Today the sun is brilliantly shining; it is quite mild and warm. I go out for my last morning walk, without an overcoat or hat. The sun shines, and Hitler is master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends — my pupils at the Workers’ School, the men and women I met at the I.A.H. — are in prison, possibly dead. But it isn’t of them I am thinking — the clear-headed ones, the purposeful, the heroic; they recognized and accepted the risks. I am thinking of poor Rudi, in his absurd Russian blouse. Rudi’s make-believe, story-book game has become earnest; the Nazis will play it with him. The Nazis won’t laugh at him; they’ll take him on trust for what he pretended to be. Perhaps at this very moment Rudi is being tortured to death.
I catch sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and am horrified to see that I am smiling. You can’t help smiling, in such beautiful weather. The trams are going up and down the Kleiststrasse, just as usual. They, and the people on the pavement, and the tea-cosy dome of the Nollendorfplatz station have an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and pleasant in the past — like a very good photograph.
No. Even now I can’t altogether believe that any of this has really happened . . .
Copyright © 1935, 1939 by Christopher Isherwood
Introduction copyright © 2008 by Literary Bent, LLC
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published as NDP134 in 1963; reissued as NDP1120 in 2008 with an introduction by Armistead Maupin.
This volume comprises the 1935 edition of Mr Norris Changes Trains and the 1939 edition of Goodbye to Berlin.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Design by Erik Rieselbach
Isherwood, Christopher, 1904–1986.
[Mr Norris Changes Trains]
Berlin stories / Christopher Isherwood ; introduction by Armistead Maupin.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2028-6 (e-book)
1. Berlin (Germany)—Social life and customs—Fiction.
I. Isherwood, Christopher, 1904–1986. Goodbye to Berlin. II. Title.
PR6017.S5L37 2008
823'.912—dc22
2008023325
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
By Christopher Isherwood
Available from New Directions
All the Conspirators
The Berlin Stories
Goodbye to Berlin
Mr Norris Changes Trains