We sat facing each other at the smoking table. I was so tired I couldn’t suppress my yawning, couldn’t find the words in my head, so drowsy I had no idea what Nikolai was talking about. Now and then I pulled myself together, ordered myself to be nice to him. For his part he was friendly. but distant. Evidently he had counted on a different reception, or else he simply no longer felt any attraction for the pale ghost I have become. Finall y I understood that, once again, Nikolai had only come to say goodbye. He’s already stationed outside Berlin and came in on duty for just this one day. for the last time, as he put it. So there’s no need to put on a friendly show for him; I don’t have to pretend I’m interested. By the same token I kept feeling a quiet regret that things turned out as they did. Nikolai has a good face. In parting, in the hallway, he pressed something into my hand, with a whisper: ‘En camarades, n’est-ce pas?’ It was money, over 200 marks. And he’d nothing from me apart from a few half-yawned words. I’d happily use this money to buy something to eat, if only some supper for tonight. But in times like these everyone clings to what they have. The black market is dying.
WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 1945
Once again it’s evening, and the walking machine has come back home. The rain is streaming down outside, and inside - oh joy! - the water is streaming from the tap in my apartment. I fill the bath and shower myself with water. No more lugging those heavy buckets up the stairs.
Another day hard at work. I went with the Hungarian to look into renting office space. Our first stop was the Rathaus, where he obtained some official papers, stamps and signatures that are meant to authorize his plans and attest to his clean record. There were a number of amazing characters there, types you haven’t seen for years, people who’ve been staying out of sight and are now crawling out of the woodwork everywhere you look. I saw young male dancers, a Jewish woman who’d gone underground and was talking about her nose operation, an older man with a bright red ‘Assyrian’ beard who was a painter of ‘degenerate’ art.
After a cup of real coffee, Ilse and her husband had a heated discussion about whether he should accept a job in Moscow. They’re offering him a high-level position, good pay. But Ilse is dead set against it, if for no other reason than he would have to make the move by himself at first. He doesn’t want to go either. He’d prefer to keep breathing western air, our publishing plans have helped him take heart and he’s hoping to get back in the usual boys’ game of money and power and big cars.
Today the Allies are conducting negotiations. The radio is spitting speeches, brimming with the tributes our ex-enemies are paying one another. All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their whims. I can’t change any of that; I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky. And maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing’s for sure: my life has certainly been full- all too full!
THURSDAY, 7 JUNE 1945
Today the walking machine had the day off. I got up early to queue at the greengrocer’s for some pickled pumpkin. Unfortunately the stuff proved too briny for me to get down. Luckily I got two bunches of dried vegetables - known as ‘shredded wire’ - and a bag of dried potatoes. On top of that I picked a handbagful of nettles in the gardens outside the ruined buildings, elegantly plucking them using the fishnet gloves I saved from my air-raid gear. I devoured them greedily; even drinking the greenish stock I’d boiled them in, and felt properly refreshed.
After that I calculated that my period was over two weeks late, so I strode seven buildings down to where a woman doctor had hung her signboard, though I’d never seen her before and didn’t even know if she had started practising again. Once inside I met a blonde woman, not much older than me, who received me in a wind-battered room. She’d replaced the windowpanes with old X-rays of unidentified chests. She refused to engage in small talk and got right down to business. ‘No,’ she said, after examining me. ‘I don’t see anything. Everything’s all right.’
‘But I’m so late. I’ve never had that before.’
‘Do you have any idea how many women are experiencing the same thing? Including me. We’re not getting enough to eat, so the body saves energy by not menstruating. You better see that you get a little meat on your bones. Then your cycle will get back to normal.’
She asked for 10 marks, and I handed them to her. But I felt bad - after all, what could she do with that? After we were through I risked asking whether there were indeed lots of women who’d been raped by the Russians and were now pregnant and coming and asking her for help.
‘It’s better not to speak of such things,’ she said curtly, showing me out.
