A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary (24 page)

I’m having a hard time falling asleep. Grim thoughts. A sad day.

FRIDAY, 11 MAY 1945

Housework. We soaked our laundry, peeled the last potatoes from our kitchen stores. Fräulein Behn brought us our new ration cards, printed in German and Russian on newsprint. There’s one type for adults and one for children under fourteen.

I have my card right here beside me and am making a note of the daily ration: 200 grams of bread, 400 grams of potatoes, 10 grams of sugar, 10 grams of salt, 2 grams of coffee substitute, 25 grams of meat. No fats. If they really give us all that it will be quite something. I’m amazed even this much order has been brought out of the chaos.

When I saw a queue in front of the greengrocer’s I took my place and used our coupons to get some beetroot and dried potatoes. You hear the same talk in the queue as at the pump: everyone is now turning their backs on Adolf, no one was ever a supporter. Everyone was persecuted, and no one denounced anyone else.

What about me? Was I for... or against? What’s clear is that I was there, that I breathed what was in the air, and it affected all of us even if we didn’t want it to. Paris proved that to me, or rather a young student I met in the Jardin du Luxembourg three years after Hitler came to power. We had taken shelter from a sudden shower under a tree. We spoke French, and recognized right away that it was a foreign language for both of us. Then we had fun bantering back and forth guessing where the other was from. My hair led him to place me as a Swede, while I pegged him as a Monegasque - I’d just learned what citizens of Monaco are called and found the name amusing.

The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. We set off, and I gave a little skip so I would be walking in step with him. He stopped and proclaimed, ‘
Aha, une fille du Fuhrer!
’ - a daughter of Hitler, in other words, a German, unmasked the minute she tried to march in perfect step with her neighbour.

So much for fun and banter. For then the young man introduced himself, not as a Monegasque, but as a Dutchman and a Jew. And that was the end of our conversation. We went our separate ways at the next fork in the path. The experience left a bitter taste. I brooded over it for a long time.

I realized it had been ages since I heard about Herr and Frau Golz, my neighbours from my earlier building that burned down, who used to be faithful party followers. I went the few buildings’ distance to find out. It took forever before their neighbours finally cracked open the door, keeping it on the chain, and told me that Herr and Frau Golz had stolen away unnoticed, and how that was a good thing since some Russians had been by looking for him. Evidently he’d been denounced.

Late in the afternoon someone knocked on our door, calling for me. I was amazed to see one of the figures, now practically forgotten, from our basement-past: Siegismund, believer in victory, who’d heard from somewhere that I had connections to ‘higher Russians’. He wanted to know if it was true that all former party members had to report voluntarily for work or else risk being lined up against a wall and shot. There are so many rumours flying about, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. I told him that I didn’t know anything and didn’t think anything like that was planned, that he should wait and see. It was almost impossible to recognize the man. His pants were bill owing loosely around his emaciated body, his whole person looked miserable and crumpled. The widow gave him a sermon about the dangers of fellow travelling, how he surely sees for himself what that can lead to. Siegismund - I still don’t know his real name - swallowed it all meekly, then asked for a piece of bread. And he was given one, too, which caused a family row as soon as he left. Herr Pauli fumed and shouted that it was outrageous for the widow to give that man something - after all, he was responsible for the whole mess, and the worse off he was now, the better, they ought to lock him up and take away his ration cards. (Pauli himself was always against; he has a contrary character- dissenting, negating, a Mephistophelian ‘spirit that always denies’. From what I’ve seen there’s nothing on earth he’s in complete and unreserved agreement with.) At any rate no one wants to hear another word about Siegismund and the man, he doesn’t dare show himself in the house. Everyone would give him a tongue-lashing; no one wants to have anything to do with him, especially not those in the same boat. He must find it all bleak as well as baffling. I also gave him a piece of my mind, which bothers me right now. Does that mean that I, too, am following the mob? From ‘Hosanna!’ to ‘Crucify him!’ - the eternal refrain.

