Christopher and His Kind (18 page)

The description of life on St. Nicholas in
Down There on a Visit
is taken directly from Christopher's diary. But the Englishman called Geoffrey is largely fictitious and the visit of Maria Constantinescu never happened. Waldemar, the boy who arrives from Germany with “Isherwood,” isn't in the least a portrait of Heinz; he is a mere second edition of the character of Otto Nowak. “Isherwood” treats Waldemar very much as he treats Otto in
Goodbye to Berlin,
with condescending amusement and without any suggestion that they are seriously involved.

Christopher didn't fully realize, at first, what a great nervous strain he was under, what an effort he was making to endure this place. St. Nicholas was like nothing he had ever experienced before. He was accustomed to say that he loved sunshine, and so he did, at some northern resort with comfortable lodgings into which he could retreat when he had had enough. But now here he was, transplanted from Frl. Schroeder's dark flat to a tent in the midst of this blazing sun-smitten outdoors—so beautiful with its encircling sea and mountains, so nearly uninhabitable with its heat, dirt, bad food and worse water, stinging flies and yelling Greeks. How could he ever have imagined he could work on his novel here?

Francis, on the other hand, seemed far more at home than he had been in Germany. He still drank a great deal, but he got up early and was busy all day long. He was never bored. He flew often into rages—with Erwin or with his boy employees, or with the men who were building the house—but these cost him no loss of energy and were immediately forgotten. Once, when Francis was screaming at someone in Christopher's presence, Christopher was suddenly possessed by the hysteria of the scene. He had a cigarette in his mouth and, involuntarily, he inhaled its smoke. This was the first time he had ever inhaled—he didn't know he knew how to—although he had been a smoker for ten years. The lift of the intoxication made him feel as though he were levitating; for an instant, he almost lost consciousness. After this, he began to inhale regularly and thus became a nicotine addict for the next thirty years.

Christopher got very little work done on his novel during their stay. The writing he did was mostly in his diary, where he describes his inability to write, with gloomy relish. If the sun shines, he is too lazy. If it rains, he is too depressed. Or else he is disturbed by the noise made by the boys and the domestic animals and the gramophone. Or he is suffering from diarrhea or worried by rectal bleeding.

I have utterly no inducements to stop staring at my shoes. Eat an orange? I have already exceeded my ration. Turkish delight? There isn't any. A glass of bottled water? Well, it's all I have. But I can't open the bottle. The boys have started playing that gramophone. I have finished my only detective novel: The Greek Coffin Mystery. All those energetic Americans. They are an example to me. I must pull myself together. I must write. If I don't, I'm lost.

The chief effect of Christopher's effort to write was to make him hostile to the non-writers—that is, to everybody else on the island. They were all making his task harder for him, simply by being there—all, with the possible exception of Heinz.

Heinz had become very much at home on St. Nicholas. After the first few days, he had stopped complaining about the food. Christopher notes sourly that Heinz was “quite uncanny” at being able to get along with the boys and the workmen. They had “interminable” conversations by means of pocket dictionaries, and soon they were exchanging Greek and German words. Heinz had private jokes with each one of them. He knew instinctively when to pinch their cheeks. They shook their fingers in each other's faces, laughing and exclaiming: “Ah na
na,
ah na
na!
” over and over again. From time to time, they would utter whoops of joy.

Nevertheless, Heinz and Christopher shared a tent; at least a fragment of their daily life was lived apart from the others. And when Christopher was in a mood to make the best of the situation, he would dwell on this aspect of it:

Bathed early for the first time. A perfect deep blue morning. Our tent is very nice, with the looking glass and the suitcase on a wooden box and the table for my typewriter, with the wire gadget Heinz has made for holding papers. We have our own oranges and marmalade. I should like to live with Heinz in this tent always.

Heinz is my one support. He makes everything tolerable. When he swims he says “Zack!” “Zack!” like the crocodile in Peter Pan.

