Nightmare in Berlin

by Hans Fallada

  He was lying at the bottom of a huge bomb crater, on his back, his arms pressed tightly against his sides, lying in the wet, yellow mud. Without moving his head, he was able to see the trunks of trees that had toppled into the crater, as well as the facades of houses with their empty window openings, and nothing behind them. Sometimes Doll was racked by the fear that these things might fall down deeper into the bomb crater and end up on top of him, but not one of these dangerously precarious ruins ever shifted its position.

  He was still tormented by the thought that a thousand water veins and springs would inundate him and fill his mouth with the sloppy yellow mud. And there would be no escape, because Doll knew that he would never be able to get up out of this crater by his own strength. But this fear, too, was groundless; he never heard a sound from the springs or the trickling water veins, and all was deathly silence inside the huge bomb crater.

  He was haunted by a third fear, and that was an illusion, too: vast flocks of ravens and crows flew in a constant stream across the sky above the bomb crater, and he was terrified that they might spot their victim lying down there in the mud. But no, the deathly silence continued unbroken; these vast flocks of birds existed only in Doll’s imagination, otherwise he would at least have heard their cawing.

  But two other things were not figments of his imagination, and he knew for certain they were true. One of them was that peace had finally come. No more bombs came screaming down through the air, no more shots were fired; peace had come, and silence reigned. One last huge explosion had flung him into the mud at the bottom of this crater. And he was not alone in this abyss. Although he never heard a sound, and saw nothing except what has been described, he knew that his whole family was lying here with him, and the whole German people, and all the nations of Europe — all just as helpless and defenceless as him, all tormented by the same fears as him.

  But always, throughout the endless hours filled with anguished dreams, when the busy and energetic Dr. Doll of the daytime was obliterated and he knew only fear — always in these harrowing interludes of sleep he saw something else. And what he saw was this:

  Sitting on the edge of the crater, silent and motionless, were the Big Three. Even in his dreams he called them only by this name, which the war had seared into his brain. Then the names Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin came to mind, though he was sometimes tormented by the thought that something had changed there recently.

  The Big Three sat close together, or at least not very far apart; they sat as if they had just turned up from their part of the world, and stared down in silent grief into the vast crater, at the bottom of which lay Doll and his family and the German people and all the peoples of Europe, defenceless and defiled. And as they sat there and stared, silent and full of grief, Doll knew with absolute certainty in the innermost depths of his heart that the Big Three were ceaselessly pondering how he, Doll, and everyone else with him could be helped back on their feet again, and how a happy world could be rebuilt from this ravaged one. They pondered this ceaselessly, the Big Three, while endless flocks of crows flew homewards over the pacified land, from the killing fields of the world to their old roosts, and while silent springs trickled inaudibly, their waters bringing the sloppy yellow mud ever more perilously close to his mouth.

  But he, Doll, could do nothing; with his arms pressed tightly against his sides, he had to lie still and wait, until the Big Three, deep in mournful thought, had come to a decision. This was perhaps the worst thing about this bad dream for Doll, that although he was still threatened by many dangers, there was nothing he could do except to lie still and wait, for an endless eternity! The empty house fronts could still fall in on him, the flocks of crows, hungry for carrion, could still spot the defenceless figure, the yellow mud could still fill his mouth; but there was nothing he could do except wait, and maybe this waiting would make it too late for him and his family, whom he loved very much … Maybe they would all perish yet!

  It took a long time for the last traces of this haunting bad dream to leave Doll, and he did not really break free until a change in his life forced him to stop brooding and busy himself with useful activity again. But it took a great deal longer for Doll to realise that this entire bad dream, rising up from within like a ghostly apparition, was only there to fool and delude him. As painful as this dream was, Doll had believed it was true.

  It took a very long time for him to grasp that there was nobody out there who was prepared to help him up out of the mire into which he had plunged. Nobody, not the Big Three, much less any of his fellow countrymen, was remotely interested in Dr. Doll. If he died there in the wet mud, too bad for him — but only for him! Not a heart in the world would grow heavier on his account. If he really had a desire to work again and write things, then it was up to him and him alone to overcome this apathy, get up on his feet again, brush the dirt off, and get down to work.

