by Heinz Rein
Have I given myself away? Lassehn wonders. It all sounds quite credible, I could really believe that this is what happened. ‘What seems to be wrong?’ he asks, and measures the distance to the cellar exit with his eyes.
‘You said you’d been working in the fields,’ the other man says, ‘when you suddenly had to leave.’
‘That’s right,’ Lassehn replies. ‘And why …’
‘You were working in the fields in the middle of March?’ the man asks again. ‘In snow and ice? Were you picking potatoes or harvesting carrots? You don’t even believe that yourself.’
Lassehn gives a start, he can see that his excuse was a serious mistake, the thoughts in his head begin circling unbearably, it’s as if someone were slowly lifting off the lid of his skull.
The man walks right up to Lassehn. ‘What’s up now?’ he asks menacingly. ‘Either you identify yourself, or you come straight the station after the all-clear. Meanwhile you’ll sit here quietly.’
‘Out of the question!’ Lassehn says and slowly stands up, taking the safety catch off the revolver in his trouser pocket. ‘You haven’t the right …’
‘Don’t be impertinent!’ says the man. ‘Haven’t the right? Everyone these days has the right to arrest suspicious people. Haven’t you heard of deserters, spies and foreign agents? And in any case, this is ID enough!’ And he points at his Party insignia.
‘That is …’ Lassehn is about to object, he is about to say that even an insignia isn’t a form of legitimation.
‘What’s going on here?’ a woman’s voice says. Mrs Buschkamp has joined them, and grasped the situation with a glance.
‘What do you want with my nephew, Mr Exner?’
The air-raid warden turns round hastily. ‘Is this your nephew, Mrs Buschkamp?’ he asks in astonishment.
‘What else?’ says Mrs Buschkamp. ‘Turned up yesterday, the lad’s half dead, leave him in peace.’
Lassehn responds to the concierge’s intervention first with astonishment, then with relief. Even though he doesn’t know what has prompted her to do this, he is still grateful to her for helping him out of his precarious situation. Once he has reached the cellar steps he is no longer afraid, but inside the shelter, where outstretched legs, prams, suitcases and electric ovens are ready to impede one’s flight, it’s dangerous.
‘Why didn’t you say straight away that he was your nephew?’ the man asks.
‘You didn’t ask,’ Lassehn replies, and slips back into the resting position. If the situation has relaxed a little, he still has to be on his guard, as his suddenly acquired nephew status presents him with new problems that he will have to solve carefully, as general attention is focused on him and the Block Warden’s suspicion has only been distracted, not entirely dispelled.
‘Go on sleeping,’ Mrs Buschkamp says to Lassehn, ‘you must be exhausted.’
‘Are you assuming responsibility for the young man?’ Exner says.
‘Course I will,’ says Mrs Buschkamp. ‘Now clear off, it’ll be the all-clear soon, and he’ll be able to go back to bed.’
‘Doesn’t look that way,’ says another man coming down the narrow passageway, ‘all kinds of formations are headed this way.’
Exner turns towards the speaker. ‘Where are they coming in from?’ he asks. The expression on his face has changed very quickly, the menace that leaped from his eyes and caused his chin to jut are being replaced by fear that makes his cheeks quiver and casts a dark shadow into his eyes.
‘From Potsdam and Luckenwalde,’ the other man replies, ‘they’re probably flying in from the south and south-west.’
‘Let’s listen to the police radio station,’ Exner says.
They both leave, and Lassehn is no longer the focus of interest, the other waves of American bombers overshadow his insignificant little person. He puts the catch on his revolver and pushes it back into the depths of his trouser pocket.
‘Mrs Buschkamp,’ he says quietly and looks gratefully at the old woman, ‘thank you …’
Mrs Buschkamp makes a quick, defensive movement with her hand. ‘Daft sod,’ she says loudly, ‘what were you doing annoying Mr Exner?’
‘But …’ Lassehn says, trying to defend himself.
‘Shut up,’ Mrs Buschkamp snaps at him. ‘Are you trying to cause your old aunt problems?’
Lassehn smiles and nods, he understands at last that Mrs Buschkamp is a new aunt for him, and that for her this new relationship is not without its dangers, a single false note could place not just him but also this old lady in very great danger. He is in no doubt that the scene has etched itself on the consciousness of the assembled residents of the house, and will be the sole topic of conversation once the daylight raid is past. He watches after the old woman, who is now returning to her place by the entrance that links the two cellars, she sits down, takes a pair of glasses from her coat pocket and starts reading a battered book. What moved this woman, a stranger, to speak up on his behalf, putting herself in danger that could become acute at any moment and whose consequences are unpredictable? What made her do that? Pity? Kindness?
