Christopher and His Kind (12 page)

Amidst these doubts, Christopher was reading about Lenin with reverence and enthusiasm. Hence, he was capable of asking Stephen for the Mirsky book, alluding to “Bolshevik crooks,” and decorating his signature with a hammer and sickle, all in the same letter. He was what party dialectitions used, in those days, to call “unclear.”

*   *   *

That autumn, Jean got herself a theatrical job—a tiny one, but in a tremendous production: Max Reinhardt's
Tales of Hoffmann,
which opened on November 28. This was one of the last great spectacles of the pre-Hitler Berlin theater and, in a sense, Reinhardt's farewell to it. Christopher was to meet him and his family in their Californian exile, during the war.

Of all the opera's splendid stage pictures, the one most vivid in my memory is that of the Grand Canal in Venice, with a gondola traveling down it. In order to make the gondola appear to move, Reinhardt moved the set itself. The huge palace fronts swung slowly around as the gondola rounded a curve of the canal. The movement of the palaces caused a profound mechanical rumbling which was sometimes louder than the music but which nevertheless seemed part of the intended effect. It was magnificently sinister, like the tread of doom.

In the course of the ball scene at the Venetian palace of the courtesan Giulietta, several pairs of lovers were carried onto the stage. Each pair reclined on a litter, locked in each other's arms. These lovers were merely extras and few members of the audience can have paid any attention to their embraces, once they had made their entrance, for a dazzling corps de ballet was performing in the middle of the stage. But Christopher watched one pair of lovers intently, through opera glasses, until the end of the scene. Even so, he couldn't be sure if what Jean had told him was true—that she had sex with her partner in full view of the audience at every single performance.

*   *   *

The Memorial
was published on February 17, 1932. There were a few really favorable notices. The best of them was in the
Granta.
I remember how one reviewer remarked that he had at first thought the novel contained a disproportionately large number of homosexual characters but had decided, on further reflection, that there
were
a lot more homosexuals about, nowadays.

*   *   *

That spring, Francis returned to Germany. Soon after their reunion, he told Christopher that he didn't want to stay cooped up in Berlin. He planned to take a house in the country, drink less, spend a lot of time out of doors, go to bed early, and be healthy. He urged Christopher to join him in this experiment. Christopher promised to think it over—he was inclined to say yes, for several reasons. Seeing Francis again, he felt a renewed affection for him; there was no special person to keep him in Berlin, now that his affair with Otto had at last cooled off; living with Francis would be far cheaper than the Nollendorfstrasse, since he would only have to pay for his food; also, he had started work on an autobiographical book (which would one day become
Lions and Shadows
) and he knew that the dullness of the country would make it easier for him to concentrate on it.

Francis had already engaged Erwin Hansen, Karl Giese's friend from the Institute, as his cook and housekeeper and told him to find someone to help with the housework. So Erwin hired a boy named Heinz. On March 13, shortly before Francis, Erwin, and Heinz were due to leave for the country, Christopher and Heinz met. Meeting Heinz was what finally decided Christopher to go with them.

It must surely have been Erwin who had arranged that they should live at Mohrin. Perhaps he had friends there. Perhaps his friends even owned the house which Francis was to rent. Only some such personal motives could explain his choice of that particular village out of so many almost identical others. Mohrin was northeast of Berlin, near what was then the Polish frontier. (Now it is inside Poland and is spelled Mory
ń
.)

As a very young man, Christopher had read Turgenev and Chekhov and had yearned romantically for the steppe, the immense land ocean which stretches east, unbounded, to the Ural Mountains and then endlessly on across Siberia. At Mohrin, he was actually on the edge of that ocean. But the ocean seemed less inspiring, here, than it had seemed in London, ten years earlier. God, it was flat.

