Christopher and His Kind (7 page)

Because of the difference in their sexual tastes, Edward and Christopher had tended to keep their sex lives in the background of their conversation, to be referred to with apologetic humor. They talked about homosexuality, of course; but Christopher was conscious that Edward trod carefully. When he spoke of “buggers” and “buggery”—these were Christopher's preferred epithets at that time—he did so in exactly the right tone of voice.

Here in Berlin, Edward felt himself to be on buggers' territory and obliged to tread more carefully than ever. He did his best to treat both the Hirschfeld Institute and Otto with respect. When they saw how good-looking Edward was, Karl Giese and his friends archly decided that he and Christopher must once have been lovers, despite Christopher's denials. As for Otto, he flirted with Edward because Edward was Christopher's friend. Christopher was uneasily aware that Otto's presence was spoiling their reunion. Yet his obsession was such that he couldn't bring himself to tell Otto to disappear until Edward's visit was over. He was afraid that Otto might disappear altogether.

Christopher had always regarded Edward as his literary mentor; and now it seemed that he might become Christopher's political mentor, too. For Edward was now a convert to Marxism, although he hadn't, as yet, joined the Communist Party. Christopher found no difficulty in responding to Communism romantically, as the brotherhood of man. But he was well aware that Edward's involvement wasn't romantic, it was altogether sane and serious; it was a change in his whole way of life. This change implied an austerity which both attracted and scared Christopher. He began to regard Edward as a conventionally pious Catholic might regard a friend who had made up his mind to become a priest.

Edward returned to England at the end of the month. On September 2, he went to see Kathleen, at her invitation. Formerly, she had disapproved of Edward as a subversive influence on Christopher in college. (She always thought in terms of “influences.”) But now she turned to Edward instinctively, no doubt feeling that, as a heterosexual, he couldn't be part of Berlin's influence on Christopher. (“That hateful Berlin,” she exclaimed in her diary, “and all it contains!”)

Edward reported on the meeting in a letter to Christopher:

I have betrayed everything, but very diplomatically. My only blunder was letting her know that you were paying for Otto. I was properly trapped. And I'm far from sure that I managed to convince her that buggery isn't unnatural. However, I insisted that you were more terrific than ever in England.

*   *   *

After Edward's visit, Christopher became increasingly aware of the kind of world he was living in. Here was the seething brew of history in the making—a brew which would test the truth of all the political theories, just as actual cooking tests the cookery books. The Berlin brew seethed with unemployment, malnutrition, stock-market panic, hatred of the Versailles Treaty, and other potent ingredients. On September 20, a new one was added; in the Reichstag elections, the Nazis won 107 seats as against their previous 12, and became for the first time a major political party.

*   *   *

At the beginning of October, Christopher moved out of his In den Zelten room and went to live with Otto and his family. The Nowaks had a flat in a slum tenement in the Hallesches Tor district: Simeonstrasse 4. (In
Goodbye to Berlin,
the name of the street is given as the Wassertorstrasse, the Water Gate Street, because Christopher thought it sounded more romantic. The Wassertorstrasse was actually a continuation of the Simeonstrasse.)

The Nowaks' flat consisted of a tiny kitchen, a living room, and a small bedroom. The living room contained two large double beds, a dining table, six chairs, and a sideboard. These pieces of furniture must have come from a larger home and a more prosperous period; there was barely space to move around them. The bedroom had two single beds in it.

Christopher's arrival caused a rearrangement of sleeping space which, characteristically, inconvenienced everybody in the family but Otto. Otto's elder brother, Lothar, had to give up his bed in the bedroom to Christopher and move into one of the double beds in the living room, sharing it with their twelve-year-old sister, Grete. Frau Nowak, who had been sleeping with Grete, had to share the other double bed with her husband. Frau Nowak probably didn't mind this—though she complained of Herr Nowak's snoring—because Christopher, as a lodger, was bringing extra money for his bed and board into the household. Herr Nowak certainly didn't mind; he drank enough beer every night to be able to sleep like a hog, regardless of his bedmate. Grete can't have minded, either; she was at an age when such changes are fun. Lothar probably did mind. He was a serious, hard-working boy of twenty who had been converted to National Socialism; he must therefore have disapproved of Christopher as a degenerate foreigner who had turned him out of his bed in order to have perverse sex with his brother.

