Nightmare in Berlin (26 page)

This sounded not so much envious as simply disembodied, spoken into the fog, like everything else he said, without resonance for himself or those around him. They walked side by side towards their neighbouring homes. The spectral doctor went on: ‘And there are all sorts of clubs and associations, leagues, chambers, groups being formed again — but not a single one has invited me to join. And yet at one time I was quite a well-known writer; not as well-known as you, Mr. Doll, but still, a well-respected figure.'

While he was talking, they had been approaching their destination, and it seemed the obvious thing for Doll to accompany the doctor into his building and into his apartment and then into his tolerably warm surgery, where they sat down, again without preamble, on adjacent sides of his desk. The white-painted treatment chair with its stirrups for the legs looked just as spectral as its owner. There was something unreal about all of it, as though Doll were trapped in a dream from which he was about to awake.

The doctor went on: ‘It's as if everyone thinks I'm dead — that's how forgotten I am. But I can't be entirely forgotten, because I'm reading the names of old friends in the newspapers. I haven't forgotten them, so they
can't
have forgotten me. But nothing! Not a peep! As if I were already dead — but I'm not dead, not yet!'

He fell silent for a moment, and gazed at Doll with his expressionless brown eyes, in a blank, unblinking stare. Thinking to make him feel better, Doll said: ‘Nobody's got in touch with me either …'

‘No!' said the papery spectre, with a forcefulness that was quite unlike him. ‘No! I have nothing to reproach myself for!' He answered a question that hadn't been asked: ‘No, I was never a Nazi. Of course, I was a doctor in the Wehrmacht for a while, that was something that nobody could get out of. But I was never in the Party — and now this silence, as if they thought I was a Nazi. How do you deal with that?'

He looked at his companion with feverishly blinking eyes, and the paper-thin skin over his cheekbones appeared almost flushed. ‘How do you deal with what?' inquired Doll. ‘Being ignored? Why don't you get in touch with one of your old friends? They may not even know that you're still alive. So many people have perished in recent times …'

‘I've written letters, lots of letters!' replied the doctor. ‘Look — half a drawerful! He opened a drawer in his desk, and showed Doll a little pile of letters, sealed in envelopes, addressed, and already franked with Berlin Bear stamps. The doctor quickly went on: ‘A letter is like putting out a call — just by writing it, you are calling out to your correspondent.' He was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Nobody can reproach me! Not when I was never a Nazi! Never! Really not!' He blinked even more fiercely.

Doll felt certain that this Dr. Pernies still partook sufficiently of this world to be tormented by something, and that he was even capable of lying in order to avert this torment. The reiterated assurance that he had never been a Nazi seemed suspicious, at the very least. It reminded him of that beer wholesaler, who had repeatedly sworn to his mayor that he honestly hadn't hidden a thing — until the hiding place was discovered.

Doll stood up. ‘I would send the letters', he said.

But the doctor had become quite impenetrable and remote again. ‘Of course!' he said in a toneless voice. ‘Only, which one shall I send? And to whom? All those people are incredibly vain, and anyone I haven't contacted will feel ignored. I thank you for your visit!'

Doll stepped out into the night. Maybe Alma had talked to the young doctor in the meantime about her discharge, and was already at the apartment? He quickened his pace.

But when he entered the room, it was empty. There was no Alma; he was on his own again this evening, and it might be that for some days to come he would have to labour alone at building their future life together. His intention was to get back to his work, and thus to a meaningful life, as soon as possible. To do that he would have to seek out the people who were in the know today, and find out what sort of publishing opportunities there were now, and what there was in the way of newspapers, magazines, and publishers. But who could he turn to? He'd been in the city of Berlin for two months, but he knew nothing, absolutely nothing of what had happened here since Germany's collapse and defeat. He'd never looked at a newspaper — shameful as it was to have to admit it to himself!

While Doll was thinking these thoughts he had been tidying up his room and getting it into some sort of order. He had also laid out everything for his supper, and brewed up some coffee. Now he knocked softly on Miss Gwenda's door, which was opened by her mother, and he asked her politely if they had a few newspapers to hand — it didn't matter if they were out of date. He promised to return them the next morning.

He was given a whole stack of newspapers, and retired to his room with them. That evening he ate his bread and drank his coffee without even noticing, because he was reading — reading the newspapers, new ones and older ones, totally absorbed in the words on the page, the way he had been as a fifteen-year-old reading his Karl May adventures, without a thought for anything else. He read everything: domestic and foreign politics, letters to the editor and the features section, arts reviews and small ads. He devoured the newspapers from the first page to the last.

And as he did so, the world in which he had hitherto lived with his eyes closed now opened up before him, and everything became clear to see. He had walked through the streets of this city without once stopping to think who had removed the anti-tank barriers, cleared away the mountains of rubble, and got the transport system running again. He had seen them working in the streets, and his only thought at the time had been that it was a little odd to see people working again — what was the point? Or else he had thought:
These people are former Nazis, who are being
made
to work. The rest of us, who don't have to work, will just wait and see for now, the situation will change somehow …

Yet these workers were people in the same situation as himself, no better and no worse; but while he had been lazing around and busily making himself ill, these people, who were just as disillusioned as he was, had got stuck in, and through sheer hard work had overcome their despair and disillusionment.

He read about theatres that were putting on plays again. About art exhibitions and concerts, about new films from all over the world. He read about the self-help initiatives for fetching timber from the forests, rebuilding homes that had been destroyed, repairing roofs, and getting burnt-out machinery working again. He read small ads where people were offering items for sale that for a long time had simply been unavailable. There weren't many of these, but at least it was a start — and that's all that could be expected for now.

