‘What’s going on?’ I shout. ‘Where are you headed?’
At first no one answers. Then someone mutters something I can’t make out. Then someone else mumbles something, but the words are dear enough: ‘Führer, command! And we will follow, even unto death.’
They all seem so miserable, so little like men any more. The only thing they inspire is pity, no hope or expectation. They already look defeated, captured. They stare past us blindly, impassively, as we stand on the kerb. They’re obviously not too concerned about us, us Volk or civilians or Berliners or whatever we are. Now we’re nothing but a burden. And I don’t sense they’re the least ashamed of how bedraggled they look, how ragged. They’re too tired to care, too apathetic. They’re all fought out. I can’t bear watching them any more.
The walls are marked with chalk, by now smeared and running, evidently directing the soldiers to specific assembly points. Two cardboard placards are tacked onto the maple tree across the street, announcements, neatly penned by hand, in blue and red letters, with the names ‘Hitler’ and ‘Goebbels’ on them. One warns against surrender and threatens hanging and shooting. The other, addressed ‘To the People of Berlin’, warns against seditious foreigners and calls on all men to fight. Nobody pays any attention. The handwriting looks pathetic and inconsequential, like something whispered.
Yes, we’ve been spoiled by technology. We can’t accept doing without loudspeakers or rotary presses. Handwritten placards and whispered proclamations just don’t carry the same weight. Technology has devalued the impact of our own speech and writing. In the old days one man’s call to arms was enough to set off an uprising – a few hand-printed leaflets, ninety-five theses nailed to a church door in Wittenberg. But today we need more, we need bigger and better, wider repercussions, mass-produced by machines and multiplied exponentially. A woman reading the placards summed it up nicely: ‘Well, just look what those two have come to.’
In the basement, 10 p.m. After my evening soup I allowed myself a little rest in the bed upstairs before trotting back down. The full assembly had already gathered. There was less shelling today, and there has been no air raid yet, though this is the time they usually come. Nervous merriment. All sorts of stories making the rounds. Frau W. pipes up, ‘Better a Russki on top than a Yank overhead’. The joke seems not very appropriate to her mourning crêpe. Next comes Fräulein Behn: ‘Let’s be honest for once. None of us is still a virgin, right?’ No one says anything; I wonder who among us might be. Probably the concierge’s younger daughter; she’s only sixteen and ever since her older sister went astray they keep her under close guard. If I’m any judge of young girls’ faces, then eighteen-year-old Stinchen with the Hamburg ‘s’ slumbering away over there is another. As for the girl who looks like a young man, I have my doubts. But she could be a special case.
We have a new woman in the basement: up to now she’s been going to the public bunker six blocks away, which is supposed to be secure. She lives by herself in her apartment, but I don’t know yet whether she’s abandoned, widowed or divorced. She has a patch of weeping eczema over her left cheek. She tells us, at first in a whisper but then out loud, that she’s secured her wedding ring to her pants. ‘If they get that far then the ring won’t matter much anyway.’ General laughter. Still, her weeping eczema might prove just the thing that saves her. Which is worth something these days.
MONDAY, 23 APRIL 1945, 9 A.M.
The night was amazingly quiet, with hardly any flak. We have a new resident, the husband of the woman who was bombed out of her home in Adlershof and who moved in here with her mother. He showed up very quietly, still in uniform; an hour later he was wearing civilian clothes. How could he get away with it? No one’s even noticed, or else they don’t care. Anyway no one’s saying anything. A hard-boiled soldier from the front, he still looks pretty strong. We’re happy to have him.
Deserting suddenly seems like a perfectly understandable thing to do – a good idea, in fact. I can’t help thinking of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans standing their ground at Thermopylae, and falling in battle as their law demanded. We learned about them in school, we were taught to admire their heroism. And I’m sure that if you looked hard enough you could find three hundred German soldiers willing to do the same. But not three million. The larger the force and the more random its composition, the less chance of its members opting for textbook heroism. We women find it senseless to begin with; that’s just the way we are – reasonable, practical, opportunistic. We prefer our men alive.
