A Woman in Berlin

by Marta Hillers

  ‘Hardly’ he says. ‘We shouldn’t look at what’s happened too personally, we shouldn’t be too narrow in our perspective. It’s a case of urges and instincts having been unleashed. A thirst for revenge, too. After all, we did a few things to them over there in their country. Now it’s time for change and introspection, for us as well as for them. Our old West is a world of yesterday. A new world is being born, the world of tomorrow, and it’s a painful birth. The Slavic nations are stepping onto the stage of world history, they’re young and full of unspent energy. The countries of Europe will blast open their borders and merge into larger regions. Just as Napoleon swept away all the little kingdoms and tiny fiefdoms, the victorious superpowers will do away with the nations and countries.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you believe that Germany will become a part of the Soviet Union, a Soviet republic?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘Then they’ll take away our homeland and scatter us far and wide, to destroy our sense of nationhood.’

  ‘It’s quite possible that we Germans living today are really just a sacrifice, a kind of fertilizer, a means of transition. Maybe our best use is as skilled teachers. But no matter what the case, I think it’s up to each of us, even under these circumstances, to make our lives as meaningful as we can. No matter where we end up, we take ourselves.’

  ‘Even if it’s to Siberia?’

  ‘I have enough faith in myself that with a measure of goodwill I would be able to create a meaningful life even in Siberia.’

  He certainly would, too, judging from his past performance: a hunchback, he still managed to hold a good job, as the head chemist of a large soft drink and mineral water plant. But is he physically up to what the future might demand of us? Are the rest of us up to it? He shrugs.

  At times I think I could survive anything on earth, as long as it came from without and not from some devious trick of my own heart. I feel so burned up, I can’t imagine what could possibly move me today or excite me tomorrow. So if one has to go on living, it might, just as well be in some icy wasteland. The doctor and I shook hands, both feeling recharged by the conversation.

  At the moment though, I’m completely surrounded by anxiously guarded bourgeois propriety. The widow once again feels herself mistress of her rooms. She wipes and scrubs and buffs, hands me a comb with a few missing teeth so I can comb out the fringes of the rugs. She’s busy in the kitchen with sand and baking soda, moaning about her Meissen figurine that lost its nose and a hand in the various lootings of the basement, whining about not being able to remember where she hid the pearl tie-pin that belonged to her late husband. Sometimes she sits deep in thought and suddenly blurts out, ‘Maybe I put it in my sewing box.’ Then she starts tossing out spools of thread and old buttons… and still doesn’t find the pearl pin. Other than that, though, she’s very capable and ingenious and unafraid of anything. She’s much better at breaking up crates than I am, something she learned from watching the Pole from Lvov, whose uncontrollable temper made him particularly talented at it. (Incidentally, by now the whole house has learned the difference between ‘Ukrainian woman – like this and you – like this’.)

  Today the sun is out. Endless fetching of water. We washed our sheets so my bed is freshly made – a much needed change after all those booted guests.

  A press of people down at the baker’s – through our shattered windows we can hear them making noise and chatting. Actually there’s no real bread today, only numbers for tomorrow’s bread, or for the day after. Everything depends on flour and coal, which the baker is waiting for. Still, using a few leftover briquettes he did manage to bake a few loaves, just for the building, and I was given a generous share. The baker hasn’t forgotten that I stood up for his wife when the boys were going after her. His salesgirl Erna, the one who survived intact in the little room blocked off by the chest, brought the loaves to our apartment. In fact, the whole building chipped in a little to get this bread made. A number of the men, led by Fräulein Behn, brought a small cartload of water buckets for the dough. And a few of the women ‘shovelled shit’, as Frau Wendt so crudely put it. It seems the Russians used an upholstered bench in the shop as a latrine, pulling it a little ways out from the wall and perching on the back… So the bread is honestly earned.

