The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood Read Free Book Online

had merely said: “Hullo. I’m afraid I can’t talk to you now. I have to go shopping with my mother.”
    “And I find this so very nice,” the Baron concluded. “It is your English self-control, you see.” The taxi crossed several bridges and passed a gas-works. The Baron pressed my hand and made me a long speech about how wonderful it is to be young. He had become rather indistinct and his English was rapidly deteriorating. “You see, excuse me, I’ve been watching your reactions the whole evening. I hope you are not offended?” I found my false nose in my pocket and put it on. It had got a bit crumpled. The Baron seemed impressed. “This is all so very interesting for me, you see.” Soon after this, I had to stop the taxi under a lamp-post in order to be sick. ‘
    We were driving along a street bounded by a high dark wall. Over the top of the wall I suddenly caught sight of an ornamental cross. “Good God,” I said. “Are you taking me to the cemetery?”
    The Baron merely smiled. We had stopped; having arrived, it seemed, at the blackest corner of the night. I stumbled over something, and the Baron obligingly took my arm. He seemed to have been here before. We passed through an archway and into a courtyard. There was light here from several windows, and snatches of gramophone music and laughter. A silhouetted head and shoulders leant out of one of the windows, shouted: “Prosit Neujahr!” and spat vigorously. The spittle landed with a soft splash on the paving-stone just beside my foot. Other heads emerged from other windows. “Is that you, Paul, you sow?” someone shouted. “Red Front!” yelled a voice, and a louder splash followed. This time, I think, a beer-mug had been emptied.
    Here one of the anassthetic periods of my evening supervened. How the Baron got me upstairs, I don’t know. It was quite painless. We were in a room full of people dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, shaking our hands and thumping us on the back. There was an immense ornamental gasolier, converted to hold electric bulbs and enmeshed in paper festoons. My glance reeled about the room, picking out large or minute objects, a bowl of claret-cup in which floated an empty match-box, a broken bead from a necklace, a bust of Bismarck on the top of a Gothic dresser—holding them for an instant, then losing them again in general coloured chaos. In this manner, I caught a sudden startling glimpse of Arthur’s head, its mouth open, the wig jammed down over its left eye. I stumbled about looking for the body and collapsed comfortably on to a sofa, holding the upper half of a girl. My face was buried in dusty-smelling lace cushions. The noise of the party burst over me in thundering waves, like the sea. It was strangely soothing. “Don’t go to sleep, darling,” said the girl I was holding. “No, of course I won’t,” I replied, and sat up, tidying my hair. I felt suddenly, quite sober.
    Opposite me, in a big armchair, sat Arthur, with a thin, dark, sulky-looking girl on his lap. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat and looked most domestic. He wore gaudily striped braces. His shirtsleeves were looped up with elastic bands. Except for a little hair round the base of the skull, he was perfectly bald.
    “What on earth have you done with it?” I exclaimed. “You’ll catch cold.”
    “The idea was not mine, William. Rather a graceful tribute, don’t you think, to the Iron Chancellor?”
    He seemed in much better spirits, now, than earlier in the evening, and, strangely enough, not at all drunk. He had a remarkably strong head. Looking up, I saw the wig perched rakishly on Bismarck’s helmet. It was much too big for him.
    Turning, I found the Baron sitting beside me on the sofa.
    “Hullo, Kuno,” I said. “How did you get here?”
    He didn’t answer, but smiled his bright rigid smile and desperately cocked an eyebrow. He seemed on the very point of collapse. In another moment, his monocle would fall out.
    The