The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood Page A

she was reading. ( We had met by appointment in a small restaurant behind the Memorial Church.)
    • Arthur gingerly took the hand she offered. He lingered uneasily beside the table, fidgeted, awaiting the ritual to which he was accustomed. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat, coughed: “Will you allow me to take a seat?”
    Helen, who was about to read something aloud from the newspaper, glanced up at him as though she’d forgotten his existence and was surprised to find him still there.
    “What’s the matter?” she said. “Aren’t there enough chairs?”
    We got talking, somehow, about Berlin night life. Arthur giggled and became arch. Helen, who dealt in statistics and psycho-analytical terms, regarded him in puzzled disapproval. At length Arthur made a sly reference to “the speciality of the Kaufhaus des Westens.”
    “Oh, you mean those whores on the corner there,” said Helen, in the bright matter-of-fact tone of a schoolmistress giving a biology lesson, “who dress up to excite the boot-fetishists?”
    “Well, upon my soul, ha ha, I must say,” Arthur sniggered, coughed and rapidly fingered his wig, “seldom have I met such an extremely, if you’ll allow me to say so, er—advanced, or shall I say, er—modern young lady…”
    “My God!” Helen threw back her head and laughed unpleasantly. “I haven’t been called a young lady since the days when I used to help mother with the shop on Saturday afternoons.”
    “Have you—er—been in this city long?” asked Arthur hastily. Vaguely aware that he had made a mistake, he imagined that he ought to change the subject. I saw the look Helen gave him and knew that all was over.
    “If you take my advice, Bill,” she said to me, the next time we met, “you won’t trust that man an inch.”
    “I don’t,” I said.
    “Oh, I know you. You’re soft, like most men. You make up romances about people instead of seeing them as they are. Have you ever noticed his mouth?”
    “Frequently.”
    “Ugh, it’s disgusting. I could hardly bear to look at it. Beastly and flabby like a toad’s.”
    “Well,” I said, laughing, “I suppose I’ve got a weakness for toads.”
    Not daunted by this failure, I tried Arthur on Fritz Wendel. Fritz was a German-American, a young man about town, who spent his leisure time dancing and playing bridge. He had a curious passion for the society of painters and writers, and had acquired a status with them by working at a fashionable art dealer’s. The art dealer didn’t pay him anything, but Fritz could afford this hobby, being rich. He had an aptitude for gossip which amounted to talent, and might have made a first-class private detective.
    We had tea together in Fritz’s flat. He and Arthur talked New York, impressionist painting, and the unpublished works of the Wilde group. Arthur was witty and astonishingly informative. Fritz’s b)ack eyes sparkled as he registered the epigrams for future use, and I smiled, feeling pleased and proud. I felt myself personally responsible for the success of the interview. I was childishly anxious that Arthur should be approved of; perhaps because I, too, wanted to be finally, completely convinced.
    We said goodbye with mutual promises of an early future meeting. A day or two later, I happened to see Fritz in the street. From the pleasure with which he greeted me, I knew at once that he had something extra spiteful to tell me. For a quarter of an hour he chatted gaily about bridge, night clubs, and his latest flame, a well-known sculptress; his malicious smile broadening all the while at the thought of the tit-bit which he had in reserve. At length he produced it.
    “Been seeing any more of your friend Norris?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Why?”
    “Nothing,” drawled Fritz, his naughty eyes on my face. “Eventually I’d watch your step, that’s all.”
    “Whatever do you mean?”
    “I’ve been hearing some queer things about him.”
    “Oh, indeed?”
    “Maybe they aren’t