  The Russians have brought us an odd sort of money. The baker showed us a 50-mark bill, a kind of military issue for Germany that we’ve never seen before. He got it from a Russian officer for a mere fourteen loaves of bread. The baker couldn’t make change, but the Russian didn’t seem to mind; evidently he had a briefcase stuffed with similar bills. The baker doesn’t know what to do with the money. He would have given the Russian the bread anyway, but the man insisted on paying. Perhaps some semblance of good faith is coming back. I assume that we, too, will be given this money, and that our own currency will be withdrawn and exchanged, probably for half the value.

  Anyway, the prospect of bread is the first indication that the higher-ups are concerned for our welfare, doing something on our behalf A second indication is hanging next to the front door of the building: a mimeographed notice signed by district mayor Dr So-and-so ordering us to return all goods stolen from shops and offices – typewriters, office furniture, shop equipment, etc. After an initial period of amnesty, discovery of such stolen goods will be punishable under martial law. The notice further decrees that all weapons must be turned in. Apartment buildings where weapons are found will be punished collectively. And anyone residing in a building where a Russian comes to harm is subject to the death penalty. I can hardly imagine any of our men armed and lying in wait for Russians. At any rate I haven’t seen any men up to that these days. We Germans are not a nation of partisan fighters. We need leadership, orders, commands. Once I spent several days on a Soviet train, rocking across the countryside, and heard a Russian tell me, ‘Our German comrades won’t storm a train station unless they’ve bought valid platform tickets first.’ Less sarcastically put, most Germans are horrified by unbridled lawlessness. Besides that, our men are now afraid. Reason tells them that they’ve been conquered, that any attempt to stir things up or make a fuss will only make things worse.

  So the men in our building have been eagerly tracking down weapons. They comb one apartment after the next – all men, not a woman among them – they ask for weapons everywhere, but all they manage to dig up is an ancient firearm without a cock. This is the first time in ages I’ve heard German men speaking out loud, or seen them moving with any vigour. They appear downright manly – or at least what we used to think of as manly. Now we have to come up with a new and better word, one that can serve in foul weather as well as fair.

  WEDNESDAY, 9 MAY 1945, WITHOUT THE REST OF TUESDAY

  Up to now I’ve always had to start with an update on the previous night. But this time there’s nothing, absolutely nothing to say about last night except that I was able to spend it entirely by myself Alone between my sheets for the first time since 27 April. No major, no Uzbek. This state of affairs led to renewed existential worries on the part of the widow who foresaw doom and destruction and no more butter. As far as she was concerned, the sooner the major showed up with new provisions, the better. I just laughed. He’ll be back. I lay in my fresh bedding the whole night long – it felt so good to stretch out. I got a full night’s sleep and woke up in fine spirits. Then I washed with warm water, courtesy of the widow, put on some clean clothes and whistled a little to myself.

  That’s what I wrote at nine o’clock. Now it’s eleven, and everything looks very different.

  Some people equipped with heavy scoops called us down to the street, where we shovelled the pile of rubble and manure on the corner, loading it onto a wheelbarrow. Then we carted it to a nearby rubble site: ancient plaster and scrap metal from the air raids had been covered with fresh debris from the recent artillery bombardment, which in turn was strewn with rags and cans and lots of empty bottles. I found two silver bromide postcards, made in Germany, with pictu
res of nudes embracing – all covered with thumbprints. I was reminded of the time I was in an office in Moscow and I left some German and American newspapers lying about for a few minutes. When I picked them up and went back to reading I noticed some pages were torn – several ads for women’s girdles and bras had been hastily ripped out. The Russians never see ads like that; their newspapers are utterly devoid of sex appeal. So in their eyes even a stupid ad that a man from the West would hardly give a second glance must seem like the most amazing pornography.

  They’re bound to be interested in that – all men are. But they can’t get it at home. Maybe that’s a mistake. If pictures like that were available, the men could fill their fantasies with all those idealized figures, and wouldn’t wind up throwing themselves on every woman in sight, no matter how old or ugly. I’ll have to give this some more thought.

  When I came back around 10 a.m. for a little ersatz coffee, I found the major in the apartment waiting for me, alone. He’d come to say goodbye. His knee isn’t doing well, so he’s been given two months’ recuperation leave, which he’s supposed to spend in a soldiers’ home not far from Leningrad, where he’s from. He’s moving out this very day.

