A Woman in Berlin

by Marta Hillers

  WEDNESDAY, 16 MAY 1945

  I got up at 7 a.m. Moscow time. The streets were quiet with an early morning stillness. The shops were empty; the new cards have yet to be distributed. A girl in uniform was standing by the iron-bar gate outside the headquarters; she didn’t want to let me in, but I showed her my paper and insisted.

  At last I was sitting in the office of the commandant, the present lord and master of at least a hundred thousand souls. A small, slender man, very much spit-and-polish, pale blond, with a conspicuously quiet manner of speaking. Russian is his only language, but he has an interpreter at his side, a bespectacled woman in a checked dress – not a soldier. Fast as the wind she rattles away in German and Russian – translating between the commandment and a sharp-nosed woman, the owner of a café. The woman wants to reopen? Excellent, she should go ahead and do so. What does she need? Flour, sugar, fat, sausage. Hmm, hmm. What does she have? Coffee substitute? Good, she should serve that along with a little music, if possible, perhaps set up a gramophone – the goal is for life to return to normal very soon. The commandment promises that she should have power back tomorrow, along with the rest of her street. The interpreter summons a man from the next room, most likely an electrical engineer; he brings in some blueprints and shows the commandant how power is being restored in the district. I crane my neck to look, but our block isn’t there.

  More petitioners follow. A man in blue overalls asks if he can take home a horse that’s lying lame and bleeding in the park, to nurse it back to health. Please, go ahead – as long as he knows something about horses. I’m secretly amazed that the horse hasn’t been cut up into pot-sized pieces by now Or have we seen the last of those days, when animals were slaughtered right where they fell? It’s astonishing to see all these people suddenly so fixated on obtaining permits just so they can cover their backs for anything they want to do. ‘Commandant’ is clearly the word of the day.

  A factory owner comes in with two stenotypists to register his small business, a stovepipe plant, temporarily closed due to lack of material. Bud’et,’ says the commandant – ‘It will be’ – a magic Russian formula that the interpreter consolingly translates as, ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be new material coming in soon.’ Well, bud’et is definitely one of the words I can manage, along with the second magic formula, ‘zavtra’ – tomorrow.

  Next come two men, apparently managers of a chocolate factory. They’ve brought along their own interpreter, someone at the same level as me; the man must have spent time in Russia as a soldier working there. Chocolate is still a long way off, of course, but the men want to bring some rye flour from a warehouse outside town and use it to make noodles. Go ahead! The commandant promises them a truck for ‘zavtra’.

  The atmosphere is very matter-of-fact – no stamps and very few papers. The commandant works with small scribbled notes. I’m all eyes and ears watching the authorities in action; it’s fun and exciting to observe.

  Finally it’s my turn. I jump right in and brazenly confess the obvious, namely that my Russian isn’t up to the complex task of interpretation. In a friendly way he asks where I learned Russian, what I studied. Then he says he’s sure that in the foreseeable future there’ll be a need for people trained in drawing and photography, that I should wait. That’s fine with me.

  Meanwhile two Russians have come in, boots gleaming, their freshly pressed uniforms richly decorated. Being washed and groomed is a mark of kultura for them, a sign of a higher level of humanity. I still remember all the posters I saw hanging in offices and trams throughout Moscow: ‘Wash your face and hands every day, and your hair at least once a month’ with cute little illustrations of splashing and blowing and rinsing in washbasins. A religion of cleanliness. Polished boots are also part of the same kultura, so I’m not surprised by how eager the men are to shine them up whenever possible.

  The two men whisper with the commandant. Finally he turns to me and asks whether I could accompany Sub lieutenant So-and-so (Ch-ch-ch… this time the name was clearly stated but I immediately forgot it) as an interpreter while he makes his rounds – he’s been assigned to inspect the banks in the district. That’s fine with me as well. I’m happy to do anything that isn’t fetching water or scavenging for wood.

