A Woman in Berlin

SUNDAY, 6 MAY 1945

First for the rest of Saturday. Once again the major showed up around 8 p.m. with his Asian orderly, who reached into his bottomless pockets and this time pulled out two turbots – by no means large, but fresh. The widow breaded and baked the delicious fish, which we then all shared. Even the Uzbek was given a piece in his corner window, which he always makes a beeline for, just like a loyal dog. A very tasty meal indeed.

Did the major stay the night? I wouldn’t have dared undress on my own, wouldn’t have dared go to sleep in the room alone, I know that. Even though our back door is now boarded up, even though the war is no longer raging outside, there’s still a strong dose of fear in all of us. Fear of people who are roaring drunk or in a fury. The major is our protection. Today he was limping; his knee is still swollen. The widow, who has gentle hands for that kind of work, made him a compress before he joined me in bed. He’s confessed to me the funny nickname his mother used to call him, and he translated my own name into Russian, using an affectionate diminutive. So I guess we’re friends. Nevertheless I keep telling myself to be on guard, and to talk as little as possible.

In the morning, alone again, we sat around Herr Pauli’s bed, ate a solid breakfast and listened to what was going on outside. Finally the widow ventured into the stairwell and ran upstairs to the booksellers’, where a dozen neighbours are still rooming together. When she came back she said, ‘Here, give me the rest of the Vaseline.’ She was swallowing hard and her eyes were full of tears.

She’d heard that the liquor distiller had returned to his wife, in the night under cover of darkness, creeping and crawling through the front line, right past the troops, together with Elvira the redhead, who’d been helping him man his post in the distillery, though why I can’t say. Was it a joint defence of the liquor bottles? There must be something rooted in us, some instinct that makes us sink our claws into our possessions when threat looms near.

Together the widow and I went up to the apartment on the fourth floor. It turns out that the distiller’s buxom wife, the one from the basement who’d been honoured with the first Russian advances, has been living unmolested in her fourth-floor apartment ever since – just a minute while I do the calculations – for over a week. Equipped with a tub full of water and a decent stock of provisions, she’s been left entirely to herself. I can believe it, too. Although it took us a while to figure out, the fact is the Russians dislike climbing stairs. Most of them are farm boys used to living close to the earth, in homes with only a single floor – so that they’re not very experienced stair climbers. Moreover, they probably feel too cut off when they’re so high up, that four flights of stairs is too long a retreat. As a result, they hardly ever dare go that far up.

We tiptoe into the apartment, as if entering a sickroom. The redhead is sitting on a kitchen chair, staring off into the distance. Her feet are in a bucket of water. She’s soaking her toes, which are battered and bloody, according to the distiller. His own feet look just as bad. They both passed through the frontline in their stockinged feet, through streets full of rubble and ruin. The Russians had taken their shoes.

The redhead is in her slip, with a blouse draped over her, probably from the man’s wife – it is far too big. She sits there groaning as she moves her toes, while the man tells us how his distillery was in the middle of the fighting for two whole days, how first German, then Russian soldiers had helped themselves to what was left of the alcohol. As they were rummaging for liquor the Russians finally found Elvira and him behind a wooden partition, along with another woman, an employee who’d sought shelter there as well. Here the man shrugs his shoulders, doesn’t want to say any more, walks out of the kitchen.

‘They lined up,’ his wife whispers to us, while the redhead stays silent. ‘Each took his turn. She says there were at least twenty, but she doesn’t know exactly. She had to bear the brunt of it herself. The other woman wasn’t well.’

I stare at Elvira. Her swollen mouth is sticking out of her pale face like a blue plum. ‘Show them,’ says the distiller’s wife. Without a word the redhead opens her blouse and shows us her breasts, all bruised and bitten. I can barely write this; just thinking about it makes me gag all over again.

We left the rest of the Vaseline. There was nothing to say, so we didn’t try. But Elvira started talking on her own, although we could barely understand, her lips were so swollen. ‘I prayed while it was happening,’ she said, or words to that effect. ‘I kept on praying: dear God, thank you for the fact that I am drunk.’ Because before the boys lined up they plied her with whatever they’d found, and they kept giving her drinks in between. And for all of this we thank the Führer.

Apart from that there was much to do in the afternoon, a lot of wiping and washing: the time passed. I was astonished suddenly to see the major standing in the room; the widow had let him in. This time he’d brought a brand-new pack of cards, which he laid out on Pauli’s quilt. Apparently the two men have found a game they both play. I don’t have the faintest idea what it is, so I’ve slipped off to the kitchen, where I’m quickly writing this down. The major has even brought some ‘play money’ – German coins, 3- and 5-mark pieces, which were withdrawn from circulation ages ago. How on earth did he get them? I don’t dare ask. He didn’t bring anything to drink, for which he apologizes to each of us. No matter, today he’s our guest – we inherited a bottle of liquor from the distiller.