Towards midnight I was so tired I almost fell off my chair (where am I supposed to come up with a bed?), so I staggered up the glass-strewn stairs and made my way to the first floor and the widow’s couch, where I slept until nearly 6 a.m. Afterwards I was surprised to learn there’d been a series of bombs. I slept right through it.
There were rolls at the baker’s, the last ones. My last ration cards for bread, too. No new cards in sight. No decrees and no news, either. Nothing. Not a soul cares about us any more. We’re suddenly mere individuals, no longer members of the tribe, the German Nation. Old ties are broken; friendships don’t extend further than three buildings away. There’s only the group of us, huddled in the cave, a clan, just like in prehistoric times. The horizon has shrunk to three hundred paces.
At the baker’s I heard the Russians were in Weissensee and Rangsdorf. How many times have I gone swimming at the lake at Rangsdorf? ‘The Russians in Rangsdorf…’ I say it out loud, just to try it out, but it doesn’t sound right. Today the eastern sky was burning red with the constant fires.
Back from getting coal, 1 p.m. Heading south I could feel I was literally marching towards the front. They’ve already closed off the S-Balm tunnel. The people standing outside said a soldier had been hanged at the other end, in his underwear, a sign with the word ‘traitor’ around his neck. His body was dangling so close to the ground you could spin him around by the legs. The person who said this had seen it himself he’d chased off the street kids who’d been amusing themselves.
Berliner Strasse looked desolate, half torn-up and barricaded off. Queues in front of the stores. Blank faces amid the flak. Trucks were rolling into town. Filthy figures in shabby bandages trudged alongside, their bodies sprayed with dirt, their faces empty. A baggage train of hay carts, grey-haired men on the boxes. Volkssturm units are posted at the barricade, in motley uniforms hastily pieced together. You see very young boys, baby faces peeping out beneath oversized steel helmets; it’s frightening to hear their high-pitched voices. They’re fifteen years old at the most, standing there looking so skinny and small in their billowing uniform tunics.
Why are we so appalled at the thought of children being murdered? In three or four years the same children strike us as perfectly fit for shooting and maiming. Where do you draw the line? When their voices break? Because that’s what really gets me the most, thinking about these little boys: their voices, so high, so bright. Up to now being a soldier meant being a man. And being a man means being able to father a child. Wasting these boys before they reach maturity obviously runs against some fundamental law of nature, against our instinct, against every drive to preserve the species. Like certain fish or insects that eat their own offspring. People aren’t supposed to do that. The fact that this is exactly what we are doing is a sure sign of madness.
No one was at the publishing house. The building was completely abandoned, the basement full of coal. The woman relocated to our building had a problem and plied me with questions about what to do. Her oldest daughter is the mother of an eight-week-old infant; it seems that yesterday she stopped giving milk, so that all of a sudden she can no longer nurse her baby, and the little one has been bawling. Everyone’s worried how the mother will pull the child through, now that there’s no more cow’s milk. I suggested to the young mother that eating some wild vegetables might help bring on her milk. Together we bent over the grass in the garden, which was soaked through with rain, and pulled up the young nettle
shoots alongside the wall, using handkerchiefs to protect our hands. Then dandelions, the few we could find smell of plants and soil, primrose, red hawthorn, spring. But the flak keeps yapping away.
I filled a pack with hard coal and probably carried off fifty pounds. Yet even with the load I managed to overtake another troop of soldiers on my way back. I saw my first weapons in several days: two bazookas, one sub-machine gun, ammunition boxes. Young guys wearing their cartridge belts like some barbaric adornment.
A little before noon there was a burial on our street, or so I was told, the pharmacist’s widow had been there. A seventeen-year-old girl: grenade, shrapnel, leg amputated, bled to death. Her parents buried her in their garden behind some currant bushes. They used their old broom cupboard as a coffin.
