Nightmare in Berlin (22 page)

When he got back to the kitchen, Miss Gwenda and her purée were gone, and the gas was turned off. Here, too, things had shut down for the day without him. He stood there for a while, looking round the kitchen. It was indubitably his, her, the Dolls' kitchen; every item in it belonged to them, not just the furniture, but also every spoon, whisk, pan, and plate. But when he went to look inside the big, wide kitchen dresser, he found every door locked and the keys removed.

It's a funny old world
, he thought.
They really ought to ask us, at least, and they ought to be paying us a bit of rent, too. What
is
the position with the rent on the apartment?
he suddenly wondered.
Miss Gwenda and her little family have only been living here since the end of August, but as for old Mother Schulz, who's so good at keeping accounts, I'll be putting the screws on her first thing in the morning for the rent, electricity, and gas. That'll bring some money in, and even if it's not a lot of money when you're paying black-market prices, even a little money is a lot of money to those who've got no money at all
.

While he was thinking these thoughts, he had a look at the locks to the pantries, of which there were two in this rather grand kitchen — one on the right of the window and the other on the left. But they were both locked.
Of course
, he said to himself with a gentle sigh.
One is for Mrs. Schulz, the other for Miss Gwenda
.
They haven't reckoned on the Dolls. That'll have to change, too. Tomorrow morning, I'm going straight down to the housing office to clarify our rights here. Ah, no, the first thing I need to do is go to the Food Office and get our ration cards; we simply can't go on as we are, begging and borrowing, and buying stuff on the black market.

Now Doll was standing by the kitchen table, gazing at it thoughtfully. But it looked too short and too hard to spend the night on. Then he remembered the bathtub, but the chill that still lay in his bones made him shiver at the mere thought of sleeping there, so he dismissed the idea immediately. There was carpeting on the floor of the little lobby, and in the hallway he had seen some sort of woman's coat hanging on the coat stand. He could use these as blankets.

But he still wasn't quite sure this was what he wanted — and then he remembered that the apartment had six-and-a-half rooms, and the half room was for the maid. He went inside and flicked the light switch, but the light didn't come on, either because the wiring was broken or because there was no bulb in the socket. So he went back to the kitchen, fumbled around with the lighter to get the gas stove lit again, found a newspaper in the waste bin, and rolled it up to make a torch. He used this to light up the maid's room.

Yes, the bedstead was still there, with the mattress on top and even the wedge pillow, but nothing else — no bed linen and no bed cover. And it was damned cold in this poky little hole! He used the last of the torchlight to light up the window, and saw that there were only a few shards of glass sticking out from the frame. There was nothing to keep the cool night air out. But he decided to make this his bedroom anyway — a bed was a bed. And, like a typical man, it never occurred to him that a bed could be moved somewhere else, into the kitchen, for example, which was warmer, and protected from the weather. But no, the thought never even occurred to Doll, for the simple reason that he was a man — or so Alma said later, after she had heard about this first night of his.

And now Doll suddenly felt qualms about just taking the woman's coat to use as a blanket. He spent ages taking up a threadbare runner in the back passageway, pulling it free from the tacks that held it down. He managed it eventually, but it was clear that this runner, now completely frayed and tattered along its edges, could never be relaid. In the kitchen, Doll quickly stripped off his suit, lit his cigarette on the gas stove, dragged the runner along behind him, and moved into his overnight quarters, folding the old, dusty carpet over and over on itself to cover him. He used the remains of a dressing gown that he had found in the bathroom to wrap around his feet, which were stiff with cold.

He lay like this in the dark, the tip of his cigarette glowing red from time to time; with the fiery glow so close to his face, he could no longer see the pale window opening, with the black silhouette of the courtyard building roof and the grey sky above it. When the red glow subsided, he could see the light of the sky again, and the air felt cooler on his face.