  But at that time Doll was still a long way from understanding this. Now that peace had finally come, he thought for a long time that the whole world was just waiting to help him back on his feet again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The second illusion

  On the morning of 26 April 1945, Doll had finally woken in a good mood again. After weeks and months of passively waiting for the war to end, the hour of liberation now seemed nigh. The town of Prenzlau had been taken, the Russians could arrive at any moment; in the morning, planes had been circling over the town — and they were not German planes!

  But the best news had come to Doll’s ears in the late evening: the SS was pulling out, the Volkssturm had been disbanded, and the little town would not be defended against the advancing Russians. That took a huge weight off his mind: for weeks now he had not ventured out of the house for fear of drawing attention to himself. Because he was absolutely determined not to fight in the Volkssturm.

  But now, after this welcome news, he could venture outdoors again without worrying about what the neighbours would say — three of whom, at least, overlooked his house and garden. So he stepped outside with his young wife into the glorious spring day. The sun felt warm, and its warmth did them a power of good, especially down here by the water’s edge. The leaves and grass were still fresh and bright with all the myriad hues of the season’s first growth, and the ground beneath their feet seemed to heave and tremble with urgent fecundity.

  As Doll was soaking up the sun outside the house with his wife, his gaze fell upon two long borders planted with shrubs, which lay either side of the narrow cement path that led to his door. There was new growth sprouting in these borders, too, and the first grape hyacinths, primroses, and anemones were starting to come into flower. But welcome as this sight was, it was spoilt by a tangle of wire, some of it hanging free, some of it still attached to ugly wooden stakes, which formed an untidy mess that was an affront to the young growth, while the loose ends of wire, dangling where they could catch you unawares, made it dangerous even to walk along the footpath.

  No sooner had Doll’s gaze taken in this untidy mess than he exclaimed: ‘I’ve got my work cut out for me today! That hideous tangle of wire has been annoying me for ages!’ And he fetched his pincers and mattock, and went to work with a will.

  While he busied himself in the sun, he was finally able to see into his neighbours’ gardens again. He soon noticed a lot of unusual activity there. Wherever he looked, there were people running back and forth, lugging suitcases and furniture out of their houses and into sheds — or the other way round — and others wandering about aimlessly (or so it appeared) with spades, which they drove into the ground here and there, seemingly at random.

  One neighbour ran out along the jetty and then stood still, hands in pockets, as if he suddenly had all the time in the world. Then something plopped into the water, and after the neighbour had looked around in an elaborately oh-so-casual way to see if anyone was watching — Doll carried on swinging his mattock the while — he sauntered back
to his house with a rolling gait, as if deep in thought, and then promptly threw himself into another round of frenetic activity.

  Then, all of a sudden, everything came to a halt again. Groups of people gathered at the fences dividing their properties and whispered conspiratorially among themselves. Large packages changed hands over the wire, and then everybody scattered again, looking furtively about them, intent on more secret business.

  Doll had only been living at this property, which belonged to his second wife, for a few months, and as an ‘outsider’ he remained excluded from all these busy comings and goings, which suited him just fine. The fact was that most of the people engaged in this blatantly surreptitious behaviour were women or very old men, which gave him licence to dismiss it all contemptuously as ‘women’s stuff’.

  But he was not able to enjoy his isolation for long, because two women, ostensibly friends of his wife, now turned up at his property. These women, whom he had never been able to stand, hung around next to him and acted all surprised that he had time for that sort of work on a day like this — when the Russians would be arriving any minute!

  Dr. Doll had now been joined by his wife, and with a slightly mocking smile he explained that that was just the point: he was clearing the paths for these long-awaited visitors. The ladies inquired with astonishment if he was planning to stay here and wait for the enemy to arrive, because that was surely not advisable, with two children, an aged grandmother, and a young wife? The people living out here on the edge of town, at any rate, had all got together and agreed to cross by boat to the other side of the lake when dusk fell, and to hide deep in the forest and await the next turn of events.