Lassehn is inclined always to assign all that is good in people to their emotional components, to explain it with reference to the innate goodness of the human psyche, he doesn’t know, or it has not revealed itself to him sufficiently clearly for him to recognize it, that impulses like pity, helpfulness and loyalty can also spring from a particular set of convictions. Nationalism has stripped many words of their noble content, so that even the notion of convictions still has a whiff of National Socialism about it. Lassehn has known since yesterday that there are certain sets of convictions which National Socialism has not been able to eradicate, and which it has not been able to distort even with the most skilful turns of phrase, but he does not suspect this feisty old woman, with her slightly pinched eyes and her quick Berlin tongue, of having them.
So why did she come to his assistance? Just out of human kindness, pity, goodness? In the few years during which he has had to rely on himself, Lassehn has met no one who possessed these qualities, instead he has only ever encountered harshness, selfishness and suspicion. Every man seemed to be an island, an island without a beach on which a strange boat could wash up. And now, two days in a row, two complete strangers have taken him under their wings, a pub landlord from Silesian Station and a concierge from Charlottenburg, strange parallelism of events. Do they allow us to draw conclusions about the people of this city?
Lassehn looks around from under lowered eyelids. The fear has fled a little from people’s faces, at intervals you can still hear the deep growl of the four-propeller engines, but there are no more explosions, the unbelievable tension of the first fifteen minutes, when bomb after bomb was falling nearby, when everyone clutched their bags more tightly as they prepared to jump, ready to push anyone ruthlessly aside to get to the exit, has now dissolved into effervescent chattiness, into small activities that smack of nervousness.
Relationships between people, which had recently been close to hostility, become conciliatory again, neighbours who are rivals in the struggle for life reacquire more human features, but it’s all a thin layer of plaster.
If the bomber squadron dropped another series of bombs nearby, that plaster would fall away immediately, revealing the wild instincts beneath. But wave after wave of planes flies over the western part of the city without dropping anything, and from the announcements on the police radio station it is soon clear that the bombers are already flying away, which makes it very unlikely that bombs will be dropped. The greater the distance between the city and the departing squadrons, the more human the faces become, and occasional laughter can even be heard ringing out in the cellar. Even though it is clear that the Americans can fly large raids every day, and even though nothing is more certain than the nocturnal attack of several dozen British mosquitoes, people know they have been spared for now, they believe that the unbearable burden placed upon them has been lifted, and that awareness revives them. It allows them to make p
lans for the next few hours, even to arrange to meet and go to the cinema that evening. As incredible as it seems, in half-dilapidated houses, in streets blocked by rubble and anti-tank barriers, the cinemas are still operating, they reel out their performances during the few hours when the electricity ban is lifted, but even then they are seldom able to show the whole programme all at once uninterrupted because the phrases of the newsreel announcers and the chatter of the shadows on the screen are drowned out by the sirens. Lassehn knows that as the spirits of life revive, interest will be focused on him once more, and since he feels no great need to clash again with air-raid warden Exner, he gets to his feet and walks with a swinging stride and in a deliberately casual posture, not too quickly, but not too slowly either, towards the exit.
‘I’m going out for a cig,’ he says to Mrs Buschkamp as he walks by.
Some men are standing smoking in the room just outside the cellar, and with a fleeting glance Lassehn sees that Exner is engaged in animated conversation with a big man in a brown Party uniform. Everything in him urges him to flee as swiftly as possible, but he controls himself, he only quickens his step a little, and only when the twists of the cellar stairs have hidden him from view does he charge up the steps, push open the cellar door and stand in the courtyard. A cloudless blue sky stretches over the great gap surrounded by houses, it is very quiet, a deep peace has settled over the big city at midday, as people dart like rats down underground passageways.
In the hallway Lassehn lights a cigarette and draws the smoke deep into his lungs. Should he go now? He only came here to see his wife, to talk to her, to consider the possibility of their living together, of finding a place to live, until … yes, until when?
Lassehn steps outside the front door. The street has been emptied, as if a magnet had sucked all the life from it, he looks along Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse, towards the north-east there hangs a dark, greyish-black wall of cloud, slowly rising into the sky.
