Berlin Blind

by Alan Scholefield

  *

  It was spring, bitterly cold, and in the house in Graf Speestrasse they wore four and five layers of clothing for there was no fuel left to heat the building. There had been twenty successive night raids by Mosquito bombers and most of that part of Berlin had been reduced to empty shells and rubble. But people still survived, houses still survived, life went on. He remembered that day very clearly.

  Lange had recently come in from working the night shift on the news-desk in the Rundfunk and they were having lunch at the kitchen table — if it could be called lunch. Lange and Bruno were arguing, as they argued almost every day now.

  ‘The trouble with you, Lange, is that you have a gloomy outlook. You pretend to be humorous but you are a pessimist.’

  ‘I prefer to call it a realist.’

  ‘You think we will all be finished. Wiped out. That is not so.’

  ‘How the hell do you know?’ He lit a cigarette and Bruno waved the smoke away.’

  ‘Because there is going to be peace.’

  ‘Peace!’ Lange said. ‘You mean unconditional surrender.’

  ‘No, I do not mean that.’

  ‘Who do you think is going to make peace with Germany?’

  ‘I tell you, von Rundstedt has already made an offer to Eisenhower for an honourable peace.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You never believe anything. That is your trouble. You are a cynic.’

  Where do you get this information from?’

  ‘It’s all over Berlin.’

  ‘I haven’t heard it.’

  ‘And not only that. Negotiations have begun with the British Embassy in Stockholm.’

  ‘Oh, God, that story!’

  ‘I tell you it will be an honourable peace. The German Army will stop fighting. Everything will stop. And we will remain on our lines.’

  ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Then tell me why the Government is leaving Berlin?’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘In the major departments sixty per cent of the staff have been dismissed. The men have been ordered to join the Home Guard. The women have been advised to quote disappear unquote.’

  ‘What does disappear mean?’

  ‘It means find a place of safety. And part of the remainder have been sent straight away to emergency headquarters.’

  ‘That’s the sort of rumour that undermines morale,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Listen, the Foreign Press Club is to be moved to Miilhausen. The diplomats go to Wildungen. And Supreme Headquarters to Meiningen. Does that sound as though we’re about to have peace?’

  A calculating look came over Bruno’s face. After a moment he said, ‘Is this really true?’

  ‘Of course it’s true.’

  Spencer had had enough of their arguing. He left the house and walked towards the Tiergarten in the bitter spring wind. It was too early to go to Annie’s apartment because she worked in a munitions factory at night and slept during the morning, usually getting up about two o’clock. As a child he had seen picture books of the First World War, of the battlefields around the Somme and Ypres. Pictures of mud and torn trees, stunted trunks and splintered branches. Now as he walked through the Tiergarten he was vividly reminded of them. The park looked as though it were part of a moon landscape; cratered and tom. And yet on those trees that remained there were buds, and new leaves.

  He walked on and came to the Brandenburg Gate. Unter den Linden had been hit by the raid the previous night and fires were still burning along its length. He turned away from it and walked on down to the Potsdamerplatz past piles of rubble and burst water mains, picking his way through the desolation; he hardly saw it now.

  He crossed Leipzigerstrasse and entered an area of smaller streets lined with apartment buildings, some in ruins, some still standing, and in these there was evidence of life going on as usual; in many windows washing had been put out to dry. He was not too far from Annie’s flat. He thought of her, warm and relaxed in the big double bed. He thought of waking her, of himself getting between the still-warm sheets. He felt excited and turned his steps towards her.

  At that moment the sirens went and almost immediately he could hear the batteries of anti-aircraft guns in the south-west sector of the city. He began to cast around for somewhere he could take cover. He saw an arrow directing him to the nearest shelter, but the way was blocked. The gunfire came nearer as batteries close to the centre of the city opened up. He could hear above the sharp crack-crack-crack of the guns the crr-ump of bombs. He seemed to be the only person in the derelict street. The bombs came nearer. He began to run.

  He had no idea where he was running, only that movement was better than inaction. He came to the end of a partially ruined apartment block and saw what looked like an opening into a basement. He ran down a flight of steps and found himself in what had cnce been the laundry area. It had no wall at the back and did not seem very safe. But a doorway led away from it into the bowels of the building and he pushed past fallen masonry and found himself in a network of passageways filled with electricity cables and central-heating pipes.

  Bombs were falling very close now. One landed with a terrible explosion about a hundred metres ahead of him. It shook the building and brought down dust and plaster. He turned and ran back along the passageway until he came to the laundry. As he reached it a bomb exploded in the street outside. He felt rather than heard the explosion.

  When he regained consciousness he thought he was paralysed. He could not move the lower part of his body. He was lying on a heap of fallen masonry and when he turned his head he could see that a baulk of timber was trapping his legs. Slowly he twisted from side to side and took in his surroundings. The bomb had blown out another wall and daylight was streaming in but because there was no sun he could not tell what time of day it was. It was very quiet; there were no guns and no bombs and it sounded as though the raid was long over. He felt something sticky on his cheek and put up his hand, touched it and saw that it was blood. He felt the wound itself above his right ear. He had no idea how bad it was but it no longer seemed to be bleeding. He realized he must have been unconscious for several hours.