A quiet evening, all to myself. Gusts of wind are sweeping through the empty window frames, swirling dust into the room. Where can I possibly go if the real tenant shows up one day? What’s certain is that, if I hadn’t been here, the apartment would long since have been cleared out by the roofers and various other fellow citizens. When it comes to heating, other people’s furniture burns better than your own.
FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 1945
The walking machine is back at it. An amazing event today: a section of the S-Bahn has resumed operations on a trial basis. I saw the red and yellow cars up on the track, climbed the stairs, paid two old groschen for a ticket and got on board. The passengers were sitting on the benches, with an air of ceremony - two of them immediately moved closer together so I could squeeze in. Then we went hurtling through the sunny wasteland of the city, while all the endless, tedious minutes I had spent marching flew by the window. I was sorry I had to get out as soon as I did. The ride was so nice, a real gift.
I put in a lot of work. Ilse and I sketched out the first number of our planned women’s magazine. We still haven’t decided on a name for it, so we put our heads together on that. Each periodical definitely has to contain the word ‘new’.
The day was strangely dreamlike; people and things appeared as if behind a veil. I walked back home on sore feet, listless from hunger. All we had to eat at lise’s was more pea soup - two ladlefuls apiece, since we’re trying to make the supplies last. It seemed to me that every person I passed had hollow, hungry eyes. Tomorrow I’m planning to go and pick some more nettles. I kept my eyes peeled for every spot of green along the way.
Everywhere you turn you can sense the fear. People are worried about their bread, their work, their pay, about the coming day. Bitter, bitter defeat.
SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 1945
Day off for me. We agreed that for as long as I don’t have anything to eat, I’d make the 12-mile trek only every other day.
In the store where I’m registered they gave me groats and sugar in exchange for coupons - enough for two or three meals. Then with my elegantly begloved hands I picked an entire mountain of nettle shoots, orache and dandelions.
In the afternoon I went to the hairdresser’s for the first time in ages, and asked for a shampoo and set. They washed about a pound of dirt out of my hair. The hairdresser had popped up from somewhere to take over the shop of a colleague who was pressed into the Volksstun n at the last minute and is missing in action. Supposedly the man’s family was evacuated to Thuringia. The place had been pretty well ransacked, but one mirror is still intact and one dryer is still halfway serviceable, if rather dented. The man’s speech was very pre-war: ‘Yes, ma’am. Why of course, ma’am, I’d be happy to, ma’am.’ I find all the overly solicitous and polite phrases somewhat alien now. ‘Yes, ma’am’ is for internal use only, a currency of no value except among ourselves. To the rest of the world we’re nothing but rubble-women and trash.
SUNDAY, 10 JUNE 1945
They’ve announced on the radio that the Russians are going to set up their military administration in Berlin after all, so that Russia will now stretch all the way to Bavaria, Hanover and Holstein; the English are supposed to get the Rhine and Ruhr, and Bavaria goes to the Americans. It’
s a topsy-turvy world with our country all sliced up. We’ve had peace for a month now.
A reflective morning, with music and sunshine, which I spent reading Rilke, Goethe, Hauptmann. The fact that they, too, are also German is some consolation, that they were of our kind.
At 1 :30p.m. I set off on a humid march through a Berlin that’s still silent and empty. In Charlottenburg we sat down again and planned. A new man has joined our group, a professional printer. He thinks obtaining paper shouldn’t be our first order of business, since anyone who has paper is going to hold onto it, and even hide it, for fear of confiscation. And if someone were willing to part with some, we have no way to pick it up or place to store it until we can start printing. At the moment our entire fleet consists of two bicycles - and that’s more than most firms. The printer thinks our primary task should be to acquire a licence from the authorities - an official allocation of printing paper. The engineer has already made the rounds of every conceivable German or Russian office and collected a lot of empty promises - he gave a rather depressing account. Only the Hungarian is bursting with optimism. He’s a sly dog, no doubt about it. I happened to mention a crate of framed photos that was still in the basement of my former firm, portraits of men who’d received the Knight’s Cross, that were intended to be handed out as prizes at some ceremony. His eyes grew bright and he immediately asked, ‘Pictures? With glass?’
