A Woman in Berlin

PENTECOST, 20 MAY 1945

A glorious day. From very early on our street echoed with the footsteps of countless people marching off to visit friends and relatives in other parts of the city. We lingered over breakfast until eleven in the morning – cake and a mix of real coffee and coffee substitute. The widow regaled us with all sorts of family anecdotes – her strong suit. Her clan is truly and bewilderingly droll: her father-in-law was married three times, with long periods of bachelordom in between; he outlived two of his wives. So there are children and grandchildren running around from all the marriages, aunts younger than their nieces, uncles sitting in the same schoolroom as their nephews. On top of that, the widow confesses, the last wife, who outlived him, married again, and her second husband is Jewish. To be sure, this Jewish stepfather-in-law died long before the Third Reich, but there he was, a blot on the family record. Today, however, the widow goes out of her way to mention him, to the point of boasting about him.

After our midday meal I went up to the attic apartment, rummaged through the mountains of plaster and debris, carried buckets of rubbish downstairs, mopped the floors. I planted some chervil and borage in the rotting balcony boxes, that is to say, I made some shallow grooves and sprinkled in the brown grains and tiny black seeds that are supposed to become my kitchen garden. I have no idea what these herbs look like except for the pictures on the front of the packages the woman from Hamburg gave me, from some of her leftovers. Then I lay in the sun on the floor of the terrace. A full hour of deep contentment – followed by unease and restlessness. I feel something nagging at me, boring into me. I can’t go on living like a plant, I need to move, I have to act, start doing something. I feel as though I’ve been dealt a good hand of cards but don’t know whether I’ll be able to play them. And who am I playing with? The worst thing of all at the moment is our being so cut off.

I went back down to the widow’s and found her absolutely jubilant. Suddenly and completely by accident she turned up her late husband’s pearl tie-pin – the one she’d stashed away and couldn’t find – in the toe of a much darned sock. ‘How could I forget something like that?’ she wondered.

Pentecost Sunday passed peacefully. From 8 p.m. on I waited for Nikolai the sub lieutenant, who’d asked me on Wednesday if he could drop by today. He didn’t show up, nor is it likely he ever will. Herr Pauli couldn’t resist the occasion to make a snide remark.