A Woman in Berlin

AT NIGHT, BETWEEN THURSDAY 3 MAY AND FRIDAY 4 MAY

A little after three in the morning, still dark. I’m all alone, in bed, writing by candlelight – a luxury I can afford because the major has provided us with an ample supply of candles.

All through Thursday our apartment was bustling with activity. Three of Anatol’s men showed up without warning. They sat round the table, chewing the fat, raucous as ever, smoked, spat on the floor and mucked around with the gramophone. They couldn’t get enough of the C&A Textile Company advertising jingle. When I asked – in a panic – about Anatol, they merely shrugged their shoulders, but hinted that he was likely to be back. Before I forget: the regimental baker reappeared wearing his white smock and repeated his stock question. Didn’t I know of a girl for him? He’d give us flour, much flour.

No, I don’t know of a girl for the baker. The drink-and-be-merry sisters are dearly spoken for by the officers. Stinchen is safely hidden away. Lately I haven’t heard or seen a thing about either of the concierge’s daughters; I assume they’ve found shelter somewhere. One,of the two bakery salesgirls has left us, and is said to be hiding in another basement. The other is being kept out of sight in the small room behind the shop – so the widow has learned – where they blocked the door with a large chest and covered up the window with Venetian blinds. It must be pretty dark and gloomy for her. In theory that leaves the young woman who looks like a young man – 24 years old and lesbian. From what we’ve heard she’s managed to escape the Ivans up to now She goes around in a grey suit with a belt and tie and a man’s hat pulled down over her face. As it is, she’s always worn her hair short at the back. So she slips right past the Russians, who think she’s a man; they aren’t familiar with such borderline types. She even goes for water and joins the queue at the pump, smoking a cigarette.

Pauli keeps cracking jokes about her, how he hopes she gets a proper reschooling, how it would be a good deed to send some of the boys her way, Petka, for instance, with his lumberjack paws. Slowly but surely we’re starting to view all the raping with a sense of humour – gallows humour.

We have ample grounds for doing so, too – as the woman with the scabby eczema discovered this morning, contrary to my prediction. She was on her way upstairs to visit some neighbours when two men jumped her and dragged her into one of the abandoned apartments. There she had to take it twice, or really one and a half times, as she explained, rather enigmatically. She told us that one of the men pointed to her cheek and asked if she had syphilis; the silly girl was so shocked at the idea that she just shook her head and shouted no. A little later she staggered into our apartment. It took a few minutes before she could speak; we revived her with a coffee cup full of burgundy. Finally she recovered, then grinned at us and said, ‘So that’s what I’ve spent seven years waiting for.’ (That’s how long she’s been separated from her husband.) She shuddered as she told us about the apartment they had dragged her into. ‘Does that place stink! They do their business anywhere and everywhere!’ Despite this she’s diligently learning Russian. She’s got hold of a little dictionary and has been writing out words. Now she wants me to teach her the proper pronunciation. Her eczema is right in front of me. She’s smeared it with some kind of salve, it looks like a piece of rotten cauliflower. But these days I’ve become a good deal less squeamish than I used to be.

We, too, consider the abandoned apartments fair game. We take whatever we need and steal whatever we can eat. I went to the apartment next door (where they’ve been using the kitchen sink as a toilet, among other things) and walked off with an armful of briquettes, a hammer and two jars of cherry preserves. We’re living well, and keeping the drone Pauli well fed on his bed of pain to the point where his cheeks are getting chubby.

Towards evening, out of nowhere, Anatol bursts into our room, unexpected and practically forgotten. I’m terrified, my heart leaps into my throat. But Anatol laughs, puts his arm round me, doesn’t appear to know anything about any major. It seems he really has been transferred to staff headquarters, since he’s so well informed. He tells us that the centre of Berlin is in ruins, that Soviet flags are fluttering over the wreck of the Reichstag and on the Brandenburg Gate. He’s been everywhere. Although he doesn’t have any information about Adolf, he confirms that Goebbels killed himself along with his wife and all their children. Anatol heads to the gramophone, but no sooner does he touch the cover with his strong hands… then it breaks into five pieces, leaving him standing there holding them, bewildered.

Confused images, scraps – it’s all mixed up in my brain, I can’t keep it straight any more. Another evening with lots of vodka, another night. Anxiously I keep one ear cocked, listening for the door, starting each time I hear a noise, a footstep. I am afraid the major might show up, but he doesn’t. Maybe the surly lieutenant told him that Anatol was back; after all, the lieutenant also knows Anatol and his entourage. In any event, Anatol has heard a rumour about the major and wants to know whether I’ve… I brushed off his question, saying that we just talked about politics, and Anatol is satisfied, or at least he pretends to be. For his part he assures me that he hasn’t touched any girl in Berlin but me. Then he pulls out some mail from home. Fourteen letters, thirteen of them addressed by women. He smiles bashfully, but acts as if the reason were completely obvious: ‘What can I say, they all love me.’

Anatol was careless enough to let me know that he had to leave by three o’clock in the morning to get back to his new billet in the centre of the city, and that he probably wouldn’t be coming back, so I tried to deprive him of as much time in bed as I could. I fussed over his letters one by one, asking as many questions as I could think of, getting him to tell me things, explain the map of Berlin, show me the progress of the front. I encouraged his men to drink and play records, asked them to sing, which they were happy to do, until Anatol kicked them out. In bed I stalled some more and finally told him, after he’d had his way once, that that was it, for the moment. I was tired and exhausted and needed to rest. I gave him a sermon, told him I was sure he was no ‘hooligan’ but a considerate, refined man of tender feelings. He accepted it, though more than a little, reluctantly, with occasional relapses into bullishness, which I managed to put a stop to. Naturally I didn’t sleep a wink. Even so it finally turned three, and Anatol had to leave. A friendly parting from the hot stallion, but then relief, a chance to stretch my legs. I stayed awake a while, since I had this idiotic feeling that I was being spied on, that everything I did was being reported, and that the major would show up any second to take over. But so far no one has come. Now the rooster is crowing outside and I want to sleep.