  Doll’s wife replied for her husband: ‘Well, we won’t be doing anything like that. We’re not going anywhere, and we’re not hiding anything away; my husband and I are going to welcome the long-awaited liberators at the door of our house!’

  The two ladies urged them strongly to reconsider, but the more forcefully they argued, the more they wavered in their own resolve, and the more doubtful they seemed about the safety of the forest retreat they had just been commending so warmly. When they finally left, Doll said to his wife with a smile: ‘They won’t do anything, you’ll see. They’ll poke around aimlessly for a couple of hours, like the hens when there’s a storm brewing, picking things up and putting things down. But in the end they’ll just flop down exhausted and do what we’ve all been doing for weeks: just wait for the liberators to arrive.’

  As far as her friends were concerned, Alma was in complete agreement with her husband; but as for herself, she felt neither exhausted nor disposed to wait patiently. After lunch she told Doll, who planned to lie down on the couch for a while after his unaccustomed morning’s labours, that she just wanted to cycle into town quickly to replenish her supply of gallbladder medicine, as there was unlikely to be much opportunity to do so in the coming days.

  Doll had some concerns, as the Russians could arrive at any moment, and it would be best if they were there at home together to welcome them. But he knew from past experience that it was a waste of time to try and dissuade his young wife from some course of action by pointing out the possible risks. She had proved to him a dozen times — during the heaviest air raids, battling the firestorms of Berlin, under attack by low-flying enemy aircraft — that she was utterly fearless. So he gave a small sigh and said: ‘If you must. Take care, my dear!’, watched from the window as she cycled off, lay down on the couch with a smile on his face, and fell asleep.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Alma Doll was pedalling hard uphill and down, heading for the local small town. Her route took her initially along quiet tracks, where there were hardly any houses, then along an avenue lined on both sides with villas. It struck her here that the streets were completely empty, and that the villas — perhaps because every single window was shut — looked unoccupied and somehow ghostly. Maybe they’re all in the forest already, thought Mrs. Doll, and felt even more excited about her little adventure.

  At the junction of the avenue and the first street of the town proper, she finally encountered a sign of life, in the form of a large German army truck. A few SS men were helping some young women and girls to climb on board. ‘Come quickly, young lady!’ one of the SS men shouted to Mrs. Doll, and it sounded almost like an order. ‘This is the last army vehicle leaving the town!’

  Like her husband, Mrs. Doll had been very pleased to learn that the town was not going to be defended, but would be surrendered without a fight. But that didn’t stop her answering back now: ‘That’s just like you bastards, to clear out now, when the Russians are coming! Ever since you’ve been here, you’ve acted like you owned the place, eating and drinking us out of house and home; but now, when the going gets tough, you just turn tail and run!’

  If she had spoken to an SS man like that only the day before, the consequences for her and her family would have been very serious. The situation must have really changed dramatically in the last twenty-four hours, because the SS man replied quite calmly: ‘Just get on the truck and don’t talk rubbish! The leading Russian tank units are already up in the town!’

  ‘Even better!’ cried Mrs. Doll. ‘I can go and say hello right now!’

  And with that she stood on the pedals and rode off into the town, leaving behind the last German army truck that she hoped to see in her life.

  Once again, it felt as if she was riding through an abandoned town — perhaps those few women by the army truck really were the last people living in the town, and everyone else had already gone. Not one person, not even a dog or a cat, was to be seen on the street. All the windows were shut, and all the doors looked like they had been barricaded. And yet, as she cycled on through the streets, approaching the town centre, she had the feeling that this creature with many hundreds of heads was just holding its breath, as if at any moment — behind her, beside her — it could suddenly erupt in a hideous scream, tormented beyond endurance by the agonizing wait. As if living behind all these blind windows were people driven almost mad with fear for what lay ahead, mad with hope that this horrendous war was finally coming to an end.