This was one of the attic flats, so it overlooked the rooftops and got plenty of daylight, at least. The lower flats stared at each other across the deep pit of the courtyard and their gloom was perpetual. The Nowaks' chief disadvantage was that the roof of the building leaked and the rain water seeped through their ceiling. There was only one toilet to every four flats, and the Nowaks had to walk down a flight of stairs to reach theirs, unless they preferred to use the bucket in the kitchen. To wash properly—that is to say, not in the kitchen sink—they had to go to the nearest public baths.

When the kitchen stove was alight, the flat got smelly and stuffy; when it wasn't, you shivered. And, no matter what the temperature was, the sink stank. Because of the leaky roof and the overcrowding, the Nowaks had been told by the housing authorities that they mustn't go on living here. Dozens of other families in this district had been told the same thing; but there was nowhere for them to move to.

In
Goodbye to Berlin,
“Isherwood” goes to live with the Nowaks in the autumn of 1931, not 1930. There were two reasons for this falsification. First, from a structural point of view, it seemed better to introduce some of the more important characters—Sally Bowles, Frl. Schroeder, and her lodgers—before the Nowaks. Second, since “Isherwood” is not overtly homosexual, he has to be given another reason for knowing Otto and another motive for going to live with his family. In the novel, “Isherwood” meets Otto through an Englishman named Peter Wilkinson who is Otto's lover; and the meeting takes place merely because they happen to be staying at the same boarding house in a seaside village (Sellin) on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic. Then Peter goes back to England, having broken with Otto, and Otto and “Isherwood” return to Berlin—but not together.

In September 1931, the British government was forced to abandon the gold standard, thereby lowering the value of the pound in relation to foreign currencies and impoverishing British nationals who were living abroad on British money. In the novel, this gives “Isherwood” a respectable motive for going to live with the Nowaks; he becomes their lodger because he is poor, not because he wants to share a bedroom with Otto.

Christopher's In den Zelten room did cost a little more than he could easily afford. But when he left it, he didn't do so because he had suddenly become poorer; his move to the Nowaks' flat was due to Otto's coaxing. Otto had decided that it would be fun if they all lived together, and Christopher agreed; such slumming seemed a thrilling adventure. By the time the British pound fell, a year later, Christopher was almost able to balance his loss with the German money he was earning by giving English lessons. He could always have afforded something a little better than the Simeonstrasse.

Quite aside from the novelty of the experience, Christopher enjoyed living with the Nowaks. He soon became very fond of Frau Nowak. Her cheeks were flushed prettily and the big blue rings under her eyes made her look sick but strangely young for her age; she had tuberculosis. There was something touchingly girlish and gay and even naughty about her—she knew all about his relationship with Otto and, though she never referred to it, Christopher was sure that it didn't shock her. She loved the excitement of having him as a visitor. Christopher also got along well with Herr Nowak, a sturdy little furniture remover who called him Christoph and slapped him on the back. Grete he found tiresome but endearingly silly. He had done his best to make friends with Lothar and had, several times, tried addressing him with the familiar
du
(thou). Working-class men would call each other
du
even when they were strangers. Herr Nowak had said
du
to Christopher from the beginning, though Frau Nowak had told him that it was no way to speak to a gentleman. But Lothar had quietly snubbed Christopher by replying to him with the formal
Sie
(you). The flat was uncomfortable, certainly; there was nowhere to put anything down. But, as far as Christopher was concerned, the discomforts were easily bearable, like those of a camping trip which could be brought to an end whenever he wished.

