Goodbye To Berlin

The final chapter of the novel consists of a series of brief anecdotes:

Frl. Schroeder hates the cold during the winter. She is now very lonely since Frl. Mayr is away in Holland on a cabaret tour. Frl. Schroeder is also upset with Bobby. He has been out of a job and is three months behind on rent. She suspects he is stealing from her. Bobby now occupies the “Swedish Pavilion” in the attic. Isherwood suspects that Frl. Schroeder has never really gotten over Bobby’s affair with Frl. Kost. As Isherwood puts it, “The tickling and bottom-slapping days are over” (187). Frl. Kost pays a visit to the flat. She is dressed in a real fur coat and snakeskin shoes. Frl. Schroeder is impressed most by the fact that Frl. Kost has had an operation in a private nursing home.

Herr Krampf, one of Isherwood’s pupils, describes to Isherwood his childhood during the last years of the war. Frau Krampf used to have to visit a butcher with a sexual perversion: “His greatest erotic pleasure was to pinch and slap the cheeks of a sensitive, well-bred girl or woman” (188).