Occasionally they spent a whole day alone together, rowing and sailing, or scrambling up the nearest of the coastal mountains. Three times, Christopher took a holiday from the island and went by train with Heinz to Athens. There they saw the sights, including what Heinz persisted in calling the “Micropolis,” and enjoyed the food at a French restaurant and the comfort of a good hotel. It was a treat to make love without the interruptions common on St. Nicholas, where one of the boys or the builders was apt to stick his head into the tent at any moment.

July 8.
I've had enough of this.

I'm tired of writing this discreet literary little journal, with one eye on the landscape and the other on the Hogarth Press. Let's be frank.

(Idea for a novel or story: a diary which begins very literary, chatty, amusing. In the middle, the diarist makes an admission which changes the whole significance of what he has been describing.)

I am potentially jealous of everybody on the island—of everybody to whom Heinz makes himself in the slightest degree agreeable.

Christopher admits that he has been jealous of Erwin (who very possibly
had
been to bed with Heinz in Berlin, before Christopher met him), of Tasso (who was quite capable of going to bed with any human being and with many sorts of animal), and of Mitso, Francis's chauffeur, as he was grandly called. Mitso was a good-looking young man. He had a wife and children in the nearby mainland village, but sometimes he spent nights on the island with the most attractive of the builders—so it was probable that he fancied Heinz as well. Christopher had once vented his jealousy of Mitso by making a hypocritical scene with him about a rabbit he had caught and put in a wooden packing case. (The boys were often horribly cruel to animals, but this rabbit seemed quite happy, munching grass.)

I took the case and smashed it, letting the rabbit out, shouting in German (for Erwin's benefit), “Next time you torture animals don't let me see it!” I then threw the packing case at Mitso. This caused a great sensation among the builders. They couldn't understand it.

Christopher continues to describe the situation on July 8 as follows:

Today, Heinz announced his intention of going rabbit-shooting with Mitso. At supper, realizing that I was cross about the proposed shooting-expedition, he was awkward, embarrassed, inclined to be sulky. Several times he snatched my spoon because he wanted to use it himself.

“You seem to be in such a hurry, this evening,” I said. “I'm not in a bit of a hurry,” said Heinz, and added, with the perception of cruelty, “I wasn't thinking about the shooting at all. It's you who were thinking about it, and hoping I shouldn't go.”

Now he's with Mitso, and I know that, either tonight when he comes back or tomorrow morning, I shall have to crawl, pocket my pride, overlook his stupid clownish rudeness, because I simply daren't bring things to an issue. The discovery of my jealousy would put a weapon into his hands. I wonder if he dislikes me already, finds my demands upon his time boring and wearisome. And if I am jealous here, what shall I be in a big city where there will be men and women who will really want to take him away from me?

There is only one protection for me. The only happiness, or indeed sanity, is in a core of detachment. I am eaten up with jealousy and devoured by boredom. I wait in vain to hear Heinz's whistling drawing nearer or the sound of him spitting out the mucus from his squashed nose.

*   *   *

This sounds like the prelude to a crisis. But—such is the power of inertia—Christopher and Heinz remained on St. Nicholas for nearly two more months.

During that period, one of the boys stole money and fled to Athens; another boy raped a duck. An effort was made to kill the rats which swarmed over the inhabited part of the island; they ate all the poison, but there wasn't enough of it. One evening, a boatful of fishermen landed uninvited and began cooking their fish. They shouted for wine. There was nothing to do but give it to them and join in a party lasting till dawn. Francis and Erwin spent most evenings drinking out of doors at a small kitchen table. They would sit there through the downpour of a thunderstorm, covering their drinks with their hands but not caring that they themselves were soaked to the skin.

Meanwhile, despite delays caused by saint's days and orgies and the damage done when the builders carelessly used too much dynamite in blasting for stone, the house got built, and was ready to be painted and have its floors paved. Set in the wall over the front door, there was a fragment of an inscription from the tomb of Seti I at Luxor. Francis had found it lying on the ground there and had smuggled it out of Egypt. So now he was saying he could tell his visitors that his home was three thousand years old.

