Christopher and His Kind (20 page)

He was chronically lonely for his family—his wife, Salka, and their sons, Hans, Peter, and Thomas. He talked about them continually and showed Christopher their latest snapshots and letters. Salka, born of a Jewish family in Poland, had come to Vienna during the 1914–18 war, as a refugee. There she met Viertel. During the early years of their marriage, they had both achieved success, she as an actress, he as a writer and stage director. They had moved from Europe to California in 1928. Their sons, said Viertel, were already becoming Americanized and beginning to regard Salka and himself as foreigners.

Viertel described their white house with its green roof, standing amidst the subtropical vegetation of Santa Monica Canyon, three minutes' walk from the Pacific Ocean. 165 Mabery Road—the British-sounding address became wildly exotic when Christopher tried to relate it to his idea of a canyon, a gigantic romantic ravine. He began to yearn to see this place; Viertel took it for granted that he would be visiting them there before long. (Forty years later, I am standing on the balcony of my home, looking out over the familiar little suburban valley, now so full of my own memories. There, on the street below us, is the Viertels' former home. It is strange to think that I have lived in the canyon much longer than they did.)

Since his arrival in the States, Viertel had directed at least eight films and several famous actors and actresses, including Paul Muni, Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer, Tallulah Bankhead. Salka had appeared in the German-language versions of three American films. One of these was
Anna Christie,
in which she played Marthy. Garbo, who had made a successful debut as a talkie actress in the American version, played Anna again in German. She and Salka had become close friends. Garbo respected Salka's wide experience and would ask her advice about possible new roles. She also wanted Salka to supervise the writing of her screenplays and used her influence to get Salka a contract with her own studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

That winter, Garbo's
Queen Christina
—on which Salka shared the writing credit with S. N. Behrman—was being shown in London, to full houses. When it became time to send Christmas presents overseas, Christopher went with Viertel to an art-book shop in Charing Cross Road. As the shop assistant wrapped one of the books they had bought, he asked whom he should mail it to. Viertel—speaking slowly and distinctly, as if this were some unheard-of and almost unpronounceable name—replied, “Miss Greta Garbo.” The young man laughed loudly, thinking that Viertel must be pulling his leg. It was unimaginable to him that anyone could actually be on gift-giving terms with that infinitely remote, two-dimensional deity.

“When you are with us in California, you will see her every day,” Viertel told Christopher as they left the shop. “She comes to swim and ride horseback with our boys.”

*   *   *

Those were long, long days of rapid talk and snail-slow work, in Viertel's stuffy Knightsbridge flat, which only Auden could have made smokier and untidier. For hours, Viertel would talk of anything, everything except
Little Friend
—of the Reichstag fire trial, then in progress (he imitated Dimitrov defying Goering); of his productions for Die Truppe in Berlin during the 1920's (he recited speeches from the leading roles); of the poetry of Hoelderlin; of the awful future in store for the world; of the nature of Woman. It was then that the grimly grinning, sparkling-eyed Clown surpassed himself. I'm sure he couldn't have performed as brilliantly in the Viennese cafés of his youth. His envious colleagues would have interrupted him. Christopher never did. He only prompted.

At last, unwillingly, they would have to come back to their task. Viertel's attitude toward it varied continually. Sometimes he denounced it as prostitution, for which they would have to answer, in some future existence, to a Supreme Tribunal composed of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov. Sometimes he saw Christopher and himself as heroic rebels against bourgeois culture: “We are breaking our heads off, fighting for Truth!” Sometimes he discovered a deep significance in the story, decided that it was even perhaps a kind of masterpiece. He philosophized over it, quoting Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and his own elected Socrates, Karl Kraus (of whom Christopher, before meeting Viertel, had never heard). But such high moods of optimism didn't survive the daylight. No sooner had Christopher left him than Viertel's mind would be clouded in with doubts. And, when Christopher returned next morning, he would find that their latest draft of a scene had been unraveled by Viertel during the night, like Penelope's weaving.