  This feeling was reinforced by a few white rags, barely the size of small towels, that had been hung over some of the doors. In the ghostly atmosphere that had enveloped Mrs. Doll since she entered the town, it took a moment for her to realise that these white cloths were meant to signify unconditional surrender. This was the first time in twelve years that she had seen flags other than ones with swastikas on them hanging from the houses. She involuntarily quickened her pace.

  She turned the corner of the street, and that sense of a pervasive unseen fear was gone in an instant. And she had to smile in spite of herself. On the uneven street of the small town, moving in all directions in a seemingly random way, were eight or ten tanks. From the uniforms and the headgear worn by the men standing in the open hatches, Mrs. Doll could tell at once that these were not German tanks; these were the leading Russian tank units she had just been warned about.

  But this didn’t seem like the sort of thing you needed to be warned about. There was nothing menacing about the way these tanks drove back and forth in the fine spring sunshine, effortlessly mounting the edge of a pavement, scraping past the line of lime trees and then dropping back onto the roadway. On the contrary: it seemed almost playful, as if they were just having fun. Not for one moment did she feel herself to be in any kind of danger. She wove in and out between the tanks and then, when she reached her destination, the chemist’s shop, she jumped off her bicycle. In her sudden mood of relief she had failed to notice that the houses in this street, too, had been barricaded and closed up by their fearful occupants, and that she was the only German among all the Russians, some of whom were standing around in the street with submachine guns.

  Mrs. Doll dragged her gaze away from this unusual street scene and turned her attention to the chemist’s shop, whose doorway, like those of all the other hou
ses, was securely barricaded and shut up. When banging and shouting failed to raise anyone, she hesitated only for a moment before walking straight up to a Russian soldier with a submachine gun who was standing close by. ‘Listen, Vanya’, she said to the Russian, smiling at him and pulling him by the sleeve in the direction of the chemist’s shop, ‘open up the shop for me there, will you?’

  The Russian returned her smiling gaze with a look of stony indifference, and for a moment she had the slightly unsettling sensation of being looked at like a brick wall or an animal. But the sensation vanished as quickly as it had come, as the man offered no resistance and let himself be pulled over by her to the chemist’s shop, where, quickly grasping her purpose, he hammered loudly on the panel of the door a few times with the butt of his weapon. The leonine head of the chemist, a man in his seventies, promptly appeared at a little glass window in the upper part of the door, anxiously peering out to see what all the noise was about. His face normally had a jovial, ruddy complexion, but now it looked grey and ashen.

  Mrs. Doll nodded cheerily to the old man, and said to the Russian: ‘It’s fine, and thanks for your help. You can go now.’

  The soldier’s expression didn’t change as he stepped back onto the street without so much as a backward glance. Now the key was turning in the lock, and Mrs. Doll was able to enter the chemist’s shop, where the seventy-year-old was holed up with his much younger wife and her late-born child of two or three years. As soon as Mrs. Doll was inside, the door to the shop was locked again.

  Though each individual memory of this first day of occupation was still fresh and vivid a long time after the events themselves, Mrs. Doll’s recollection of what had been said inside the chemist’s shop that day was unclear. Yes, she had her usual medication dispensed with the customary precision, and she knew, too, that when she went to pay for it her money was initially declined, and then accepted with a weary twinkle of the eye, like the playful antics of some silly child. After that, it was just casual talk; they told her, for instance, that she couldn’t possibly set out on the long ride home with all those Russians about, and that she absolutely had to remain in the shop. And then, a few moments later, the same people who had urged her to stay were wondering if the house was still a safe place to be, or whether they would not have done better to go and hide in the forest after all. And they began to reproach themselves for not getting out much earlier and heading for the western part of Germany — in short, what Mrs. Doll heard here was the same wretched, pointless talk, the talk of people worn down by endless, anguished waiting, that could be heard in just about any German household around this time.