Christopher seldom was able to talk to Francis alone. He was either with Erwin or the boys, or he was arguing with the builders about the house. If he
was
alone, he was often too drunk to make sense. His manner with Christopher was always polite, even when they had a domestic argument. On one occasion, Christopher protested because the boy whose job it was to wash the plates after meals had sores on his hands, probably of syphilitic origin. Francis treated this exhibition of “fussiness” with good humor. Christopher said that he and Heinz would wash up themselves but that, if they did, they ought to be charged less for their board. To which Francis replied, through Erwin, that Christopher might stay on without paying anything, as his guest, but that there could be no question, on principle, of allowing him to pay
less.
Heinz wasn't included in this invitation; Francis was still hostile to him, regarding him as a servant who was living with the gentlefolk, under false pretenses.

August 14.
Things are bad with Heinz. For days he's been sulky or prepared to sulk. The slightest word sets him off. To the workmen he's as pleasant as he knows how. I'm very patient, but patience is wrong, even cowardly. I've probably got into the position of being the sink down which his bad moods drain off. We all have such a sink but I don't want to be it. I must seriously face the idea of leaving him.

August 16.
We started talking in the morning, a fatal trick. Heinz became sullen, as he always does when I talk personalities. Finally he said that it would be better if we parted and he returned to Berlin. I asked him to reconsider it till after lunch. After lunch I talked to him again and shed tears, and finally he said: Well, all right, I'll stay with you, but we'll go to Paris at once. Since then we haven't spoken to each other. My own feelings and his are both in such a muddle that it's better not. He is quite astonishingly muddle-headed, a confusion of resentments. I suppose we shall have to part, but it shan't be till I want to. I must leave him, as I left Otto, in my own time.

When someone told Christopher he was a monster—it happened now and then—he would protest, and feel secretly flattered. The word sounds rather romantic. But here I am confronted by the reality of Christopher's monster behavior—his tears followed by cold calculation—and it shocks me, it hurts my self-esteem, even after all these years! The more reason for recording it.

From August 24 to August 28 they were in Athens, celebrating Christopher's birthday. His only comment is that the weekend was “nice” and that “I spent my birthday very pleasantly, chiefly in bed.” This, however, was merely an armistice.

September 6.
About lunchtime, in our tent, I deliberately raked the embers of a row which Heinz and I had three days ago, over the boat. It was so simple, like draughts. I moved. Heinz moved. I moved. Until Heinz had preposterously demanded that I should buy him a boat. “No, of course I won't.” “You won't?” “No.” “Then I shall go to Berlin.” I shrugged my shoulders.

Our departure was semi-secret. I didn't want Erwin's attempts at reconciliation or the workmen's demonstrations. We were rowed away from the island just after sunset. We spent the night in the hotel at Chalkis.

I suppose Christopher did at least say goodbye to Francis, who would certainly never have attempted a reconciliation or even politely urged them to stay. He was lonely, amidst this crowd of employees and hangers-on. (He told Stephen Spender, who visited him in 1936, that not one of his boys had heard of Homer.) But his pride prevented him from admitting to his loneliness. All he probably said to Christopher was: “Have a nice journey, lovey.”

If Christopher and Heinz didn't say goodbye to Erwin on this occasion, they were fated never to do so. Erwin returned to Germany several years later. Someone told me that he was arrested by the Nazis and died in a concentration camp, but I haven't been able to confirm this. I only know that he is dead now.

September 7.
We came to Athens by the early train. I'd counted on cashing a check with a friend of Francis, but he wasn't in Athens. So it was only possible to raise enough money for Heinz's ticket to Berlin. He was to have left this evening. But we arrived too late at lunchtime to book a sleeping-berth for him. After lunch, Heinz said: “If you give me six thousand drachmas, I'll stay with you.” I said: “Certainly not. I'm not going to buy you.” So we went back to the travel bureau. All the sleeping-berths were booked. “It's a portent,” I said.

So Heinz has said he'll come with me on the steamer to Marseille, starting from here on the 9th. He's sitting about with a face like death and won't speak. I shall have to get rid of him as soon as I'm in Paris.