ONE NIGHT IN October 1930, about a month after the Elections, there was a big row on the Leipzigerstrasse. Gangs of Nazi roughs turned out to demonstrate against the Jews. They manhandled some dark-haired, large-nosed pedestrians, and smashed the windows of all the Jewish shops. The incident was not, in itself, very remarkable; there were no deaths, very little shooting, not more than a couple of dozen arrests. I remember it only because it was my first introduction to Berlin politics.
Frl. Mayr, of course, was delighted: "Serves them right!" she exclaimed. "This town is sick with Jews. Turn over any stone, and a couple of them will crawl out. They're poisoning the very water we drink! They're strangling us, they're robbing us, they're sucking our life-blood. Look at all the big department stores: Wertheim, K.D.W., Landauers'. Who owns them? Filthy thieving Jews!"
"The Landauers are personal friends of mine," I retorted icily, and left the room before Frl. Mayr had time to think of a suitable reply.
This wasn't strictly true. As a matter of fact, I had never met any member of the Landauer family in my life. But, before leaving England, I had been given a letter of introduction to them by a mutual friend. I mistrust letters of introduction, and should probably never have used this one, if it hadn't been for Frl. Mayr's remark. Now, perversely, I decided to write to Frau Landauer at once.
Natalia Landauer, as I saw her, for the first time, three days later, was a schoolgirl of eighteen. 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.
The sitting-room was large and cheerful, pre-War in taste, a little over-furnished. Natalia had begun talking at once, with terrific animation, in eager stumbling English, showing me gramophone records, pictures, books. I wasn't allowed to look at anything for more than a moment:
"You like Mozart? Yes? Oh, I also! Vairy much! . . . These picture is in the Kronprinz Palast. You have not seen it? I shall show you one day, yes? . . . You are fond of Heine? Say quite truthfully, please." She looked up from the bookcase, smiling, but with a certain school-marm severity: "Read. It's beautiful, I find."
I hadn't been in the house for more than a quarter of an hour before Natalia had put aside four books for me to take with me when I left — Tonio Kröger, Jacobsen's stories, a volume of Stefan George, Goethe's letters. "You are to tell me your truthful opinions," she warned me.
Suddenly, a maid parted the sliding glass doors at the end of the room, and we found ourselves in the presence of Frau Landauer, a large, pale woman with a mole on her left cheek and her hair brushed back smooth into a knot, seated placidly at the dining-room table, filling glasses from a samovar with tea. There were plates of ham and cold cut wurst and a bowl of those thin wet slippery sausages which squirt you with hot water when their skins are punctured by a fork; as well as cheese, radishes, pumpernickel and bottled beer. "You will drink beer," Natalia ordered, returning one of the glasses of tea to her mother.
Looking round me, I noticed that the few available wall-spaces between pictures and cupboards were decorated with eccentric life-size figures, maidens with flying hair or oblique-eyed gazelles, cut out of painted paper and fastened down with drawing-pins. They made a comically ineffectual protest against the bourgeois solidity of the mahogany furniture. I knew, without being told, that Natalia must have designed them. Yes, she'd made them and fixed them up there for a party; now she wanted to take them down, but her mother wouldn't let her. They had a little argument about this — evidently part of the domestic routine. "Oh, but they're tairrible, I find!" cried Natalia, in English. "I think they're very pretty," replied Frau Landauer placidly, in German, without raising her eyes from the plate, her mouth full of pumpernickel and radish.