Strange weather, he thinks, it’s a spring sky, light blue with a bright sun, small, white clouds, and beyond it the dark-grey, threatening bank of storm cloud which whirls and seethes and twitches, and there is no wind, hardly a breeze. Strange weather! But suddenly an icy feeling of terror runs through him. The thing that is rising over there is not a storm cloud, that is smoke and haze, desolation and destruction, death and ruin, that is the terrible trail of war which now stretches from Egypt and the Kazakh Steppe, from Narvik and Crete to Berlin. So that’s what it looks like. While only sideswipes fell here, over there the full, targeted force of the bombers came raining down.
Lassehn gives a start when the front door opens behind him. His hand immediately reaches for the revolver in his trouser pocket, these days it has become an entirely instinctive movement, but he quickly puts the revolver back and is almost a little ashamed. Mrs Buschkamp has stepped outside.
‘Ah, it’s you,’ Lassehn says.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ says Mrs Buschkamp. ‘What are you doing standing outside the front door? Do you want the Party bigwigs to come after you?’
‘I’m just thinking about something,’ Lassehn says.
‘But not in the street,’ Mrs Buschkamp says firmly. ‘Too much air in your belly? Or do you want them to hang you?’
Lassehn shakes his head, he’s almost irritated, the woman’s care and attention are nearly becoming a little too much. ‘Look over there,’ he says by way of distraction, and points towards the threatening cloud.
‘That’s nothing new, I don’t even bother looking at that any more,’ Mrs Buschkamp says. ‘We’ve all been through it all, and I’ve even been in the middle of one of those, nothing bothers us these days. But now …’
Sirens cut three long, harsh notes into the deadly silence that spreads like a shroud over the city.
‘All clear,’ Mrs Buschkamp says. ‘Well, you’ve got away with it again.’
‘It’s all a matter of luck,’ Lassehn says, for the sake of saying something.
Mrs Buschkamp looks at him with quick, appraising eyes.
‘Come to mine first,’ she says. ‘Be quick, before the others creep out of the cellar.’
Lassehn follows her hesitantly.
‘Thank you,’ he says, when he is sitting opposite her in the concierge’s lodge.
‘It’s fine,’ Mrs Buschkamp waves the idea away, ‘I don’t want anything in return.’
‘Why have you done this?’ Lassehn asks. ‘You don’t even know me.’
Mrs Buschkamp looks at him thoughtfully. ‘Do you need to know someone to pull him out of the water?’ she asks.
‘No,’ Lassehn admits, ‘but you had no reason …’
‘Save your breath, lad,’ Mrs Buschkamp exclaims angrily. ‘Are you saying you would have let me perish?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lassehn says honestly. ‘Damn it all,’ he says, tearing furiously into himself. ‘You’re quite right, if you’re indirectly reproaching me, Mrs Buschkamp, this Nazi system which supposedly trains up everyone to be a hero and a dragon killer has in fact turned us all into pitiful cowards, cringers before any shit-brown uniform, toadies at the sight of every piece of enamel. All humanity in us has been suffocated, all individuality flattened out, and if humanity in Germany has not quite died out, it’s only because the bastards haven’t yet had time to squeeze the little remaining decency and justice out of us.’ Lassehn is amazed by his own outburst, but he feels liberated, and somewhat justified in the face of this clear-eyed old woman.
Mrs Buschkamp looks at him seriously and thoughtfully. ‘You put that very nicely, Mr Kempner, that’s exactly how it is, I couldn’t have said it so well myself.’ A violent twitch runs over her wrinkled and furrowed face. ‘It would make you weep, all the things the criminals have made of us,’ she says. ‘Have you any idea how mean and wretched I feel for having said Heil Hitler every now and again? But they put you under so much pressure that sometimes you really have no choice, but inside we’re still the same, you can depend on that! It’s lucky they can’t peep inside us.’ She taps her chest and laughs scornfully. ‘They can’t break people like us, and they can’t persuade us either. You’re still a young man, Mr Kempner. This is all you’ve ever known, but what you’ve learned should be enough, if you can see further than the nose in front of your face.’
Lassehn nods. ‘Certainly, but – forgive me if my question is intrusive or bothersome – why are you opposed to Hitler’s rule?’
Mrs Buschkamp gets to her feet and props her hands on her hips. ‘So that’s your next question?’