  So I traipse through the Berlin streets alongside the swarthy, good-looking officer. He talks to me slowly, careful to pronounce every word distinctly, the way you do with foreigners who barely speak your language, and explains that we first have to call on the district mayor, a German, to request a list of the various banks’ branch offices.

  Burgemestr is the Russian word for mayor, from the German Bürgermeister. Crowds of people are milling about the Rathaus and running up and down the dim corridors. Men dash from room to room, doors bang open and shut. Somewhere a typewriter is rattling away. Identical handwritten notices have been posted on the few pillars that have a little light: a family is searching for a woman who lost her mind on 27 April and ran away. ‘The person in question is forty-three years of age, teeth in poor condition, hair dyed black and wearing slippers.’

  In the mayor’s office a swarm of men is buzzing around the desk talking, and gesturing intently as an interpreter keeps chattering. Within minutes the sub lieutenant is handed a list of the banks. A girl types out the addresses. The window seat is adorned with a bouquet of lilac.

  We set off. The lieutenant is reserved and very polite. He asks if he’s going too quickly, if I know much about banking, if it really isn’t a burden to accompany him.

  At the Dresdner Bank we find things in good order: clean desks, with pencils placed at right angles. The ledger books are open, all the safes intact. The entrance to this bank is inside a larger entranceway; it was probably overlooked.

  Things are different at the Commerzbank – a real pigsty, filthy, forlorn and empty. The vaults have all been broken into, as well as the deposit boxes, boxes and cases have been slit open and trampled. There’s human excrement everywhere; the place stinks. We flee.

  The Deutsche Bank looks halfway decent. Two men are busying themselves sweeping the floor. The safes have been cleaned out, but very neatly, obviously opened using the keys from the bank. One of the men tells me how ‘they’ had got hold of the director’s home address and raced off with a truck to get him. When they arrived they found him dead, along with his wife and daughter – poisoned. Without wasting time they drove straight to the deputy director and demanded that he unlock the vaults. This bank has even opened for business. A sign states that the teller will receive deposits from 1 to 3 p.m. I’d like to see who’s interested in making a deposit right now The old-fashioned stocking or mattress method strikes me as decidedly more secure.

  I can’t quite figure out why the Russians burrowed their way into the banks like that, with such determination. Surely their orders did not include this sort of brutal safe-cracking – that’s clear from the bank where the boxes were so ruthlessly smashed open and from the overwhelming faecal stench left by the robbers. It’s possible the looters had been taught that banks in this country are the bulwarks of the evil capitalists, so that by plundering them they were performing a kind of expropriation of the expropriators, a deed worthy of praise and celebration. But it doesn’t add up. This looks more like sheer unbridled looting, each man for himself, boldly snatching whatever he can. I’d like to ask the sub lieutenant about it, but don’t dare.

  A big cleaning operation is under way in the Stadische Sparkasse. Two elderly women are scrubbing the floor. There are no vaults here. As far as we can see the tills are completely empty. The lieutenant promises to send a guard tomorrow. But what is there to guard?

  We spend a good while searching in vain for the the Kreditund Bodenbank. At last we find it in a back courtyard, safe and sound, peacefully slumbering away like sleeping Beauty, behind a folding security grate. I ask around in the building and eventually am able to give the sub lieutenant the bank manager’s address. No Russian ever even laid eyes on this bank. The glass sign out
by the street that used to announce its presence is now nothing more than a few splinters dangling from a couple of screws.

  There’s one more branch of the Deutsche Bank, at the edge of our district. We make our way there. The sun is burning. I drag myself along, tired, weak and weary. The sub lieutenant kindly slows down to accommodate me. He asks some personal questions about my education, what languages I know. And suddenly he says in French, very quietly and without looking at me, Dites-moi, est-ce qu’on vous a fait du mal?’

  I’m taken aback, stammer in reply, ‘Mais non, pas du tout.’ Then I correct myself. ‘Oui, monsieur, enfin, vous comprenez.’

