A Woman in Berlin

TUESDAY, 29 MAY 1945

Another washday, long and hot. This time it was positively raining trousers and tunics. One tunic disappeared off the line, apparently a particularly fine item that belonged to an officer. The idea that one of us might have filched the thing didn’t occur to anyone, not even the man who was robbed. The men let out the inevitable hue and cry, but it was clear they accepted the theft as a natural occurrence. Thieving has deep roots among these people. Back when I was travelling in Russia I was robbed of nearly everything that could be stolen, especially during the first part of my stay: my purse, briefcase, coat, gloves, alarm clock, even the stockings I’d hung in the bathroom to dry. One time I was in an office with three other people. I bent down for a moment to open a drawer and look for a photo, and when I turned back again I saw that someone had taken my pair of scissors. It had to be one of the three of them all friendly, well-mannered clerks. I didn’t dare say anything; I simply poked around the desk some more, my face blushing instead of the thief’s, while they calmly went about their business. To this day I don’t know which one it could have been. I only know that ordinary Russians couldn’t find scissors like that in the stores. No doubt about it; poverty breeds theft, it’s catching on here as well. But the Russians have their own style, a kind of innocent approach, as if stealing were something completely acceptable. That’s just the way it is, what can you do about it?

The men paid court to us all day long with their repeated proposition: ‘Bacon and eggs, sleep at your home.’ One of them kept following me around. He showed me a German 20-mark bill on the sly, and laid another one on top, as a promise, if I’d step in the shed with him, real quick, and… He’d already made the same offer to little Gerti.

Today we had a Russian woman washing alongside us, the wife or girlfriend of a captain, a busty blonde. She was washing some men’s shirts made of rayon, humming a German hit she’d probably picked up from a record. Gerti and our fellow launderer – both with perfect pitch – sang along. The Russian woman smiled at us. The atmosphere was friendly.

It’s sunny and breezy outside – nice weather for drying. Most of the Russians were dozing in the yard. For a while no one came to pinch or pester us. We just went on washing. Somehow our talk shifted to poetry. It turns out that Gerti knows half of her school reader by heart. I joined in, and for a while you could hear poems by Mörike, Eichendorff, Lenau and Goethe – all declaimed over the washtubs. Eyes down, Gerti recited: ‘Just wait, for soon/ you, too, will rest.’ Then she sighed and said, ‘If only that were true.’ Our fellow washer shook her head. She’s more than twice little Gerti’s age, but dying is the last thing on her mind. Her constant refrain: ‘Everything passes, time goes by.’

Around 8 p.m., tired and worn out, I arrived home. Except it turned out it wasn’t home any more. Our accidental family has fallen apart. In view of the dwindling supply of potatoes in the basket, Herr Pauli finally blew up at the widow – it was a long time coming – and demanded she stop sharing their room and board with me. My stock has gone down since Nikolai vanished into thin air and there’s no other prospect in sight, no viable candidate for ‘sleeping up’ some food. The widow met me in the hallway, hemming and hawing, to deliver the bad news. On the one hand she likes me. The bad times have brought us together. On the other hand she’s known Herr Pauli longer than she’s known me, feels bound to him, and she is also counting on him to provide some sort of guarantee for the future. She doesn’t want to antagonize him.

I said, ‘Thank God I know where I stand. I haven’t exactly been savouring the meals here for some time. To tell the truth I was glad to be eating with the Russians this past week.’

Of course I have no idea what I’m supposed to live off next week, once the work for the Russians is finished and I’ll be sitting alone upstairs in the attic apartment, forced to rely on the little bit we’ve been allotted but have yet to receive. I packed my belongings – a few spoons and a handful of old clothes – and trundled upstairs, though as I’m writing this I’m back in the widow’s apartment, where I’m spending the last night. It’s an orphan’s lot to wander, I suppose. The most bitter thing in the life of a single woman is that every time she enters some kind of family life, after a while she ends up causing trouble: she’s one too many, someone doesn’t like her because someone else does, and in the end they kick her out to preserve the precious peace.

And still this page is smudged with a tear.