Christopher and His Kind (6 page)

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A few days after Christopher's arrival in London, Wystan had to undergo an operation for a rectal fissure. His announcement of this, on a postcard, was characteristically terse. It ended with a T. S. Eliot quotation: “Pray for Boudin.” Christopher went up to Birmingham twice to be with him, before leaving England.

Wystan suffered from the aftereffects of this operation for several years. They inspired him to write his “Letter to a Wound,” which forms part of
The Orators.

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Christopher went back to Berlin on May 8, having told Kathleen that he could never live in her house again. According to her diary, “he begged that I should refuse to have him again even if he suggested coming.” He did come back, but not until ten months later. And, of the next three and a half years, he was to spend only five months in England.

The only good which came of this unhappy visit was that Christopher and Richard became intimate. Up to that time, they had been almost strangers, because of the rareness of their meetings and the seven-year age gap between them. Richard had been dreading Christopher's return from Berlin, since he felt sure Christopher would agree with Kathleen that he must go back to his hated tutor. So, when Christopher disagreed with her and sympathized with his point of view, Richard was correspondingly grateful. Before the visit was over, they had become friends. Richard was often rash and childish in his dealings with the outside world, but the eyes with which he observed it were searching and mature and his comments were as candid as Layard's. Christopher realized, with surprise and pleasure, that he had a brother to whom he could tell absolutely anything about himself without shame.

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During his years in Germany, Christopher kept a diary. As he became aware that he would one day write stories about the people he knew there, his diary entries got longer. They later supplied him with most of the material which is used to create period atmosphere in
Mr. Norris
and
Goodbye to Berlin.

After those two books had been written, Christopher burned the diary. His private reason for doing this was that it was full of details about his sex life and he feared that it might somehow fall into the hands of the police or other enemies.

Christopher's declared reason for burning his Berlin diary was unconvincing. He used to tell his friends that he had destroyed his real past because he preferred the simplified, more creditable, more exciting fictitious past which he had created to take its place. This fictitious past, he said, was the past he wanted to “remember.” Now that I am writing about Christopher's real past, I sadly miss the help of the lost diary and have no patience with this arty talk. The Berlin novels leave out a great deal which I now want to remember; they also falsify events and alter dates for dramatic purposes. As for the few surviving letters written at that time by Christopher and his friends to each other, they usually have no dates at all. I get the impression that their writers regarded letter dating as something beneath their dignity as artists—something bank clerkly, formal, and mean-spirited. My most reliable source of information proves, ironically, to be the diaries of Kathleen, whom Christopher was trying to exclude from his Berlin life altogether. Kathleen picked up scraps of news from friends who had visited him there and from his occasional grudging letters. I bless her for having recorded them.

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It was probably in May 1930, soon after Christopher's return from London, that he met the youth who is called Otto Nowak in
Goodbye to Berlin.
He was then sixteen or seventeen years old.

Otto has a face like a very ripe peach. His hair is full and thick, growing low on his forehead. He has small sparkling eyes, full of naughtiness, and a wide disarming grin, which is much too innocent to be true. When he grins, two large dimples appear in his peach-bloom cheeks … Otto moves fluidly, effortlessly; his gestures have the savage, unconscious grace of a cruel elegant animal … Otto is outrageously conceited … Otto certainly has a superb pair of shoulders and chest for a boy of his age—but his body is nevertheless somehow slightly ridiculous. The beautiful ripe lines of the torso taper away too suddenly to his rather absurd little buttocks and spindly, immature legs. And these struggles with the chest-expander are daily making him more and more top-heavy.

This is how Otto is described by “Christopher Isherwood,” the narrator of the novel. The fictitious Isherwood takes the attitude of an amused, slightly contemptuous onlooker. He nearly gives himself away when he speaks of “the beautiful ripe lines of the torso.” So, lest the reader should suspect him of finding Otto physically attractive, he adds that Otto's legs are “spindly.” Otto's original in life had an entirely adequate, sturdy pair of legs, even if they weren't quite as handsome as the upper half of his body.

