The Berlin Stories (33 page)

I accepted them gratefully. What else could I do? Clive had corrupted us utterly. It was understood that he was going to put up the money to launch Sally upon a stage career. He often spoke of this, in a thoroughly nice way, as though it were a very trivial matter, to be settled, without fuss, between friends. But no sooner had he touched on the subject than his attention seemed to wander off again—his thoughts were as easily distracted as those of a child. Sometimes Sally was very hard put to it, I could see, to hide her impatience. “Just leave us alone for a bit now, darling,” she would whisper to me, “Clive and I are going to talk business.” But however tactfully Sally tried to bring him to the point, she never quite succeeded. When I rejoined them, half an hour later, I would find Clive smiling and sipping his whisky; and Sally also smiling, to conceal her extreme irritation.

“I adore him,” Sally told me, repeatedly and very solemnly, whenever we were alone together. She was intensely earnest in believing this. It was like a dogma in a newly adopted religious creed: Sally adores Clive. It is a veiy solemn undertaking to adore a millionaire. Sally’s features began to assume, with increasing frequency, the rapt expression of the theatrical nun. And indeed, when Clive, with his charming vagueness, gave a particularly flagrant professional beggar a twenty-mark note, we would exchange glances of genuine awe. The waste of so much good money affected us both like something inspired, a kind of miracle.

There came an afternoon when Clive seemed more nearly sober than usual. He began to make plans. In a few days we were all three of us to leave Berlin, for good. The Orient Express would take us to Athens. Thence, we should fly to Egypt. From Egypt to Marseilles. From Marseilles, by boat to South America. Then Tahiti. Singapore. Japan. Clive pronounced the names as though they had been stations on the Wannsee railway, quite as a matter of course: he had been there already. He knew it all. His matter-of-fact boredom gradually infused reality into the preposterous conversation. After all, he could do it. I began seriously to believe that he meant to do it. With a mere gesture of his wealth, he could alter the whole course of our lives.

What would become of us? Once started, we should never go back. We could never leave him. Sally, of course, he would marry. I should occupy an ill-defined position: a kind of private secretary without duties. With a flash of vision, I saw myself ten years hence, in flannels and black and white shoes, gone heavier round the jowl and a bit glassy, pouring out a drink in the lounge of a Californian hotel.

“Come and cast an eye at the funeral,” Clive was saying.

“What funeral, darling?” Sally asked, patiently. This was a new kind of interruption.

“Why, say, haven’t you noticed it?” Clive laughed. “It’s a most elegant funeral. It’s been going past for the last hour.”

We all three went out on to the balcony of Clive’s room. Sure enough, the street below was full of people. They were burying Hermann Müller. Ranks of pale steadfast clerks, governmenFöfficials, trade union secretaries—the whole drab weary pageant of Prussian Social Democracy—trudged past under their banners towards the silhouetted arches of the Brandenburger Tor, from which the long black streamers stirred slowly in an evening breeze.

“Say, who was this guy, anyway?” asked Clive, looking down. “I guess he must have been a big swell?”

“God knows,” Sally answered, yawning. “Look, Clive darling, isn’t it a marvellous sunset?”

She was quite right. We had nothing to do with those Germans down there, marching, or with the dead man in the coffin, or with the words on the banners. In a few days, I thought, we shall have forfeited all kinship with ninety-nine per cent, of the population of the world, with the men and women who earn their living, who insure their lives, who are anxious about the future of their children. Perhaps in the Middle Ages people felt like this, when they believed themselves to have sold their souls to the Devil. It was a curious, exhilarating, not unpleasant sensation: but, at the same time, I felt slightly scared. Yes, I said to myself, I’ve done it, now. I am lost.

Next morning, we arrived at the hotel at the usual time. The porter eyed us, I thought, rather queerly.

“Whom did you wish to see, Madam?”

The question seemed so extraordinary that we both laughed.

“Why, number 365, of course,” Sally answered. “Who did you think? Don’t you know us by this time?”

“I’m afraid you can’t do that, Madam. The gentleman in 365 left early this morning.”

