THE LIFE OF LITERATURE
((Herr Ishyvoo ist noch nicht fertig,"
with a rolling of her eyes which
indicated the full implications of the word
fertig,
or
((Herr lshyvoo
hat Besuch,"
with a sombre humorousness which equally implied a
double meaning. I would then be shown into the room which was
the very center of Fraulein Thurau's universe, a reception room, a
dining room, a hall, as one might choose to regard it, a room with
faded impressive furniture out of which all the doors of the other
rooms in the flat radiated. Here on a wide double-chair with a tapes–
tried seat, in front of a table covered with a massive velvet table
cloth from which huge tassels hung down to the carpet, I would sit
among the shored up wreckage of Fraulein Thurau's former grand–
eur, waiting an unconscionably long time for Christopher to appear.
While I was waiting, one or another of the characters of Christopher's
as yet unwritten novels would probably emerge from one of the rad–
iating doors, perhaps Bobbi the bar tender, or perhaps, if I was
lucky, Sally Bowles and dart across the room in dishevelment: for
Christopher lived in this apartment surrounded by his creations,
like one of those portraits of a writer by a painter, where, while the
novelist sits meditating in a chair, all the creatures of his fiction
tum around him, subtly revealed within an umber cloud which
would be not unlike the rich dusty lighting of Fraulein Thurau's
apartment.
After some time Christopher would appear, probably in his
shirt sleeves, holding a razor in his hand, to say that he was sorry
but last night had been terrible, he had not slept, but now he would
be ready in a few minutes. Ten minutes later he would reappear re–
markably transformed with a neatness of the cuffs emphasized by
the way in which he often held
his
wrists extended slightly apart
from his body. His hair was brushed in a boyish lick over his fore–
head, below which his round shining eyes had a steadiness which
seemed to come from the strain of effort, as though their feat of
balancing themselves in Christopher's face at the same time sup–
ported the whole world which he saw. They were the eyes of some–
one who when he is a passenger in an aeroplane thinks that the
machine is kept in the air by an act of his will, and that unless he
continues to look steadily in front of him, it will fall instantly to the
ground. These eyes were under sandy sharp-angled eyebrows which
added to the impression of a strained schoolboy. The mouth with its
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