Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood Page A

of the street, I found an old lady, dressed in a kind of uniform, French “horizon blue.” She was sniveling and cursing to herself. It was she who had shot off the Jew’s hands. She wanted to shoot him again; but her ammunition (which was, I noticed with surprise, only for a .22 rifle) lay scattered on the ground. She couldn’t collect it, because she was blind.
    Then I went into the British Embassy, where I was welcomed by a cheerful, fatuous, drawling young man, like Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. He pointed out to me that the walls of the entrance hall were covered with post-impressionist and cubist paintings. “The Ambassador likes them,” he explained. “I mean to say, a bit of contrast, what?”
    Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to tell this dream to Bergmann. I wasn’t in the mood for one of his elaborate and perhaps disagreeably personal interpretations. Also, I had a curious suspicion that he had put the whole thing, telepathically, into my head.
    *   *   *
    ALL THESE MONTHS, there hadn’t been a single word from Chatsworth.
    His silence was magnificent. It seemed to express the most generous kind of confidence. He was giving us an absolutely free hand. Or perhaps he was so busy that he had forgotten about us altogether.
    I think he must have written Prater Violet on the first leaf of his 1934 calendar. For January had barely begun before we started to get telephone calls from the studio. How was the script coming along?
    Bergmann went down to Imperial Bulldog to see him, and came back in a state of considerable self-satisfaction. He gave me to understand that he had been exceedingly diplomatic. Chatsworth’s stock rose. He was no longer a vulgarian, but a man of culture and insight. “He appreciates,” said Bergmann, “how a director needs time to follow his ideas quietly and lovingly.” Bergmann had told the story, no doubt with a most lavish display of gesture and intonation, and Chatsworth had seemed very pleased.
    However, this didn’t alter the fact that our script was still a torso, or, at best, a living body with mechanical limbs. The final sequence, the whole episode of Toni’s revenge on Rudolf with its happy ending, was still wishfully vague. Neither of us really liked the idea of her masquerade, in a blonde wig, as the famous opera singer. Not all Bergmann’s histrionics, no amount of Freudian analysis or Marxian dialectic could make it anything but very silly.
    And perhaps Chatsworth hadn’t been so impressed, after all. Because now we started to have visits from Ashmeade. His approach was extremely tactful. It opened with what appeared to be a purely social call. “I happened to be passing,” he told us, “so I thought I’d look in. Are you and Isherwood still on speaking terms?”
    But Bergmann wasn’t deceived. “The Secret Police are on our footprints,” he said gloomily. “So … Now it begins.”
    Two days later, Ashmeade returned. This time, he was more frankly inquisitive. He wanted to know all about the last sequence. Bergmann went into his act; he had never been better. Ashmeade looked politely dubious.
    Next morning, early, he was on the phone. “I’ve been thinking it over. I’ve just had an idea. Suppose Toni knew all the time that Rudolf was the Prince? I mean, right from the beginning.”
    â€œNo, no, no!” cried Bergmann in despair. “Definitely not!”
    When their conversation was over, he was furious. “They have given me this fashionable cretin, this elegant dwarf to sit on my back! Have we not enough burdens already? Here we are, breaking our heads off fighting for Truth!”
    His anger, as always, subsided into philosophic doubt. He could never dismiss any suggestion, however fantastic, without hours of soul-searching. He groaned painfully. “Very well, let us see where this leads us. Wait. Wait. Let us