Christopher and His Kind (27 page)

Paul crosses the frontier and that is the last they ever hear of him. In due course, they begin to honor him as one of their martyred dead. But the reader, knowing Paul much better than they do, may have certain doubts.

(Paul wasn't a portrait of any particular individual. The general idea of the character was based on an Englishman whom Christopher had known briefly during his early days in Berlin. This young man was a kleptomaniac—or perhaps he posed as one to make himself seem more interesting. Christopher preached Homer Lane to him and proposed a cure in the classic Lane tradition—the young man was to go on stealing but he was also to keep a ledger in which he entered the estimated value of everything he stole, as though he were running a business. This was to make theft unromantic. The cure didn't work. But Christopher later pretended, to Stephen and others, that it did.)

Like
The Lost, Paul Is Alone
was an attempt by Christopher to pack a section of his past life into a plot structure—in this instance, his experiences since leaving Berlin, up to and including the Auden–Mann marriage. When he described the novel in outline—much more sensationally than I have done here—to Upward, Auden, Spender, and Lehmann, they were all enthusiastic. Only he himself was full of misgivings. Again and again, by talking about it to his friends, he talked himself into continuing; again and again, he lost faith in it. He tinkered with it, on and off, for at least a year, but produced no more than a couple of chapters.

Finally he realized that he simply wanted to describe his life as he had lived it. What inspired him was the commentary he would make on it, not the melodrama he could make out of it. Certainly, he would fictionalize many episodes in order to simplify them and thus reveal their essence; a change-over from fact to fiction often begins with the weeding out of superfluous details. But he could tell his own lies; he didn't need a Paul to tell them for him. That would merely put his fiction at a double remove from fact.

*   *   *

On July 7, John Lehmann came to Amsterdam to talk to Christopher about
New Writing,
the magazine he was planning to edit and publish next spring. Christopher would soon owe a great debt to John. His continuing demand for material forced Christopher to do what he was stupidly unwilling to do—publish the rest of his Berlin writings as disconnected fragments, suitable in length for the magazine, instead of trying to fit them into a stodgy, plot-ridden story. Thus John became responsible for the informal form of
Goodbye to Berlin.

Many of their discussions during that visit were held while walking through the Amsterdam streets. A favorite walk took them along the edge of an athletic field full of teenage boys. Among these were a few types of exotic beauty, products of Holland's colonial presence in the East Indies—Nordic blond hair and peach skin, with Indonesian cheekbones and liquid black equatorial eyes. At one corner of the field was a boxing ring. The boys didn't fight, they only sparred, with a sportsmanlike restraint which verged absurdly on politeness. But it was just the caressing softness with which their big leather gloves patted each other's naked bodies that Christopher found distractingly erotic. His attention would stray far from literature, and his voice, though continuing to talk about it, must have sounded like a programmed robot's: “Oh yes, indeed—I
do
agree—I think he's quite definitely the best writer in that genre, absolutely—”

*   *   *

In a letter to Kathleen, July 30, Christopher reports that Gerald Hamilton keeps sending postcards, each under a different name, to one of the Dutch publishers, urging him to publish a translation of
Mr. Norris
in Dutch; he has sent forty of these cards already. (The publisher, nevertheless, refused the book, giving the odd-sounding reason that it was “too topical.” Perhaps by “topical” he meant anti-Nazi, and was thus hinting that he feared its publication might expose him to reprisals by Nazi sympathizers in Holland.)

*   *   *

Early in August, Kathleen paid them a short visit. She went sightseeing with her usual energy, although Dutch culture was a little too Germanic to suit her taste. One evening, while they were out for a stroll, Christopher unintentionally led her onto the Zeedijk, where ladies in negligee sat at the windows of invitingly lit parlors. Kathleen behaved as though this were a street on which picturesque native craftsmen were selling their artifacts. She asked, in would-be appreciative tourist tones: “Oh, is this what they call the red-light district?”

*   *   *

On August 24, Forster and his friend, Bob Buckingham, arrived; also Brian Howard and his friend, Toni. (Since I have just used the word “friend” twice in one sentence, this is a good place to comment on it. Admittedly, it is ambiguous. In Christopher's case, for example, it had to cover his relationships with Upward, Forster, Auden, and Heinz—each one of which differed greatly from the others in character. Nevertheless, when a male friendship includes sexual love, I dislike referring to either of the friends as a “lover” or a “boyfriend.” Except in the plural, “lover” suggests to me a one-sided attachment; “boyfriend” always sounds condescending and often ridiculously unsuitable. So I shall go on using “friend” and try to show what the word means when applied to any given pair of people.)

