Twilight, a distant howling along the front. The widow has managed to get hold of a candle, we light it and stick it onto a saucer. A meagre pool of light on the table. soldiers come and go – evening is when things get busy. People hammering on the front door, pushing through the back into the kitchen. But we are unafraid, nothing can happen to us as long as Petka, Grisha and Yasha are sitting at our table.
Suddenly Anatol is standing in the room, filling the space with his masculine self. A regular soldier is trotting behind him carrying a canteen full of alcohol and a round dark loaf of bread under his arm. The men are at their best–fed, strong and strapping, their uniforms clean, practical and rugged, their movements broad, very self –assured. They spit inside the room, toss their long cigarette filters on the floor, scrape the herringbones off the table onto the carpet and plop down into the armchairs.
Anatol reports that the front has reached the Landwehrkanal, and I think of that old dreary tune ‘Es liegt eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal...’ A body floats down the Landwehr Canal. Lots of bodies at the moment. Anatol claims that 130 German generals have surrendered in the past few days. He takes a cellophane bag, pulls out a map of Berlin, shows us the progress of the front. The map, printed in Russian, is very exact. It’s a strange feeling when, complying with Anatol’ s request, I show him where our house is located.
So... Saturday, 28 April 1945... the front at the Landwehrkanal. As I write this, it’s Tuesday, 1 May. The rockets are singing over head, the oily drone of Russian aero planes. Long rows of Stalin Organs are stacked in the school across the street, the Russians call them by the tender name Katyusha – little Kate – the tide of a popular song among the soldiers. When they are fired they howl like wolves. They don’t look like much – upright balusters, made of thin tubes. But they howl and shriek and wail so loud they nearly break our eardrums as we stand in line for water not far away. And they spew bundles of fiery streaks.
They were howling overhead this morning when I stood in line for water. The sky was full of bloody clouds. Smoke and steam rising over the centre of town. The la C k of water brings us out of our holes. People come creeping from all sides, miserable, dirty civilians, women with grey faces, mostly old – the young ones are kept hidden. Men with stubbly beards and white armbands to show they’ve surrendered stand and watch the soldiers fill bucket after bucket for their horses. Naturally the military always has priority. Still, there’s never any quarrel. Quite the contrary: one time the handle broke while a civilian was using it, and a Russian nailed it right back together.
They’re camped out in the garden plots, under the flowering trees. Howitzers mounted in the flower beds. Russians sleeping outside the sheds. Others give water to their horses which are stabled inside the sheds. We’re amazed to see so many women soldiers, with field tunics, skirts, berets and insignia. They’re regular infantry, no doubt about it. Most are very young – small, tough, their hair combed back smooth. They wash their things in tubs. Shirts and blouses dancing together on hastily strung clotheslines. And overhead the organs howl away, a wall of thick black smoke cutting off the sky.
This morning was like yesterday. On my way home I ran into Herr Golz, loyal Nazi to the end. Now he’s adapted. He spotted a Russian with bright rows of decorations on his breast, all wrapped in cellophane, and asked, ‘Ribbons?’ (It’s the same word in Russian and German, as he informed me, not realizing how much Russian I understand.) He gave me a little notebook, a German–Russian dictionary for soldiers, assuring me he could get hold of some more. I’ve looked it over, it has a lot of very useful words like ‘bacon’, ‘flour’, salt’. Some other important words are missing, however, like ‘f ear’ and ‘basement’. Also the word for ‘dead’, which I never used on my travels, but which I find myself reaching for quite often in recent conversations. Instead I substitute the word ‘kaput’ –which works well for a lot of other things too. The dictionary also contains a number of expressions for which I have no use at all now, despite my best intentions, such as ‘Hands up!’ and ‘Halt!’ At most we might hear those words being used on us.
Getting back to Saturday evening, 28 April. Around 5p.m. Petka and his entourage left – official business of some sort. Petka mumbled something about coming–back–soon, in a low voice so the sub lieutenant wouldn’t hear. Then he crushed my fingers again and tried to look me in the eye.
