The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood Read Free Book Online Page B

girl. Perhaps she had been there all the time. She snuggled against me, while from the other side a boy was amateurishly trying to pick my pocket. I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Why make a scene at the end of such an enjoyable evening? He was welcome to my money. I only had three marks left at the most. The Baron would pay for everything, anyhow. At that moment, I saw his face with almost microscopic distinctness. He had, as I noticed now for the first time, been taking artificial sunlight treatment. The skin round his nose was just beginning to peel. How nice he was! I raised my glass to him. His fish-eye gleamed faintly over the boxer’s arm and he made a slight movement of his head. He was beyond speech. When I turned round, Arthur and Anni had disappeared.
    With the vague intention of going to look for them, I staggered to my feet, only to become involved in the dancing, which had broken out again with renewed vigour. I was seized round the waist, round the neck, kissed, hugged, tickled, half undressed; I danced with girls, with boys, with two or three people at the same time. It may have been five or ten minutes before I reached the door at the farther end of the room. Beyond the door was a pitch-dark passage with a crack of light at the end of it. The passage was crammed so full of furniture that one could only edge one’s way along it sideways. I had wriggled and shuffled about half the distance, when an agonised cry came from the lighted room ahead of me.
    “Nein, nein. Mercy! oh dear! Hilfe! Hilfe!”
    There was no mistaking the voice. They had got Arthur in there, and were robbing him and knocking him about. I might have known it. We were fools ever to have poked our noses into a place like this. We had only ourselves to thank. Drink made me brave. Struggling forward to the door, I pushed it open.
    The first person I saw was Anni. She was standing in the middle of the room. Arthur cringed on the floor at her feet. He had removed several more of his garments, and was now dressed, lightly but with perfect decency, in a suit of mauve silk underwear, a rubber abdominal belt and a pair of socks. In one hand he held a brush and in the other a yellow shoe-rag. Olga towered behind him, brandishing a heavy leather whip.
    “You call that clean, you swine!” she cried, in a terrible voice. “Do them again this minute! And if I find a speck of dirt on them I’ll thrash you till you can’t sit down for a week.”
    As she spoke she gave Arthur a smart cut across the buttocks. He uttered a squeal of pain and pleasure, and began to brush and polish Anni’s boots with feverish haste.
    “Mercy! Mercy!” Arthur’s voice was shrill and gleeful, like a child’s when it is shamming. “Stop! You’re killing me.”
    “Killing’s too good for you,” retorted Olga, administering another cut. “Ill skin you alive!”
    “Oh! Oh! Stop! Mercy! Oh!”
    They were making such a noise that they hadn’t heard me bang open the door. Now they saw me, however. My presence did not seem to disconcert any of them in the least. Indeed, it appeared to add spice to Arthur’s enjoyment.
    “Oh dear! William, save me! You won’t? You’re as cruel as the rest of them. Anni, my love! Olga! Just look how she treats me. Goodness knows what they won’t be making me do in a minute!”
    “Come in, Baby,” cried Olga, with tigerish jocularity. “Just you wait! It’s your turn next. Ill make you cry for Mummy!”
    She made a playful slash at me with the whip which sent me in headlong retreat down the passage, pursued by Arthur’s delighted and anguished cries.
    Several hours later I woke to find myself lying curled up on the floor, with my face pressed against the leg of the sofa. I had a head like a furnace, and pains in every bone. The party was over. Half a dozen people lay insensible about the dismantled room, sprawling in various attitudes of extreme discomfort. Daylight gleamed through the slats of the