  He’s very serious, almost stern, keeping an iron grip on himself Awkwardly he carefully spells out my address on a piece of paper; he wants to write to me, to stay in touch. I can’t give him the photo he asks for because I don’t have any. My entire photographed past – consisting of one album and a thick envelope – burned during the bombing. And in the intervening weeks I haven’t had a chance to get a new snapshot taken. The major looks at me for a long time, as if to photograph me with his eyes. Then he kisses me in the Russian style on both cheeks and marches out, limping, without looking back. I feel a little sad, a little empty. I think about his leather gloves, which I saw for the first time today. He was holding them elegantly in his left hand. They dropped on the floor once and he hurried to pick them up, but I could see they didn’t match – one had seams on the back, while the other didn’t. The major was embarrassed and looked away. In that second I liked him very much.

  Then it was back outside, since I had more shovelling to do. After that we were planning to look for wood. We need something for the stove, all the pea soup we’ve been eating uses up a lot of fuel. Which made me realize that no one will be bringing food, candles and cigarettes any more. I have to break the news to the widow gently, when she comes back from the pump. But I won’t tell Pauli anything – let the widow take care of that.

  My search for wood brings me to the patch of grass outside the cinema. It’s the first time I’ve been there in two weeks. The place has become our block’s local burial ground. There are three double graves among the rubble and the bomb craters – three married couples, all suicides. An old lady who is sitting on a stone, chewing away at something and tells me the details, with bitter satisfaction, all the while nodding her head. The grave on the right is for a high-ranking Nazi political leader and his wife (revolver). The middle grave, which is strewn with a few wilted lilacs contains a lieutenant-colonel and his wife (poison). The old lady doesn’t know anything about the third grave, but someone has stuck a stake in the sand with an inscription penned in red: ‘2 Müllers.’ One of the single graves belongs to the woman who jumped out of the window when the Ivans were after her. It has a kind of crooked cross fashioned out of two pieces from a door panel – shiny white paint – and fastened together with wire. My throat tightens up. Why does the sight of a cross affect us the way it does, even if we can no longer call ourselves Christians? Memories of early childhood resurface: I see and hear Fräulein Dreyer, with tears in her eyes, describing Our Saviour’s Passion in infinite detail to us seven-year-olds. For those of us in the West who were raised in the Christian tradition every cross has a God appended to it, even if it’s nothing but two splintered bits of door panels and a piece of wire.

  Everywhere there’s filth and horse manure and children playing – if that’s what it can be called. They loiter about, stare at us, whisper to one another. The only loud voices you hear belong to Russians. We see one coming our way, with some curtains draped over his arm. He calls out to us, some obscenity. Now you only see them occasionally here or there or in troops marching off. Their songs strike our ears as raw, defiant.

  I gave the baker 70 pfennig for the two loaves. A strange feeling, as if I were handing him something completely worthless. I just can’t believe that our German money still has any value. Erna the salesgirl was collecting all the ration books for the households still in the building, drawing up a list of names and the number of people in each apartment. Evidently new ration cards are in the offing. She came by wearing a flowery summer dress, all done up – a rare sight. For the past two weeks none of the women dared go outside unless they were dressed like low-lifes. I’m in the mood for some new clothes myself. It’s hard to grasp the fact there aren’t Russians knocking at our door, no one stretching out on our chairs and sofas. When I gave the room a thorough deaning, I found a small Soviet star made of red glass and a condom in paper wrapping. I have no idea who might have left that. I didn’t know they even knew there were such things. In any case, where German women were concerned they didn’t feel it was worth the trouble.

  They took away the gramophone, along with the record featuring the old ad jingle (For the lady, for the child, everyone can find his style’). But they did leave a total of forty-three classical records, from Bach to Pfitzner, including half of Lohengrin. And the cover that Anatol had broken, which we gratefully toss into the stove.

  It’s already evening. I’m sitting on the window seat, writing. Outside it’s summer, the maple is dark green, the street has been swept clean and is empty. I’m making use of the last bit of daylight, since we have to save on candles. No one’s going to bring us any new ones.

