The Berlin Stories (38 page)

“Let’s go to the other beach,” urged Otto. “It’s so dull here. There’s hardly anyone about.”

“You can go if you like,” Peter retorted with angry sarcasm: Tm afraid I should be rather out of place. I had a grandmother who was partly Spanish.”

But the little doctor won’t let us alone. Our opposition and more or less openly expressed dislike seem actually to fascinate him. Otto is always betraying us into his hands. One day, when the doctor was speaking enthusiastically about Hitler, Otto said, “It’s no good your talking like that to Christoph, Herr Doktor. He’s a communist!”

This seemed positively to delight the doctor. His ferrety blue eyes gleamed with triumph. He la, id his hand affectionately on my shoulder.

“But you can’t be a communist! You tantl”

“Why can’t I?” I asked coldly, moving away. I hate him to touch me.

“Because there isn’t any such thing as communism. It’s just an hallucination. A mental disease. People only imagine that they’re communists. They aren’t really.”

“What are they, then?”

But he wasn’t listening. He fixed me with his triumphant, ferrety smile.

“Five years ago I used to think as you do. But my work at the clinic has convinced me that communism is a mere hallucination. What people need is discipline, self-control. I can tell you this as a doctor. I know it from my own experience.”

This morning we were all together in my room, ready to start out to bathe. The atmosphere was electric, because Peter and Otto were still carrying on an obscure quarrel which they had begun before breakfast, in their own bedroom. I was turning over the pages of a book, not paying much attention to them. Suddenly Peter slapped Otto hard on both cheeks. They closed immediately and staggered grappling about the room, knocking over the chairs. I looked on, getting out of their way as well as I could. It was funny, and, at the same time, unpleasant, because rage made their faces strange and ugly. Presently Otto got Peter 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. I knew that Otto was glad to have me there, because my presence was an extra humiliation for Peter. So I laughed, as though the whole thing were a joke, and went out of the room. I walked through the woods to Baabe, and bathed from the beach beyond. I felt I didn’t want to see either of them again for several hours.

If Otto wishes to humiliate Peter, Peter in his different way, also wishes to humiliate Otto. He wants to force Otto into making a certain kind of submission to his will, and this submission Otto refuses instinctively to make. Otto is naturally and healthily selfish, like an animal. If there are two chairs in a room, he will take the more comfortable one without hesitation, because it never even occurs to him to consider Peter’s comfort. Peter’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 Peter immediately sees a challenge which he dare not refuse to accept. I suppose that—given their two natures—there is no possible escape from this situation. Peter 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.

The really destructive feature of their relationship is its inherent quality of boredom. It is quite natural for Peter often to feel bored with Otto—they have scarcely a single interest in common—but Peter, for sentimental reasons, will never admit that this is so. When Otto, who has no such motives for pretending, says, “It’s so dull here!” I invariably see Peter wince and looked pained. Yet Otto is actually far less often bored than Peter himself; he finds Peter’s company genuinely amusing, and is quite glad to be with him most of the day. Often, when Otto has been chattering rubbish for an hour without stopping, I can see that Peter really longs for him to be quiet and go away. But to admit this would be, in Peter’s eyes, a total defeat, so he only laughs and rubs his hands, tacitly appealing to me to support him in his pretence of finding Otto inexhaustibly delightful and funny.

On my way back through the woods, after my bathe, I saw the ferrety little blond doctor advancing to meet me. It was too late to turn back. I said “Good Morning” as politely and coldly as possible. The doctor was dressed in running-shorts and a sweater; he explained that he had been taking a “Waldlauf.”

“But I think I shall turn back now,” he added. “Wouldn’t you like to run with me a little?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said rashly, “you see, I twisted my ankle a bit yesterday.”

I could have bitten my tongue out as I saw the gleam of triumph in his eyes. “Ah, you’ve sprained your ankle? Please let me look at it!” Squirming with dislike, I had to submit to his prodding fingers. “But it is nothing, I assure you. You have no cause for alarm.”

As we walked the doctor began to question me about Peter and Otto, twisting his head to look up at me, as he delivered each sharp, inquisitive little thrust. He was fairly consumed with curiosity.

“My work in the clinic has taught me that it is no use trying to help this type of boy. Your friend Peter is very generous and very well meaning, but he makes a great mistake. This type of boy always reverts. From a scientific point of view, I find him exceedingly interesting.”

As though he were about to say something specially momentous, the doctor suddenly stood still in the middle of the path, paused a moment to engage my attention, and smilingly announced: “He has a criminal head!”

“And you think that people with criminal heads should be left to become criminals?”

“Certainly not. I believe in discipline. These boys ought to be put into labour-camps.”

“And what are you going to do with them when you’ve got them there? You say that they can’t be altered, anyhow, so I suppose you’d keep them locked up for the rest of their lives?”

The doctor laughed delightedly, as though this were a joke against himself which he could, nevertheless, appreciate. He laid a caressing hand on my arm: “You are an idealist! Do not imagine that I don’t understand your point of view. But it is unscientific, quite unscientific. You and your friend do not understand such boys as Otto. I understand them. Every week, one or two such boys come to my clinic, and I must operate on them for adenoids, or mastoid, or poisoned tonsils. So, you see, I know them through and through!”

“I should have thought it would be more accurate to say you knew their throats and ears.”

Perhaps my German wasn’t quite equal to rendering the sense of this last remark. At all events, the doctor ignored it completely. “I know this type of boy very well,” he repeated, “It is a bad degenerate type. You cannot make anything out of these boys. Their tonsils are almost invariably diseased.”