Otto—as he will be called in this book, also—was a child of the borderland. His family came from what was then known as the Polish Corridor, the strip of Germany which had been ceded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles, after World War I. Like many other families in that area, the Nowaks had moved west and settled in Berlin, rather than lose their German nationality. Yet Otto himself seemed Slav rather than German, in his looks and temperament. His sensual nostrils and lips reminded Christopher of a photograph he had once seen of a Russian dancer.

When Otto was in a good mood, Christopher would be enchanted by his eagerness to enjoy himself. He delighted in watching movies and eating meals and making love. Like Christopher, he was a play actor. In the midst of their lovemaking, he would exclaim, in a swooning tone, “This is how I'd like to die—doing this!” Once, when they had seen a film about a psychopathic killer, he turned to Christopher and said solemnly, “Let's thank God, Christoph, we're both normal!” And he told stories, with immense tragic gusto. Of how, for example, he was haunted by a huge spectral black hand. He had seen it twice already, once in childhood, once in his early teens. “One day soon, I'll see that Hand again—and then it'll be all over with me.” Otto would say this with his eyes full of tears. And there would be tears in Christopher's eyes too, from laughing.

For Christopher, during their first months together, Otto's physical presence seemed part of the summer itself. Otto was the coming of warmth and color to the drab cold city, bringing the linden trees into leaf, sweating the citizens out of their topcoats, making the bands play outdoors. Christopher rode on the bus with him to the great lake at Wannsee, where they splashed together in the shallow water amidst the holiday crowds, then wandered off into the surrounding woods to find a spot where they could be alone. Otto was the exciting laughter of the crowd and the inviting shadow of the woods. But the crowd and the woods were also full of menace to Christopher; within them lurked those who might lure Otto away from him.

Otto preferred women to men, but he was a narcissist first and foremost. Therefore, the degree of his lust was largely dependent upon that of his partner. Christopher could compete successfully with most women by showing more lust, more shamelessly, than they would. (Older women were a greater threat than young ones.) “I love the way you look when you're hot for me,” Otto used to say to him. “Your eyes shine so bright.” Otto was perpetually admiring his body and calling Christopher's attention to its muscles and golden smoothness—“just feel, Christoph, as smooth as silk!” When winter returned and Otto revealed himself bit by bit as he pulled off layers of thick clothes, his nakedness aroused both of them even more. His body became a tropical island on which they were snugly marooned in the midst of snowbound Berlin.

Although Otto's attractiveness was very much a matter of taste—he certainly wasn't conventionally handsome—Christopher always felt proud to be seen with him in public. When they went to their favorite cabaret, which was also a restaurant, Christopher would keep looking away from the stage to see if people at other tables were admiring Otto. And he loved to watch the performance as it was reflected in Otto's eyes.

Christopher spent more money on Otto than he could well afford, but Otto was careful not to go too far in his demands, or rather, wheedlings. When Otto was coaxing Christopher into buying him a new suit, Christopher enjoyed the game in spite of his misgivings. It was a kind of seduction and it always ended erotically as well as financially.

Certainly, Otto was selfish. But so was Christopher, as is pointed out in
Goodbye to Berlin.
(I have changed a name and some pronouns from the ones used in the novel, in order not to confuse the reader of this book.)

Christopher's selfishness is much less honest, more civilised, more perverse. Appealed to in the right way, he will make any sacrifice, however unreasonable and unnecessary. But when Otto takes the better chair as if by right, then Christopher sees a challenge which he dare not refuse to accept … Christopher is bound to go on fighting to win Otto's submission. When, at last, he ceases to do so, it will merely mean that he has lost interest in Otto altogether.

This is an attempt to describe the relationship between Christopher and Otto as it may have appeared to a third party, Stephen Spender. Stephen was then living in Hamburg and they went to visit him there for a few days, that summer. (I remember Stephen's explosive laugh as he greeted Christopher—the laugh of a small boy who has done something forbidden: “I've just written the most marvelous poem!” A pause. Then, with sudden anxiety: “At least, I hope it is.”)

