A Woman in Berlin

LOOKING BACK ON MONDAY, 30 APRIL 1945 RECORDED ON TUESDAY, 1 MAY

The day breaks grey and pink. The cold blows through the empty window sockets, filling our mouths with the taste of smoke. Once again the roosters. I have this early hour all to myself. I wipe everything down, sweep away cigarette butts, breadcrumbs, fish bones, rub out the rings from the tabletop. Then a frugal wash in the tub, with two cups of water. This is my happiest time, between five and seven in the morning, while the widow and Herr Pauli are still asleep – if ‘happy’ is the right word. It’s a relative happiness. I do some mending and then soap up my extra shirt. We know from experience that no Russians come at this early hour.

But from 8 a.m. on the back door is open to the usual traffic. Unknown men of all descriptions. Two or three burst in out of the blue, start pestering the widow and me, randy as goats, try to grab hold of us. But now it’s the custom for one of our recent acquaintances to come and help us shake them off. I heard Grisha mentioning Anatol by name, affirming the taboo. And I’m very proud I actually managed to tame one of the wolves – most likely the strongest in the pack, too – to keep away the others.

Around 10 a.m. we climb up to the booksellers’, where a dozen of the local tenants are still being sheltered, behind the excellent security locks. We give the special knock, the door opens, we join the other residents for the arranged meeting.

A jostle of men and women. It takes me a while to recognize individual cave dwellers; some of them look unbelievably different. Overnight practically all the women have grey or grey-streaked hair – they can’t get their usual hair dye. Their faces, too, look unfamiliar, older, distraught.

We draw around the table, hastily, for fear the Russians will discover our ‘assembly’ and misinterpret it. Very quickly, as fast as I can speak, I report what news I’ve gleaned from the Russian papers and from the Russians themselves – mostly Andrei and Anatol: Berlin is completely encircled. All the outlying districts are occupied, the only places still resisting are Tiergarten and Moabit. Huge numbers of generals have been captured. They say that Hitler is dead but give no details, that Goebbels has committed suicide, that the Italians have shot Mussolini. The Russians have reached the Elbe, where they’ve met up and are fraternizing with the Americans.

Everyone listens eagerly; it’s all news to them. I look around, ask the woman from Hamburg about her daughter, eighteen-year-old Stinchen with the bandaged head. She answers – with her sharp ‘s’ – that the girl has moved into the crawl space above the false kitchen ceiling in their apartment and spends every night and most of the day up there under the real ceiling. The Russians don’t know about crawl spaces and false ceilings – they don’t have that kind of thing back home. In the old days people would store their trunks there; before that they were used as maids’ quarters – or so they say. So now Stinchen is vegetating away in that cramped, stuffy space, equipped with bedclothes, a chamber pot and some eau de cologne. Her mother says that at the first sign of footsteps or any other noise she quickly shuts the hatch. At least she’s still a virgin.

We feel our way back downstairs. Our building has long since become a regular barracks. The stench of horses is everywhere, the whole place sprinkled with manure tracked in by the soldiers. These victors also feel free to piss on any wall any time they choose. Puddles of urine in the stairwell, on the landings, in the entrance hall. Evidently they do the same in the abandoned apartments that they now have entirely to themselves.

Vanya the Child is already waiting in our kitchen, erect as a sentry, his machine gun at the ready. With the look of a loyal dog he offers to escort us to the basement. So once again we went down into the dark. Several Russians are still sprawled out in the back hallway, slumbering into the day, on proper bedding, too, which they’ve managed to get hold of somewhere. One of them is lying right under the spiral staircase, blocking our way, in his own little puddle still trickling from his body. Vanya kicks him and he moves aside, muttering under his breath. Even though he’s just sixteen, Vanya is a sergeant, and demands that his rank is respected. Andrei has told me that Vanya was sent to labour on an estate in East Prussia, but joined the advancing Russian army and quickly climbed the ranks thanks to various heroic deeds.

