Goodbye To Berlin

Isherwood’s friend, Fritz Wendel, introduces Isherwood to Sally Bowles, an English actress who sings at the Lady Windermere. Sally and Isherwood make plans to see each other again, but Isherwood initially believes Sally has (wrongly) assumed that Isherwood is a wealthy man after hearing Sally gossip about her past affairs.

Isherwood meets Sally at her apartment and Sally tells Isherwood about how she came to Berlin: she moved from England with her friend, Diana, an older actress and “the most marvelous gold-digger you can imagine” (30). Diana eventually moved to Paris with a banker and left Sally in Berlin. Sally also tells Isherwood that she is 19 years old—Isherwood had believed she was about 25.

Isherwood doesn’t understand why Sally is living where she’s living and believes Sally could get a much better apartment for the money she’s paying. Sally explains that she doesn’t want to leave her apartment because she gets along with the landlady well and fears the landlady would commit suicide if Sally left her. Sally makes it a point to tell Isherwood that she has never slept with Fritz and that she knows Isherwood isn’t rich.

When Sally visits Isherwood at his place for tea, she casually mentions that she “didn’t sleep a wink last night” (34) because of her new lover. Isherwood believes Sally tries to trick people into either approving or disapproving of her behavior by shocking them with talk of her lovers. He goes on to say, “I wish you wouldn’t try it on me, because it only makes me feel embarrassed” (35). Sally then explains, “I don’t believe that a woman can be a great actress who hasn’t had any love-affairs” (35).

Sally wants to make sure that Isherwood likes her but isn’t in love with her. Isherwood confirms that he likes Sally but isn’t in love with her. Sally is relieved. She says, “I’m glad you’re not in love with me, because, somehow, I couldn’t possibly be in love with you—so, if you had been, everything would have been spoilt” (36).

Sally comes to live at Frl. Schroeder’s on New Year’s Eve after catching Frau Karpf, her old landlady, stealing from her. Sally begins seeing Klaus Linke, a young pianist who used to accompany Sally when she sang at the Lady Windermere. Sally confides in Isherwood that she is in love with Klaus.

Klaus leaves suddenly for England after getting a job offer synchronizing music for films. Sally slips into a mild depression after Klaus leaves. She eventually tells Isherwood that she could never marry Klaus because it would ruin their careers. Klaus writes letters to Sally describing how he wished Sally was there with him. In the letter, he tells Sally to work hard because work will cheer her up and keep her from getting depressed. Despite this, Isherwood says, “From the first, the letter left a nasty taste in my mouth” (41). 

Sally receives another letter from Klaus. This time, he refers to Sally as “his poor dear child” (42) and that they must part ways because Sally adored him too much. Should they continue to be together, he writes, she “would soon have no will and no mind of [her] own” (42). Work, according to Klaus, is the only thing that matters.

At the end of the letter, Klaus explains that he met a young English girl named Miss Gore-Eckersley. Klaus is attracted to her intelligence and says he has never met a girl “who could understand my mind so well as she does” (43). Sally is angry with Klaus but also feels sorry for him, “in a motherly sort of way” (43). Sally says she will become a great actress just to show Klaus. However, Sally also expresses regret about not being able to keep a man. She thinks that she really did love Klaus. Sally becomes more and more restless and agitated as the days go on. She tells Isherwood that she thinks she might be pregnant, but neither believes this too seriously.

Sally and Isherwood meet a man named Clive at the Troika and begin to see him often. Clive is a heavy drinker and says he drinks because he is unhappy. Sally soon begins drinking nearly as much as Clive. Clive is very wealthy and careless with his money and both Sally and Isherwood believe that Clive will put up the money to launch Sally’s stage career. Clive decides that the three of them will travel the globe together, but the next morning, when Sally and Isherwood arrive at Clive’s hotel, they discover that Clive has left for Budapest. He has left three 100-mark notes for them in an envelope. Sally again laments the fact that all men leave her. Sally says she’s “sick of being a whore” (52) and that she’ll “never look at a man with money again” (52).

The next morning, Sally is very ill and Isherwood and Frl. Schroeder send for a doctor. When the doctor leaves, Sally informs Isherwood that she’s pregnant. The child is likely Klaus’s and she plans to terminate the pregnancy. Sally makes Isherwood promise not to tell Klaus.

Sally finds a doctor willing to write her a certificate confirming that the state of her health has made it impossible for her to undergo the risks of childbirth and is moved into a nursing home to have the abortion. Sally tells the staff of the nursing home that Isherwood is the father of the child. Later, Sally expresses some remorse about not having the child and tells Isherwood that she spent the night prior holding a cushion, imagining it was her child.

Isherwood leaves for the Baltic during the summer so that he can focus on his writing. When he returns to Berlin in July, he finds that Sally has given up her room at Frl. Schroeder’s. When Isherwood meets with Sally, he notices that she seems to have made many more male acquaintances.

Sally later calls Isherwood and asks him to write an article for her to be published in a magazine. She had originally agreed to write the article herself, but she only wants the article published so as not to disappoint the publisher, a man who “may be terribly useful […] in other ways, later on” (62). Isherwood completes the article, but Sally tells him it isn’t what the publisher is looking for. She instead calls up Kurt Rosenthal, a young scenario writer for the cinema, and asks him to do the job. Sally tells Isherwood he seems to have changed and lacks energy and calls him a “dilettante” (64). Sally then tells Isherwood that she thinks they’ve outgrown each other. Isherwood is furious at himself and with Sally. He is angry that he was jealous of Kurt and angry that Sally had made him feel like a sham, even though Isherwood acknowledges that in some ways he is a sham. Isherwood believes it will be impossible to see Sally again after this.

A man who says his name is George P. Sandars visits Isherwood. Sandars asks Isherwood for 200 marks to help him start a business. After Isherwood refuses, the man asks Isherwood if he knows any actresses, as he’s selling a new kind of face cream popular in Hollywood. Isherwood gives the man Sally’s address but instructs him not to tell her that Isherwood sent him.

Sally calls Isherwood a few days later and tells him that she needs to see him about a serious matter and that he’s “the only person who can possibly help” (68). Sally tells Isherwood about a man who came to see her and promised her a job as an actress. Sally ended up going to dinner with this man, lending him money, and eventually sleeping with him. The next morning, the man left her at a hotel and took the rest of her money with him. After describing the man to Isherwood, Isherwood realizes that it’s the same man who came asking him for 200 marks.

Sally and Isherwood go to the police station together to report the crime. The officers listening to Sally recount the events are shocked by her casualness about the illicit and sexual details of the night. Sally tells the police that the man was her fiancé—apparently he had proposed that night. Isherwood thinks Sally is joking about this detail until Sally tells him that it’s true. When the police arrest the man, they discover he’s 16 years old. Isherwood tells Sally, “What I really like about you is that you’re awfully easy to take in. People who never get taken in are so dreary” (76).

The chapter closes by Isherwood saying it was the last time he saw Sally. He later received a postcard from her from Paris and then from Rome and then that was it.