Half an hour ago, in the evening twilight, sudden shots. Far off, a woman’s scream. We didn’t even look out of the window. What for? But reminders like that aren’t a bad thing - they keep us alert.

SATURDAY, 12 MAY 1945

This morning the entire community of tenants - as we are again officially called - gathered in the back garden, which I had at one point pictured as a cemetery. We were there to dig, all right, but only a pit for the building’s garbage, which was towering over the bins. People were eager to work and had funny things to say. Everyone felt relieved, happy to be able to do something useful. It’s so strange that no one has to go ‘to work’ any more, that we’re all on a kind of leave, that the married couples are with each other from dawn to dusk.

After that I mopped the living room, scrubbed away all the Russian spittle and boot polish and swept the last crumbs of horse manure off the floor. That left me good and hungry. We still have peas and flour. The widow has rendered what she could from the rancid leftovers of Herr Pauli’s Volkssturmbutter and uses it as fat.

The apartment was sparkling when our guests arrived from Sch
ö
neberg. They’d come together, even though Gisela had never met the widow’s friends. All three were cleaned up, neatly dressed and their hair nicely done. They took the same route we did and saw the same thing - that is hardly anyone except the occasional Russian, only silence and desolation. We showed them lavish hospitality: thin coffee and bread with a little fat for all of them!

I took Gisela into the living room for a chat. I wanted to know what she was thinking of doing. Her predictions were dire. She sees her world, the western world steeped in art and culture, as disappearing - and it’s the only world she finds worthy. She feels she’s too tired to start all over. She doesn’t think that a discriminating individual will have any room to breathe, let alone do any kind of intellectual work. No, she’s not thinking of taking Verona! or some other poison. She intends to stick it out, even if she has little courage and less joy. She spoke of trying to find ‘the divine’ within her soul, wanting to be reconciled with her innermost self and finding salvation there. She’s undernourished, has dark shadows un d er her eyes, and will have to go on being hungry, along with the two girls she’s taken in, whom I think she’s feeding out of her own portion. Her small store of peas and beans and oats was stolen from of her basement - by Germans, before the Russians invaded.
Homo homini lupus
. (Man is a wolf to man.) As she left I gave her two cigars that I quietly lifted from the major’s box, which Herr Pauli has already half consumed. After all, I’m the one responsible for that gift, not Pauli; I deserve my share. Gisela can trade them for something to eat.

In the evening I went to get water. Our pump is a fine piece of work. The shaft is broken and the lever, which has come undone many times, has been lashed on cumbersomely with yards of wire and string. Three people have to hold the structure up while two pump. This collective effort is now taken for granted; no one says a thing. Afterwards both my buckets are full of floating splinters and shavings from the pump. We have to strain the water. I’m once again amazed at the fact that ‘they’ went to such efforts to build barricades that proved useless but didn’t give the slightest thought to ensuring we had a few decent water stations for the siege. After all, they put cities to siege, so they had to have known. Probably anyone in a position of power who’d talked about pump construction would have been dismissed as a defeatist and a scoundrel.

A quiet evening. For the first time in three weeks opened a book-Joseph Conrad,
The Shadow-Line
. But I had a hard time finding my way into it, I’m too full of images myself.

SUNDAY, 13 MAY 1945

A glorious summer day. Noises first thing in the morning- an optimistic clamour of beating rugs, scrubbing, hammering. Still there’s apprehension in the air, a looming fear that we’ll have to hand our apartments over to the military. The rumour at the pump was that troops will be billeted on our block. Nothing in this country belongs to us any more, nothing but ·the moment at hand. And all three of us chose to enjoy that by sitting down to a richly spread breakfast table, Herr Pauli still in his robe, but already halfway healthy again.

Bells are ringing all over Berlin to celebrate the Allied triumph. Somewhere right now the famous parade is under way; a parade that doesn’t concern us at all. They say that the Russians have a holiday; that the troops have been given vodka to celebrate the victory. The word at the pump is that women should do what they can not to leave home. We don’t know whether to believe it or not. The widow shakes her head uneasily. Herr Pauli is again rubbing the small of his back, says he should lie down. I’ll wait and see.