‘I’m interested in your reasons,’ Lassehn says emphatically, ‘to some extent I’m a student, how …’
‘Well, then take a look around you,’ Mrs Buschkamp says quickly, ‘then you’ll see reasons enough, but you didn’t need to wait for war to hate that gang. Christ alive, were you blind? Didn’t you see them persecuting the Jews, crushing our trade unions, dragging the best of our comrades to the camps and shooting them if they tried to get away? Didn’t you see a whole people having to hold its nose, that the capitalists had us all under their thumbs disguised as socialists, and that they’re destroying everything in their path with their damned war?’
Lassehn is surprised by the woman’s outburst, her calm, detached air has made way for flaming fury, her face twitches, deep folds have formed among her wrinkles. If Lassehn didn’t understand everything that has poured forth from the old woman, he does know one thing for certain: that this flood has its source in a just sense of rage.
‘That’s how I see it by and large,’ Mrs Buschkamp continues. ‘And what does it look like on the ground? What does it look like for the little man, the simple proletarian? Look at me, I’m just sixty, and I’m spending my last days on my own, they took my husband to the Volkssturm eight days ago, my daughter and her kids were evacuated, her husband is missing, my other daughter was transferred with her factory to western Prussia, God alone knows where she is now, and my son …’ she breaks off and sits down again. ‘You see, Mr Kempn
er, you’ve worked for a lifetime, you’ve toiled and slaved, you’ve brought up a son, you’ve sent him to Beuth University so that he can become a technician, maybe an engineer, and then …’ her voice lowers and becomes almost a whisper – ‘and then one day a letter arrives, and it says: “For Führer, Nation and Fatherland, died a heroic death at Marsa Matruh.” I know exactly what that means, it means that they buried him in the desert sand, maybe they even put up a little wooden cross, and at the next sandstorm it was gone, blown away. That’s how it is, Mr Kempner, you’ve brought up a boy, you’ve put everything into him, love, care, pride, hope, also vexation and annoyance, a lot of work and money, you were proud that he’d achieved something and you’d contributed to it, and then one day it says: died a heroic death. That’s it, gone, died a heroic death, the Party sends you its deepest condolences. For Führer, Nation and Fatherland. What a stupid thing to say. What did he die for? For something good? Then I might accept it. But for this? For them? Buried in the desert, a plaything for the hyenas, food for jackals?’ She sits there frozen, her hands lying limply in her lap.
Lassehn is shaken, he walks over to the old woman and rests a hand lightly on her shoulder, for a moment he is almost even tempted to let his hand run over the dark-brown hair already run through with grey, but then he thinks better of it, it’s too familiar.
‘I understand your pain, Mrs Buschkamp,’ he says quietly. ‘You have sowed life and harvested death.’
Mrs Buschkamp jerks her head up again, for a few seconds her gaze is quite blank, but then she shakes herself from her stupor.
‘But don’t believe that I’m going to die of grief, oh no, Mr Kempner, I’m cut from different cloth.’ She laughs loudly. ‘He didn’t die in vain, my Werner didn’t, he left me something that keeps me going. And you know what that is? It’s hatred, a very great hatred that no one can take away from me, a bitter, deadly hatred of those bandits who call themselves the government and the Party. But don’t think I didn’t hate that rabble before, of course, I always hated those fellows, but back then it was in a way a general hatred, the way you might hate dogs or bugs, you’re not hating a particular dog or a particular bug. You hate the species, you see, and that’s how it is for me. After my Werner’s death my hatred turned into a very personal hatred, for every Nazi I know, and you can rely on that, I won’t forget a single one of them if things change. The little Hitlers who boss us and bully us day in and day out, who slap us in the face if we let slip a single word about their proud Greater Germany, who stand by our doors listening to hear if we’ve tuned into a foreign station, who control all the lists, how much each of us has donated for winter relief, and check whether everyone’s got that cleaning rag dangling out of the window, who are always making sure that we say “Heil Hitler”. Those little Hitlers, like Exner here and a few other rogues, I hate them very personally. I’d like to see those bastards dangling because they’re almost more to blame for our misfortune than the ones at the top, because what could the ones at the top do, Adolf, Club-Foot, Hermann, Heini the Undertaker and whatever the hell their names are, what could they do if the people down at the bottom didn’t join in? They could do nothing, that’s what. And what do you have to say to that, Mr Kempner?’