We grope around the basement, looking for the widow’s things. Things that I wouldn’t recognize and that the widow doesn’t want to identify too carefully, as she is simply grabbing whatever she feels might come in useful. By the faint glow from the upper windows, amplified by Vanya’s torch, we gather potatoes and onions and even find a number of jars of preserves, still intact, which we take down off one of the shelves.

A man comes up, eyes like slits, makes some lewd comments mixed with German words. Whereupon Vanya says, as if to no one in particular, All right, that’s enough.’ And the slit-eyed man moves on.

The midday meal. We still have more than enough to eat. Compared to my meagre meals, alone in the attic, I’m living well here. No more nettles; now there’s meat, bacon, butter, peas, onions, canned vegetables. Even on his bed of pain, Herr Pauli manages to eat like a horse – until he starts cursing when he bites into a stewed pear and pulls a long sharp splinter of glass out of his mouth. I find myself chewing on something jagged as well – evidently one of the jars we brought from the basement was chipped.

Outside the war is still on. And we have a new morning and evening prayer: ‘For all of this we thank the Führer.’ A line we know from the years before the war, when it was printed in praise and thanksgiving on thousands of posters, proclaimed in speeches. Today the exact same words have precisely the opposite meaning, full of scorn and derision. I believe that’s what’s called a dialectic conversion.

A quiet afternoon. Anatol is out with his men. Evidently they’re preparing a May Day celebration. That makes us anxious; supposedly all Russians are to get an extra ration of vodka.

No Anatol. But around 9 p.m. someone else shows up instead, a small man, on the older side, pockmarked and with scarred cheeks. My heart pounds. What a terrible-looking face!

But it turns out he has good manners, uses highly refined language and is very solicitous. He’s also the first soldier to address me as ‘grazhdanka’ – meaning ‘citizen’ – which the Russians use for foreign women whom they can’t refer to as ‘comrade’. He introduces himself as Anatol’s new orderly, charged with informing us that his superior will be joining us for supper and with procuring the necessary provisions. He tells me all of this from outside the door, which I haven’t unchained.

I let him in, offer him a seat. Clearly he was hoping to get into a conversation with me. He’s bound to realize that his face isn’t one to inspire confidence, so he’s twice as eager to please in some other way. He mentions that he’s from the Caucasus, from an area that Pushkin visited and where he found much inspiration. I can’t understand everything, since the man is using very sophisticated expressions and constructing long, elaborate sentences. Still, I take my cue from ‘Pushkin’ and manage to name a few titles – Boris Godunov and The Postmaster. I tell him that they’d made a film of The Postmaster in Germany a few years back; the orderly is clearly pleased to

hear it. In short, a genuine parlour conversation, very unusual. I don’t know how to read these men, and am always taken aback at how they surprise us.

A sudden noise, men’s voices in the kitchen. Anatol? The little orderly doesn’t think so. We both rush to the kitchen, run into the widow who is fleeing in visible terror.

‘Watch out, it’s Petka!’

Petka? My God, so he’s still around. Petka with the blond bristles and the lumberjack paws that shook so much when he launched into his Romeo babble.

The three of us advance into the room. A small Hindenburg lamp on the pantry is giving out its last light. Apart from that there’s a flickering gleam from a dying torch, swung by a Russian I’ve never seen before. The other man is Petka, no doubt about it, I can tell from his voice. Since the day before yesterday (hard to believe, but it really was just two days ago), his love for me has turned to hate. As soon as he catches sight of me, the spurned Siberian comes lunging my way. His bristles are standing on end (who knows where his cap is?). His small eyes are glistening. He’s dead drunk.

