A Woman in Berlin

by Marta Hillers

  Onward to the edge of the Schöneberg district. We’ll soon find out whether we can continue, whether any of the bridges leading west over the S-Bahn survived intact. Some of the buildings have red flags, the first we’ve seen. Actually they’re more like flaglets, evidently cut from old Nazi flags – here and there you can still make out the line of a circle, where the white field containing the black swastika used to be. The little flags are neatly hemmed, undoubtedly by women’s hands. How could it be otherwise in our country?

  All along the way we see debris left by the troops: gutted cars, burned-out tanks, battered gun-carriages. Occasional posters in Russian celebrating May Day, Stalin, the victory. Here, too, there are scarcely any people. Now and then some pitiful creature darts by – a man in shirt sleeves, a woman with dishevelled hair. No one pays us much attention. A woman passes us, barefoot and bedraggled. She answers our question – ‘Yes, the bridge is still there’ – and hurries away. Barefoot? In Berlin? I’ve never seen a woman in that condition before. The bridge is still blocked by a barricade of rubble; my heart is pounding as we slip through a gap.

  Glaring sun. The bridge is deserted. We pause to look down at the railroad embankment, a jumble of tracks, straw-coloured in the sunlight, pockmarked with craters one yard deep. Pieces of rail wrenched high above the ground, upholstery and scraps of fabric streaming out of bombed sleepers and dining cars. The heat is stifling. The smell of fire hangs over the tracks. All around is desolation, a wasteland, not a breath of life. This is the carcass of Berlin.

  On into Schöneberg. Here and there we see people in the doorways – a woman, a girl, their blank eyes staring into space, their features vapid and bloated. I can tell by looking that the war has only recently ended here. They still haven’t recovered from the shock; they’re still as numb as we were several days back.

  We head down Potsdamer Strasse, past blackened offices, empty tenements, heaps of rubble.

  A moving sight on one corner: two rickety old women standing in front of a pile of rubble so huge it towers above them. They scratch at the refuse with a small shovel, load it onto a little cart. At that rate it will take them weeks to move the entire mountain. Their hands are knobby and gnarled, but perhaps they’ll finish the job.

  Kleist Park is a wasteland with masses of rags, mattresses and cushions torn from cars lying under the arcades and piles of faeces everywhere, swarming with flies. Right in the middle stands the half-finished high-rise bunker, like a hedgehog surrounded by iron spikes, that was intended to shelter us from bombs in the seventh year of the war. Two civilians are yanking away at a stack of beams, one of them sawing the timbers into more manageable pieces. Everything belongs to everyone. The saw cuts through the silence with its pitiful rasp. Reflexively the widow and I drop our voices to a whisper. Our throats are parched – the dead city has taken our breath away. The air in the park is full of dust, all the trees are covered in white powder, riddled with bullet holes, badly wounded. A German shadow hurries past with a load of bedding. At the other end of the park we find a Russian grave surrounded by wire. Another set of gaudy red wooden uprights, and in the middle a flat granite slab bearing an inscription in lime-paint: here rest heroes who fell for the fatherland. The Russian word for hero is geroi. It sounds so Prussian.

  Twenty minutes later we are in front of the house where the widow’s friends live. ‘He was in the same brotherhood as my husband,’ she says of the man, a lecturer in classical literature. The building looks completely dead, the front door boarded up with slats. As we search for the back entrance we run into a woman who has lifted her skirt and is taking care of her needs in the corner of the courtyard, completely unembarrassed. I’ve never seen that in Berlin before either, not so publicly. Finally we find the entrance, climb the two flights of stairs, knock and shout, the widow’s name as a password. Noises inside, steps and whispers, until they finally realize who it is. The door flies open, we embrace, I press my face against that of a stranger – after all, I’ve never seen these people before. First the wife, then her husband emerges, holding his hands out to us, asking us inside. The widow talks as if in a fever, her words a jumble. The other woman is talking as well and neither is listening. It takes a while before we’re seated in the apartment’s one inhabitable but very drafty room. We fish out the butter sandwiches we’ve brought along and offer them to the widow’s friends. They’re both amazed. They haven’t seen any bread, and the Russians didn’t leave any behind. In answer to the standard question, ‘How often did they…?’ the lady of the house answers with a broad East Prussian accent, ‘Me? Only once, the first day. After that we locked ourselves down in the basement. We had a wash-boiler full of water.’ The conquerors reached the neighbourhood later and left earlier. Everything happened in a flash.