‘Yes, all framed with glass.’
‘We’ll go and get the glass,’ he decreed. He’s found some potential office space, but like most spaces in Berlin, it has no windowpanes. As far as I’m concerned he can go ahead and break in. I’ll gladly act as a lookout. But my guess is that the crate has long since gone.
On my way home I dropped in ·on Gisela. Hertha was lying sick on the sofa again, but this time her face was no longer a glowing red-it was snow white. She’d had a miscarriage, Gisela told me. I didn’t ask any questions, just gave each of the girls one of the chocolates the Hungarian had given me on my way out, ‘as a thank-you for the good tip about the glass’. Filled mochabeans, very tasty. It was nice to see the girls’ tense, bitter faces relax up when they tasted the sweet filling.
I told Gisela about our publishing plans, thinking that she could join us as soon as one of them becomes concrete. Gisela was sceptical. She can’t imagine that we’ll be able to print the kind of thing we want to, not here in Germany right now. She thinks that they won’t allow anything that doesn’t follow the Moscow line, which isn’t her own. She’s too embarrassed to mention the word ‘God’ in front of me, but that was the gist of what she was saying. I’m convinced that she prays and that this gives her strength. She doesn’t have any more to eat than I do. She has deep circles under her eyes, but hers are lit up, whereas mine are simply bright. We can’t help each other now. But the simple fact that I’m surrounded by other hungry people keeps me going.
MONDAY, 11 JUNE 1945
Another day to myself. I went to the police to try to get some kind of official permission to use the abandoned garden in the back of the burned-down house where Professor K., a close colleague of mine used to live. I showed them a letter the old man had sent me from the Brandenburg Mark, where he had found refuge, asking me to look after his garden. I was sent from pillar to post. Nobody claimed to have the authority. Dingy cubbies with cardboard in the windows, musty smells, low-level bickering. Nothing has changed.
On the way home I picked my quota of nettles. I was very low on energy; my diet has no fat. There’s always this kind of wavy mist in front of my eyes, and I feel a floating sensation, as if I were getting lighter and lighter. Even writing this down takes effort, but at least it’s some consolation in my loneliness, a kind of conversation, a chance to pour my heart out. The widow told me she’s still having wild dreams of Russians. I haven’t had anything like that, probably because I’ve spewed everything onto paper.
My potato supply looks pretty grim. The rations they’ve given us have to last through to the end of July. We were forced to take them now, and anybody can smell the reason why: the tubers, which had just been dug out of the pit, are fermenting, so that half the potatoes are already a stinking mash. I can hardly stand the smell in the kitchen, but I’m afraid they’ll spoil even more quickly if I keep them on the balcony. What are we supposed to live on come July? What’s more, I’m worried about the gas stove. When there’s enough pressure in the gas line to use it, the pipes start banging like gunshots. And the electric cooker, patched up as it is, doesn’t want to run any more.
I have to guard the bread against myself. I’m already 100 grams into my next day’s ration - I can’t let that become a habit.
TUESDAY, 12 JUNE 1945
The automatic walking machine was back to Charlottenburg. No more joyrides on the S-Bahn. Something went wrong after the first few runs and the trams are once again out of commission. We worked hard; now our designs and proposals must be submitted to all the various offices.
On the way I had a new experience. Bodies were being exhumed from a grassy lawn, to be reinterred in a cemetery. One corpse was already lying op top of all the debris - a long bundle wrapped in sailcloth and caked in loam. The man who was doing the digging, an older civilian, was wiping the sweat off with his shirt sleeves and fanning himself with his cap. It was the first time I had ever smelled a human corpse. The descriptions I’ve read always use the phrase ‘sweetish odour’, but that’s far too vague, completely inadequate. The fumes are not so much an odour as something firmer, something thicker, a soupy vapor that collects in front of your face and nostrils, too mouldy and thick to breathe. It beats you back as if with fists.