  All at once there’s a different atmosphere between us. How is it that he speaks French so well? I know without his telling me: he is a byvshy – someone from the ‘has-been’ class, the former ruling class in old Russia. He proceeds to tell me his background: he’s from Moscow, his father was a doctor, his grandfather a well-known surgeon and university professor. His father studied abroad, in Paris, Berlin. They were well-off, with a French nanny. The sub lieutenant, who was born in 1907, was still able to imbibe something of the ‘has-been’ way of life.

  After our first exchange in French, we grow quiet again. The man is dearly uncomfortable, unsure. All of a sudden he blurts out, staring ahead of him, ‘Oui, je comprends. Mais je vous prie, Mademoiselle, n’y pensez plus. Il faut oublier. Tout.’ He looks for the right words, speaks earnestly and forcefully. I answer, ‘C’est la guerre. N’en parlors plus.’ And we don’t speak any more about it.

  Silently we step into the bank lobby, which is wide open, utterly destroyed and looted. We trip over drawers and index files, wade through floods of papers, carefully stepping round the piles of excrement. Flies, flies, flies everywhere. I’ve never seen such massive swarms of flies in Berlin. Or heard them. I had no idea they could make so much noise.

  We climb down an iron ladder into the vault, which is crowded with mattresses and strewn with the ever-present bottles, flannel boot liners, trunks and briefcases slit open. A thick stench over everything, dead silence. We crawl back up into the light. The sub lieutenant takes notes.

  Outside the sun is scorching. The sub lieutenant wants to rest, have a glass of water. We amble a little down the street – the deserted, bleak, silent street that we have all to ourselves. We sit down on a garden wall beneath some lilacs. ‘Ah, c’est bien,’ he says, but he prefers speaking Russian with me. Although he has a perfect French accent, it’s clear he lacks practice, so that his French is quickly exhausted after the first questions and phrases. He finds my Russian quite valiant, but smiles at my accent, which he finds – ‘Excusez, s’il vous plaît’ – Jewish. That’s understandable: after all, the Russian Jews speak Yiddish, which is a dialect of German as their mother-tongue.

  I look at the lieutenant’s brownish face and wonder if he isn’t Jewish. Should I ask? Right away I dismiss the idea as tactless. Afterwards I started thinking: with all the invectives and accusations the Russians heaped on me, they never once brought up the persecution of Jews. I also remember how concerned the man from the Caucasus was to let me know he wasn’t a Jew – it was the first thing he said to me. In the questionnaire we all had to fill out in Russia when I was there, the word ‘Jew’ was in the same ethnic column as ‘Tatar’ or ‘Kalmuck’ or Armenian’. I also remember a female clerk there who made a great fuss about not being listed as a ‘Jew’, insisting that her mother was Russian. Still, in the offices where foreigners have to report, you find very many Jewish citizens with typically German-sounding surnames, names that have a certain flowery ring – Goldstein, Perlmann, Rosenzweig. Generally most of these officials are proficient in languages and devoted to the Soviet dogma – no Jehovah, no Sabbath, no Ark of the Covenant.

  We sit in the shade. Behind us is yet another red column, another silent lodger, a Sergeant Markov. The door to the basement apartment opens a tiny crack, an ancient woman peers out and I ask her for a glass of water for the Russian. Amicably she hands over a glass; it’s cool, fogged up with condensation. The sub lieutenant stands up and bows in thanks.

  I can’t help thinking of the major and his model etiquette. Always these extremes. Either it’s ‘Woman, here!’ and faeces on the floor, or all gentleness and bowing. In any case the lieutenant couldn’t be more polite, couldn’t treat me more like a lady – which I evidently really am in his eyes. In general I have the feeling that as long as we German women are somewhat dean and well-mannered and possessed of some schooling, then the Russians consider us very respectable creatures, representatives of a higher kultura. Even the lumberjack Petka must have felt something like that. Perhaps it’s a matter of context, too, surrounded as we are by the remnants of well-polished furniture, the pianos and paintings and carpets – all the bourgeois trappings they find so splendid. I remember Anatol expressing his amazement at how well off the German farmers he met in the villages were as the front moved west. ‘They all had drawers full of things!’ Yes, all the many things that’s new to them. Where they come from, people don’t have as much, everything can be packed into a single room. Instead of a wardrobe, many families just have a few hooks on the wall. And if they do acquire things, they manage to break them very quickly. Russians take no delight in the mending and tinkering of typical German housewives. I saw with my own eyes how the wife of a Russian engineer swept the floor, then whisked the dirt right under the cupboard, where there was undoubtedly more than enough already. And hanging behind the door to their sitting room was a towel where all three children blew their noses – the smallest one at the bottom, the older ones higher up. Just like back in the village.