Incidentally, the officer’s stars seem to have strangely little effect on the enlisted men. I was disappointed. No one felt any need to restrain their happy mood because of Anatol’ s rank, and he himself simply sat alongside the others very peacefully and laughed and carried on with them, filling up their glasses and sharing his pot of liquor. I’m worried about my taboo. Apparently the strict Prussian order of ranks we’re so used to doesn’t apply here. The ones with stars don’t come from any special class, they’re by no means superior than the others in background or education. Nor do they have any special code of honour – especially when it comes to women. Western traditions of chivalry and gallantry never made it to Russia. As far as I know they never had any jousting tournaments, no minnesingers or troubadours, no traincarrying pages. So why should they be expected to be chivalrous? They’re all peasants including Anatol. Of course, my Russian isn’t good enough for me to tell from a given man’s speech and vocabulary what his education or profession is. And I’ve scarcely been able to speak with any of them about literature and art. But I have the feeling that, deep inside, all these simple, undiscriminating men feel insecure in front of me, despite their blustering. They’re children of the people.
Still, at least Anatol is a full two hundred pounds. So maybe his size will help even if his stars do not. In any case, I’m not changing my mind. He moves like a comet, with a tail of young people, boy–like soldiers, who in the meantime have found shelter in the apartment abandoned by the puddingsisters. One of Anatol’s entourage really is just a child – Vanya, sixteen years old, with a stern face and intense black eyes. The widow takes me aside and whispers that he could have been the one, back then on the stairs, his face was small and smooth, his body slender. For his part, Vanya doesn’t show any sign of recognition, although that’s to be expected, since he never even saw the woman he took in such a clumsy. juvenile fashion – he only felt her. Still, I have the sense he knows who she is. After all, he heard her voice, the widow told me how she sobbed and begged. In any event, Vanya follows her around like a puppy, carrying fresh glasses and washing out the dirty ones.
I drank a lot that evening. I wanted to drink a lot, wanted to get drunk. and I did. That’s why I only remember bits and pieces: Anatol next to me again, his weapons and things scattered around the bed... All his buttons and all his bags and everything in them... Friendly. helpful, childlike... But born in May – a Taurus, a bull... I felt like I was a doll, no sensation, shaken, shoved around, made of wood... All of a sudden someone is standing in the dark room, shining a torch. And Anatol is yelling at him roughly, shakes his fists, and the man disappears. Or did I dream that?
Early in the morning I see Anatol standing by the window, looking outside, a reddish glow is flaming into the room, a yellow light tugs at the wallpaper. I hear the katyushas howling away as Anatol stretches his arms and says, ‘Petukh paiot’ – the cock is singing. It’s true –between shells you can actually hear a rooster crowing down below.
As soon as Anatol left I got up, washed myself in the bath with what water was left, scrubbed down the table, swept away the cigarette butts, herring tails and horse manure, rolled up the carpet and stowed it in the chest. I looked in the next room, where the widow had set up camp under the protection of her tenant, both were snoring away. Ice–cold air was blowing through the cardboard on the windows. I felt rested and refreshed after five hours of deep sleep. A little hungover, but nothing more. I’d made it through another night.
I figured out that it was Sunday, 29 April. But Sunday is a word for civilians, at the moment without meaning. There are no Sundays on
the front.
LOOKING BACK ON SUNDAY, 29 APRIL 1945. RECORDED ON TUESDAY, 1 MAY
The first part of the day was filled with the constant, whip–like popping of rifle fire. Trucks rolling up down below, trucks driving away. Hoarse shouts, neighing, clinking of chains. The field kitchen sends its smoke right through our missing kitchen window, while our own oven, stoked with nothing but a few broken crates and pieces of lath, is smoking so much it makes us cry.
The widow asks me through the smoke, aren’t you scared?’
‘You mean of the Russians?’
‘That, too. But it’s really Anatol I’m thinking of. Such a great big bull of a man.’
‘I’ve got him eating out of my hand.’
‘While he gets you with child,’ the widow responds, poking at the fire.
Ah yes. She’s right, that threat is looming over us all, though until now I haven’t been very worried about it. Why not? I try to explain to the widow, with a saying I once heard: ‘No grass grows on the well–trodden path.’