“Left? You mean he’s gone out for the day? That’s funny! What time will he be back?”

“He didn’t say anything about coming back, Madam. He was travelling to Budapest.”

As we stood there goggling at him, a waiter hurried up with a note.

“Dear Sally and Chris,” it said, “I can’t stick this darned town any longer, so am off. Hoping to see you sometime, Clive.”

“(These are in case I forgot anything.)”

In the envelope were tiire^_hundxediQarkjaotes. These, the fading flowers, Sally’s four pairs of shoes and two hats ( bought in Dresden) and my six shirts were our total assets from Clive’s visit. At first, Sally was very angry. Then we both began to laugh: “Well, Chris, I’m afraid we’re not much use as gold-diggers, are we, darling?”

We spent most of the day discussing whether Clive’s departure was a premeditated trick. I was inclined to think it wasn’t. I imagined him leaving every new town and every new set of acquaintances in much the same sort of way. I sympathised with him, a good deal.

Then came the question of what was to be done with the money. Sally decided to put by two hundred and fifty marks for some new clothes: fifty marks we would blow that evening.

But blowing the fifty marks wasn’t as much fun as we’d imagined it would be. Sally felt ill and couldn’t eat the wonderful dinner we’d ordered. We were both depressed.

“You know, Chris, I’m beginning to think that men are always going to leave me. The more I think about it, the more men I remember who have. It’s ghastly, re, ally.”

“I’ll never leave you, Sally.”

“Won’t you, darling?… But seriously, I believe I’m a sort of Ideal Woman, if you know what I mean. I’m the sort of woman who can take men away from their wives, but I could never keep anybody for long. And that’s because I’m the type which every man imagines he wants, until he gets me; and then he finds he doesn’t really, after all.”

“Well, you’d rather be that than the Ugly Duckling with the Heart of Gold, wouldn’t you?”

“… I could kick myself, the way I behaved to Clive. I ought never to have bothered him about money, the way I did. I expect he thought I was just a common little whore, like all the others. And I really did adore him—in a way… If I’d married him, I’d have made a man out of him. I’d have got him to give up drinking.”

“You set him such a good example.”

We both laughed.

“The old swine might at least have left me with a decent cheque.”

“Never mind, darling. There’s more where he came from.”

“I don’t care,” said Sally. “I’m sick of being a whore. I’ll never look at a man with money again.”

Next morning, Sally felt very ill. We both put it down to the drink. She stayed in bed the whole morning and when she got up she fainted. I wanted her to see a doctor straight away, but she wouldn’t. About tea-time, she fainted again and looked so bad afterwards that Frl. Schroeder and I sent for a doctor without consulting her at all.

The doctor, when he arrived, stayed a long time. Frl. Schroeder and I sat waiting in the living-room to hear his diagnosis. But, very much to our surprise, he left the flat suddenly, in a great hurry, without even looking in to wish us good afternoon. I went at once to Sally’s room. Sally was sitting up in bed, with a rather fixed grin on her face: “Well, Christopher darling, I’ve been made an April Fool of.”

“What do you mean?”

“He says I’m going to have a baby.”

Sally tried to laugh.

“Oh my God!”

“Don’t look so scared, darling! I’ve been more or less expecting it, you know.”

“It’s Klaus’s, I suppose?”

IYeS”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Not have it, of course.” Sally reached for a cigarette. I sat stupidly staring at my shoes.

“Will the doctor…”

“No, he won’t. I asked him straight out. He was terribly shocked. I said: ‘My dear man, what do you imagine would happen to the unfortunate child if it was born? Do I look as if I’d make a good mother?’ “

“And what did he say to that?”

“He seemed to think it was quite beside the point. The only thing which matters to him is his professional reputation.”

“Well then, we’ve got to find someone without a professional reputation, that’s all.”

“I should think,” said Sally, “we’d better ask Frl. Schroeder.”

So Frl. Schroeder was consulted. She took it very well: she was alarmed but extremely practical. Yes, she knew of somebody. A friend of a friend’s friend had once had difficulties. And the doctor was a fully qualified man, very clever indeed. The only trouble was, he might be rather expensive.