All the houses of all these villages had double windows, to keep out the cold of the long, terrible winters. Now the spring was beginning—a short poignant episode of awareness, between the numbness of the snow and the stupor of the summer heat. In the spring you might become fully conscious for a few weeks, look around you and decide to leave this village forever—or fall in love with someone you had known all your life and stay here with him until you died. The poplars had new leaves and the lilac was coming into bloom. The ice was cracking on the Mohrinersee, the dull little local lake; it would be stored in cellars to refrigerate food during the hot months ahead. Showers of rain followed each other. The snow had melted into mud. You could work at home and then walk around the lake, and then have a few drinks at the inn, and then come back home. Or you could omit the lake, or the inn. Or you could drink first and walk later. That was the extent of your choice. Whenever you stepped out of doors, after the first week, it was with the certainty that you would never meet anybody whose face you didn't recognize. This was a place where, to use a favorite expression of Frl. Thurau's, “the foxes say goodnight to each other.”

As soon as Francis realized that Christopher and Heinz were going to bed together, he announced that Christopher must pay half of Heinz's wages. Christopher agreed to this with more amusement than indignation; it was the way Francis was. He said nothing to Heinz. But Erwin, who thought that Francis was being stingy and who was anyhow a bit of a mischief-maker, told Heinz what had happened. Heinz went outside the house and burst into tears. It was his declaration of love.

Christopher had no hesitation in falling in love with Heinz. It seemed most natural to him that they two should be drawn together. Heinz had found his elder brother; Christopher had found someone emotionally innocent, entirely vulnerable and uncritical, whom he could protect and cherish as his very own. He was deeply touched and not in the least apprehensive. He wasn't yet aware that he was letting himself in for a relationship which would be far more serious than any he had had in his life.

Heinz was a slim boy of about seventeen with large brown eyes. His nose had been broken with a brick wielded by one of his age mates when he was still a child; it had a funny but attractive dip in the middle. Heinz had some difficulty in breathing through it. This nose, together with his big protruding lips, round head, and close-curling hair, gave him a somewhat Negroid appearance. He was delighted when Christopher called him Nigger Boy, and he used to repeat the nickname to himself, chuckling. His face was young and good-natured, with a wide grin, when he was happy. When he wasn't, it became older and you saw the grim sullenness of the peasant. He hadn't at all the air of a city dweller. He only looked at ease dressed in working clothes, a thick magenta sweater and a cap with a shiny peak, which he wore on one side of his head; in his best suit, he seemed disguised and self-conscious.

Heinz's father was alive but Heinz seldom saw him. He had no brothers or sisters, no girlfriend, no particular boyfriends. He lived with his grandmother, an old lady who looked exactly as he would look in his seventies. The grandmother had a basement flat which she kept so hot that you began to sweat when you entered it. If anyone suggested opening a window, she would growl, “I don't heat for the street.”

*   *   *

Francis soon got tired of Mohrin and began going off to Berlin for long weekends, taking Erwin with him. Thus Christopher found himself keeping house with Heinz. This was a kind of happiness which he had never experienced before; he now realized that he had always desired it. Unlike Otto, or any of the boys he had known from the bars, Heinz actually enjoyed work for work's sake. No lover, however literary, could have shared Christopher's work with him. But Heinz did the next best thing; while Christopher wrote, Heinz collaborated with him indirectly by sweeping the floors, tidying up the garden, cooking the meals. Whenever Christopher had written while Otto was nearby, he had been conscious of Otto's restlessness and boredom and had felt responsible for it. His effort to go on writing became an assertion of his will against Otto's, although Otto was probably unaware that he was interfering with Christopher's work; he merely wanted attention. As for Heinz, he was certainly quite unaware how much he was helping Christopher. This odd pair, enjoying these few days of privacy and occupation with pauses for eating and making love, were absurdly like the most ordinary happily married heterosexual couple.

Then Francis and Erwin would return, bringing with them one or more boys from the Berlin bars. By now, Francis and Heinz had taken a rooted dislike to each other. Francis found fault with Heinz at every opportunity; Heinz became sullen in his presence. Christopher retaliated by being unpleasant to Francis's boys. This didn't create any serious hostility between Francis and Christopher; each understood the other's motives too well. Francis had asked Christopher to come with him to Mohrin on the assumption that their life there would be a dialogue between two intimate friends, with Erwin and other employees kept in the background, on an inferior level. Christopher had violated what Francis regarded as an unspoken agreement by treating Heinz as an intimate. Francis felt betrayed, and Christopher didn't blame him.