At first, despite the cigarette, he couldn't really relax because he couldn't get warm; the runner was heavy, and smelled unpleasantly of dust and all kinds of other things he couldn't quite identify, but it certainly wasn't warming. But when he had finished the cigarette and only the night sky above the black roof cast its pale light over Doll's face, he suddenly found himself, in that bitter cold, in an imaginary world between waking and sleeping, in a place to which he had always resorted ever since his earliest childhood at times when he was feeling particularly vulnerable.

In this imaginary world, he was Robinson Crusoe on the desert island, but a Robinson Crusoe without Man Friday, and a Robinson Crusoe who dreaded the arrival of white people, and felt only fear at the thought of being ‘saved' by them. This latter-day Robinson Crusoe did everything possible to hide away completely from his fellow creatures. The vegetation around his cave could never be sufficiently dense, or the pathway through it sufficiently overgrown and concealed. His favourite fantasy was a deep valley basin between steep, towering cliffs, only accessible through a long, dark tunnel cut into the rock, which could be blocked up easily with stones. The valley basin itself was lightly planted with trees, but the tree cover was dense enough to ensure that this Robinson could not be detected from the air.

Even as a boy, Doll had sought refuge in such fantasies of hidden solitude, whenever the world and other people became too frightening, or when he had failed to grasp a proof in geometry, or when he had told a lie and been found out. As a grown man, he had taken refuge in the same escapist fantasy in times of depression, and in the last few years it had assumed a special importance for him, of course, during the constant heavy bombing raids over Berlin.

At bottom, though — and Doll knew this very well since reading the works of Freud — this rocky cave or the sheltered valley basin signified his mother's womb, to which he wished he could return when danger threatened. There and only there had he been safely at peace, and the southern sun that he always pictured shining down on Robinson's island was in fact his mother's great, warm heart, which graciously and tirelessly streamed its warm red blood down upon him.

With these and similar thoughts, Doll finally fell asleep, and when he woke, the fading night was still a dirty grey light in the empty window opening. But Mr. Doll leapt out of bed with alacrity and still feeling all warm, eager to begin the first real day of useful activity after the collapse of all his hopes. In the kitchen, under the electric light, he got a shock when he saw how filthy he was from the dusty old carpet runner. But there was nothing he could do about it, not having a change of clothes with him. Instead he took time and trouble over his ablutions in the bathroom, and felt fresh, if also very cold again, as he inspected himself in the large mirror in the hallway. It seemed to him that he was looking fresher and healthier than he had in a long time. He hurried down the stairs and through the front door, which was already open; but around the corner, the shop run by Mother Minus was still closed.

He could see a light inside, and began to knock, and he carried on knocking so persistently that eventually the familiar, big, white-haired head of Mother Minus was pressed up against the glass in the door; but she was shaking her head vigorously, to indicate that it was not yet opening time. Whereupon Doll knocked all the harder, so that the sound echoed through the empty street in the pale grey light of dawn, and when dear old Minus finally opened the door to get rid of the importunate caller, with all the irritation that only she could muster, he immediately grasped her hand in both of his, and said: ‘Yes, it's really me, Dr. Doll! We last saw each other at the end of March, and I'm so glad you've come through it all safely, as have we. My wife's in the hospital at the moment, but I think she'll be back home again soon. And the reason I was kicking up such a terrible racket just now was that I absolutely must speak to you alone before your first customers arrive!'

While Doll was chatting away so cheerily to Mother Minus, he had been gradually inching his way forward, forcing her to take little steps backwards into her shop. Now he closed the door of the shop behind him as a precaution, in case anyone else might be cheeky enough to take similar liberties.

‘Yes', said Mother Minus, no longer angry. ‘Yes, I'd heard that you were both back again, and someone did tell me that you were not well. So what's on your mind now, Doctor?'

But before Doll could tell her about his needs and his prospects and promises, she broke in: ‘But what am I even asking for? Why would anyone call on Mother Minus at this early hour, insisting on speaking with her alone? You want something to eat, don't you? A nice, tasty morsel, eh? Well now, Doctor, just this once, I'll do it without ration cards — but just this once, understand? Never again!'