“Thank goodness,” Sally interjected, “we haven’t spent all that swine Clive’s money!”

“I must say, I think Klaus ought–—”

“Look here, Chris. Let me tell you this once for all: if I catch you writing to Klaus about this business, I’ll never forgive you and I’ll never speak to you again!”

“Oh, very well… Of course I won’t. It was just a suggestion, that’s all.”

I didn’t like the doctor. He kept stroking and pinching Sally’s arm and pawing her hand. However, he seemed the right man for the job. Sally was to go into his private nursing-home as soon as there was a vacancy for her. Everything was perfectly official and above-board. In a few polished sentence, the dapper little doctor dispelled the least whiff of sinister illegality. Sally’s state of health, he explained, made it quite impossible for her to undergo the risks of childbirth: there would be a certificate to that effect. Needless to say, the certificate would cost a lot of money. So would the nursing-home and so would the. operation itself. The doctor wanted two hundred and fifty marks down before he would make any arrangements at all. In the end, we beat him down to two hundred. Sally wanted the extra fifty, she explained to me later, to get some new nightdresses.

At last, it was spring. The cafés were putting up wooden platforms on the pavement and the ice-cream shops were opening, with their rainbow-wheels. We drove to the nursing-home in an open taxi. Because of the lovely weather, Sally was in better spirits than I had seen her in for weeks. But Frl. Schroeder, though she bravely tried to smile, was on the verge of tears. “The doctor isn’t a Jew, I hope?” Frl. Mayr asked me sternly. “Don’t you let one of those filthy Jews touch her. They always try to get a job of that kind, the beasts!”

Sally had a nice room, clean and cheerful, with a balcony. I called there again in the evening. Lying in bed without her make-up, she looked years younger, like a little girl: “Hullo, darling… They haven’t killed me yet, you see. But they’ve been doing their best to… Isn’t this a funny place?… I wish that pig Klaus could see me… This is what comes of not understanding his mind.. ‘..”

She was a bit feverish and laughed a great deal. One of the nurses came in for a moment, as if looking for something, and went out again almost immediately.

“She was dying to get a peep at you,” Sally explained. “You see, I told her you were the father. You don’t mind, do you darling…”

“Not at all. It’s a compliment.”

“It makes everything so much simpler. Otherwise, if there’s no one, they think it so odd. And I don’t care for being sort of looked down on and pitied as the poor betrayed girl who gets abandoned by her lover. It isn’t particularly flattering for me, is it? So I told her we were most terribly in love but fearfully hard up, so that we couldn’t afford to marry, and how we dreamed of the time when we’d both be rich and famous and then we’d have a family of ten, just to make up for this one. The nurse was awfully touched, poor girl. In fact, she wept. Tonight, when she’s on duty, she’s going to show me pictures of her young man. Isn’t it sweet?”

Next day, Frl. Schroeder and I went round to the nursing • home together. We found Sally lying flat, with the bedclothes up to her chin: “Oh, hullo, you two! Won’t you sit down? What time is it?” She turned uneasily in bed and rubbed her eyes; “Where did all these flowers come from?”

“We brought them.”

“How marvellous of you!” Sally smiled vacantly. “Sorry to be such a fool to-day… It’s this bloody chloroform… My head’s full of it.”

We only stayed a few minutes. On the way home Frl. Schroeder was terribly upset: “Will you believe it, Herr Issyvoo, I couldn’t take it more to heart if it was my own daughter? Why, when I see the poor child suffering like that, I’d rather it was myself lying there in her place—I would indeed!”

Next day Sally was much better. We all went to visit her: Frl. Schroeder, Frl. Mayr, Bobby and Fritz. Fritz, of course, hadn’t the faintest idea what had really happened. Sally, he had been told, was being operated upon for a small internal ulcer. As always is the way with people when they aren’t in the know, he made all kinds of unintentional and startlingly apt references to storks, gooseberry-bushes, perambulators and babies generally; and even recounted a special new item of scandal about a well-known Berlin society lady who was said to have undergone a recent illegal operation. Sally and I avoided each other’s eyes.