As the weeks passed, Francis and his household caused a scandal in the village, merely by being themselves. Someone denounced them to the police. Erwin the diplomatist prevented an official inquiry from being made. But it became obvious that they would all have to leave before long.

Meanwhile, Stephen Spender arrived in Berlin and came out to pay them a short visit. Christopher had tried hard to discourage him from doing this, but Stephen had seemed unconscious of Christopher's attitude. He hated having Stephen and Stephen's camera invade the scene of his love affair with Heinz. Clicking that camera, Stephen seemed to mock and expose you, even while he flattered you by his piercing curiosity. Jealously, almost superstitiously, Christopher feared that Stephen would somehow alter his image in Heinz's eyes and make Heinz unable to go on loving him. (It was Stephen, not Christopher, who ought to have said, “I am a camera,” in those days. Now we survivors can feel nothing but gratitude to him for his tireless clicking. He saved so many bits of our youth for us.)

Stephen soon left Mohrin, however, and there was no open quarrel. When he had gone, Christopher felt immediate relief from his own fears and aversion. He even regretted the loss of Stephen's lively company and wrote to him in the normal tone of friendship, describing the humors and horrors of country life. In view of Christopher's ambivalent attitude, these letters now ring shockingly false.

Early in July, they were together again, back at Sellin on Ruegen Island, with Heinz and with Stephen's younger brother, Humphrey. During this holiday, there was less tension between them—largely because of Humphrey's presence. Humphrey was a charming, easygoing, friendly young man. Like Stephen, he was a photographer—soon to become professional—but he was definitely not a camera. Christopher never thought of him as a menace to his relationship with Heinz. Humphrey would never invade anybody's privacy.

He did, however, once ask Christopher an unusual personal question; it was while the two of them were out walking alone together. Humphrey said suddenly, “You speak German so well—tell me, why don't you ever use the subjunctive mood?” Christopher had to admit that he didn't know how to. In the days when he had studied German, he had left the subjunctive to be dealt with later, since it wasn't absolutely essential and he was in a hurry. By this time, he could hop through the language without its aid, like an agile man with only one leg. But now Christopher set himself to master the subjunctive. Very soon, he had done so. Proud of this accomplishment, he began showing it off whenever he talked: “Had it not been for him, I should never have asked myself what I would do if they were to—” etc., etc. Humphrey was much amused.

SIX

On August 4, 1932, Christopher began another visit to England. It was to be made memorable by some old friends and by some new ones. His first few days there were spent chiefly with Jean Ross—who had now left Germany for good—or with Hector Wintle, his friend since their schooldays at Repton and, for a short while, his fellow medical student. (Hector is called Philip Lindsay in
All the Conspirators
and Philip Linsley in
Lions and Shadows;
the slight alteration was made because some libel-conscious lawyer feared that the repetition of the original surname might annoy the novelist Philip Lindsay. As far as I know, Mr. Lindsay neither read Christopher nor cared what he wrote.)

Christopher had grown accustomed to thinking of Hector as one of his least fortunate friends. For years, he had had to pore over textbooks, squeeze through examinations, and toil at St. Thomas's Hospital amidst the squalor of moaning, messy patients. His heart had been weak, ever since an early attack of rheumatic fever, and he had been told that the twinges he felt in his fingers were symptoms of progressive rheumatoid arthritis which would probably cripple him. Hector was no tightlipped martyr. He complained unceasingly and most amusingly of his bad health, his lack of money, and his hatred of studying medicine. He was one of those rare beings who could make you thoroughly enjoy his misfortunes even while you were sympathizing with him. Christopher would listen to him by the hour and always feel the better for it; Hector's plight made him grateful for Uncle Henry's allowance and for his own irresponsible life. And Hector's perseverance was inspiring. He had spent all his spare time steadily writing novels or pursuing girls. The novels, so far, had always been rejected; Hector, himself, had seldom been. The novels were well written but a bit forbidding; Hector was accessible, charming, and full of suave, plump sex appeal.