‘That's fantastic, Mrs. Minus!' cried Doll, delighted that it had been made so easy for him. ‘You're an absolute star!'

‘Get on with you!' replied Mrs. Minus, and she was already packing things up and filling bags, weighing, slicing, and slapping stuff onto greaseproof paper — while Doll's eyes grew steadily wider, since the best he had been hoping for was a loaf of bread and a bit of coffee substitute. ‘Don't talk so much — and don't make any promises! But don't forget, I said “just this once”, and I mean it. I know everyone says I'm too soft-hearted and can't say “no”, but I can! You know it's not allowed, and they can shut me down just like that for such a thing. But just this once, I say: you've got to do right by people, and I've heard what the two of you have been through. So here you are, just take the stuff and shut up. It comes to twelve marks forty-seven, and if you've got the money, you can pay now; otherwise you can leave it. I can put it down in the book, and in your case I'm happy to go on doing that for a while — that's different. But not without ration cards!'

And having said this for the third time with as much emphasis as she could muster, as if she was trying to harden her soft heart, she pushed Doll, who was really touched by her generosity, out of the shop and back onto the street. He heard the key turning in the lock, and nodded vigorously in farewell, since his hands were full and he couldn't wave. Then he went home, feeling that he'd suddenly become a very rich man.

When he had left, he had taken the key out of the apartment door and kept it with him, which was a good thing, because when he got back, nobody was stirring as yet. This suited him fine, because now he could unpack his spoils undisturbed and unobserved. When it was all laid out before him on the kitchen table, he really did feel like a rich man who'd been poor Lazarus just a little while ago. Arrayed before him now were three loaves of bread — one white, two brown — a bag of coffee substitute, another bag containing sugar, one with noodles, another with white flour, a twist of paper with coffee beans, a parcel of greaseproof paper with butter and another with margarine, and a cardboard plate piled with jam.

If I'd had to buy that lot on the black market!
thought Doll, and put some water on to heat in a pan — for the coffee substitute, of course: he was saving the real coffee beans for his reunion with Alma.

He found it quite difficult to scrape together enough crockery for his breakfast, since they had locked up his kitchen dresser. But he finally found what he needed in the sink, washed it as best he could with cold water, and said to himself once again:
All this has got to change — as of today!
And then he sat down to a veritable feast.

He was disturbed only twice. The first time, Mrs. Schulz came wandering into the kitchen like a ghost, albeit a distinctly unwashed ghost, looked aghast at the early-morning guest and rushed out again, with a cry that was more of a croak: ‘Dear God, you might have told me, Dr. Doll!'

And she was gone again, with her untidy, tattered nightdress and her tousled head, her short locks in curlers. Doll hurried after her. ‘Mrs. Schulz!' he cried beseechingly. ‘Hang on a minute. I won't look, really I won't!'

The door was slammed in his face, and he was reluctant to barge into her room. So he called to her through the keyhole: ‘Mrs. Schulz, I'm just going to pop down to the ration card office — can I speak to you later?'

A sigh, followed by an ‘Oh Lord!', came back by way of reply.

‘I absolutely must speak to you today! It's about something that's important for you, too!' A sigh, deeper than the first one, was the only reply. ‘It wasn't that bad, you know', Doll whispered, piped, through the keyhole. ‘I've got an attractive young wife myself, after all! So: we'll speak again later, Mrs. Schulz — in peace and friendship! Until later, then!'

Another sigh of ‘Oh Lord!', but at least now it sounded like something that Doll could take for a ‘Yes'.
You old bat
! he muttered under his breath.
Just you wait, I'll have you out of here so fast your feet won't touch the ground! Do you think I've forgotten how you rejoiced over the divine deliverance of your beloved Führer after the 20th of July?