Christopher and His Kind (2 page)

Despite his preoccupation with Bubi, Christopher had found the time to see John Layard in Berlin. Under any other circumstances, he would have been fascinated by Layard's X-ray eyes, his mocking amusement, his stunning frankness, and his talk about Lane. But Layard's theory had seemed academic, just then, compared with Bubi's practice.

However, the next year, during a visit to England, Christopher met Layard again. They became friends and Layard taught him a great deal. He even cured Christopher—or, rather, made him cure himself—of an intimate physical shame. Christopher had been ashamed of the patch of hair which had sprouted out of an old acne scar on his left shoulder blade. Layard explained that this was a conflict between instinct—the hairy left shoulder—and conscious control—the hairless right one. God and the Devil were at it again. “You see, your instinct's trying to get your animal nature out of jail, trying to force you to recognize it. So it's growing
fur!
I like it, it's beautiful!” And Layard actually kissed the hairy shoulder, to show he meant what he said. Christopher giggled with embarrassment. But gradually, from that day on, he stopped being conscious of the hair, even when he had his shirt off in public.

*   *   *

Soon after getting back from Berlin, Christopher had a more than usually severe attack of tonsillitis. In those days, he was subject to sore throats. Wystan called them “the liar's quinsy” and reminded him that Lane had said they are symptoms of a basic untruthfulness in one's life. Christopher was quite willing to admit that his life in England was basically untruthful, since it conformed outwardly to standards of respectability which he inwardly rejected and despised. But Lane had also said, “Every disease is a cure, if we know how to take it,” and Christopher was now sure that he knew how to make his life truthful again. He studied German hard—from Hugo's
German in Three Months without a Master.
He wrote letters in German to Bubi, which Bubi answered with tactful requests for money. And, as soon as he could afford the trip, he went back to Germany. This was in early July.

Wystan was now at a village called Rothehuette in the Harz Mountains, surrounded by forests. The air smelled of resin and echoed romantically with jangling cowbells. At the end of the day, when the cows came down from the high pastures into the village, they would separate from the herd of their own accord and find their ways to their respective farms. It was easy to pretend to yourself that they were human beings bewitched, for the whole place could have been a setting for one of Grimm's fairy tales, except that it had a railway station.

Wystan was staying at the inn with a cheerful, good-natured youth he had brought with him from Berlin. He had already made himself completely at home. His room was like every other room he had ever lived in, a chaos of books and manuscripts; he was reading and writing with his usual impatient energy. He welcomed Christopher as one welcomes a guest to one's household; he had the air of owning the village and the villagers. Certainly he must have been the chief topic of their conversation. He entertained them by thumping out German popular songs and English hymn tunes on a piano in the refreshment room of the railway station and intrigued them by wrestling naked with his friend in a nearby meadow.

At Christopher's request, Wystan had phoned Bubi in Berlin and told him to come and join them the day after Christopher arrived. But two days passed and he didn't appear. Christopher became frantic. He decided to go to Berlin and look for Bubi. To help Christopher in his search, Wystan gave him the address of an Englishman he knew there, named Francis. And Francis did help, by coming with him to the Cosy Corner and other bars and translating when he questioned boys who knew Bubi. Thus Christopher found out that Bubi was wanted by the police and that he had disappeared.

So Christopher returned mournfully to Rothehuette. And, the next day, the police arrived. They must have been tipped off by somebody in one of the Berlin bars that Bubi might be expected to join Christopher at this mountain hideout. While the police were questioning him and Wystan, a letter was handed to Christopher by the innkeeper. It had a Dutch stamp on it. It was from Bubi. Christopher read it under their very noses. Bubi wrote that he was in Amsterdam and about to ship out as a deck hand on a boat to South America. Could Christopher send him some money as quickly as possible, poste restante? Bubi added that he wasn't giving the address where he was staying because he was in Holland illegally and this letter might fall into the wrong hands. As for the money, Bubi had sworn to himself never to ask for any more, because Christopher had been so generous already. But now here he was, amongst strangers, all alone. There was no one he could trust in the whole world. Except Christopher, his last dear true friend … The letter thrilled Christopher unspeakably. As he read, he began to feel that he himself had become an honorary member of the criminal class. Now he must be worthy of the occasion. He must respond recklessly. He must leave for Amsterdam at once and see Bubi before he sailed.

