The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

Author:Christopher Isherwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Classics, Gay, Historical
ISBN: 9780811200707
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 1945-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SALLY BOWLES

One afternoon, early in October, I was invited to black coffee at Fritz Wendel’s flat. Fritz always invited you to “black coffee,” with emphasis on the black. He was very proud of his coffee. People used to say that it was the strongest in Berlin.

Fritz himself was dressed in his usual coffee-party costume—a very thick white yachting sweater and very light blue flannel trousers. He greeted me with his full-lipped, luscious smile: “‘lo, Chris!”

“Hullo, Fritz. How are you?”

“Fine.” He bent over the coffee-machine, his sleek black hair unplastering itself from his scalp and falling in richly scented locks over his eyes. “This darn thing doesn’t go,” he added.

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Lousy and terrible.” Fritz grinned richly. “Or I pull off a new deal in the next month or I go as a gigolo.”

“Either… or…,” I corrected, from force of professional habit.

“I’m speaking a lousy English just now,” drawled Fritz, with great self-satisfaction. “Sally says maybe shell give me a few lesson’s.”

“Who’s Sally?”

“Why, I forgot. You don’t know Sally. Too bad of me. Eventually she’s coming around here this afternoon.”

“Is she nice?”

Fritz rolled his naughty black eyes, handing me a rum-moistened cigarette from his patent tin: “Marvellous!” he drawled. “Eventually I believe I’m getting crazy about her.”

“And who is she? What does she do?”

“She’s an English girl, an actress: sings at the Lady Windermere—hot stuff, believe me!”

“That doesn’t sound much like an English girl, I must say.”

“Eventually she’s got a bit of French in her. Her mother was French.”

A few minutes later, Sally herself arrived.

“Am I terribly late, Fritz darling?”

“Only half of an hour, I suppose,” Fritz drawled, beaming with proprietary pleasure. “May I introduce Mr. Isherwood—Miss Bowles? Mr. Isherwood is commonly known as Chris.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Fritz is about the only person who’s ever called me Chris in my life.”

Sally laughed. She was dressed in black silk, with a small cape over her shoulders and a little cap like a page-boy’s stuck jauntily on one side of her head: “Do you mind if I use your telephone, sweet?”

“Sure. Go right ahead.” Fritz caught my eye. “Come into the other room, Chris. I want to show you something.” He was evidently longing to hear my first impressions of Sally, his new acquisition.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t leave me alone with this man!” she exclaimed. “Or he’ll seduce me down the telephone. He’s most terribly passionate.”

As she dialled the number, I noticed that her finger-nails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette-smoking and as dirty as a little girl’s. She was dark enough to be Fritz’s sister. Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.

“Hilloo,” she cooed, pursing her brilliant cherry lips as though she were going to kiss the mouthpiece: “Ist dass Du, mein Liebling?” Her mouth opened in a fatuously sweet smile.

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