A Woman in Berlin

SUNDAY, 13 MAY 1945

A glorious summer day. Noises first thing in the morning – an optimistic damour of beating rugs, scrubbing, hammering. Still there’s apprehension in the air, a looming fear that we’ll have to hand our apartments over to the military. The rumour at the pump was that troops will be billeted on our block. Nothing in this country belongs to us any more, nothing but the moment at hand. And all three of us chose to enjoy that by sitting dawn to a richly spread breakfast table, Herr Pauli still in his robe, but already halfway healthy again.

Bells are ringing all over Berlin to celebrate the Allied triumph. Somewhere right now the famous parade is under way, a parade that doesn’t concern us at all. They say that the Russians have a holiday, that the troops have been given vodka to celebrate the victory. The word at the pump is that women should do what they can not to leave home. We don’t know whether to believe it or not. The widow shakes her head uneasily. Herr Pauli is again rubbing the small of his back, says he should lie down. I’ll wait and see.

As it is, the subject of alcohol has been much on our minds. Herr Pauli heard about an order issued to retreating German soldiers to leave all liquor stores intact for the advancing enemy – experience shows that alcohol impairs the enemy’s strength to fight and slows their advance. Now that’s something only men could cook up for other men. If they just thought about it for two minutes they’d realize that liquor greatly intensifies the sexual urge. I’m convinced that if the

Russians hadn’t found so much alcohol all over, half as many rapes would have taken place. These men aren’t natural Casanovas. They had to goad themselves on to such brazen acts, had to drown their inhibitions. And they knew it, too, or at least suspected as much, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so desperate for alcohol. Next time there’s a war fought in the presence of women and children (for whose protection men supposedly used to do their fighting out on the battlefield, away from home), every last drop of drink should be poured into the gutter, wine stores destroyed, beer cellars blown up. Or else let the defenders have their final spree, as far as I’m concerned. Just make sure there’s no alcohol left, as long as there are women within grabbing distance of the enemy.

Onward. It’s now evening. The much-feared Sunday is over. Nothing happened: it was the most peaceful Sunday since 3 September 1939. I lay on the sofa; outside was full of sun and twittering birds. I nibbled on some cake the widow baked using a sinful amount of wood, and took an accounting of my life. Here’s the balance.

On the one hand things are looking pretty good for me. I’m healthy and refreshed. Nothing has harmed me physically. I feel extremely well armed for life, as if I had webbed feet for the mud, as if my fibre were especially supple and strong. I’m well equipped for the world, I’m not delicate – my grandmother used to haul manure. On the other hand, there are multiple minuses. I don’t know what in the world I should do. No one really needs me. I’m simply floating, waiting, with neither goal nor task in sight. I can’t help thinking of a debate I once had with a very smart Swiss woman, in which I countered every scheme for improving the world by insisting ‘that the sum total of tears always stays the same’ – i.e. that in every nation of the world, no matter what flag or system of government, no matter which gods are worshipped or what the average income is, the sum total of tears, pain and fear that every person must pay for his existence is a constant. And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, while people plagued with suffering, as we are now, may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through – if not for that I’d be weeping morning, noon and night. But I’m not crying and neither is anyone else, and the fact that we aren’t is all part of a natural law. Of course, if you believe that the earthly sum of tears is fixed and immutable, then you’re not very well cut out to improve the world or to act on any kind of grand scale.

To summarize. I’ve been in twelve European countries. I’ve seen Moscow, Paris and London, among other cities, and experienced Bolshevism, Parliamentarianism and Fascism close-up, as an ordinary person among ordinary people. Are there differences? Yes, substantial ones. But from what I can tell these distinctions are mostly ones of form and colouration, of the rules of play, not differences in the greater or lesser fortunes of the common people, which Candide was so concerned about. And the individuals I encountered who were meek, subservient and utterly uninterested in any existence other than the one they were born to didn’t seem any unhappier in Moscow than they did in Paris or Berlin – all of them lived by adjusting their souls to the prevailing conditions.

No, my current gauge is an utterly subjective one: personal taste. I simply wouldn’t want to live in Moscow. What oppressed me most there was the relentless ideological schooling, the fact that people were not allowed to travel freely, and the absolute lack of any erotic aura. The way of life just wouldn’t suit me. On the other hand I’d be happy in Paris or London, although there I’ve always had the painfully clear feeling of not belonging, of being a foreigner, someone who is merely tolerated. It was my own choice to return to Germany, even though friends advised me to emigrate. And it was good I came home, because I could never have put down roots elsewhere. I feel that I belong to my people, that I want to share their fate, even now.

But how? When I was young the red flag seemed like such a bright beacon, but there’s no way back to that now, not for me; the sum of tears is constant in Moscow, too. And I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in Progress? Yes, to bigger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb out the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment? I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again, I would always be anxious I could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don’t. I’m just an ordinary labourer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still, the dark and amazing adventure of life beckons. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity, and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.