He'd dismissed Berlin as a ‘city of the dead', a ‘sea of ruins', in which he would never be able to work: but just look how much work was being done in this city now! Anyone who wasn't doing their bit should feel ashamed of themselves. They had been living in a state of blind selfishness for the past few months — a parasitic, self-centred existence. All they had done was take, take, never stopping to think how they might give something back.

When Doll had put down the last newspaper that evening, that night, laid down on the couch and turned out the light, he didn't need to resort to some pathetic Robinson Crusoe fantasy in order to get off to sleep. Instead, all the things that he had read were going round and round in his head, and the more he went over in his mind all that had been achieved so far, the more incomprehensible it seemed to him that he had stood idly by, resentful and blank, while all this was happening. These reproaches pursued him into his dreams at dead of night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A stormy start

In spite of his tormenting dreams, Doll woke feeling fresh and rested, and, like the day before, he took a great deal of trouble over his toilet so that he wouldn't be distracted by thoughts about his unkempt appearance. He hoped very much that his planned errand would be successful, and that he wouldn't have his spirits dashed again by some other petty little tyrant like the one at the housing office.

Reading the newspaper the night before, Doll kept coming across the name of a man whom he remembered from pre-Nazi times. He had not had a great deal to do with him personally, but as publishing editor for a large publishing house, this man — Völger by name — had overseen the publication of several of his books. Doll now planned to track him down, and hoped that he might even find him at the editorial offices of that very newspaper.

Doll was just slipping his arms into the sleeves of his borrowed summer coat when the doorbell to his apartment was rung repeatedly, five or six times; and when he opened the door to see who was so impatient to be let in, who should it be but his own wife, Alma! She had a bulging shopping bag in each hand, her arms were festooned with items of clothing — dresses and skirts or something — and it was clear from the expression on her face that she was not in the best of moods.

Doll, who had been worried the night before that his wife might turn up, was now nonplussed by her sudden appearance. His newspaper reading and his planned visit to the publishing editor Völger had so preoccupied him that he had barely given a thought to his wife this morning, and certainly not to her arrival at the apartment. ‘Alma, it's you!' he said, sounding genuinely flabbergasted.

‘Yes, it's me, Alma!' she said, mimicking him with angry sarcasm. ‘And if it was left to you, I certainly wouldn't be here — I'd be stuck in hospital for weeks on end! (Can you just shut that door and take some of these things from me? You can see I've got my hands full here!) That's a great way to keep a promise, turning that young doctor against me! And then you go and accept cigarettes from someone like that — well, thanks very much!'

As she spat out these words, she marched ahead of him into the room. Here she dumped her bags, tossed the armful of clothes over a dining chair, and sat down in an armchair. But she was on her feet again straightaway, dug a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, and lit one up. Despite her anger, she showed that the spirit of comradeship was not something acquired or artificial with her, because she immediately proffered the pack and invited him to take one: ‘Here!'

Doll, who the evening before, to his own annoyance, had not declined the offer of a cigarette from the young doctor, chose to do so now — another mistake! — with his wife, and said angrily: ‘I didn't turn the doctor against you! And anyway, I didn't ask for cigarettes from him; he pressed them upon me and I took one, just one, just to be polite!'

‘Is that so?' she replied angrily. ‘But you won't take one from me? Then again, why be polite to your own wife? That makes it easier to go behind her back and persuade the doctor, contrary to a solemn promise, to keep me in hospital for God knows how long!'

‘I didn't promise anything of the kind! But you promised
me
solemnly that you wouldn't leave there until you'd spoken to the senior consultant!'

‘See — you've said it yourself: we were going to talk to the consultant, but you go and hide behind the ward doctor! Typical! All you were interested in was making sure I stayed there! Presumably you don't need me here!'

‘Alma!' said Doll quietly. ‘Alma, let's not quarrel. Let's think about the future instead. And I can't imagine a future without you. But you need to get well again first, that's all I care about here. I was reading the newspapers last night — Alma, there's so much been happening in the world during the two months we were lying around here doing nothing! From now on we need to do our bit again. When you arrived, I was just about to go and see Völger, my former editor, who always spoke up for my books. They've discharged you, all right; what's done is done. But now you need to lie down and look after that leg …'

Her face had relaxed and become friendly, now that he had dropped the combative tone. But at his last suggestion she shook her head like a sulky child, and replied: ‘I can't see why I shouldn't come with you. My leg is fine — or nearly. I don't want to lie around here and get bored!'

When he answered, his tone was still gentle: ‘It's because we don't want to end up lying around again the whole time that I'm asking you to take care of yourself. If we go back to a life of idleness, there'll be no more getting out of bed in the mornings and going to work — or only to go and fetch morphine, and then Mrs. Schulz and Dorle will be running our lives again. Have a care, my dear, and look after yourself, before we end up like that again!'

But she shook her head and repeated stubbornly: ‘I've looked after myself for long enough; now I want to do my bit again, too. Whatever you're doing, I want to be part of it!'

‘You've been confined to bed the whole time until just this morning — you can't just start running around again as if nothing has happened!' he persisted. ‘You've no idea how scared I am that we'll fall back into our old ways. And this time we have no reserves, no more diamond rings to sell. You've got to get used to the idea that we are poor now, Alma, and that there are lots of things we can no longer afford, such as doctors and expensive American cigarettes, and maybe not even white bread, which gets eaten much too quickly and doesn't fill you up anything like brown bread.'