In Stephen's presence—and indeed in the presence of any of his English friends—Christopher's attitude to Otto became one of apology and embarrassment. He felt himself being pulled in two opposite directions. His way of apologizing to Stephen for Otto's existence was to play the martyred, masochistic victim of a hopeless passion—a character like Maugham's Philip Carey in
Of Human Bondage,
who becomes the slave of Mildred, the faithless, rapacious teashop waitress. This was deliberate farce. Even when Christopher felt genuinely jealous, genuinely furious with Otto, he continued to play for Stephen's amusement. Otto, being a natural actor, knew this instinctively and entered into the performance; he didn't object to taking the unsympathetic role. Here is another scene from
Goodbye to Berlin,
with names and pronouns changed, as before:

Suddenly, Christopher slapped Otto hard on both cheeks. They closed immediately and staggered grappling about the room, knocking over the chairs. Stephen looked on, getting out of their way as well as he could. It was funny and, at the same time, unpleasant, because rage made their faces strange and ugly. Presently, Otto got Christopher down on the ground and began twisting his arm: “Have you had enough?” he kept asking. He grinned: at that moment he was really hideous, positively deformed with malice. Stephen knew that Otto was glad to have him there, because his presence was an extra humiliation for Christopher.

Nevertheless, Otto wanted Christopher's friends to like him. He tried to approach them by the only method he knew: flirtation. This didn't usually displease them but it did make them decide that he was a quite ordinary boy of his kind, unworthy of their further curiosity. So they went back to talking English with Christopher. Otto, who didn't understand the language, was obliged to read their faces, gestures, and tones of voice as an animal does—with the result that he ended by knowing a great deal more about them than they knew about him.

From time to time, Christopher was apt to become suddenly angered by his own embarrassment over Otto. Then he would blame his friends for it and punish them by exposing them even more mercilessly to the annoyance of Otto's presence. Those whose ultimatum is “love me, love my dog” are using their pets in the same aggressive manner.

When defending Otto, I must beware of making Christopher seem too sinister. He was well aware of his masochism and his domineering will; they were part of his survival technique as a writer. He needed to be made to suffer; otherwise, he would have lapsed into indifference and never noticed or cared about anybody or anything. And he needed his will; without it, he would have stopped working and probably have become an alcoholic. His will was a psychological muscle which had been overdeveloped in his struggle with sloth. But too much muscle is better than none at all.

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At the end of June, Wystan came out to Berlin on a short visit. He had brought with him a proof copy of his first volume of poems, which was to be published that September. The poems were publicly dedicated to Christopher, and Wystan had also composed a personal dedication to him, in dog German full of private jokes. Christopher later lent the proof copy to Stephen, who accidentally crumpled its flimsy paper jacket. Before returning it, Stephen himself inscribed it: “Written by Wystan, dedicated to Christopher, damaged by Stephen Spender.”

Wystan wasn't greatly interested in Otto but he did at least pay Otto the compliment of treating him as a metaphysical concept. In a poem which he wrote for Christopher's birthday in 1931, Otto is the prize for which Christopher is fighting against the powers of Hell. And Wystan declares—with more politeness, perhaps, than genuine optimism:

The plants have one whole cycle run

Since your campaign was first begun,

Though still the peace-map is not drawn

It stands recorded

That most of Otto has been won

To you awarded.

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Edward Upward (who is called Allen Chalmers in
Lions and Shadows
) also visited Christopher in Berlin in 1930, toward the end of August. Edward was Christopher's closest heterosexual male friend—they had met at their public school and had become constant companions while up at Cambridge. Their friendship had grown out of their admiration for each other as writers. Since both of them were essentially novelists, they shared the experience of writing more completely than Christopher and Wystan ever did. From Christopher's point of view, Wystan's poems were like rabbits he produced from a hat; they couldn't be talked about before they appeared.