Goodbye To Berlin

The final chapter of the novel consists of a series of brief anecdotes:

Frl. Schroeder hates the cold during the winter. She is now very lonely since Frl. Mayr is away in Holland on a cabaret tour. Frl. Schroeder is also upset with Bobby. He has been out of a job and is three months behind on rent. She suspects he is stealing from her. Bobby now occupies the “Swedish Pavilion” in the attic. Isherwood suspects that Frl. Schroeder has never really gotten over Bobby’s affair with Frl. Kost. As Isherwood puts it, “The tickling and bottom-slapping days are over” (187). Frl. Kost pays a visit to the flat. She is dressed in a real fur coat and snakeskin shoes. Frl. Schroeder is impressed most by the fact that Frl. Kost has had an operation in a private nursing home.

Herr Krampf, one of Isherwood’s pupils, describes to Isherwood his childhood during the last years of the war. Frau Krampf used to have to visit a butcher with a sexual perversion: “His greatest erotic pleasure was to pinch and slap the cheeks of a sensitive, well-bred girl or woman” (188). Frau Krampf would let this butcher pinch and slap her cheeks “in exchange for some cutlets or a steak” (189).

Isherwood describes a fairground where one of the attractions is a tent that stages boxing and wrestling matches. The winners and the losers of these matches are invariably pre-determined. The referees collect money from the crowd as the audience quarrels and makes bets on the results of the fights. Isherwood concludes that “the political moral is certainly depressing: these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything” (190).

There is an incident where a Nazi confronts two Jews who had picked up a couple of girls in their car. The Nazi had tried to drag one of the Jews with him to find a policeman, but the Jew punched the Nazi and laid him out. The Jews then drove away before the Nazi could get to his feet. Later, as Isherwood passes the same spot, he notes that the Nazi “was still patrolling up and down, looking hungrily for more German womanhood to rescue” (190).

Fritz proposes a tour of the “dives” as a farewell visit. The police have begun raiding these places and writing down the names of their clients. Isherwood insists on visiting the Salomé: “The whole premises are painted gold and inferno-red—crimson plush inches thick, and vast gilded mirrors” (191). After watching the cabaret performance, Fritz and Isherwood have a brief encounter with a group of young Americans who seem startled and confused when Fritz tells them that there are “men dressed as women” (191) inside the Salomé.

Fritz and Isherwood go to another dive that is a communist café. There, he meets a man named Martin, who “began to talk about the coming civil war” (193). Martin tells Isherwood, “‘I spend most of my time now making bombs’” (193). Isherwood can’t tell if Martin is being serious or not.

Isherwood also meets a man named Rudi at the communist café. Rudi tells Isherwood about his pathfinder group and their Scoutmaster named Uncle Peter. When Isherwood visits Uncle Peter at Rudi’s clubhouse, Isherwood notes the strangeness of everything: 

The magazine itself has articles on hunting, tracking, and preparing food—all written in super-enthusiastic style, with a curious underlying note of hysteria, as though the actions described were part of a religious or erotic ritual (197). 

Isherwood gets away from the place as soon as he can.

Isherwood visits Herr Brink, another of his pupils, who is the master at a reformatory. Herr Brink describes the situation most of the children at the reformatory face:

‘You see those two buildings? One is the engineering-works, the other is the prison. For the boys of this district there used to be two alternatives […] But now the works are bankrupt. Next week they will close down’ (196).

The police injure Werner, another man Isherwood met at the communist café, during a streetfight near the Stettiner Bahnhof. Meanwhile, violent attacks and demonstrations by the Nazis continue. Schleicher resigns and Hitler forms a cabinet with Hugenberg. The Nazis raid a small liberal pacifist publisher, throwing books to the crowd and mocking titles like, “No More War!” (204).

Isherwood describes an incident at a Russian tea-shop with a man he only refers to as “D.” When D. tells the girl he’s sitting with that Isherwood “hates the Nazis as much as we do” (203), Isherwood feels incredibly uncomfortable because saying this in public has become very dangerous. Isherwood describes another man, a pupil of Isherwood’s and a police chief, as “Herr N.” Isherwood “know[s] that Herr N. must be an enemy of the Nazis, and, perhaps, even in hourly danger of arrest” (204). While Herr N. never says any of this outwardly, Isherwood notes Herr N.’s sad resignation to the events taking place in Berlin.   

Isherwood decides he is finally leaving Berlin for England. Frl. Schroeder doesn’t understand why Isherwood is leaving: “It’s no use trying to explain to her, or talking politics. Already she is adapting herself, as she will adapt herself to every new régime” (205). The novel concludes with Isherwood detailing a city that he remembers as normal and pleasant and remarking that he “can’t altogether believe that any of this has really happened” (206).