  So now it’s over – no more liquor, sugar, butter, meat. If only we could get to our potatoes! But as of yet no one dares dismantle the basement barricade. We’re not sure they won’t be coming back, or sending new troops in. The widow preaches one sermon after the other, although not about the lilies in the field, which would be the only apt example for us. She’s spinning more gloom and doom, sees us all starving to death. When I ask for a second helping of pea soup she exchanges glances with Herr Pauli.

  Anti-aircraft fire is rattling my writing. People say they’re practising for a victory parade; the Americans are supposed to be there as well. It’s entirely possible. Let them get on with their celebrations; they don’t concern us. We’ve surrendered. Nevertheless I do feel a new desire for life.

  Moving along – now I’m writing at night, by candlelight, with a compress on my forehead. Around 8 p.m. someone pounded on our front door crying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ We ran outside, where everything was lit up and glaring bright. Flames were shooting out of the ruined basement two houses down the street, licking at the firewall of the neighbouring house, which was still intact. Acrid smoke came streaming out of a hole in the ruins and creeping up the street. The block was swarming with shadows, civilians. Shouts and cries.

  What to do? There’s no water. The superheated air was blasting out of the basement like a searing wind, exactly as during the night-time air raids, which is why no one got very excited. ‘Smother it,’ people said. ‘Let’s cover it with rubble.’ In no time we’d formed two chains. People passed chunks of stone from hand to hand, and the last person tossed them into the flames. Someone called out to hurry, it was already nine, and all civilians had to be off the streets by ten.

  A few figures rolled a barrel of liquid over from somewhere; we used buckets to scoop out the smelly stuff. In passing me a bucket, one woman accidentally hit my temple with the metal rim. My head spinning, I staggered over to a mound of stone on the grass across from me, the circular patch with all the graves, and sat down. A woman sat down next to me and told me in a monotone that ‘the people under here’ were an officer and his wife who took cyanide. I knew that already, but I let her talk
. ‘No coffin, nothing,’ she said. ‘They were simply wrapped in blackout paper tied up with string. They didn’t even have sheets on their beds. They’d just been relocated here when their own place was bombed.’ But they must have had the poison ready.

  I felt dizzy I could literally feel the bruise swelling on my forehead. The fire was soon contained and smothered. I joined a group of people and, at first, couldn’t understand why they were cursing owner of the delicatessen in the ruined building. Then I learned the man had left some of his wine stores in the basement, which was partially intact. The Russians discovered the alcohol, or perhaps I should say they sniffed it out, and cleared it off the shelves, candles in hand. By accident a spark must have landed in some of the straw used for wrapping the bottles and that eventually led to the fire. According to one witness: ‘The boys were lying dead drunk in the gutter. With my own eyes I saw one of them who was still able to stand in his boots go down the row pulling watches off his comrades’ arms.’ General laughter.

  Now I’m lying in bed, writing, cooling my bruise. For tomorrow we’re planning a trip all the way across Berlin to the Schöneberg district.

  THURSDAY, 10 MAY 1945

  The morning went by with housework, breaking wood, fetching water. The widow soaked her feet in water with baking soda after trying out various hairstyles to find the one that shows as little grey as possible. Finally at 3 p.m. we were ready to set off on our first tour of the conquered city.

  Poor words, you do not suffice.

  We clambered past the cemetery in the Hasenheide park – long, uniform rows of graves in the yellow sand from the last big air raid in March. The summer sun was scorching. The park itself was desolate. Our own troops had felled all the trees to have a clear field for shooting. The ground was scored with trenches strewn with rags, bottles, cans, wires, ammunition. Two Russians were sitting beside a girl on a bench. It’s rare to see one on his own; they probably feel safer in twos. We went on, through what were once heavily populated working-class streets. Now they seem so mute, the houses locked up and shut off from the world – you would think the ten thousand people who lived there had emigrated or were dead. No sound of man or beast, no car, radio or tram. Nothing but an oppressive silence broken only by our footsteps. If there are people inside the buildings watching us, they are doing so in secret. We don’t see any faces at the windows.