The widow disagrees, she doesn’t think that logic applies here. So I continue. ‘I don’t know, I’m simply convinced it couldn’t happen to me. As if I could lock myself up, physically shut myself off from something so unwanted.’
The widow’s still not satisfied. Her husband was a pharmacist, she knows what she’s talking about. Her medicine chest is well stocked, unfortunately, she doesn’t have anything that would help me protect myself, as she puts it.
‘And you?’ I ask back.
Next thing I know she’s running to her purse. which is lying on the kitchen cabinet, fishing out her ID card and showing it to me, pointing to her date of birth, as self–conscious as if she were undressing in front of me. Sure enough, she’s turning fifty this year. I had pegged her as about six years younger.
‘That’s at least one worry I don’t have,’ she says. ‘Anyway, we should start thinking about whom to go to in case it does happen.’ She assures me that she has connections, thanks to her late husband. ‘Let me handle it. I’ll figure things out. You’ll be able to get rid of it, no question.’ She nods as if that were that and, having finally brought the water to a boil, pours it over the coffee substitute. And I stand there, my hands on my belly, feeling stupid. But I’m still convinced that my sheer aversion can prevent such a tragedy, that I can will my body shut.
It’s strange how the men always start by asking, ‘Do you have a husband?’ What’s the best way to answer? If you say no, they start making advances right away. If you say yes, thinking they’ll leave you in peace, they just go on with their grilling: ‘Where is he? Did he stay in Stalingrad for good?’ (Many of our troops fought at Stalingrad, they wear a special medal.) If you have a real live man around, one you can actually show them (as the widow does with Herr Pauli, even though he’s her tenant and nothing more), they’ll back off a bit – at first. But they don’t really care, they take what they can get, married or not. However, they prefer to keep the husband out of the way for as long as needed, by sending him off somewhere or locking him up or doing something else. Not because they’re afraid. They’ve already noticed that none of the husbands here are very likely to fly into a rage. But having one around makes them uncomfortable – unless they’re completely plastered.
As it happens I don’t know how to answer that question, even if I wanted to be completely honest. Gerd and I would have married long ago if it hadn’t been for the war. But once he was called up that was it, he didn’t want to any more. ‘Bring another war orphan into the world? Not a chance. I’m one myself, I know what it’s like: And that’s the way it’s been up to now. Even so, we feel just as tied to each other as if we were married. Except I haven’t heard from him for over nine weeks, his last letter was posted from the Siegfried Line. I hardly know what he looks like any more. All my photos were bombed, except the one I had in my bag, and I tore that one up on account of the uniform. Even if he was just an NCO, I was afraid. The whole building got rid of anything that had to do with soldiers, anything that might upset the Russians. They all burned books, too, but at least when the books went up in smoke they provided some warmth, a little hot soup.
We’d barely managed to drink our ersatz coffee and eat a few buttered slices of the plundered bread when Anatol’s men marched in. Our place has become a kind of restaurant for them, atheit one where the guests bring their own food. This time they brought a decent man along, the best I’ve met so far: Andrei, a sergeant, a schoolteacher by profession. Narrow forehead, icy–blue eyes, quiet and intelligent. My first political conversation. That’s not as difficult as it sounds, since all the words having to do with politics and the economy have Latin or Greek roots, so they sound similar in both languages. Andrei is an orthodox Marxist. He doesn’t blame Hitler personally for the war, instead he faults capitalism, which spawns the Hitlers of the world and stockpiles war material. He thinks that Russia and Germany make a good economic match, that Germany can be a natural partner for Russia, once it has been built up along socialist lines. The conversation did me a lot of good, and not so much because of the subject, which I’m not as well versed in as Andrei, but simply because one of them treated me as an equal, without once touching me, not even with his eyes. He didn’t see me as a mere piece of female flesh, like all the others up to now.
People were coming and going throughout the morning, while Andrei sat on the sofa writing his report. As long as he’s there we feel secure. He brought a Russian army newspaper, I deciphered the familiar names of Berlin districts. There’s not much left of our city that’s still German.