There’s a sewing machine in the corner next to the window. Petka picks the whole thing up by its locked cover and hurls it across the kitchen at me. The heavy piece goes crashing onto the tiles. I duck and call out to the orderly, ‘Go and get Anatol!’ Then I dash behind the other soldier, the one I don’t know who came in with Petka, beg him to help me ward off the drunken man. Petka starts swinging at me with his fists, but keeps missing because he’s so drunk. Then without warning he blows out the Hindenburg lamp. The torch battery dies as well; we’re completely in the dark. I hear Petka panting, smell the alcohol on his breath. I’m not frightened, not at all – I’m too busy trying to dodge him, trying to trip him, and I sense that I have allies near at hand. Finally we manage to manoeuvre him to the back door. The torch gives one or two final flashes. We shove Petka down the spiral staircase, hear him falling down several steps. As he stumbles he calls out to me how bad I am, nothing but filth, tells me to take my mother and…

It’s 1 a.m., so it’s already Tuesday – May Day. Exhausted, I plop down in the wing chair. The small orderly goes back out, this time to get Anatol for sure. I keep my ears pricked, doze a bit… The widow and Herr Pauli are bound to have gone to sleep a long time ago. But I don’t dare to, so I wait.

At last there’s a knock at the front door. It’s the orderly again, now loaded with bacon, bread, herring, a canteen full of vodka. Teetering with fatigue, I search the kitchen for some plates and glasses, then set the table with his help. The herring fillets are fully boned and daintily curled. I yawn. The orderly consoles me, Anatol will be right over.’

And he really does show up ten minutes later, along with the pale blond lieutenant, still limping on his German hiking pole. Anatol pulls me on his knee and yawns. ‘Ahhh, to sleep…’

No sooner have the four of us sat down to eat and drink than there’s another knock at the door. One of Anatol’s men, sent to bring Anatol and his orderly to their commander. Something seems to be going on, or maybe it has to do with the May Day celebration? Anatol sighs, gets up, goes out. The little orderly takes a hefty bite of bacon sandwich and follows his superior, still chewing.

They’re gone, leaving me alone with the blond lieutenant. Restless, he hobbles around the room leaning on his stick, sits back down, fixes me with his eyes. The candle is flickering. I’m so tired I nearly fall off my chair. I can’t think of a single word in Russian.

He gapes in front of him, announces that he wants to stay here. I start to show him to the back room. No, he wants to stay in this room. I put a blanket on the sofa. No, he wants the bed. He whines, on one note, stubborn, like an overly tired child. Fine, let him go ahead. I lie down on the sofa just as I am, fully dressed. No, I should go to bed with him. But I don’t want to. He starts to pester me on the sofa. I threaten with Anatol. He laughs crudely. ‘He won’t be coming back tonight.’

I get up to move to the front room, or in with the widow, somewhere. He gives in, says he’s content to take the sofa, wraps himself in the blanket. So I lie down on the bed and take off my shoes.

A little later I jump up, startled, hearing his pole tapping in the darkness, nearer and nearer. He’s back, wants to get into bed with me. I’m drunk with fatigue, I resist, babble something, that I don’t want to. With a dull, dogged, cheerless insistence, he refuses to give up, peevishly repeating, ‘But I’m young.’ He can’t be more than twenty.

Once, as I’m resisting, I manage to hit his wounded leg. He groans, curses me, takes a swing at me with his fist. Then he bends over the edge of the bed, feeling for something on the floor. A moment later I realize that he’s looking for his hiking pole, which he left next to the bed. A knobbly wooden stick. One blow on the head with that and I’m done for. I try to grasp his hands, pull him away from the edge of the bed. He starts trying to nuzzle me again. I say, keeping my voice low: ‘That’s just like a dog.’

That turns out to please him immensely. He repeats my words, sullenly, tenaciously: ‘Yes – that’s good – just like dogs – very good – the way dogs love – just like dogs love.’ Meanwhile both of us are so exhausted we fall asleep for a few minutes, then he starts rooting around and pushing again… I’m so sore, so wrecked; I go on resisting, stupefied, half-asleep. His lips are very cold.

Around 5 a.m., at the first cockcrow, he gets up, with difficulty, rolls up his trouser leg and pulls the grubby bandage off his jagged wound. I shrink back, involuntarily, then ask, ‘Can I help?’ He shakes his head, stares at me a while – then spits right in front of my bed, spits contempt. He leaves. One nightmare fades away. I sleep like a log for three hours more.