Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood Page A

Starhemberg, and Fey and all their gangsters. It covers up the dirty syphilitic sore with rose leaves, with the petals of this hypocritical reactionary violet. It lies and declares that the pretty Danube is blue, when the water is red with blood.… I am punished for assisting at this lie. We shall all be punished.…”
    The telephone rang. Bergmann seized it. “Yes, hullo. Yes…” His face darkened. “It is the studio,” he told me. “You speak to them.”
    â€œHullo, Mr. Isherwood?” said the voice of Chatsworth’s secretary, very brightly. “My word, you’re up early this morning! Well, that’s splendid—because Mr. Harris is a little bit worried. He’s not sure about some details in the next set. Perhaps you could come in a little sooner and talk things over before you start work?”
    I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Do you want me to tell them you’re not well?” I asked Bergmann.
    â€œMoment … Wait … No. Do not say that.” He sighed deeply. “We must go.”
    It was an awful day. Bergmann went through it in a kind of stupor, and I watched him anxiously, fearing some outburst. During the takes, he sat like a dummy, seeming not to care what happened. If spoken to, he answered briefly and listlessly. He made no criticisms, no objection to anything. Unless Roger or the camera operator said “No,” the scene would be printed; and we went on dully to the next.
    Everybody in the unit reacted to his mood. Anita made difficulties, Cromwell hammed, Eliot fussed idiotically, the electricians were lazy, Mr. Watts wasted hours on lighting. Only Roger and Teddy were efficient, quiet and considerate. I had tried to explain to them how Bergmann was feeling. Teddy’s only comment was, “Rotten luck.” But he meant it.
    In the evening, just as we were finishing work, a telegram arrived from Vienna: “Don’t be silly, Friedrich dear. You know how newspapers exaggerate. Inge is still on holiday in the mountains with friends. I have just made a cake. Mother says it is delicious and sends love. Many kisses.”
    Bergmann showed it to me, smiling, with tears in his eyes. “She is great,” he said. “Definitely great.”
    But now his personal trouble gave way to political anxiety and anger, which grew from day to day. Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, the struggle continued. Without definite orders, without leadership, cut off and isolated into small groups, the workers went on fighting. What else could they do? Their homes, the great modern tenements, admired by the whole of Europe as the first architecture of a new and better world, were now described by the Press as “red fortresses”; and the government artillery was shooting them to pieces. The socialist leaders, fearing this emergency, had provided secret stores of arms and ammunition; but the leaders were all arrested now, or in hiding. Nobody knew where the weapons were buried. Desperately, men dug in courtyards and basements, and found nothing. Dollfuss took tea with the Papal Nuncio. Starhemberg saw forty-two corpses laid out in the captured Goethe Hof, and commented: “Far too few!” Berlin looked on, smugly satisfied. Another of its enemies was being destroyed; and Hitler’s hands were clean.
    Bergmann listened eagerly to every news broadcast, bought every special edition. During those first two days, while the workers still held out, I knew that he was hoping against hope. Perhaps the street fighting would grow into a revolution. Perhaps international Labor would force the Powers to intervene. There was just one little chance—one in a million. And then there was no chance at all.
    Bergmann raged in his despair. He wanted to write letters to the conservative Press, protesting against its studied tone of neutrality. The letters were written, but I had to persuade him not to send them. He had no