  As his senses returned he began to shiver in the cold and knew he would not survive unless he managed to free himself or someone came to help. He struggled, but the beam was too heavy. He shouted, his voice echoing through the ruined building. And then, from somewhere nearby, he heard an answering call.

  He was not certain from which direction it came, so he shouted again, and again he was answered. The voice came from somewhere over his left shoulder. He managed to twist round until he was facing in the correct direction. Just then a pale sun broke through the cloud layer and lit the interior of the building with mote-filled shafts. At first, because of the dust, he could make out very little, and then he saw her, about ten metres from him. All he could see was the top part of her body. She was covered in dust, her hair matted.

  ‘Help me,’ she said.

  ‘Are you badly hurt?’ he called.

  ‘Help me.’ Her voice was shrill with hysteria.

  ‘I can’t move. Are you badly hurt?’

  ‘Can’t you help me?’

  ‘Someone will come along soon.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she said, and then she screamed, the sound bouncing and echoing off the broken walls.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ he said.

  She ignored all his questions but from what he could make out she seemed to be an elderly woman with a large round face and plump arms. ‘Can you come over here?’ he said. ‘If you can come over here and help me with this beam...’

  ‘I can’t move!’ she shrieked. ‘Look!’

  She raised both her arms and moved them and he saw that the lower portion of her body was buried in rubble. There was silence as they took stock of each other’s positions. Neither could free their legs. They were not able to help each other.

 
‘I’m cold,’ she said.

  He was shaking with cold, too.

  ‘Where were you when the bomb fell?’ he said, his teeth chattering.

  ‘In my apartment.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘On the first floor.’

  So she had come plunging down from the first floor to the basement.

  ‘What is your name?’ He did not find it odd that he, a youth, was comforting someone old enough to be his grandmother.

  ‘I am Mrs Mentzel.’

  What about your husband. Won’t he look for you?’

  ‘My husband died years ago. Who are you? You sound foreign.’

  ‘I was born in England.’

  ‘He was a cheese importer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My husband. He imported from all over: Pont l’Eveque, Es-rom, Bel Paese, Gruyere, Reblochon, Carre de l’Est.’ Her voice trailed away. ‘On Saturdays he always brought home something nice. A Brie. A Bleu de Bresse, just ready.’ She began to cry.

  ‘They can’t be too long,’ he said, but he didn’t believe it himself. He had seen bodies stiff and dead on bombed sites before. There were just too many injured; not all could be rescued in time.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  There was a noise of falling masonry and he turned to look. As he did so she screamed again. At first all he could make out was a shadow, black against the sky, then it moved a few paces towards them. He thought it was a dog, then he realized that no dog he had ever seen was as large as this. The animal came down a slope of rubble, placing one paw delicately after another, sending little trickles of pebbles ahead of it. It came through a shaft of: unlight and he saw that it was not a dog. He was looking at a North American timber wolf, a female, in an emaciated condition. She was coloured dark grey, almost sable on her shoulders, lightening towards her belly. Her fur was dull and her ribs were clearly visible. She was in a highly nervous state. Until a week before she had been in a den created for her and several other wolves in the Zoo, but the bombing had smashed down the wire enclosures and had killed all the others of her pack. She was the sole survivor. For two days she had not eaten. Then in a bombed building she had made a meal from the carcass of a cat. But there had been nothing else for nearly four days and she was starving.

  Mrs Mentzel screamed again and the wolf checked, growling softly all the time.

  ‘Get away!’ Spencer shouted.

  But the animal came on, taking one or two more small steps. Spencer picked up half a brick and with all his strength he flung it at her. It smacked into what must once have been the enamel side of a cooker, for it made a tremendous clanging. In a flash the wolf had whisked up the slope and was gone.

  Mr Mentzel was crying hysterically and he said, ‘It’s all right now, it’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  What was it?’

  ‘A dog.’

  ‘A dog?’

  He was thinking of what he had heard about the bombing of the Zoo: of the snakes and crocodiles said to lurk in the bush near the canal, of the tiger in the restaurant. It had been a joke then.

  Suddenly he realized that she was no longer crying. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They’ll soon come to fetch us.’ She did not reply and her head appeared to be lolling forward as though she were unconscious or dead.

  He was alone again. He began to struggle with renewed vigour, but the beam resisted all his efforts and finally, exhausted, he collapsed on his stomach.

  Would it be back? Since his childhood he had been frightened of wolves. They had appeared in the nursery stories, laying a shadow of terror over them; and then at school there had been novels and short stories about wolves that came down from the mountains in a bad winter, of the troika rushing through the snow and the old and weak being thrown out to appease the slavering pack.

  The day was dying when he woke for the second time. Through the broken wall he could see the blood red clouds of sunset. He was stiff and frozen and found it difficult to move. Then he heard a noise. It was the slithering trickle of small stones, this time louder than on the previous occasion, and he knew that the wolf had come back. He was facing away from the sounds and desperately, as a child would, he wanted to close his eyes and pull blankets over his head. Instead he forced himself to face it. But it was not there. The slope of masonry leading up to the broken wall was bare.