Meanwhile, the police, not wanting to go away empty-handed, were checking up on Wystan's friend. They asked for his identity papers—and, alas, his papers were not in order. (Boys would say, “My papers aren't in order,” and “My stomach isn't in order,” in the same plaintive tone, as though both were ailments.) The police soon made him admit that he was a fugitive from a reform school. Then they took him off with them.

As soon as they were gone, Christopher showed Wystan the letter and Wystan agreed to come to Amsterdam too, although he wasn't feeling kindly toward Bubi, who was indirectly to blame for his friend's arrest. When they left Rothehuette, the innkeeper was still friendly, despite the scandal of having had the police on his premises. He said to Wystan, with a tolerant grin, “I expect a lot of things happen in Berlin which we wouldn't understand.”

In Amsterdam, they ran into Bubi almost at once; he was going into the post office to see if Christopher had sent him a letter. Bubi's astonishment and delight were all that Christopher had hoped for. Even more gratifying, after their first joyful embraces, was his sudden sadness: “We have so little time left, to be together.” Bubi was a true German in his enjoyment of emotional partings. He turned this short reunion with Christopher into a continuous farewell; they went for farewell walks, ate farewell meals, drank farewell toasts, made farewell love. Then the day came for Bubi's ship to sail. His eyes brimmed with tears of heartfelt pity for the lonely Wanderer, as he wrung Christopher's and Wystan's hands, saying, “Who knows if we shall ever meet again!”

(They did meet again, many times, in many different places. When Christopher next saw Bubi he was in Berlin, about three years later. Christopher found it very odd to be able to chatter away to him in German—odd and a little saddening, because the collapse of their language barrier had buried the magic image of the German Boy. Bubi seemed an entirely different person, not at all vulnerable, amusingly sly. Christopher felt wonderfully at ease with him and absolutely uninfatuated.)

*   *   *

Christopher and Wystan stayed on an extra day in Amsterdam, before Christopher went back to England. They were both in the highest spirits. It was such a relief and happiness to be alone with each other. They took a trip through the canals and the harbor in a tourist launch, deep in an exchange of private jargon and jokes, barely conscious of their surroundings. On disembarking, all the passengers were asked to sign a guest book. Beside their two signatures, Wystan wrote a quotation from Ilya Ehrenburg's poem about the Russian Revolution:

Read about us and marvel!

You did not live in our time—be sorry!

*   *   *

In August, Christopher left London for a remote seaside village where he had been engaged to tutor a small boy or at least keep him occupied during his school holidays. While Christopher was there, he had his first—and last—complete sex experience with a woman. After dark, in that tiny place, there was nothing social to do but play cards, get drunk, or make love. They were both drunk. She was five or six years older than he was, easygoing, stylish, humorous. She had been married. She liked sex but wasn't in the least desperate to get it. He started kissing her without bothering about what it might lead to. When she responded, he was surprised and amused to find how easily he could relate his usual holds and movements to this unusual partner. He felt curiosity and the fun of playing a new game. He also felt a lust which was largely narcissistic; she had told him how attractive he was and now he was excited by himself making love to her. But plenty of heterosexuals would admit to feeling that way sometimes. What mattered was that he was genuinely aroused. After their orgasm, he urged her to come to his room, where they could take all their clothes off and continue indefinitely. She wouldn't do this because she was now sobering up and getting worried that they might be caught together. Next day, she said, “I could tell that you've had a lot of women through your hands.”