At the moment the whole city of Berlin is reeking. Typhus is going around, and hardly anyone has escaped dysentery - Herr Pauli was hard hit. I also heard that they came for the lady with eczema; apparently she’s been quarantined in a typhus-barracks. There are fields of rubbish all over, swarming with flies. Flies upon flies, blue-black and fat. Must be the life for them! Each bit of faeces is covered with a humming, swarming mass of black.
The widow heard a rumour that’s going around Berlin: ‘They’re making us starve as punishment because a few men from Operation Werewolf recently shot at some Russians.’ I don’t believe it. You hardly see any Russians at all in our district, so the werewolves wouldn’t have anyone to prey on. I have no idea where all the Ivans have disappeared to. The widow claims that one of the two drink-and-be-merry sisters who moved to our building-Anya with the cute little son - is still receiving Russian callers with packages. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. I can picture her lying across her sofa, her white throat slit.
[Scribbled in the margin at the end of June] Not Anya and not the throat, but a certain Inge, two buildings down, was found this morning with her skull bashed in, after a night of boozing with four unknown men, still at large. She was beaten with a beer bottle - empty, of course. Probably it wasn’t malice or even a lust for murder. More likely it just happened that way, perhaps after an argument over whose tum it was. Or maybe Inge laughed at her visitors. Russians are dangerous when drunk. They see red, fly into a rage against anyone and everyone else when provoked.
WEDNESDAY, 13 JUNE 1945
A day to myself. The widow and I went out to look for nettles and orache, and roamed through the professor’s ruined garden, now run wild. Even if I did receive permission to tend the garden, I would be too late. Strangers’ have broken off whole branches of the cherry tree, picking the cherries just barely turned gold. Nothing will ripen here; hungry people will harvest everything before its time.
Cold, storms and rain. The tram drove down our street again for the first time. I jumped on right away, just for the ride, but once on board I realized that it would be a good time to go to the town hall and ask whether we really could expect pay for our week’s labour for the Russians. It turned out my name was indeed on the list, along with all the others, with every workday neatly recorded. They’d even entered the amounts to be withheld for tax.
I am to be paid 56 marks - though not until there’s money in the coffers again. The clerk asked me to check again next week. At any rate they’re keeping the books and adding amounts and collecting the money, so I’m bound to get something.
While I waited in the rain for the tram to take me back, I spoke with two refugees, a married couple. They’d been travelling for eighteen days from Czech territory and had bad things to report. The man told how the Czech at the border was stripping Germans of their shirts and hitting them with dogwhips. ‘We can’t complain,’ his wife said, wearily, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’ Apparently all the roads from the east are swarming with refugees.
On the way home I saw people coming out of a cinema. I immediately got off and went into the half-empty auditorium for the next showing. A Russian film, entitled At Six p.m. After the War. A strange feeling, after all the pulp-novels I’ve been living, to sit in the audience and watch a film.
There were still soldiers in the audience, alongside several dozen Germans, mostly children. Hardly any women, though - they’re still reluctant to venture into dark places with all the uniforms. But none of the men paid any attention to us civilians, they were all watching the screen and laughing diligently. I devoured the film, which was bursting with salt-of-the-earth characters: sturdy women, healthy men. It was a talking movie, in Russian - I understood quite a bit, since it takes place among simple people. The film had a happy end - victory fireworks over the turrets of Moscow, though it was apparently filmed in 1944. Our leaders never risked anything like that, for all their promises of future triumphs.
Once again I feel oppressed by our German disaster. I came out of the cinema deeply saddened, but help myself by summoning things that dull my emotions. Like that bit of Shakespeare I jotted in my notebook, back then in Paris, when I discovered Spengler and felt so dejected by his Decline of the West. 'A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.’ Losing two world wars hits damned deep.
A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Page 26