A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary (33 page)

TUESDAY, 5 JUNE 1945

I slept poorly because of a toothache. Despite that I got up early and set out for Charlottenburg. Today the flags are out again everywhere. The Allies are said to have flown in by the thousands, English, Americans, French. And all these comical, motley flags waving them welcome -products of German women and a weekend’s hard work. Meanwhile the Russian trucks never stop rolling, carrying our machines away.

I trudge along, as always the automatic walking machine. I’m putting in about twelve miles a day, with the barest nourishment. The work itself is fun. The Hungarian is always cooking up something new. He heard somewhere that for now the only available paper will go for schoolbooks. So he adds schoolbooks to the publishing programme. He’s guessing there’ll be a great demand for contemporary German primers and Russian grammars; my assignment is to rack my brains about that. Today llse actually treated us all to a cup of real coffee. At 6p.m. I headed home, on paper-thin soles. Along the way I met the first German public service vehicle to resume operation, a bus that runs every half hour. But it’s hopelessly packed; there’s no way to get on. I also saw some German policemen, newly commissioned. They seemed oddly undersized, determined not to stick out.

By the time I got home my feet were aching and I was dripping with sweat. The widow met me on the stairs with some surprising news: Nikolai had been there and had asked after me! Nikolai? It took me a moment to remember. Oh yes, Nikolai from the distant past, Nikolai the sub lieutenant and bank inspector, Nikolai who wanted to come but never came. ‘He said he’d call in again at eight,’ the widow said. ‘He’ll go straight up to the attic and ring for you. Are you glad?’

Je ne sais pas
,’ I answered, remembering Nikolai’s French. I really didn’t know whether to be glad or not. After Nikolai twice dissolved into thin air, the idea that he’d ever show up seemed implausible. What’s more, that was a bygone era and I didn’t want to be reminded of it. And I was so tired.

I had barely managed to take a quick wash and lie down for an hour, as I always do after the forced march from Charlottenburg, when the doorbell rang. And there, indeed, was Nikolai. We exchanged a few phrases in French in the dim hallway. When I invited him in and he saw me in the light, he was visibly startled. Just look at you. What’s the matter?’ He said I was all skin and bones. How, he wanted to know could that have happened in such a short time. What can I say? All the work and the endless marching around and that degree of hunger and just a little dry bread are a formula to make anyone waste away. What’s odd is that I didn’t realize I had changed that much myself. You can’t check your weight anywhere, and I never give the mirror more than a fleeting glance. But have I changed so much for the worse?

We sat facing each other at the smoking table. I was so tired I couldn’t suppress my yawning, couldn’t find the words in my head, so drowsy I had no idea what Nikolai was talking about. Now and then I pulled myself together, ordered myself to be nice to him. For his part he was friendly. but distant. Evidently he had counted on a different reception, or else he simply no longer felt any attraction for the pale ghost I have become. Finall y I understood that, once again, Nikolai had only come to say goodbye. He’s already stationed outside Berlin and came in on duty for just this one day. for the last time, as he put it. So there’s no need to put on a friendly show for him; I don’t have to pretend I’m interested. By the same token I kept feeling a quiet regret that things turned out as they did. Nikolai has a good face. In parting, in the hallway, he pressed something into my hand, with a whisper: ‘
En camarades, n’est-ce
pas?
’ It was money, over 200 marks. And he’d nothing from me apart from a few half-yawned words. I’d happily use this money to buy something to eat, if only some supper for tonight. But in times like these everyone clings to what they have. The black market is dying.

WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 1945

Once again it’s evening, and the walking machine has come back home. The rain is streaming down outside, and inside - oh joy! - the water is streaming from the tap in my apartment. I fill the bath and shower myself with water. No more lugging those heavy buckets up the stairs.

Another day hard at work. I went with the Hungarian to look into renting office space. Our first stop was the Rathaus, where he obtained some official papers, stamps and signatures that are meant to authorize his plans and attest to his clean record. There were a number of amazing characters there, types you haven’t seen for years, people who’ve been staying out of sight and are now crawling out of the woodwork everywhere you look. I saw young male dancers, a Jewish woman who’d gone underground and was talking about her nose operation, an older man with a bright red ‘Assyrian’ beard who was a painter of ‘degenerate’ art.

