purgatives of the most powerful kind and practically starving. So please excuse my writing as I am weak and trembling with joy at your letter.

(Christopher's joy-inspiring letter must have been written in answer to one of Stephen's which has been lost. Stephen had evidently expressed fears that a certain person, a member of the “Burning Cactus” group who had been with him in Spain and had now come to Berlin, was making mischief and trying to revive the quarrel between him and Christopher. Stephen, in his tapeworm-weakened, hyper-emotional state, is trembling with joy because Christopher's letter has assured him that this isn't so.)