Goodbye To Berlin

Isherwood spends the summer of 1931 in a beach house on Ruegen Island with Peter Wilkinson, an Englishman about Isherwood’s age, and Otto Nowak, a German working-class boy of about 16 or 17. Isherwood describes how, earlier in his life, Peter had difficulties with school, his family, and his family’s wealth. Peter has had multiple nervous breakdowns and has seen different analysts to ease his anxiety. Otto’s presence at the beach house has a way of relieving Peter’s anxieties and neuroses when they are together. The two men have a certain kind of unspoken relationship that is only alluded to during the chapter, but the reader is meant to understand that Peter is romantically interested in Otto.

Otto and Peter have several arguments about Otto’s behavior. Otto goes out at night to dance while Peter jealously waits up for him to return. Peter seems to want to keep Otto all to himself while Otto enjoys going out and flirting with women and stringing Peter along.

Isherwood, Peter, and Otto meet a surgeon from a Berlin hospital. The doctor is an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler and tells Isherwood that communism is “just a hallucination. A mental disease” (87). One day, the doctor tells Isherwood that Otto has a “criminal head” (89) and believes that boys like Otto “ought to be put into labour-camps” (90). 

Otto becomes friends with a woman after a night of dancing. The woman is a teacher and she sometimes brings her schoolchildren by the house that Otto, Peter, and Isherwood are staying at. Otto soon tells her not to bring the children by the house anymore because Peter makes a scene about it. Peter is tortured by his jealousy of Otto.

One night, Otto comes home drunk after another night of dancing. Peter has been waiting up for him to return. The two have a fight and Peter slaps Otto. Otto tells Peter that he’s going back to Berlin in the morning. The next morning, however, Otto is more concerned with sending money back to his family. Peter agrees to send money to Otto’s family and orders Otto a new suit. In exchange, Otto volunteers to break off his relations with the teacher. It turns out the teacher is leaving the island the next day anyway.

After this incident, Otto goes off to bathe on another beach during the day, leaving Isherwood and Peter largely alone. Peter and Isherwood hire a boat and row out beyond the pier on the lake. Isherwood tells Peter that he should leave Otto as soon as possible, but Peter says he can’t leave: “Things have to go on as they are—until something happens. They can’t last much longer, anyhow” (97).

By the time Peter and Isherwood return to the house, Otto has packed all of his things and left on a train for Berlin. He has left a note for Peter telling him not to be angry. Peter then decides to leave for England. Later, Isherwood finds another note from Otto tucked between the pages of a book he has been reading. The note is from Otto and it tells Isherwood that Otto plans to come see him in Berlin. Isherwood decides to leave for Berlin in a day or two, as the beach house has become too lonely without Peter and Otto.