On August 27, Forster and Bob, Brian and Toni, Stephen Spender (who had appeared unexpectedly the day before), Klaus Mann, and Gerald Hamilton all went with Christopher and Heinz to The Hague, where Gerald had arranged a birthday lunch in a restaurant for Christopher. (Christopher's birthday was the twenty-sixth but he had become accustomed in childhood to celebrating one day later, because the twenty-seventh was the birthday of his Grandfather John.) Soon after their arrival, a rainstorm forced them to take shelter in the nearest public building. It happened to be the Gevangenpoort prison, now a museum. This was an emergency which demanded all Gerald's art as a host. He had to entertain his guests without benefit of alcohol or even chairs, amidst a depressing display of antique torture instruments.

This all-male party was oddly assorted. Gerald himself sparkled with jokes to which he wasn't quite attending; he had an air of nervously expecting the police to appear. Stephen simmered with sly giggles, aware of the Joke behind the jokes yet also basically inattentive, perhaps because he was composing a poem. Klaus Mann, charming and civilized, with his quick eager speech, talked pessimistically but cheerfully about the times they were living in. (He had described his latest book,
Flucht in den Norden,
to Christopher with a grin as “oh, another prewar novel.”) Brian Howard's dark, heavy-lidded, keenly searching and testing eyes missed no nuance of the situation but were made restless by his need for a drink and his anxiety lest Toni should say something gauche. Handsome Bavarian blond Toni, ill at ease in his expensive clothes, was only anxious not to offend, also in need of a drink, and enjoying himself least of anyone present. Forster, beaming through his spectacles, was probably enjoying himself most, since Bob Buckingham was with him. They kept exchanging glances full of fun and affection. Bob's thick-featured broad face was made beautiful by its strength and good nature. Heinz had felt drawn to him immediately and it seemed to Christopher that they had a kind of resemblance, due to their working-class kinship. He himself was feeling unusually happy.

After his return to England, Forster wrote:

As for Amsterdam, my only objection to it is that I had no time there whatever alone with you. There was nothing I wanted to imbibe or impart, still it would have been an additional enjoyment. After all, we are both of us writers, and good ones.

I think you did realize how much we both liked Heinz.

This was the first of Forster's letters which began “Dear Christopher” and which was signed “Morgan.”

*   *   *

Gerald, the ever punctual, ever polite, used to say that Brian Howard had “the manners of a very great genius”—by which he meant that Brian was unreliable, unpunctual, noisy, and quarrelsome in public, apt to get drunk or doped—and that he didn't have the talent which would have excused such behavior. Here, Gerald—who hadn't much literary taste—was wrong. Brian did have talent as a poet. What was inexcusable was that he used it so seldom. His self-indulgence was babyish; he was one of the most fascinating and dangerous babies of his generation. If you flattered yourself that you could wean him away from babyhood, he was delighted to let you try, for as long as your patience held out. But you couldn't complain later that he hadn't warned you you'd fail—and maybe end by acquiring his vices, into the bargain. Indeed, he warned Christopher, that would-be healer: “What you
must
realize, my dear, is that
you
can never understand someone like me—someone who's devoted his
entire life
to pleasure.” Brian contrived to pronounce the word “pleasure” in a tone which brought a chill to Christopher's spine and suggested the grimmest austerities of the medieval monks.

Christopher had enough sense not to get too involved with Brian personally, but for a while it seemed that circumstances might throw him and Heinz together with Brian and Toni as a foursome. Toni had been refused permission to live in England—on the ground that he had associated with a drug addict during a previous visit—so now he and Brian, like Christopher and Heinz, were looking for a country where they could settle.

September 1.
Dinner with Brian and Toni. They have now heard from Ireland and it seems doubtful whether it's worth going there, as there is an exchange of alien lists with England. Brian wants to go to Portugal, buy a ruined palace, and keep hens and goats and grow oranges. Toni keeps making objections and warns Brian in advance that he won't clean the shit off the goats. Brian got angry with him and alarmed that his lack of enthusiasm would put us off. Actually, I don't want to go unless we can get Gerald or Stephen to come with us.