*   *   *

Now and again, Viertel touched on a sensitive area. Once, he told a story about a famous actor who decided to watch two boys having sex with each other. Viertel made it clear that the actor himself wasn't homosexual, merely feeling bored and in the mood for any variety of freak show. The actor hired two homosexual youths. But, when they began to perform, one of them was unable to get an erection. Whereupon, the other advised him, in a stage whisper, to “pretend I'm Erich” … The point and joke of this story—as far as Christopher could guess—was that these preposterous little inverts were suggesting that one sex partner might be preferable to another; they were, in fact, behaving like heterosexuals. This was amusing because, as we know, all homosexuals are hot to go to bed with any male whomsoever. Ha, ha. “Pretend I'm Erich,” Viertel said, imitating the boy's effeminate voice, and laughed heartily. Christopher laughed too, and felt ashamed of himself for doing so. Suppose Christopher had told a comparable story about the Jews—would Viertel have laughed? Either he would have found it completely pointless, or he would have flown into a rage, and rightly.

On another occasion, Viertel referred to Hitler's chief of staff, Ernst Roehm, and his notorious homosexuality. Viertel's comment was: “To such swine we will never belong!” His tone as well as his words implied that Roehm's swinishness consisted just as much in being a homosexual as in being a Nazi. Christopher should have challenged him on this, but he didn't. He kept silent. Worse still, he felt himself blushing as though he were guilty. Which he was—of cowardice.

Viertel also told him: “You are a typical mother's son, I think. You are very repressed sexually. But you must not be. The right woman will change all that.” Could Viertel, with all his vaunted worldly wisdom, be so unperceptive? No, that was impossible. Then he must be deliberately provoking Christopher, to make him confess what he was. This, Christopher vowed to himself with cold fury, he would never do.

*   *   *

Working on
Little Friend
certainly helped Christopher not to brood on personal problems; nevertheless, he missed Heinz more and more. And now, in the middle of December, with the end of the screenplay in sight, the studio asked Christopher to stay on its payroll throughout the shooting of the film. Officially, he was to be its dialogue director—which meant that he was to advise Viertel on the nuances of English intonation and to do emergency rewrites if necessary. Unofficially, he was to act as a go-between if Viertel and the studio were to get into an argument. Both sides realized already that this was more than likely to happen.

Christopher was eager to accept. From his point of view, shooting the film would be ten times as much fun as writing it. But the job would keep him in England for another two and a half to three months. He couldn't be separated from Heinz for that much longer; Heinz would have to be brought back. How he would behave during such a long stay as Kathleen's guest—how his demands on Christopher's time would be tolerated by Viertel, the all-demanding—were questions which Christopher chose not to think about until they stared him in the face.

So he began making arrangements for Heinz's coming. He mailed Heinz money for the journey and money to show the British immigration officials as a proof that he would be able to support himself while he was in England. Christopher also sent an invitation, dictated by himself, handwritten by Kathleen, asking Heinz to come and stay with her for an unspecified period, but making no mention of Christopher.

On January 5, 1934, Christopher went to Harwich to meet Heinz's boat. Wystan came with him, at his request. Luckily, Heinz was arriving at a time when the school at which Wystan was then teaching was still on its Christmas holidays. Christopher wouldn't have wanted any other companion on this mission. And a curious foreboding made him unwilling to face it alone.

When the boat arrived, Heinz was on it, enormously to Christopher's relief. He had been dreading some last-minute hitch. He and Heinz exchanged a brief formal greeting; Christopher dared not even hug, much less kiss, lest some police spy should be watching them. “Everything will be all right,” he told Heinz, and sent him off to the passport and customs inspections.

He and Wystan waited outside the office where the aliens had to show their passports. He wasn't really anxious but he made himself worry a little, out of superstitiousness; overconfidence was unlucky. At the same time he remembered the ease with which Heinz had been admitted to England, when they had arrived together, last September. Meanwhile, Wystan, that positive thinker, was talking about his job and his pupils, as if this passport inspection were the merest formality, unworthy of comment. Indeed, it seemed to be so, as more and more of the aliens emerged—a few with expressions of glad relief, most of them taking it as a matter of course—and went on their way to the customs.