Other than that we feel completely at the mercy of anyone and everyone. When we’re alone we jump at every noise, every step. The widow and I huddle around Herr Pauli’s bed, the way we are right now as I am writing this. We linger for hours in the dark, icy room. Ivan has driven us to the very depths – even literally, in some cases, there are still a few groups on our block that haven’t been discovered, families who have been living in their basements since Friday, who only send people out early in the morning for water. I think our men must feel even dirtier than we do, sullied as we women are. In the queue at the pump one woman told me how her neighbour reacted when the Russians fell on her in her basement. He simply shouted, ‘Well, why don’t you just go with them, you’re putting all of us in danger!’ A minor footnote to the Decline of the West.
I’m constantly repulsed by my own skin. I don’t want to touch myself, can barely look at my body. I can’t help but think about the little child I was, once upon a time, the little pink and white baby who made her parents so proud, as my mother told me over and over. And when my father had to become a soldier in 1916, when he said goodbye to my mother at the train station, he reminded her never to forget to put my lace bonnet on to protect me from the sun. So that I would have a lily–white neck and a lily–white face. That was the fashion of the times for girls from good homes. So much love, so much bother. with sunbonnets, bath thermometers and evening prayers – and all for the filth I am now.
Back to Sunday. It’s difficult to recollect everything, my mind is such a jumble. By 10a.m. all the usual guests were gathered: Andrei, Petka, Grisha, Yasha and little Vanya as well, who once again washes our dishes in the kitchen. They ate, drank and chatted away. At one point Vanya told me, his child’s face turning very serious: ‘We humans are all bad. Me too, I’ve done bad things.’
Then Anatol showed up, lugging a record player – I have no idea from where – with two of his entourage carrying the records. And what do they keep playing, over and over, at least a dozen times? After quickly sampling and rejecting records like Lohengrin and Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms and Smetana? An advertising jingle! –A record the Camp: A Textile company on the Spittelmarkt used to give customers for buying a certain amount. ‘Stroll on down to Camp and see what’s in our store today...’ followed by a list of their entire collection crooned to the rhythm of a foxtrot. But that’s just what Ivan wants –they started warbling alon
g, happy as larks.
Once again the spirits are going around the table. Anatol gets the familiar glint in his eye and finally kicks everybody out under fairly obvious pretences. This particular door doesn’t even have a lock, he simply shoves the wing chair against it. Meanwhile I can’t stop thinking about my conversation with the widow, this morning at the oven. I make myself stiff as stone, shut my eyes, concentrate on my body’s veto, my inner No.
He moves the chair back away from the door to let the widow in with the soup tureen. She and I take our places at the table. Even Herr Pauli comes hobbling in from his room, perfectly shaved and manicured, in a silk robe, but Anatol stays sprawled across the bedstead, his legs dangling in their boots, his black hair tousled. He sleeps and sleeps, gently exhaling.
For three hours he sleeps, like a baby, all alone with us’ three enemies. But we feel safer, even when he’s sleeping, Anatol is our earthwork, our rampart. He snores away, his revolver stuck in his holster. And outside there’s war, the crackle of gunfire, the centre of town all in smoke.
The widow takes out a bottle of the burgundy I looted from the police barracks and serves it to us in coffee cups –just in case of Russians. We talk very quietly, so as not to wake Anatol. It does us good to be together like this, polite and friendly. We enjoy an hour of calm, the chance to be nice to one another. Our souls recover somewhat.
Around 4p.m. Anatol wakes up and rushes out, head over heels, to attend to some duty. A little later we hear loud banging on the front door. We tremble, my heart skips a beat. Thank God it’s only Andrei, the schoolteacher with the icyblue eyes. We beam at him, the widow hugs him with relief. He smiles back.
We have a good conversation, this time about humanity, not politics. He lectures, about himself, about how he sees women as comrades and not mere female bodies, how he disapproves of ‘that kind of thing’ – and here he looks past me, awkward and embarrassed. Andrei is a fanatic, his eyes are far away as he says this. He is convinced that his dogma is infallible.
A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Page 9
