The Dancing Bear

by Frances Faviell

  We sat there talking until late. I was intensely interested in Max’s reactions to Britain and now to Berlin. At first he would not talk much, but after Ursula had assured him that I really wanted him to talk frankly and was not going to listen as an Occupation official’s wife, but merely as an interested onlooker, he opened up and couldn’t talk fast enough. He had a most charming speaking voice—something very rare in this land of harsh guttural ones—and a very dangerous asset in a man with his looks.

  He told me that he had been astounded at the small amount of work the prisoners had been required to do in England. “We were all astonished,” he said. “On my farm there were four of us, and we did far more than we need have because we liked it and the farmer was so good to us.”

  He had been genuinely shocked at the laziness and unwillingness of some of the British workmen. He gave us many small incidents of their unwillingness to do more than they were absolutely obliged to do. The farm hands, he said, refused to do anything on Sundays except the bare feeding. They had refused to help in such an emergency as when the young heifers had strayed into a field of valuable oats on a Sunday, in spite of the fact that it was plainly their fault that the heifers had got out of their own field. They would down tools when their hours were up, regardless whether it was finished. He couldn’t understand such things.

  “They talk of nothing but Trade Unions,” he said; “but your Government, excuse me saying so, are making a race of very lazy people. Here our labourers and farm hands have to work very long hours and very hard for their wages, which are much lower than yours, and now I hear that you are going to revive all the trade unions in Germany.”

  I asked him about the food.

  “There is always food on farms,” he said indifferently. “We got our rations and there were always other things—we were not badly fed, but you British have no lust—I use the word in the German sense—in anything that you do; you are moderate to the point of boredom. If you have two ounces of butter on your ration, you eke it out by scraping it on several pieces of bread—the German plasters it all on one piece, enjoys that thoroughly, and lives on its memory until the next one. It is the same with all your pleasures—please don’t think that I don’t appreciate this moderation in all things—but I don’t want to be like that myself.”

  I asked him if he had belonged to the Nazi Party.

  “To the Hitler Youth Party, of course,” he said, surprised; he was new to post-war Germany and knew nothing of the fashion now of denying having had anything to do with the Nazis.

  “Were you a keen member?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Haven’t I just told you that I dislike moderation? What I do, I do with my whole heart.”

  I asked if he knew that Berlin had been so terribly destroyed. “Did you?” he countered—“No. All we heard in England was the daily weight of bombs dropped. It gives one no idea of the real destruction. It was a terrible shock to see my birthplace like this,” waving a hand at the ruins all round us.

  He was alive, intelligent and not yet disillusioned; it was going to be interesting to see what he would make of life in this shambles of what was once Berlin.

  Max had said that he received a great shock when he saw Berlin and its devastation; but in the eighteen months since I had first seen it on that lovely autumn morning it had changed its face a little for the better. Or was it, as Stampie said, that you got used to it?

  Looking around one saw great masses of rubble everywhere, but efforts were being made now to clear them away. Some large buildings were being repaired, shops were finding the means to rebuild at least one storey and re-open. Others managed to erect a small shack at the foot of the mound of débris of their former building and to carry on business. All down the Kurfürstendamm there were gay little kiosks and shacks and in the previous summer the striped awnings of the cafés and the geraniums and other flowers made a brave show which was doing wonders for the morale of the populace. Faces were far less yellow and strained. People did not jump so violently at the sound of a horn or a bell.

  The children looked a little less like wizened gnomes, although their legs were still pathetically thin. They grew at an alarming rate—upwards like overgrown wheat with no roots. The doctors were watching this with foreboding. Fats were still horribly scarce, as were sugar and any kind of oil. The winter had not been anything like as hard as that of the previous year when so many children and old folk had died of their privations. The birds were slowly returning to the trees. There were robins and every kind of tit at our windows now, and our cat Puffin would sit watching them for hours. A magnificent seasonal programme of opera, ballet and concerts had been within the reach of all the Allied personnel; entertaining was still going on every night. Party followed party, each one vying with the other. The clubs were always packed with diners and dancers.

  Operas and ballets hitherto unknown to me had been given night after night, all the Russian ones which we seldom have a chance to see in Britain. Eugene Onegin, Sadko and The Queen of Spades were all new to me, as were Prince Igor, Firebird and Scheherezade. Gluck’s Orpheus was enchantingly given and Erna Berger was delighting us all as Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute.

  The long-promised visit of the Moscow State Ballet was the highlight of this season for me. I have never seen anything to equal it for sheer perfection as a whole, and surely this should be the ultimate aim of ballet. Exquisitely matched as to height and technique, the Russian ballerinas were so superbly trained that each and every one could dance any rôle. The precision of the corps de ballet was as flawless as that of each individual performance. The wild exciting music of Prokofiev, Asafiev and Khachaturian, new to me, were intoxicating, as were the superb décor and costumes. The barbaric Tartar, Azerbaijan and Ukrainian dances brought something virile and stimulating to a conception of ballet grown somewhat stale at home. Even the purely classical ballets were imbued with this virility and freshness.

