Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood Page A

Cabaret, the male lead is called Brian Roberts. He is a bisexual Englishman; he has an affair with Sally and, later, with one of Sally’s lovers, a German baron. At the end of the film, he is eager to marry Sally. But Sally reminds him of his lapse and hints that there may be others in the future. Brian’s homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting.
    In real life, Jean and Christopher had a relationship which was asexual but more truly intimate than the relationships between Sally and her various partners in the novel, the plays, and the films. Jean moved into a room in the Nollendorfstrasse flat after she met Christopher, early in 1931. Soon they were like brother and sister. They amused each other greatly and enjoyed being together, but both of them were selfish and they often quarreled. Jean never tried to seduce him. But I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked, “What a pity we can’t make love, there’s nothing else to do,” and he agreed that it was and there wasn’t. Nevertheless, on at least one occasion, because of some financial or housing emergency, they shared a bed without the least embarrassment. Jean knew Otto and Christopher’s other sexmates but showed no desire to share them, although he wouldn’t have really minded.
    I don’t think that Jean stayed for more than a few months at the flat. Frl. Thurau was tremendously intrigued by her looks and mannerisms, her makeup, her style of dressing, and, above all, her stories about her love affairs. But she didn’t altogether like Jean. For Jean was untidy and inconsiderate; she made a lot of extra work for her landladies. She expected room service and would sometimes order people around in an imperious tone, with English upper-class rudeness. Frl. Thurau preferred male lodgers, anyway.
    Unlike “Isherwood” and Sally, Christopher and Jean didn’t part forever when she left Berlin. Circumstances separated them for long intervals, but they continued to meet, as affectionate friends, throughout the rest of Jean’s life. She died in 1973.
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    Through Stephen Spender, Christopher got to know another of his chief characters-to-be: Gisa Soloweitschik. She was a young Jewish girl who lived with her wealthy parents. Stephen had first met her in Switzerland, some years previously.
    In Goodbye to Berlin, Gisa is called Natalia Landauer:
    She had dark fluffy hair, far too much of it—it made her face, with its sparkling eyes, appear too long and too narrow. She reminded me of a young fox. She shook hands straight from the shoulder in the modern student manner. “In here, please.” Her tone was peremptory and brisk.
    Natalia is presented as a bossy bluestocking, desperately enthusiastic about culture, sexually frigid and prudish. She takes “Isherwood” in hand immediately, deciding what books he must read, what concerts he must go to, what picture galleries he must visit. At first, “Isherwood” remains mockingly passive toward her attempts to run his life; then he counterattacks by introducing her to Sally Bowles. He does this to test Natalia, not Sally; for he knows in advance how Sally will behave. Sally, as usual, boasts about her lovers; and Natalia is prudishly shocked. She has failed Christopher’s test. After this, he and Natalia become temporarily estranged.
    In real life, Jean and Gisa never met, so there was no test. But I am sure Gisa could have passed it; she might even have made friends with Jean. Indeed, the Natalia character is a mere caricature of Gisa, as Stephen Spender pointed out to Christopher in a reproachful letter:
    Gisa always seemed to me a very passionate character, childish in a way, more Russian almost than Jewish, generous and deeply interested in other people. The essential fact to me about your relationship with Gisa is that you talked to her continually