  He shifted to look at Mrs Mentzel. The figure of a man was squatting next to her and looked to be stroking one of her hands. A feeling of enormous relief came over Spencer. It must, he thought, be one of the Hilfsdienst who had found them at last and was comforting the old woman. He opened his mouth to call when suddenly Mrs Mentzel regained consciousness and screamed. She screamed again and again and beat the man with her other hand. He released her, scooped up a piece of rubble twice the size of an ordinary house brick and, with her scream still ringing through the building, brought it down with all his force on her head. He stood there for a second, as though waiting to hit her again, but he must have been satisfied that she was dead, for he threw the lump of masonry to one side and bent again to his task, which Spencer had assumed to be one of soothing a frightened old woman by stroking her hands. Instead, as he tugged and tugged at the finger, Spencer could see that he was, in fact, wrenching off the rings embedded in the plump flesh.

  He lay very still. Even the horror of what he had seen could not blot out the fear that he would be next, not from anything valuable he owned, but simply because he had been a witness. The man struggled for some time before he managed to pull the last of the rings off. Like many women at that time, she was wearing all the jewellery she had as a form of safety. At last he stood up, put the rings in the pocket of his coat and then looked about him as though searching for other victims. He saw Spencer. He picked up a second lump of concrete and came across the rubble. Spencer closed his eyes, pretending to be dead. Then the man stopped. ‘Johnnie!’ he said softly.

  Spencer’s eyes snapped open and he looked up in to Bruno’s face.

  ‘My God, Johnnie, we were worried!’ Bruno said, dropping the concrete lump. ‘We’ve been looking for you. What happened?’

  It was as though the old woman’s murder had never taken place.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘My legs...’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have that off in a moment.’ But he made no move to shift the beam. He squatted there, looking down. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘For a walk. To the Brandenburg Gate and then down here. I was caught in a raid. Can you get it off my legs?’

  ‘Yes. Sure. In a minute. Let me just see, I don’t want to hurt you or make it worse, you know.’ But instead of looking at the beam he was looking at Spencer. Then he said, ‘Did you see what happened over there?’ and he gave a slight twitch of his head.

  Spencer did not reply.

  ‘It was the kindest thing to do, you know. I tried to move her, but it was impossible. She was trapped.’

  Spencer stared at him. He could have pointed out that had Bruno gone for help the Hilfsdienst could soon have shifted the rubble.

  ‘I mean, that’s what you would do to an animal, isn’t it? When it hurts itself badly and there is no way it can recover. It’s a kindness to put it out of its misery. And that’s all I did. What do you say, Johnnie?’

  Spencer could find no words. Bruno picked up a piece of concrete, larger than his fist, and said, ‘You think I should have gone for help? Let me ask you where? Don’t you realize how bad the raid was? There’s almost nothing left in this part of town. Do you think you can just go out into the street and call for help and help will come? I tell you, there would have been no help. She would have died tonight. If she hadn’t died from her wounds she would have died from cold. Instead of looking at me like that you should be pleased that I acted like a man.’ Spencer thought of Mrs Mentzel with her plump face and her plump fingers
covered with rings; and of her husband who imported cheeses and always brought home something nice on a Saturday night. And he thought of the terror she had undergone, not only from the bombing but from the wolf, and how pleased she must have been to see Bruno; someone come to save her at last.

  ‘You want to know why I took her rings?’ Bruno said. ‘I’ll tell you why. Ask yourself what good would they have been to her? You can’t take rings up there, you know.’ He pointed skywards. ‘Anyway, where did she get all those rings? One on every finger. Is that how women dress? Rubbish! You can’t tell me that. A ring on every finger! Stolen, probably. That’s more like it. Stolen from someone else. Looted, maybe. You can get the death sentence for looting, you know.’ He had worked himself up into a rage. Then he paused as though realizing what he had said and to whom it applied. ‘Of course, only if the authorities know about it. Do you think they will find out?’

  ‘Help me!’ Spencer said.

  Bruno moved the concrete from one hand to the other. ‘Everybody does it. You know that? Everybody!’

  ‘Help me with the beam.’

  ‘That’s just it, Johnnie. If I help you, how do I know you won’t harm me?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Yes, now, when things are bad for you, you promise. But maybe tomorrow when you are feeling better, then you forget your promise, isn’t it?’

  ‘I won’t forget it.’

  ‘You know, Johnnie, you and me could have been friends.’

  ‘We are friends.’

  ‘I mean real friends. We would have been if it hadn’t been for Lange. I warned you about him. He’s an unhealthy type. We don’t want his type here in Germany.’

  ‘I can’t feel my legs any more.’

  Bruno squatted there, seemingly deep in thought, moving the lump of concrete from one hand to the other.

  ‘What am I to do with you, Johnnie?’ he said.

  At that moment there was a growl from above them. They looked up and there was the wolf.

  ‘My God,’ Bruno said. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A wolf. It must have escaped from the Zoo. It was here before.’