  I remembered all that Lilli had told me of this ballet and of Ulanova, the idol of the Soviet audiences. Someone had told her a great deal about Ulanova, and how she had looked forward to seeing her. Several times while watching the ballet, the vision of Lilli’s light figure in her white practice dress flitted across my mind.

  Marshal Sokolovsky had indeed given his friends a feast when he invited us to this. It was only one of the many magnificent entertainments he provided that winter.

  Although there were now teachers from home in the schools, I was still helping with the art there and still teaching at the Army Education Centre.

  The reichsmark was scarcely worth the paper it was printed on and prices were still fantastic on the Black Market. There was constant talk of a currency reform—the date of which was to be kept a secret because of speculators. It had been delayed by the usual Russian refusal to agree to it.

  “It won’t make any difference to me,” said Frau Altmann, when we were discussing it one evening, “I have no hoard of reichsmarks.”

  She looked pointedly at Ursula and Joe who were sitting in the window doing some kind of sums in a notebook. They had not got married as they had intended the previous summer, because Joe had not found it so easy to get his transfer to the States as he had thought. He could not marry Ursula until he was due to leave Germany, and so they had been obliged to wait. Frau Altmann still did not approve of Joe, but she admitted his generosity and that he and Ursula seemed to suit each other well enough.

  The Altmann house was just the same. There was never any money to do the repairs which would make it less draughty and less cold. Ursula and her mother managed somehow with Joe’s help. We were sitting there listening to the radio and gramophone and they were trying out new records from the States. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was Ursula’s latest love. She wanted it again and again.

  “Like it?” she asked Max, who was reading.

  “I do—and I don’t,” he fenced.

  “That’s a darned silly answer,” drawled Joe; “either you like it or yo
u don’t.”

  Max said nothing. He was watching Ursula, who was gyrating slowly to the waltz theme in it.

  I was watching her too. She seemed even harder after Lilli’s death and quite impervious to any suffering or privations. She simply took things in her stride, accepting everything as it came. She did not do this with the calm stoical patience of her mother, who now found greater consolation than ever in her religion, but with the bitter armour of disillusioned youth.

  Outwardly she was far more polite and affectionate towards Frau Altmann, but it was impossible not to sense the terrible struggle between these two women, both still bitterly antagonistic to each other but each striving to ignore it in the necessity of living together.

  Frau Altmann had said resignedly that she supposed Ursula and Joe might as well make a match of it. “There is no one else for her,” she had sighed, “for no German man would want to marry her—she is far too hard and selfish.” I was not so sure that she was right.

  It was soon after the Furtwängler concert that I first noticed her reaction to Max. She was waiting for Joe to take her to one of their usual night clubs. Frau Altmann and I were going to a German cinema together. Max was writing a letter at the table. He asked her where she was going that night.

  “To a new place,” she said shortly. She was bestowing great care on her face with the aid of a hand mirror which she held under the lamp. Electricity was still scarce, and at the end of each month the meter showed practically nothing left on the tiny ration. The last few days of the month were usually spent in the gloom of candles, when one could obtain them.

  “There are plenty of those,” I remarked. “They spring up like mushrooms and disappear as quickly.”

  I saw Max looking intently at Ursula as she made up her face. “It doesn’t need all that stuff, Ursi,” he said. “Why do you do it?”

  She looked up in surprise and paused with a lipstick in her hand. The light from the lamp and two candles lit up her face in the dark room. Her eyes, her most attractive feature, set at a slight slant in her high-cheekboned face, had mysterious shadows round them which made them strangely compelling. I thought she looked like the heroine of some thriller.

  “It may not need it, but it’s getting it,” she said tartly, and drew in the line of her curving upper lip with the red stick. “Things have changed since you left here,” she said, snapping the lid of her powder compact shut. “You are still thinking of the days when the Party forbade German women to use make-up, good German women did not use it. Well, there are no good German women left now—so what?”

  The bitterness in her voice astounded Max, who protested, “Why, Ursi, don’t snap at me like that. I’m not criticising you. I’m trying to tell you that you don’t need all that stuff—you are so lovely without it.”

  He had risen from his chair and was staring at her. The colour rushed into her face and flooded her neck. I looked from one to the other and the picture of those two faces was imprinted on my memory as if I had painted them. It was the first time I had seen Ursula disconcerted or at a loss. Her hand shook, and the lipstick dropped on the floor. In a moment Max had retrieved it for her and just then Frau Altmann came in with Joe at her heels.

  I heard Ursula say in a slightly shaking voice, “What about coming along with us, Max—Joe doesn’t mind, do you Joe?”

  “Sure, come along. We’ll find plenty of janes there, there’s no shortage.”

  He had put his arms round Ursula and tilted her face up to his and deliberately kissed her full on the mouth which she had just painted.

  It was this lack of reticence in his love-making which so upset Frau Altmann. She hated it. She was no prude, but she simply couldn’t bear this kind of caress being given in the presence of others. Apparently Max couldn’t either. I saw his blue eyes narrow, then deliberately turning his back he said quietly, “No thank you, I have no desire to come with you.”