There are perpetual little rows going on between Peter and Otto, yet I cannot say that I find living with them actually unpleasant. Just now, I am very much taken up ‘with my new novel. Thinking about it, I often go out for long walks, alone. Indeed, I find myself making more and more frequent excuses to leave them to themselves; and this is selfish, because, when I am with them, I can often choke off the beginnings of a quarrel by changing the subject or making a joke. Peter, I know, resents my desertions. “You’re quite an ascetic,” he said maliciously the other day, “always withdrawing for your contemplations.” Once, when I was sitting in a café near the pier, listening to the band, Peter and Otto came past. “So this is where you’ve been hiding!” Peter exclaimed. I saw that, for the moment, he really disliked me.

One evening, we were all walking up the main street, which was crowded with summer visitors. Otto said to Peter, with his most spiteful grin: “Why must you always look in the same direction as I do?” This was surprisingly acute, for, whenever Otto turned his head to star# at a girl, Peter’s eyes mechanically followed his glance with instinctive jealousy. We passed the photographer’s window, in which, every day, the latest groups snapped by the beach camera-men are displayed. Otto paused to examine one of the new pictures with great attention, as though its subject were particularly attractive. I saw Peter’s lips contract. He was struggling with himself, but he couldn’t resist his own jealous curiosity—he stopped too. The photograph was of a fat old man with a long beard, waving a Berlin flag. Otto, seeing that his trap had been successful, laughed maliciously.

Invariably, after supper, Otto goes dancing at the Kurhaus or the café by the lake. He no longer bothers to ask Peter’s permission to do this; he has established the right to have his evenings to himself. Peter and I generally go out too, into the village. We lean over the rail of the pier for a long time without speaking, staring down at the cheap jewellery of the Kurhaus lights reflected in the black water, each busy with his own thoughts. Sometimes we go into the Bavarian café and Peter gets steadily drunk—his stern, Puritan mouth contracting slightly with distaste as he raises the glass to his lips. I say nothing. There is too much to say. Peter, I know, wants me to make some provocative remark about Otto which will give him the exquisite relief of losing his temper. I don’t, and we drink—keeping up a desultory conversation about books and concerts and plays. Later, when we are returning home, Peter’s footsteps will gradually quicken until, as we enter the house, he leaves me and runs upstairs to his bedroom. Often we don’t get back till half-past twelve or a quarter to one, but it is very seldom that we find Otto already there.

Down by the railway station, there is a holiday home for children from the Hamburg slums. Otto has got to know one of the teachers from this home, and they go out dancing together nearly every evening. Sometimes the girl, with her little troop of children, comes marching past the house. The children glance up at the windows and, if Otto happens to be looking out, indulge in precocious jokes. They nudge and pluck at their young teacher’s arm to persuade her to look up, too.

On these occasions, the girl smiles coyly and shoots one glance at Otto from under her eyelashes, while Peter, watching behind the curtains, mutters through clenched teeth: “Bitch… bitch… bitch…” This persecution annoys him more than the actual friendship itself. We always seem to be running across the children when we are out walking in the woods. The children sing as they march—patriotic songs about the Homeland—in voices as shrill as birds. From far off, we hear them approaching, and have to turn hastily in the opposite direction. It is, as Peter says, like Captain Hook and the Crocodile.

Peter has made a scene, and Otto has told his friend that she mustn’t bring her troop past the house any more. But now they have begun bathing on our beach, not very far from the fort. The first morning this happened, Otto’s glance kept turning in their direction. Peter was aware of this, of course, and remained plunged in gloomy silence.

“What’s the matter with you to-day, Peter?” said Otto. “Why are you so horrid to me?”

“Horrid to you?” Peter laughed savagely.

“Oh, very well then,” Otto jumped up. “I see you don’t want me here.” And, bounding over the rampart of our fort, he began to run along the beach towards the teacher and her children, very gracefully, displaying his figure to the best possible advantage.

Yesterday evening, there was a gala dance at the Kurhaus. In a rnood of unusual generosity, Otto had promised Peter not to be later than a quarter to one, so Beter sat up with a book to wait for him. I didn’t feel tired, and wanted to finish a chapter, so suggested that he should come into my room and wait there. • I worked. Peter read. The hours went slowly by. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was a quarter past two. Peter had dozed off in his chair. Just as I was wondering whether I should wake him, I heard Otto coming up the stairs. His footsteps sounded drunk. Finding no one in his room, he banged open my door. Peter sat up with a start.

Otto lolled grinning against the doorpost. He made me a half-tipsy salute. “Have you been reading all this time?” he asked Peter.

“Yes,” said Peter, very self-controlled.

“Why?” Otto smiled fatuously.

“Because I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“You know quite well,” said Peter between his teeth.

Otto yawned in his most offensive manner. “I don’t know and I don’t care… Don’t make such a fuss.”

Peter rose to his feet. “God, you little swine!” he said, smacking Otto’s face hard with the flat of his hand. Otto didn’t attempt to defend himself. He gave Peter an extraordinarily vindictive look out of his bright little eyes. “Good!” He spoke rather thickly. “Tomorrow I shall go back to Berlin.” He turned unsteadily on his heel.

“Otto, come here,” said Peter. I saw that, in another moment, he would burst into tears of rage. He followed Otto out on to the landing. “Come here,” he said again, in a sharp tone of command.

“Oh, leave me alone,” said Otto, “I’m sick of you. I want to sleep now. Tomorrow I’m going back to Berlin.”

This morning, however, peace has been restored—at a price. Otto’s repentance has taken the form of a sentimental outburst over his family: “Here I’ve been enjoying myself and never thinking of them… Poor mother has to work like a dog, and her lungs are so bad… Let’s send her some money, shall we, Peter? Let’s send her fifty marks….” Otto’s generosity reminded him of his own needs. In addition to the money for Frau Nowak, Peter has been talked into ordering Otto a new suit, which will cost a hundred and eighty, as well as a pair of shoes, a dressing-gown, and a hat.