After a cup of real coffee, Ilse and her husband had a heated discussion about whether he should accept a job in Moscow. They’re offering him a high-level position, good pay. But Ilse is dead set against it, if for no other reason than he would have to make the move by himself at first. He doesn’t want to go either. He’d prefer to keep breathing western air, our publishing plans have helped him take heart and he’s hoping to get back in the usual boys’ game of money and power and big cars.

Today the Allies are conducting negotiations. The radio is spitting speeches, brimming with the tributes our ex-enemies are paying one another. All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their whims. I can’t change any of that; I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky. And maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing’s for sure: my life has certainly been full- all too full!

THURSDAY, 7 JUNE 1945

Today the walking machine had the day off. I got up early to queue at the greengrocer’s for some pickled pumpkin. Unfortunately the stuff proved too briny for me to get down. Luckily I got two bunches of dried vegetables - known as ‘shredded wire’ - and a bag of dried potatoes. On top of that I picked a handbagful of nettles in the gardens outside the ruined buildings, elegantly plucking them using the fishnet gloves I saved from my air-raid gear. I devoured them greedily; even drinking the greenish stock I’d boiled them in, and felt properly refreshed.

After that I calculated that my period was over two weeks late, so I strode seven buildings down to where a woman doctor had hung her signboard, though I’d never seen her before and didn’t even know if she had started practising again. Once inside I met a blonde woman, not much older than me, who received me in a wind-battered room. She’d replaced the windowpanes with old X-rays of unidentified chests. She refused to engage in small talk and got right down to business. ‘No,’ she said, after examining me. ‘I don’t see anything. Everything’s all right.’

‘But I’m so late. I’ve never had that before.’

‘Do you have any idea how many women are experiencing the same thing? Including me. We’re not getting enough to eat, so the body saves energy by not menstruating. You better see that you get a little meat on your bones. Then your cycle will get back to normal.’

She asked for 10 marks, and I handed them to her. But I felt bad - after all, what could she do with that? After we were through I risked asking whether there were indeed lots of women who’d been raped by the Russians and were now pregnant and coming and asking her for help.

‘It’s better not to speak of such things,’ she said curtly, showing me out.

A quiet evening, all to myself. Gusts of wind are sweeping through the empty window frames, swirling dust into the room. Where can I possibly go if the real tenant shows up one day? What’s certain is that, if I hadn’t been here, the apartment would long since have been cleared out by the roofers and various other fellow citizens. When it comes to heating, other people’s furniture burns better than your own.

FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 1945

The walking machine is back at it. An amazing event today: a section of the S-Bahn has resumed operations on a trial basis. I saw the red and yellow cars up on the track, climbed the stairs, paid two old groschen for a ticket and got on board. The passengers were sitting on the benches, with an air of ceremony - two of them immediately moved closer together so I could squeeze in. Then we went hurtling through the sunny wasteland of the city, while all the endless, tedious minutes I had spent marching flew by the window. I was sorry I had to get out as soon as I did. The ride was so nice, a real gift.

I put in a lot of work. Ilse and I sketched out the first number of our planned women’s magazine. We still haven’t decided on a name for it, so we put our heads together on that. Each periodical definitely has to contain the word ‘new’.

The day was strangely dreamlike; people and things appeared as if behind a veil. I walked back home on sore feet, listless from hunger. All we had to eat at lise’s was more pea soup - two ladlefuls apiece, since we’re trying to make the supplies last. It seemed to me that every person I passed had hollow, hungry eyes. Tomorrow I’m planning to go and pick some more nettles. I kept my eyes peeled for every spot of green along the way.

Everywhere you turn you can sense the fear. People are worried about their bread, their work, their pay, about the coming day. Bitter, bitter defeat.

SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 1945

Day off for me. We agreed that for as long as I don’t have anything to eat, I’d make the 12-mile trek only every other day.

In the store where I’m registered they gave me groats and sugar in exchange for coupons - enough for two or three meals. Then with my elegantly begloved hands I picked an entire mountain of nettle shoots, orache and dandelions.