  The difference which the coming of Max had made in Frau Altmann’s life was remarkable. She was typical of German women in that they must have some man to serve. She was like a lost soul when Fritz left, and she had no menfolk to wait on. When this man whom she had mothered as a schoolboy had arrived in Berlin lonely and homeless, and had been overjoyed at finding her again, she had immediately suggested that he make his home with them.

  Ursula had not liked this. Her relations with Joe were by no means platonic, and the giving up of her bedroom and the sharing of her mother’s meant constant scenes now because of the late hours she kept. She argued that she provided most of the money for the home and she was entitled to her own room in it. Max had insisted that she was right, that he could not accept her room, that the divan in the sitting room on which Fritz had slept would suit him admirably.

  Frau Altmann did not agree. To her the male had the first call on comfort. Max, who was paying her well for his board and lodging, was in her opinion entitled to a room of his own.

  Max was extraordinarily interested in Fritz. He had known him only as a small child, and simply could not take in the fact that he had become a Communist. At the same time he told me that many of the younger men in the service of the Control Commission were attracted by Communism. Their one topic of conversation was politics, just as Karl’s our new driver’s was, and amongst them the two great subjects for discussion were Communism and Nazism.

  “Democracy doesn’t come into it at all then?” I asked him.

  “No,” he replied in surprise. “We Germans are not democrats. And what astonishes us is that you British should think that we are so willing to accept ‘the British way of life’ as you call it. Just because we are defeated and occupied it does not mean that our whole natures can be changed to accept something absolutely alien to us. Forgive me if I tell you that much as I respect your nation I find them extremely stupid to think like this. In fact I found in Britain that nice as the people were, and they are nice, they have the idea that there is only one way to live and that is the British way.”

  I began to laugh. It seemed funny. The Germans had done exactly the same in the countries they had occupied, forcing totalitarianism on the people by very much harsher methods than ours. I said as much.

  “I don’t deny it,” he answered hotly, “but when you do the same, why do you set yourselves up to be so much better than any other nation?”

  “I can’t understand you British,” he would say. It was always the same. No one understood us. How often had I been told that in other European and Asiatic countries.

  “You see, I have been almost five years in Britain and made many friends. No one treated me as a prisoner of war. Indeed they almost apologized that I was one. I was asked to tea at many houses. People took the trouble to find German literature for me to read. They found people to talk German with me so that I should feel at home. This was incredible to us prisoners. A prisoner doesn’t expect to be treated in such a way. You don’t hate us at all.”

  “But why should we hate you? What is the good of hate?” I interrupted.

  “You must hate someone. It is healthy. There must be some sharply dividing line somewhere in life. How can you love if you don’t hate? This amazing moderation in all things is quite alien to us. We are taught to hate certain things and certain people, and by this only can one assess the value of the things one loves.”

  I told him that the Christian religion taught us not to hate, and that surely what the people in the neighbourhood he had lived in were doing was carrying out their religious teaching.

  “But it wasn’t Christianity,” he said, with the slow smile which was one of his most attractive traits; “it was just the British way of life.”

  I discovered later from a German secretary of my husband’s that this phrase had become quite a slogan among the Germans.

  “Don’t do this, or don’t do that,” they would reprove each other; “it isn’t the British way of life!”

  We would have endless discussions. He was puzzled and completely at sea. He could not understan
d that the free speech, thought and political views encouraged at home in Britain were not allowed here under the Occupation. “We were never allowed any of these things under Hitler,” he insisted, “and did not expect them, but if you are going to force your way of life on to us, then surely we can have your freedom of speech and press too.”

  It was useless to try and make him see that all this would come later—that we were still engaged in making some kind of order out of chaos. He had not seen the first appalling confusion after the surrender of Germany. Frau Altmann had seen what our troops had done for the Berlin populace and she told him firmly that he was talking nonsense. She hated political talk of any kind. She had endured a good deal of it in her time.

  “If there were no politicians there would be no wars,” she always insisted. “People understand each other very well; it is the political parties that make all the problems.”

  “We have no leader. If only we had a leader,” Max would say. Lotte frequently said the same thing. “We Germans are no use without a leader. Hitler did unite us. Without a leader we are lost.”

  AUTUMN

  1948

  I

  IT was on my return from an eventful journey to London that I noticed how frail Frau Altmann had become. It was as if I saw her with new eyes. She was not an old woman in actual years, but she had endured a great deal recently and it was telling on her. There had been no news of Fritz since that one letter. He may have been a bad son to her, but he was her youngest—her baby. She was a mother and I could understand that she was still grieving terribly over him.

  I was in touch with several families in the neighbourhood of Leipzig, and when a member of one of them came to Berlin to collect some parcels which we could not send, I gave him a photograph of Fritz which Ursula had obtained for me. It seemed unlikely that Fritz would be living under his own name now. Stampie had assured me that there were ways and means of getting new papers and identity cards which I wouldn’t know about.