  What are they living off? ‘We still have a sack of groats and a few potatoes. Oh, and our horse too!’

  Horse? They laugh, and the woman explains with graphic gestures. While the German soldiers still controlled the street, someone came running into the basement with the good news that a horse had been killed, and in no time people were outside. The animal was still twitching and rolling its eyes as the first bread knives and penknives plunged into its body – all under fire, of course. Everyone sliced and dug at the first spot they found. When the classicist’s wife reached over towards some shimmering layers of yellow fat, someone rapped a knife handle across her fingers and said: ‘You! Stick to your own place!’ She managed to hack out a six-pound piece of meat. ‘We used the last of it to celebrate my birthday,’ she told us. ‘It tasted excellent. I had pickled it in what vinegar I had left.’

  We wished her many happy returns. A bottle of Bordeaux appeared. We drank, raising our glasses to the wife. The widow talked about how she compares with a Ukrainian woman we have lost all sense of moderation.

  We said goodbye over and over. The classicist rummaged about the room, searching for something he could give us in exchange for the bread, but didn’t find anything.

  Then we moved on to the next district, the Bayerisches Viertel, to look in on my friend Gisela. The streets were blocked with row after row of German automobiles, practically every one of them gutted. One barber had reopened his shop; a piece of paper advertised that he cut men’s hair and washed women’s, if they brought their own warm water. We actually saw a customer in the half-dark and a man jumping around with a pair of scissors. The first sign of life in the city carcass.

  Up the stairs to Gisela’s. I knocked and called out, shaking with excitement. Once again we pressed our cheeks together, though the most we ever used to do was give each other’s hand a firm squeeze.

  Gisela was not alone. She’s taken in two young girls, students sent by an acquaintance, refugees from Breslau. They sat mutely in a nearly empty room that had no windowpanes but nevertheless clean.

  After the first eager exchanges a lull settled in the conversation. I could sense suffering in the air. Both young girls had black cirdes under their eyes. What they said sounded so hopeless, so bitter. At one point Gisela led me out to the balcony and whispered that both of them had been deflowered by the Russians, they’d had to withstand repeated rapes. Hertha, a blonde of twenty, has been having pains ever since and doesn’t know what to do. She cries a great deal, according to Gisela. There’s no word from her family; from Silesia they were scattered to the winds – who knows if they’re still alive. She clings to Gisela hysterically. The other one, delicate Brigitte, is nineteen and defends herself psychologically with an angry cynicism. She’s brimming with gall and hate: life is-filthy and all men are swine. She wants to go away, far away, some place where she won’t see that uniform, the mere sight of which makes her heart lose a beat.

  Gisela herself came through unscathed, using a trick I learned about too late, unfortunately. Before she became an editor, she had had ambitions to be an actress and had taken courses in which she learned a little about stage make-up. In the basement she painted a wonderful old-lady’s mask on h
er face and tucked her hair under a handkerchief. When the Russians came in and spotted the two young students with their flashlights, they pushed Gisela, charcoal-wrinkles and all, back onto her bedding. ‘You, babushka, sleep.’ I couldn’t help laughing, but I immediately had to rein in my merriment – the two girls looked too glum, too bitter.

