There was a further step to be taken, however. Christopher feared that Harold might tell Andrew about Christopher’s pass, to punish him by making him feel that he had been just another in a long line of Christopher’s lays, chosen merely because he had been easy to get. Therefore Christopher had to talk to Andrew as soon as possible––preferably before Harold told him––and explain why he had made the pass at Harold. In fact, it was several days before Christopher got this opportunity. When he did, he was relieved to find that Harold hadn’t told Andrew anything. Christopher’s fears had been founded on a knowledge of his own character––“man
imputes himself,” as Gerald Heard was so fond of saying. But Harold wasn’t Christopher. If Harold had been in Christopher’s place, I’m sure he would never have boasted to his friends, as Christopher later did, about the affair and the tact he himself had shown in handling it.
At this time, Lincoln Kirstein was going through a phase of tremendous enthusiasm for the sculpture of Elie Nadelman. On August 5, he drove Christopher and Caskey out to a house in the Bronx (maybe it was Nadelman’s former home) in which a lot of the work was stored. Lincoln had filled the living room with a selection of the pieces and he came every day to dust and rearrange them, like a priest taking care of a shrine. Indeed, this art cult was Lincoln’s religion. And how beautiful and noble his half-crazy passionate devotion seemed, compared to the prim knowingness of the ordinary
“art lover.”
Next day, Christopher and Caskey were initiated into another
of the mysteries of Lincoln’s religion. He took them down to
Washington to see a collection of paintings which had been brought over from Germany. I’m vague about the details, but I think that the ¾ 1947 ¾
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paintings had been hidden in a salt mine for safety during the war and that Lincoln himself had been partly responsible for discovering their hiding place. I assume that the paintings had been appropriated from their original owners by high-ranking Nazis like Göring, so that they were now technically stolen property; for Lincoln explained that their presence in the United States had to be kept secret lest the new German government should protest and demand their instant return.
The room in which they were hung was guarded by military police, and Lincoln, Caskey and Christopher were escorted into it by an official of the State Department. I remember the thrill of this contact with the world of Classified Material––but not, unfortunately, anything about the paintings themselves, except that they were all by famous masters. Caskey and Christopher were proud of this privilege Lincoln had obtained for them. They bragged about it to their friends and were therefore disgusted when the State Department changed its policy soon afterward for some unknown reason and allowed the paintings to be taken on tour around the U.S. and exhibited publicly in various cities, before being sent back to Germany.
Christopher and Caskey were now beginning to get shots and
visas, in preparation for their South American journey. Their last month in New York became increasingly social. At Ollie Jennings’s house, Ben Baz had been joined by his brother Emilio and by Luis Creixell from Mexico [. . .]. Then Berthold Szczesny arrived from Buenos Aires with Tota Cuevas de Vera.1 Then Stephen Spender 1 Berthold Szczesny and Tota appear in the last two chapters of The Condor and the Cows, but discretion forced me to leave out some details about Berthold’s background and his relationship to Tota.
Christopher first met Berthold when he [went] to Berlin to visit Auden, in March 1929. Berthold was then a hustler in a boy bar called The Cosy Corner which Auden frequented because it was near to where he was living in the Hallesches Tor district. Christopher fell for Berthold instantly––but not because he found Berthold so very attractive sexually. (In bed they were never quite compatible; Christopher felt that Berthold didn’t really enjoy it and this inhibited him. I think they only sucked cock and belly rubbed.) Berthold’s undoubtedly strong attraction––for both men and women––was that he was so vividly, charmingly, absurdly conscious of his own myth. (In The Condor and the Cows, I call it “The Szczesny Saga.”) He was thus able to make his lovers see him as he saw himself––as the romantic, homeless, penniless wanderer, the Lost Boy who roams the earth, pushed hither and thither by fate, dreamily passive yet able and willing to take care of himself when in physical danger; a boxer, a cowboy, an able-bodied seaman who nevertheless seems poignantly vulnerable and whom everyone is eager to help and protect.
When Christopher returned to Germany a few months later, to stay with Auden at Rotehütte, a village in the Harz Mountains, he had arranged 134
Lost Years
appeared; he had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Then Chris
Wood paid a visit from California. Through him, Caskey and
Christopher met John Gielgud. Through Stephen, they met Frank beforehand that Berthold should join them there. But Berthold didn’t show up. So Christopher made a flying visit to Berlin and found out from the owner of The Cosy Corner that Berthold was wanted by the police for robbery.
Christopher returned to Rotehütte, bringing with him a boy he had hastily selected as a substitute sex mate. (I think he must have been helped in this transaction by Francis Turville-Petre (“Ambrose” [in Down There on a Visit]), for at that time he spoke very little German.) The next day, the police appeared at the village inn where Auden, Auden’s boyfriend, Christopher and the boy he had brought from Berlin were staying. The police were looking for Berthold––no doubt they had been tipped off by someone at The Cosy Corner that they might find him with Christopher. Not wanting to return empty-handed, they cross-examined the two young Germans and thus found out that Auden’s friend Otto [Küsel]––a charming boy who used to wrestle naked with him in a field near the village, to the amusement of the villagers [and about whom Auden wrote two poems, “Upon this line between adventure” and
“Sentries against inner and outer”]––was an escapee from reform school. So they took him away with them, under arrest; which caused Christopher’s boy to decide that Christopher was dangerous to know and that he wanted to be sent back to Berlin immediately.
This was Christopher’s first experience as an honorary member of the criminal class. And it was made more thrilling by a coincidence: while the police were still in the house, the mailman arrived with a letter from Berthold.
Christopher read it under their very noses. Berthold wrote that he was in Amsterdam and hoped that Christopher would send him some money. Being now eager to play a part in The Szczesny Saga, Christopher proposed to Auden that they should go at once to Amsterdam. Auden agreed, though he wasn’t feeling very kindly toward Berthold, who had been responsible for disrupting his life at Rotehütte and getting his boyfriend into trouble. (Nevertheless, Auden made his own important contribution to The Szczesny Saga; his poem
“Before this loved one . . .” refers to Berthold.)
Auden and Christopher got to Amsterdam within a day or two, and had the good luck to run into Berthold at once, right outside the post office at which Christopher had just left a letter poste restante, announcing their arrival. They could spend only a couple of days together because Berthold had no permit to stay in Holland. (Boys would say, “My papers aren’t in order,” and, “My stomach isn’t in order,” in the same plaintive tone, as if both were ailments!) So, after a real romantic German farewell (Berthold was wonderful at them) he shipped out. This was probably his first voyage to South America. Many years later, he told Christopher that he had once jumped ship at Punta Arenas, earned money there as a boxer and then made his way across the frontier and up north to Buenos Aires. Perhaps that was when he met Tota and became her lover. She was a millionairess and a countess and old enough to be his grandmother but as human beings they weren’t mismatched, for Tota was as sweetly silly as he was and her silliness made her seem sometimes almost girlish. As for ¾ 1947 ¾