What did all this prove? That he had gained enormously in self-confidence. That sex, as sex, was becoming more natural to him—in the sense that swimming is natural when you know how to swim and the situation demands it. This he owed to Bubi.

He asked himself: Do I now want to go to bed with more women and girls? Of course not, as long as I can have boys. Why do I prefer boys? Because of their shape and their voices and their smell and the way they move. And boys can be romantic. I can put them into my myth and fall in love with them. Girls can be absolutely beautiful but never romantic. In fact, their utter lack of romance is what I find most likable about them. They're so sensible.

Couldn't you get yourself excited by the shape of girls, too—if you worked hard at it? Perhaps. And couldn't you invent another myth—to put girls into? Why the hell should I? Well, it would be a lot more convenient for you, if you did. Then you wouldn't have all these problems. Society would accept you. You wouldn't be out of step with nearly everybody else.

It was at this point in his self-examination that Christopher would become suddenly, blindly furious. Damn Nearly Everybody. Girls are what the state and the church and the law and the press and the medical profession endorse, and command me to desire. My mother endorses them, too. She is silently brutishly willing me to get married and breed grandchildren for her. Her will is the will of Nearly Everybody, and in their will is my death.
My
will is to live according to my nature, and to find a place where I can be what I am … But I'll admit this—even if my nature were like theirs, I should still have to fight them, in one way or another. If boys didn't exist, I should have to invent them.

Psychologists might find Christopher's admission damaging to his case, and his violence highly suspicious. They might accuse him of repressed heterosexuality. Wystan sometimes half jokingly did this, telling Christopher that he was merely “a heter with good taste,” and expressing fears that he would sooner or later defect. Nearly fifty years have passed, since then; and Wystan's fears have been proved groundless.

*   *   *

Wystan was now back in England. Soon he would start work as a schoolmaster. Bubi was somewhere in South America; he never wrote. Layard had left Berlin. On November 29, Christopher set out on his third visit to Germany that year. Only, this time, he wasn't putting any limits on his stay. This might even become an immigration. When the German passport official asked him the purpose of his journey, he could have truthfully replied, “I'm looking for my homeland and I've come to find out if this is it.”

*   *   *

On the morning after his arrival, he went to call on Francis, who was now the only English-speaking person he knew in Berlin. Francis lived on a street called In den Zelten. It had a view across the Tiergarten park. As the huge house door boomed shut behind him, Christopher ran upstairs with his characteristic nervous haste to the second or third floor—I now forget which it was—and rang.

The door of the apartment flew open and Francis appeared, tousled, furious, one hand clutching the folds of his crimson silk robe. Instantly he started screaming in German. Christopher understood the language better now; he knew that he was being told to go away and never come back or Francis would call the police. The screaming ended and the door was slammed in his face. He stood staring at it, too astonished to move. Then he shouted, “Francis—it's me, Christopher!”

The door reopened and Francis reappeared. “I say, how awful of me! I
do
apologize! I felt certain you must be the boy who came home with me last night. Just because I was drunk, he thought he could steal everything in the place. I caught him at it and threw him out … But you don't even look like him … Why, I
know
you, don't I?”

“I was over here in the summer, looking for someone. You were so kind, taking me round the bars. As a matter of fact, I've just got back from England—”

“Won't you come in? I'm afraid this place is in an awful mess. I'm never up at the unearthly hour they want to clean it. Is this your first visit to Berlin?”

“Well, no—I told you, I was here in the summer—”

“Do forgive me, lovey—my mind's a total blank before I've had lunch. I suppose you wouldn't care to have lunch here, would you? Or is that more than you can face?”

What Christopher was being asked to face was the ordeal of having lunch with the staff and some of the patients of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut fuer Sexual-Wissenschaft—Institute for Sexual Science—which occupied the adjoining building. A sister of Dr. Hirschfeld lived in this apartment and let out two of its rooms to Francis. It so happened that she had a third room which was vacant just then and which she charged less for, because it was small and dark. By the time lunch was over, Christopher had decided to move into it.