  These girls have been forever deprived of love’s first fruits. Whoever begins with the last phase, and in such a wicked way, can no longer quiver with excitement at the very first touch. There’s one boy I’m thinking of, Paul was his name. He was seventeen, just like me, when he pushed me into the shadows of an unfamiliar entranceway on Ulmenstrasse. We had been to a school concert – Schubert, I think – and were still warmed by the music, though we had no idea what to say about it. Both of us were inexperienced, teeth pressed against teeth, and I waited faithfully for the wonder you’re supposed to feel when you kiss – until I realized that my hair had come undone. The hairslide I used to keep it up was gone.

  In a panic I shook out my dress and collar. Paul felt around in the dark on the pavement. I helped him and our hands met and touched, but no longer with any warmth. We didn’t find the hairslide. I had probably lost it on the way. That was very

  annoying as my mother would notice right away, ask me what had happened, give me stern looks. And surely my face would betray what Paul and I had done in the entranceway. We parted in a hurry, suddenly at a loss, and never drew close to each other again. Even so, those shy minutes in the shadows have always kept their silver sheen.

  We stayed at Gisela’s an hour and spent a long time saying goodbye. These days it’s so hard to separate from your friends; you never know whether and how you’ll see one another again. So much can happen. Nonetheless I invited Gisela to visit us the next day. The widow had invited her friends as well. We want to see that they get a crust of bread.

  Back home, the same desolate, long, dusty way. It turned out that the trip really was too much for the widow. Her feet were aching, and we had to make frequent stops to rest on the kerb. I trudged along as if under a heavy load, the burdensome feeling that Berlin might never rise again, that we would remain rats in the rubble for the rest of our lives. For the first time I entertained the thought of leaving this city, of looking for bread and shelter elsewhere, some place where there’s air and open countryside.

  In the park we rested on a bench. A young woman sitting next to us was taking a walk with two small boys. A Russian came by and waved his inevitable companion over, saying to him in Russian, ‘Come here, there are some children. They’re the only ones you can talk to in this place.’ The mother glanced at us, anxious, and shrugged her shoulders. Sure enough a conversation developed between the men and the two little boys, whom the soldiers took on their knees and bounced to a Russian song.

  Then one of the soldiers turned to me and said in the friendliest tone in the world, in Russian, ‘It’s all the same who sleeps with you. A cock’s a cock.’ (I’d learned that expression in all its country-boy crudeness from Anatol.) I had to strain to keep up my act of not understanding what he was saying – since that’s what he was counting on. So I just smiled, which made the two men roar with laughter. As you please!

  Home with tired feet. Herr Pauli had posted himself in an armchair next to the window and was keeping an eye out for us. He refused to believe that in three hours of trekking about we’d run into only a few wandering Russians. He had imagined the centre of town would be abuzz with troops. After the fact we were surprised ourselves, and wondered where all the victors might have gone. We gulped down the dean air of our corner, still shuddering at the thought of the dusty wasteland in Schöneberg.

  I’m having a hard time falling asleep. Grim thoughts. A sad day.

  FRIDAY, 11 MAY 1945

  Housework. We soaked our laundry, peeled the last potatoes from our kitchen stores. Fräulein Behn brought us our new ration cards, printed in German and Russian on newsprint. There’s one type for adults and one for children under fourteen.

  I have my card right here beside me and am making a note of the daily ration: 200 grams of bread, 400 grams of potatoes, 10 grams of sugar, 10 grams of salt, 2 grams of coffee substitute, 25 grams of meat. No fats. If they really give us all that it will be quite something. I’m amazed even this much order has been brought out of the chaos.

  When I saw a queue in front of the greengrocer’s I took my place and used our coupons to get some beetroot and dried potatoes. You hear the same talk in the queue as at the pump: everyone is now turning their backs on Adolf, no one was ever a supporter. Everyone was persecuted, and no one denounced anyone else.

  What about me? Was I for… or against? What’s clear is that I was there, that I breathed what was in the air, and it affected all of us even if we didn’t want it to. Paris proved that to me, or rather a young student I met in the Jardin du Luxembourg three years after Hitler came to power. We had taken shelter from a sudden shower under a tree. We spoke French, and recognized right away that it was a foreign language for both of us. Then we had fun bantering back and forth guessing where the other was from. My hair led him to place me as a Swede, while I pegged him as a Monegasque – I’d just learned what citizens of Monaco are called and found the name amusing.