So now we’re free to bury our dead wherever we wish, just as in ancient times. It makes me think of the time a huge Great Dane died in my old apartment building and wound up being buried in the garden. But what a scene beforehand – the landlord, the concierge, the other tenants, everybody fought against it. And now they bury a human being and nobody gives it a second thought; in fact, I think the parents find comfort in their daughter being so close. And I catch myself assigning graves in our own little bit of garden.
4 p.m. in the attic. I just had an amazing experience. I was visiting Frau Golz and started playing with the telephone, just for fun. To my amazement I could hear something, despite the fact the line has been dead for days. I dialled Gisela’s number and managed to get through to her, even though she lives an hour away in Berlin W. We were so eager to hear what the other had to say we couldn’t stop talking. It turns out her company has just collapsed. Her boss gave a rousing speech and then fled to the west, leaving the little people to fend for themselves. We’re completely forgotten, we strain our ears to the void. We are all alone.
Gisela told me she’s exactly as old as her father was when he fell at Verdun in the first world war – almost to the day. She never saw her father. Now she says that she can’t stop thinking about him, she talks with him in spirit, as if her time were coming, as if she was going to meet him soon. We never spoke about such things before; we would have been embarrassed to bare our hearts like that. Now the deepest layers are pushing to the surface. Farewell, Gisela. We’ve each lived our thirty years or so. Maybe we’ll see each other again some day, safe and sound.
Back in the cave, Monday, 8 p.m. Today the first artillery hit our corner. Whizzing, hissing, howling: uuueee. Flames flashing up. Terrified shouts in the courtyard. Stumbling downstairs, I could hear the shells landing right outside the cinema. The enemy is shooting at us. Incidentally, people say the Russians are sticking to the smaller guns. And we’re beginning to feel a little less terrified about the American carpet-bombing, since at least here in Berlin they’d wind up hitting Russians as well.
A new rumour floats around the basement, which the wife of the liquor distiller heard from a reliable, very secret source and announces with a heaving bosom: the Yanks and Tommies have quarrelled with Ivan and are thinking of joining with us to chase Ivan out of the country. Scornful laughter and heated discussion. The woman is offended and gets so angry she slips into her native Saxon dialect. She just returned yesterday to her apartment – and our basement – from their (somewhat small) distillery behind Moritzplatz, where she and her husband had been spending the nights, so she could hold the fort at home. Her husband stayed with the bottles and vats – and a redhead named Elvira, as everyone in the basement knows.
People are still taking care of business. Just before the shops closed I managed to get another 150 grams of coarse grain. Suddenly I heard excited screams around the corner, and the sound of running feet: a wagon was being unloaded near Bolle’s, barrels of butter – all rancid – were being carried into the building for distribution. One pound per person, and – here’s what’s frightening – for free! All you have to do is get your card stamped. Is this the first sign of panic or is it the voice of reason speaking from beyond the bureaucratic files? Right away people started crowding outside the shop door, pounding one another with umbrellas and fists. I joined in the pushing, too, for a few minutes, and in the process overheard talk of reserves, reinforcements and German tanks from somewhere – one woman claimed to have picked up something like that last night over the radio detector. Then I decided to let butter be butter, I didn’t want to get into a fistfight over it, at least not today. But maybe I’ll have to learn how soon.
Silent night. Distant pounding. Not a peep from the cave dwellers, not a word – they’re too exhausted. Only snoring and the short shallow breaths of the children.
TUESDAY, 24 APRIL 1945, AROUND NOON
No news. We’re completely cut off. Some gas but no water. Looking out of the window I see throngs of people outside the stores. They’re still fighting over the rancid butter – they’re still giving it away, but now it’s down to a quarter of a pound per ration card. The Schutzpolizei are just now getting things under control – I see four of them. And on top of that it’s raining.