  We spend a while sitting on the little wall, talking and resting. Soon the sub lieutenant wants to know where I live, and how I’m getting along. He’d like to get to know me better, but right away wants to dispel any wrong ideas: ‘Pas ça, vous cornprenez?’ he says and looks at me with foggy eyes. Oh yes, I understand.

  We arrange to meet that evening. He’ll call up to me from the street. I’m to be watching out for him at the arranged time. His name is Nikolai. His mother calls him Kolya. I don’t ask about his wife. I’m sure he has a wife and children, but what does that concern me? In parting he says, ‘Au revoir.’

  I go home and report the latest news to the widow. She’s delighted. ‘You better keep him. Finally an educated man from a good home, someone you can talk to.’ (Pauli and the widow also know some French.) In her mind she’s already seeing the provisions rolling in, she’s convinced that Nikolai has access to food and that he’ll do something for me – and by extension for all three of us. I’m not so sure. On the one hand there’s no denying that he’s likeable. Of all the Russian conquerors I’ve seen so far he’s the most westernized. On the other hand I don’t have any desire to get involved with a new man. I’m still ecstatic at being able to sleep by myself between clean sheets. Besides, I want to finally move out of the first floor and away from the widow, above all away from Herr Pauli, who begrudges me every single potato. I’d like to resettle in the attic apartment, clean it up, make it liveable. Why should I sleep with someone to procure food for that lazy Pauli? (Sleeping-for-food is another new concept, with its own vocabulary, its own specialized jargon, just like ‘my major’s sugar’, ‘rape shoes’, ‘plunder-wine’ and ‘coal-filching’.)

  Moving on, late at night. Towards 8 p.m. I was waiting by the window, as arranged, but there was no Nikolai. Herr Pauli made fun of me, saying my conquest was so unfaithful. The widow, still hopeful, kept her eye on the clock. Then, as it was getting dark, a call came from outside. ‘C’est moi!’ I opened the door – now all worked up – and led Nikolai upstairs to our apartment. But he’d just come to say he couldn’t stay longer than a quarter of an hour. He greeted the widow and Herr Pauli ceremoniously in French and left right away with his ‘Au revoir.’ In the hallway he said, in Russian, as he shook my hand, ‘Until Sunday at eight.’ And then, in French, ‘Vous permettez?’ Since when are we in a position
to permit it or not to permit? Maybe there really is a new wind blowing our way. Incidentally, Nikolai doesn’t think there will be inflation or a new currency – I asked him this morning. He thinks the money we’ve been using will stay in circulation for the time being, but that the banking industry will be overhauled and drastically simplified. ‘Probably socialized, right?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that. These are completely different conditions.’ And he changed the subject.

  THURSDAY, 17 MAY 1945

  Up early to get water at the new hydrant. There’s a newspaper hanging in a shop window, the Tägliche Runclschau, printed by the Red Army for ‘the population of Berlin’. We’re no longer a people, only a population, present and accounted for but representative of nothing. This same linguistic differentiation – Bevölkerung as opposed to Volk – occurs in other languages too, as in the French peuple and population. Reading about the victory celebrations in Moscow, Belgrade, Warsaw, leaves a bitter taste. They say Count Schwerin-Krosigk has addressed the German people, called on them to face facts. Of course, we women have been doing that for a long time. But who knows what will happen once the generals and gauleiters and holders of the Knight’s Cross start doing the same? I’d be curious to know just how high the suicide rate in Germany is at the moment.