  The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. We set off, and I gave a little skip so I would be walking in step with him. He stopped and proclaimed, ‘Aha, une fille du Führer!’ – a daughter of Hitler, in other words, a German, unmasked the minute she tried to march in perfect step with her neighbour.

  So much for fun and banter. For then the young man introduced himself, not as a Monegasque, but as a Dutchman and a Jew. And that was the end of our conversation. We went our separate ways at the next fork in the path. The experience left a bitter taste. I brooded over it for a long time.

  I realized it had been ages since I heard about Herr and Frau Golz, my neighbours from my earlier building that burned down, who used to be faithful party followers. I went the few buildings’ distance to find out. It took forever before their neighbours finally cracked open the door, keeping it on the chain, and told me that Herr and Frau Golz had stolen away unnoticed, and how that was a good thing since some Russians had been by looking for him. Evidently he’d been denounced.

  Late in the afternoon someone knocked on our door, calling for me. I was amazed to see one of the figures, now practically forgotten, from our basement-past: Siegismund, believer in victory, who’d heard from somewhere that I had connections to ‘higher Russians’. He wanted to know if it was true that all former party members had to report voluntarily for work or else risk being lined up against a wall and shot. There are so many rumours flying about, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. I told him that I didn’t know anything and didn’t think anything like that was planned, that he should wait and see. It was almost impossible to recognize the man. His pants were billowing loosely around his emaciated body, his whole person looked miserable and crumpled. The widow gave him a sermon about the dangers of fellow-travelling, how he surely sees for himself what that can lead to. Siegismund – I still don’t know his real name – swallowed it all meekly, then asked for a piece of bread. And he was given one, too, which caused a family row as soon as he left. Herr Pauli fumed and shouted that it was outrageous for the widow to give that man something – after all, he was responsible for the whole mess, and the worse off he was now, the better, they ought to lock him up and take away his ration cards. (Pauli himself was always against; he has a contrary character – dissenting, negating, a Mephistophelian ‘spirit that always denies’. From what I’ve seen there’s nothing on earth he’s in complete and unreserved agreement with.) At any rate no one wants to hear another word about Siegismund and the man, he doesn’t dare show himself in the house. Everyone would give him a tongue-lashing; no one wants to have anything to do with him, especially not those in the same boat. He must find it all bleak as well as baffling. I also gave him a piece of my mind, which bothers me right
now Does that mean that I, too, am following the mob? From ‘Hosanna!’ to ‘Crucify him!’ – the eternal refrain.

  Half an hour ago, in the evening twilight, sudden shots. Far off, a woman’s scream. We didn’t even look out of the window. What for? But reminders like that aren’t a bad thing – they keep us alert.

  SATURDAY, 12 MAY 1945

  This morning the entire community of tenants – as we are again officially called – gathered in the back garden, which I had at one point pictured as a cemetery. We were there to dig, all right, but only a pit for the building’s garbage, which was towering over the bins. People were eager to work and had funny things to say. Everyone felt relieved, happy to be able to do something useful. It’s so strange that no one has to go ‘to work’ any more, that we’re all on a kind of leave, that the married couples are with each other from dawn to dusk.

  After that I mopped the living room, scrubbed away all the Russian spittle and boot polish and swept the last crumbs of horse manure off the floor. That left me good and hungry. We still have peas and flour. The widow has rendered what she could from the rancid leftovers of Herr Pauli’s Volkssturmbutter and uses it as fat.

  The apartment was sparkling when our guests arrived from Schönberg. They’d come together, even though Gisela had never met the widow’s friends. All three were cleaned up, neatly dressed and their hair nicely done. They took the same route we did and saw the same thing – that is hardly anyone except the occasional Russian, only silence and desolation. We showed them lavish hospitality: thin coffee and bread with a little fat for all of them!