At the moment I’m sitting on the window seat in the widow’s apartment. She just stormed in, all worked up. A shell hit outside Hefter’s meat market, right in the middle of the queue. Three dead and ten wounded, but they’re already queuing up again. The widow demonstrated how people were using their sleeves to wipe the blood off their meat coupons. ‘Anyway, only three people died,’ she said. ‘What’s that compared to an air raid?’ No question about it: we’re spoiled, all right.
Still, I’m astounded at how the sight of a few beef quarters and hog jowls is enough to get the frailest grandmother to hold her ground. The same people who used to run for shelter if three fighter planes were spotted somewhere over central Germany are now standing in the meat line as solid as walls. At most they’ll plop a bucket on their head or perhaps a helmet. Queuing is a family business, with every member on shift for a couple of hours before being relieved. But the line for meat is too long for me; I’m not yet ready to give it a go. Besides, meat has to be eaten right away; it won’t keep for more than a meal. I think they’re all dreaming of eating their fill one last time, a final meal before the execution.
2 p.m. Just caught a glimpse of the sun. Without giving it a second thought, I strolled out to the balcony overlooking the courtyard and sat down in my wicker chair, basking in the sun – until a formation of bombers whizzed by overhead and one explosion merged into the next. I’d actually forgotten there was a war on. As it is, my head is oddly empty – just now I jerked up from my writing, something fell close by, and I heard the clink of shattering glass. Once again I’m having hunger pangs on a full stomach. I feel the need to gnaw on something. What’s the baby who’s still nursing supposed to live off now, the baby who can’t get any milk? Yesterday the people queuing up were talking about children dying. One old lady suggested that a piece of bread chewed up and full of saliva might help the little ones when they can’t get milk.
An infant in the city is a sorry thing indeed, when its elaborately constructed supply of milk has been disrupted. Even if the mother manages to find something for herself and get halfway nourished, the source is bound to run dry soon enough, given what is approaching us so mercilessly. Fortunately the youngest child in our basement is already eighteen months old. Yesterday I saw someone slip the mother a couple of biscuits for the baby – in what was likely the only recent act of giving. Mostly people squirrel away whatever they have and nobody thinks about sharing anything with anybody.
Back in the basement, 9 p.m. Towards evening a woman we didn’t know showed up and asked the widow and me to go with her to help in the field hospital.
Smoke and red skies on the horizon. The east is all ablaze. They say the Russians have already reached Braunauer Strasse – ironic, considering that it was in Braunau that Adolf first saw the light of day. That reminds me of a quip I heard yesterday in the basement: ‘Just think how much better off we’d be if his old lady’d had a miscarriage.’
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br /> When we reached the hospital, the whole place was filled with smoke. Men were running about wildly, screaming and hollering: An ambulance driver: ‘Hey, we’ve got a shot lung with an impacted bullet!’
‘Move, go away, didn’t you hear? We don’t have a single bed left.’
The ambulance driver is fuming: ‘This is where they told me to go.’
‘Go away or else!’ The sergeant threatens with his fists. The driver storms off, cursing.
Lightly wounded men go slinking through the corridor, one barefoot, his bleeding hand wrapped in his socks. Another, also barefoot, leaves bloody footprints as he walks, the soles of his feet squelch as he lifts them off the ground. Waxy yellow faces peek out of head bandages, with rapidly spreading stains of red. We look into two or three other rooms.
It’s very stuffy, a smell of men, bivouacs, nervous apprehension. One man snarls at us: ‘What do you want?’
The woman who’d come to get us answers shyly that a man in a truck had driven by shouting that the field hospital needed women to help.
‘That’s nonsense. We don’t have anything for you to do here. Go back home.’
So they don’t want female help, but what a peculiar tone, so dismissive, disdainful. As if we wanted to get our hands on the guns, or play at being soldiers. Here, too, I have to relearn everything I’ve been taught about women in war. Once our role was to play the ministering angel. Scraping up lint for bandages. A cool hand on a man’s hot brow. At a healthy distance from the shooting. Now there’s no difference between a regular hospital and a field hospital. The front is everywhere.
A Woman in Berlin Page 4