Once again we all have to report to the Rathaus. Today was the day for people with my last initial. The street was unusually crowded at registration time. A man in the Rathaus lobby was chiseling away the relief of Adolf. I watched the nose come splintering off. What is stone, what are monuments? An iconoclastic wave such as we have never seen is currently surging through Germany. A new twilight of the gods - is it remotely possible that the big Nazis could ever rise again after this? As soon as I’ve freed my mind a little I really have to tum my attention to Napoleon; after all, he too was banished in his day; only to be brought back and glorified once more.
We had to go up to the third floor and wait in line. The corridor was pitch-dark, packed with women you could hear but not see. A conversation in front of me had to do with planting asparagus, a task several women had been assigned to do. That wouldn’t be so bad. The two women behind me were well-bred ladies, judging from their speech. One said: ‘You know, I was completely numb. I’m very small there; my husband always took that into consideration.’ Apparently she’d been raped repeatedly and attempted to poison herself. Then I heard her say, ‘I didn’t realize it at the time, but I later learned that your stomach has to have enough acid inside for the stuff to work. I couldn’t keep it down.’
‘And now?’ the other asked, quietly.
‘Well - life goes on. The best part was over anyway. I’m just glad my husband didn’t have to live through this.
Once again I have to reflect on the consequences of being alone in the midst of adversity. In some ways it’s easier, not having to endure the torment of someone else’s suffering. What must a mother feel seeing her girl devastated? Probably the same as anyone who truly loves another but either cannot help them or doesn’t dare to. The men who’ve been married for many years seem to hold up best. They don’t look back. Sooner or later their wives will call them to account though. But it must be bad for parents - I can understand why whole families would cling together in death.
The registration was over in a flash. We all had to say which languages we· know. When I confessed to my bit of Russian, I was given a paper requiring me to report tomorrow morning to Russian headquarters as an interpreter.
I spent the evening preparing lists of words, and realized how paltry my command of the language really is. After that I ended my day with a visit to the lady from Hamburg downstairs. Stinchen, the eighteen-year-old student, has finally come down from the crawl space. The scars from the flying rubble have healed. She played the part of the well-bred daughter from a good home perfectly, carrying a pot of real tea from the kitchen and listening politely to our conversation. Apparently our young girl who looks like a young man also managed to come through safely. I mentioned that I’d seen her in the stairwell last night. She was arguing with another girl, someone in a white sweater, tanned and quite pretty, but vulgar and unbridled in her swearing. Over tea I found out that it was a jealous spat: the tanned girl had taken up with a Russian officer - in time more or less voluntarily - drinking with him and accepting food. This evidently irked her young friend, who is an altruistic kind of lover, constantly giving the other girl presents and doing this and that for her over the past several years. We discussed all of this calmly and offhandedly over a proper tea. No judgement, no verdict. We no longer whisper. We don’t hesitate to use certain words, to voice certain things, certain ideas. They come out of our mouths casually, as if we were channelling them from Sirius.
WEDNESDAY, 16 MAY 1945
I got up at 7a.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 corning 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’ br
anch 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 buzz ing 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 3p.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. r 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 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 clearly 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 parlons 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 plait’ - 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 high
er 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 r m getting along. He’d like to get to know me better, but right away wants to dispel any wrong ideas: ‘Pas ça, vous comprenez?’ 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.’
A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Page 20