As it is, the subject of alcohol has been much on our minds. Herr Pauli heard about an order issued to retreating German soldiers to leave all liquor stores intact for the advancing enemy - experience shows that alcohol impairs the enemy’s strength to fight and slows their advance. Now that’s something only men could cook up for other men. If they just thought about it for two minutes they’d realize that liquor greatly intensifies the sexual urge. I’m convinced that if the Russians hadn’t found so much alcohol all over, half as many rapes would have taken place. These men aren’t natural Casanovas. They had to goad themselves on to such brazen acts, had to drown their inhibitions. And they knew it, too, or at least suspected as much, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so desperate for alcohol. Next time there’s a war fought in the presence of women and children (for whose protection men supposedly used to do their fighting out on the battlefield, away from home), every last drop of drink should be poured into the gutter, wine stores destroyed, beer cellars blown up. Or else let the defenders have their fmal spree, as far as I’m concerned. Just make sure there’s no alcohol left, as long as there are women within grabbing distance of the enemy.

Onward. It’s now evening. The much-feared Sunday is over. Nothing happened: it was the most peaceful Sunday since 3 September 1939. I lay on the sofa; outside was full of sun and twittering birds. I nibbled on some cake the widow baked using a sinful amount of wood, and took an accounting of my life. Here’s the balance.

On the one hand things are looking pretty good for me. I’m healthy and refreshed. Nothing has harmed me physically. I feel extremely well armed for life, as if I had webbed feet for the mud, as if my fibre were especially supple and strong. I’m well equipped for the world, I’m not delicate - my grandmother used to haul ma
n
ure. On the other hand, there are multiple minuses. I don’t know what in the world I should do. No one really needs me. I’m simply floating, waiting, with neither goal nor task in sight. I can’t help thinking of a debate I once had with a very smart Swiss woman, in which I countered every scheme for improving the world by insisting ‘that the sum total of tears always stays the same’ - i.e. that in every nation of the world, no matter what flag or system of government, no matter which gods are worshipped or what the average income is, the sum total of tears, pain and fear that every person must pay for his existence is a constant. And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, while people plagued with suffering, as we are now, may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through - if not for that I’d be weeping morning, noon and night. But I’m not crying and neither is anyone else, and the fact that we aren’t is all part of a natural law. Of course, if you believe that the earthly sum of tears is fixed and immutable, then you’re not very well cut out to improve the world or to act on any kind of grand scale.

To summarize, I’ve been in twelve European countries. I’ve seen Moscow, Paris and London, among other cities, and experienced Bolshevism, Parliamentarianism and Fascism close-up, as an ordinary person among ordinary people. Are there differences? Yes, substantial ones. But from what I can tell these distinctions are mostly ones of form and colouration, of the rules of play, not differences in the greater or lesser fortunes of the common people, which Candide was so concerned about. And the individuals I encountered who were meek, subservient and utterly uninterested in any existence other than the one they were born to didn’t seem any unhappier in Moscow than they did in Paris or Berlin - all of them lived by adjusting their souls to the prevailing conditions.

No, my current gauge is an utterly subjective one: personal taste. I simply wouldn’t want to live in Moscow. What oppressed me most there was the relentless ideological schooling, the fact that people were not allowed to travel freely. and the absolute lack of any erotic aura. The way of life just wouldn’t suit me. On the other hand I’d be happy in Paris or London, although there I’ve always had the painfully clear feeling of not belonging, of being a foreigner, someone who is merely tolerated. It was my own choice to return to Germany, even though friends advised me to emigrate. And it was good I came home, because I could never have put down roots elsewhere. I feel that I belong to my people, that I want to share their fate, even now.

But how? When I was young the red flag seemed like such a bright beacon, but there’s no way back to that now, not for me; the sum of tears is constant in Moscow, too. And I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in Progress? Yes, to bigger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb out the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment? I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again, I would always be anxious I could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.