September 6.
Last night we went out with Brian and Toni and sat in the cafe by the Concert Hall. The boys played billiards. Brian discussed the various fittings of the cafe, piece by piece—the lamps, the vases, the ornaments—and described the artistic pedigree of each: sham Louis XIV, bastard Oriental mixed with Second Empire, pre-war arty German (balls on strings) etc, etc. He knows a good deal about the history of bad taste and was very amusing.

Christopher's diary also describes a teatime scene in the lounge of a hotel where Christopher and Brian are sitting together. Brian produces from his pocket a twist of paper containing some white powder. “Do you know what
this
is, my dear?” he says aggressively and very loudly, to embarrass both Christopher and the other guests. “Take a
good
look at it—no, it isn't salt, my dear, and it isn't sugar, my dear, it's
cocaine,
my dear, COCAINE!” He sniffs ostentatiously at the powder as he explains that this isn't good cocaine, however. “Good cocaine is sparkling white, so dazzling that you can't look at it.” Continuing to sniff, he tells Christopher that cocaine “gathers in a knot in the chest and is like ozone,” that hashish “is like toffee, it makes you feel like the gateway to Hell,” and that heroin “spreads like a stone flower from the stomach to the legs and the arms.” Christopher asks him to describe his sensations at this moment. He answers: “Imagine yourself partly a wonderful calm Venetian palace in the sunshine and partly Joan of Arc.”

And then there was another evening on which they had all been out together. Having said good night to Brian and Toni, Christopher and Heinz walked at a leisurely pace down the street toward their lodgings. Meanwhile, Brian ran down a parallel street, waited for them at the next corner, and jumped out at them, with his black furry greatcoat over his head. They screamed, first with surprise, then with laughter, as he chased them … In retrospect, this seemed to Christopher to have been a beautifully imaginative act of affection. “How many other people we know,” he asked himself, “would have
cared
for us enough to do that?”

(Brian and Toni did go to Portugal, in October of that year. But they didn't stay long. Christopher and Heinz saw little of them when they, too, came to Portugal later.)

*   *   *

On September 12, Christopher and Heinz went to the Belgian consulate in Rotterdam and made another attempt to get Heinz a permit to stay in Belgium. Again they were refused; Gerald Hamilton had, in fact, accomplished nothing for them. Returning disgusted and depressed to Amsterdam, they found a letter from a friend suggesting that they should try for the permit at the Belgian consulate in Luxembourg. One could get into Luxembourg without any formalities.

On September 14, they entered Luxembourg, went to the Belgian consulate there, and were given a thirty-day permit for Heinz within five minutes. Next day, they took a bus trip through what is called the Luxembourg Switzerland, a hilly region of forests, which Christopher imagined as looking like the country of Ruritania in
The Prisoner of Zenda.
At Echternach, the bus made a detour across the frontier into Germany and back. Their driver assured them that the German officials wouldn't ask for passports. Some passengers were nervous and preferred to remain behind and be picked up on the return journey, but Christopher and Heinz couldn't resist the adventure. At a café just inside Germany, they were allowed to get out of the bus and spend a quarter of an hour drinking beer and writing postcards. A young man in S.S. uniform was sitting there, but he seemed as unreal and theatrical as the Jew-Hate placard nailed to the wall. They mailed a postcard to Gerald but the shock which they had intended it to give him was neutralized, because they arrived in Brussels before the card did.

September 19.
We moved in here yesterday evening, a second-floor flat overlooking the Boulevard Adolphe Max (number 22). The living-room has fish-net curtains, huge sideboards covered with silver cake-dishes and fancy ashtrays, a pair of sofa dolls, two table lamps whose silk shades are the skirts of ballerinas—the kind used in brothels—six large and small photos of Clark Gable and six of Ramon Novarro, a miniature aeroplane propellor supporting a whole bunch of snaps, good-looking young airmen mostly (one of them signed: “pour Claire, 1'audacieuse”), and a grandfather clock (whose chime I have had stopped) with weights like small artillery shells. The bedroom has a handsome white bath, a dangerous gas-heater for the water, and a big painting of Leda with her swan.