I doubt if Christopher managed to do any writing while he was with the Nowaks. True, there is a passage in
Goodbye to Berlin:

Sunday was a long day at the Nowaks. There was nowhere to go in this wretched weather. We were all of us at home … I was sitting on the opposite side of the table, frowning at a piece of paper on which I had written: “But, Edward, can't you
see?
” I was trying to get on with my novel. It was about a family who lived in a large country house on unearned incomes and were very unhappy. They spent their time explaining to each other why they couldn't enjoy their lives; and some of the reasons—though I say it myself—were most ingenious. Unfortunately, I found myself taking less and less interest in my unhappy family; the atmosphere of the Nowak household was not very inspiring.

But here “Isherwood” is playing to the gallery. The novel he seems to be referring to,
The Memorial,
is described with willful inaccuracy—none of its characters are unhappy for “ingenious” reasons; they are bereaved and lonely and in need of love, as people often are on any social level. “Isherwood,” merely because he has moved to the Simeonstrasse, feels that he has broken with his bourgeois literary past. Anything written about the upper classes is simply not worth reading, he implies. The rich
ought
to be happy—that is the least they can be—since they are living on money they've stolen from the poor; if they are miserable, that's just too tiresome. In any case, their lives can never be meaningful, as the lives of the Nowaks are—and as “Isherwood” 's life is, now that he is living with them.

Such was a side effect of Christopher's political awakening. But Edward Upward can't be blamed for it. He was utterly incapable of such silliness. And Christopher himself knew better, despite his occasional lapses. Indeed, I remember how, in the later thirties, he used to tell people that he had written about the Nowaks in order to debunk the cult of worker worship as it was being practiced by many would-be revolutionary writers.

*   *   *

As it turned out, Christopher didn't stay much more than a month at the Simeonstrasse. His immediate reason for leaving was that Frau Nowak was being sent to a sanatorium; but he would have left soon in any case. Slumming had lost its novelty for him, and he and Otto were on bad terms. His next move, sometime in November, was to lodgings in the Admiralstrasse—number 38. This was in the neighboring district of Kottbusser Tor, also a slum. But Christopher now had a room to himself and was in comparative comfort. When he went to register with the police—you had to do this whenever you changed your address—they told him that he was the only Englishman living in that area. Christopher's vanity was tickled. He liked to imagine himself as one of those mysterious wanderers who penetrate the depths of a foreign land, disguise themselves in the dress and customs of its natives, and die in unknown graves, envied by their stay-at-home compatriots; like Waring in Browning's poem, or like Bierce, who vanished forever into Mexico.

In the early stages of our friendship, I was drawn to him by the adventurousness of his life. His renunciation of England, his poverty, his friendship, his independence, his work, all struck me as heroic. During months in the winter of 1930, when I went back to England, I corresponded with him in the spirit of writing letters to a Polar explorer.

Thus writes Stephen Spender, serio-comically, in his autobiography,
World within World.
Stephen had adopted Wystan and Christopher as his mentors while he was still at Oxford. Christopher had been eager to welcome Stephen as a pupil; he enjoyed preaching Lane-Layard to him and he briskly took charge of Stephen's problems as a writer: “Don't be put off by what any don says about Form. What does C.” (referring to an internationally famous scholar and critic) “know about Form?
I
tell you it is a good well-constructed piece of work. Isn't that enough for you?”

It was more than enough. Stephen responded in the spirit of wholehearted pupilship:

How many years will it take before I can emerge from the waters at the point where you have emerged. It is as though I had to
swim
that rotten Channel. I have always been trying to build tunnels under it. Now I give up. I see it has got to be swum.

After their meeting in Hamburg in the summer of 1930, Stephen began visiting Christopher in Berlin. Christopher let him have a glimpse of the rigors of the Simeonstrasse, and he was suitably impressed. (Writing to me more than forty years later, Stephen observed satirically: “This was your most heroic period of poverty and sacrificing everything to buying new suits for Otto.”) Stephen was naturally generous and also conscious that, compared to Christopher, he was well off. Christopher didn't discourage this idea. He accepted money from Stephen and occasionally from Edward. Sometimes he paid it back, sometimes he didn't. Stephen also showered him with books and other gifts.