But Heinz didn't emerge. And, at last, when Christopher had begun to tremble with impatience and when his conversation with Wystan had died away because he couldn't keep his mind on it, a man appeared at the door of the office and called his name. Wystan followed him in.

Once inside, Christopher saw instantly that something was very wrong indeed. Heinz sat opposite his questioners, looking humiliated and resentful. He was the sullen peasant boy, despite his middle-class clothes.

Christopher decided to play the gentleman, very superior, with a “What's this little fuss about?” air. But it was as a gentleman that they attacked him. On their table lay Kathleen's letter of invitation, side by side with Heinz's passport containing that damning word
Hausdiener.
Why, they wanted to know, should a lady like Mrs. Isherwood, the mother of a gentleman like himself, invite a young working-class foreigner to her home? Could it be that she herself planned to employ Heinz—without a work permit and perhaps on substandard wages?

Christopher felt on safe ground here. After remarking severely that his mother wasn't in the habit of exploiting illegal alien labor—a rebuke which didn't seem to abash them in the least—he added that Heinz was in no need of employment; he had enough money of his own.

They had been waiting for him to say this. Instantly, a second letter was played like a trump card: “Was this written by you, Mr. Isherwood?” With a sick shock, Christopher recognized it as the letter of instructions he had sent to Heinz in Berlin. He had neglected to tell Heinz to destroy it, so Heinz had brought it along with him. And when the examiners, who had already become suspicious, had asked for proof that the money was really his, he had shown them the letter. This wasn't mere stupidity. It was perhaps a subconscious bitchery which develops in people who have become accustomed to do exactly what they are told. In the military profession it has sometimes caused famous acts of heroism costing ninety percent casualties. Heinz's not to reason why.

(“If they ask how you got the money,” the letter said, “tell them your grandmother gave it to you. That'll sound better. They can't prove she didn't. And it's yours, anyhow.”)

“I presume you're aware, Mr. Isherwood, that this could be construed as an attempt to deceive His Majesty's Immigration Service?”

This was from the man who had asked most of the questions. He was small, bright-eyed, smiling.

“I don't see it makes any difference who gave him the money. I did, as it happens.”

“Rather a generous gift, wasn't it? It couldn't by any chance have been just a loan?”

“I've told you once already—”

“And then this letter of yours. A bit curious, isn't it, the way it's written?”

“I don't see why.”

But Christopher did see, only too clearly. He had written that he was counting the days until Heinz's arrival, that he'd been so lonely without him. Nothing stronger than that. But far too much, under the circumstances.

“You don't?” The voice was teasing, playful. “I'd say it was the sort of letter that, well, a man might write to his sweetheart.”

Christopher glared at him in helpless amazement.
How dare he?
And he looked Christopher straight in the eyes, smiling.

The examiners consulted together for a moment. In a daze, he heard them telling him that Heinz wouldn't be granted permission to enter the United Kingdom. He would have to leave by the next boat. Christopher was incredulous. How could this be happening, when they hadn't proved their case? Then he realized that they didn't have to prove anything. An alien has no rights whatsoever; he can't force anybody to receive him. “I shall appeal,” Christopher said, and was told that that was certainly his privilege; he could write to the Home Secretary, if he wished. “But I think you'll find, sir, that he'll endorse our decision. He gives us pretty wide powers.”

When all the miserable arrangements had been made and a sad leave had been taken of Heinz and they were back in the train on their way to London, Wystan said: “As soon as I saw that bright-eyed little rat, I knew we were done for. He understood the whole situation at a glance—because he's
one of us.
”

*   *   *

Christopher hated having to tell people what had happened at Harwich, even in a strictly censored version. Richard was an exception, of course—Christopher could tell him anything. But Richard lacked experience; he couldn't always feel what Christopher had felt. Kathleen's obstinate, one-sided love grasped nothing but the fact that Christopher was unhappy. For this she blamed both the immigration officials and Heinz; Heinz more than them, since he had caused all the trouble by being, so tiresomely, a foreigner and working-class.