In the afternoon I went to the hairdresser’s for the first time in ages, and asked for a shampoo and set. They washed about a pound of dirt out of my hair. The hairdresser had popped up from somewhere to take over the shop of a colleague who was pressed into the Volksstun n at the last minute and is missing in action. Supposedly the man’s family was evacuated to Thuringia. The place had been pretty well ransacked, but one mirror is still intact and one dryer is still halfway serviceable, if rather dented. The man’s speech was very pre-war: ‘Yes, ma’am. Why of course, ma’am, I’d be happy to, ma’am.’ I find all the overly solicitous and polite phrases somewhat alien now. ‘Yes, ma’am’ is for internal use only, a currency of no value except among ourselves. To the rest of the world we’re nothing but rubble-women and trash.

SUNDAY, 10 JUNE 1945

They’ve announced on the radio that the Russians are going to set up their military administration in Berlin after all, so that Russia will now stretch all the way to Bavaria, Hanover and Holstein; the English are supposed to get the Rhine and Ruhr, and Bavaria goes to the Americans. It’s a topsy-turvy world with our country all sliced up. We’ve had peace for a month now.

A reflective morning, with music and sunshine, which I spent reading Rilke, Goethe, Hauptmann. The fact that they, too, are also German is some consolation, that they were of our kind.

At 1 :30p.m. I set off on a humid march through a Berlin that’s still silent and empty. In Charlottenburg we sat down again and planned. A new man has joined our group, a professional printer. He thinks obtaining paper shouldn’t be our first order of business, since anyone who has paper is going to hold onto it, and even hide it, for fear of confiscation. And if someone were willing to part with some, we have no way to pick it up or place to store it until we can start printing. At the moment our entire fleet consists of two bicycles - and that’s more than most firms. The printer thinks our primary task should be to acquire a licence from the authorities - an official allocation of printing paper. The engineer has already made the rounds of every conceivable German or Russian office and collected a lot of empty promises - he gave a rather depressing account. Only the Hungarian is bursting with optimism. He’s a sly dog, no doubt about it. I happened to mention a crate of framed photos that was still in the basement of my former firm, portraits of men who’d received the Knight’s Cross, that were intended to be handed out as prizes at some ceremony. His eyes grew bright and he immediately asked, ‘Pictures? With glass?’

‘Yes, all framed with glass.’

‘We’ll go and get the glass,’ he decreed. He’s found some potential office space, but like most spaces in Berlin, it has no windowpanes. As far as I’m concerned he can go ahead and break in. I’ll gladly act as a lookout. But my guess is that the crate has long since gone.

On my way home I dropped in ·on Gisela. Hertha was lying sick on the sofa again, but this time her face was no longer a glowing red-it was snow white. She’d had a miscarriage, Gisela told me. I didn’t ask any questions, just gave each of the girls one of the chocolates the Hungarian had given me on my way out, ‘as a thank-you for the good tip about the glass’. Filled mochabeans, very tasty. It was nice to see the girls’ tense, bitter faces relax up when they tasted the sweet filling.

I told Gisela about our publishing plans, thinking that she could join us as soon as one of them becomes concrete. Gisela was sceptical. She can’t imagine that we’ll be able to print the kind of thing we want to, not here in Germany right now. She thinks that they won’t allow anything that doesn’t follow the Moscow line, which isn’t her own. She’s too embarrassed to mention the word ‘God’ in front of me, but that was the gist of what she was saying. I’m convinced that she prays and that this gives her strength. She doesn’t have any more to eat than I do. She has deep circles under her eyes, but hers are lit up, whereas mine are simply bright. We can’t help each other now. But the simple fact that I’m surrounded by other hungry people keeps me going.

MONDAY, 11 JUNE 1945

Another day to myself. I went to the police to try to get some kind of official permission to use the abandoned garden in the back of the burned-down house where Professor K., a close colleague of mine used to live. I showed them a letter the old man had sent me from the Brandenburg Mark, where he had found refuge, asking me to look after his garden. I was sent from pillar to post. Nobody claimed to have the authority. Dingy cubbies with cardboard in the windows, musty smells, low-level bickering. Nothing has changed.