Read Online Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood - Free Book Online Page A

certainly didn’t mind; he drank enough beer every night to be able to sleep like a hog, regardless of his bedmate. Grete can’t have minded, either; she was at an age when such changes are fun. Lothar probably did mind. He was a serious, hard-working boy of twenty who had been converted to National Socialism; he must therefore have disapproved of Christopher as a degenerate foreigner who had turned him out of his bed in order to have perverse sex with his brother.
    This was one of the attic flats, so it overlooked the rooftops and got plenty of daylight, at least. The lower flats stared at each other across the deep pit of the courtyard and their gloom was perpetual. The Nowaks’ chief disadvantage was that the roof of the building leaked and the rain water seeped through their ceiling. There was only one toilet to every four flats, and the Nowaks had to walk down a flight of stairs to reach theirs, unless they preferred to use the bucket in the kitchen. To wash properly—that is to say, not in the kitchen sink—they had to go to the nearest public baths.
    When the kitchen stove was alight, the flat got smelly and stuffy; when it wasn’t, you shivered. And, no matter what the temperature was, the sink stank. Because of the leaky roof and the overcrowding, the Nowaks had been told by the housing authorities that they mustn’t go on living here. Dozens of other families in this district had been told the same thing; but there was nowhere for them to move to.
    In Goodbye to Berlin, “Isherwood” goes to live with the Nowaks in the autumn of 1931, not 1930. There were two reasons for this falsification. First, from a structural point of view, it seemed better to introduce some of the more important characters—Sally Bowles, Frl. Schroeder, and her lodgers—before the Nowaks. Second, since “Isherwood” is not overtly homosexual, he has to be given another reason for knowing Otto and another motive for going to live with his family. In the novel, “Isherwood” meets Otto through an Englishman named Peter Wilkinson who is Otto’s lover; and the meeting takes place merely because they happen to be staying at the same boarding house in a seaside village (Sellin) on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic. Then Peter goes back to England, having broken with Otto, and Otto and “Isherwood” return to Berlin—but not together.
    In September 1931, the British government was forced to abandon the gold standard, thereby lowering the value of the pound in relation to foreign currencies and impoverishing British nationals who were living abroad on British money. In the novel, this gives “Isherwood” a respectable motive for going to live with the Nowaks; he becomes their lodger because he is poor, not because he wants to share a bedroom with Otto.
    Christopher’s In den Zelten room did cost a little more than he could easily afford. But when he left it, he didn’t do so because he had suddenly become poorer; his move to the Nowaks’ flat was due to Otto’s coaxing. Otto had decided that it would be fun if they all lived together, and Christopher agreed; such slumming seemed a thrilling adventure. By the time the British pound fell, a year later, Christopher was almost able to balance his loss with the German money he was earning by giving English lessons. He could always have afforded something a little better than the Simeonstrasse.
    Quite aside from the novelty of the experience, Christopher enjoyed living with the Nowaks. He soon became very fond of Frau Nowak. Her cheeks were flushed prettily and the big blue rings under her eyes made her look sick but strangely young for her age; she had tuberculosis. There was something touchingly girlish and gay and even naughty about her—she knew all about his relationship with Otto and, though she never referred to it, Christopher was sure that it didn’t shock her. She loved the excitement of