by John King
I look at her powerful blue eyes and wonder. The strong bones and straight shoulders. She leans in close and I can smell the schnapps on her breath. It’s hard but sweetened with fruit. Could be strawberry flavour. I wonder if those white teeth are her own. She asks me if I know what the Russians did to the Germans? I shake my head. Probably kicked fuck out of them, but I’ll let her explain. Her eyes water as she starts telling me how thousands of German civilians were left behind by the army’s retreat, the countryside around her village swamped by the communists. She says the Bolsheviks were worse than animals. Her voice trembles. They showed no mercy, raping the women and, when they’d finished, killing them along with their children. There were massacres everywhere as the Russians looted houses and exterminated innocent people, ransacking and burning whole villages. The land was thick with blood. It wasn’t fair, because they were simple folk and none of the people she knew were members of the Nazi party. They were being made to pay a debt according to their nationality. So much for communist ideals. The communists were less than human. She hates communists and is glad the Soviet Union has collapsed.
She lowers her head and I feel bad for her, an old woman lost in a big city like Berlin. She raises her head and tells me she’s a peasant forced to hide among cold towers. That she wanders through heartless office blocks watching strangers. Her father was a peasant forced to fight in the East when all he wanted to do was stay in his village and grow vegetables. He was a gentle man who died somewhere outside Stalingrad. Before she became a refugee and was forced towards Berlin, life was uncomplicated. The village would still be her home today and she would have married a local boy if it wasn’t for the Soviets. They’d have had children. Lots of children with blond hair and blue eyes like their mother and father. But everything was destroyed by the communists and her life was never the same, her father frozen in ice and left for the wolves.
She holds her gaze steady and says she was very friendly with the British, French and American soldiers. She worked hard to survive and refused to give in. There’s a swelling pride in her classic face and the water has cleared from eyes that stare into mine. I can imagine she was a good-looking woman when she was young. She puts her hand on my leg and smiles for the first time. The blue eyes sparkle and there’s a hard, piss-taking humour. She runs her hand towards my bollocks but stops short. I don’t know what to do and this old dear has put me in my place. Her eyes never leave mine and she’s got the power of a woman who knows what’s what. Her fingers are inches from my balls and she squeezes. Digging her nails in. She holds it for a few seconds then softens and starts stroking my leg. The worst thing that could happen now would be if I got a hard-on. Sitting in the street in front of the troops. It’s a fucking nightmare and I shrug my shoulders. She nods and moves her hand back to the table – I was a good girl for you British boys and you’ve all forgotten me now my skin is wrinkled.
The woman is sad and serious, switching back and forward. She lowers her voice and turns her head quickly to the Englishmen nearby, making sure I’m the only one listening. She says that the people were running from the communist murderers gripped by a panic someone like me can never believe. It was an extermination of innocents, a holocaust. Stalin was a monster. She knows Hitler was a monster, everyone knows that now, but do they understand about Stalin? They were both monsters who never lived in her village and never knew she even existed, yet together they destroyed everything she held precious. The Soviets were out of control – hard, bitter men with no kindness in their hearts for German civilians. There were women too, fighting for the communists. Imagine that, tough peasant women matching the men. The Nazis started everything and then hid, buried in their bunkers. They left the ordinary people to pay the party’s debt. Hitler didn’t even evacuate her family. She was lucky to get out of her village before the Bolsheviks arrived.
She lowers her voice further. She seems uncertain for a moment and then tells her story. There were angels. She is telling the truth about this. There were angels who came at night to help the German people. Many Germans know about these angels. They were mysterious figures who appeared in areas invaded by the Soviets. Angels led the people back through enemy lines to safe German territory. She went through the woods as a child, heading for the magic city of Berlin where they hoped they would be safe. Where were the men when they were needed? The angels helped her reach Berlin and she stayed for the rest of her life. Her mother and brother died in the shelling. Their bodies were burnt in a street near where we’re sitting now, drinking lager and feeling the sun, their corpses bruised and distorted. Everything was destroyed. God was on her side though, and she wants me to understand that God was with her because she was young and innocent.
She saw the Berlin Wall go up and she saw the Berlin Wall come down. Nature made her beautiful so she could work and survive. What happened to the ugly people? Did I ever think what happened to the ugly women with scarred faces and missing limbs? Who would care for these women? She grew quickly and was working when she was thirteen. She had been lucky because the soldiers liked blonde hair and blue eyes, and they liked her breasts and some of them liked her behind. She laughs.
– Yes, some of them liked my behind as well as the other places. Mostly it was the French boys who liked that kind of love. I was beautiful and they wanted my body. They paid and I saved and one day I bought an apartment. I worked hard and built a new life. My brother was nine when he died. My mother was twenty-eight and my father thirty-one. I was the only one left to continue.
Tears trickle down her face. I feel like shit and don’t know what to say. I nod my head. I can see Carter behind the old woman with a bottle of lager in his mouth. Raising his eyes to the sky and laughing through the drink because I’ve got the nutter. Tom’s got the fucking headcase. The mad old granny pissed on meths, schnapps, whatever. Brain rotting with the clap and dementia taking a grip. Mark shakes his head, glad it’s not him. You can’t tell old people to fuck off and leave you alone. Doesn’t matter where they come from and how bad they make you feel. You can’t tell the old folk to fuck off and die.
Carter and Mark turn away and go back to their conversation, the England boys drinking and enjoying the day. Not a care in the world. Probably don’t see anything in the old girl except decay and weakness. We’re young and hard as nails. We don’t care about anything except ourselves. Don’t let the disease in. Stand together and have the dignity to fade away when your time’s up instead of causing trouble for people with the sadness of age. It’ll happen to all of us eventually. The ones who last that long. There’s no story the young want to hear from this old dear. But I’m interested. Trying to imagine the panic of war. Must be a fucking nightmare for the women and kids. The weak left defenceless. Left to pay the tab for their men’s behaviour. Mothers watching their kids bayoneted in the street. Young boys and girls seeing their mum gang-raped by Russians, Germans, whoever. Never the English. Suppose there’s always someone left to pay in the end and it doesn’t matter if it’s your fault or not. All that bollocks about the meek inheriting the earth. The woman takes out a hanky and dabs her eyes. Focuses on the table. Lost in her memories.
I look down the main street and feel the rush of being in Berlin. Have to shut this old girl out and stop thinking. Don’t know what it is, but Berlin is the place to be. Maybe it’s the history lodged in our heads. All those pictures fed to you as a kid. It was the centre of the Cold War and a focus between East and West. Now we’ve got it off the communists, but the memory of the Wall is still fresh.
This woman is old and battered but has her pride. Maybe she’s a nutter, I don’t know. I’m not a fucking doctor. But she’s glad she lived to tell the tale. One day she’ll die and it’ll be sooner rather than later. In some ways she’s already gone because the financiers are rebuilding Berlin and the young girl sweating under a column of Allied soldiers doesn’t count. As long as the boys pay in hard currency everyone’s happy. There’s no need for pride in the multinational equati
on. This might be Germany but the ordinary Germans in their run-down estates and rural hovels don’t count either. None of these banker cunts know the name of a kid’s village swallowed up by the Soviets. It’s the new dictators who’ll piss all over her and say she’s better off – the bankers and industrialists, and every kind of cunt you can imagine. They’re looking our way next, England in their sights.
The prossies in Amsterdam must’ve made a killing from the England boys and one day those girls will be touching up young men when their looks have gone, their blood riddled with tropical disease. But the latest wave of English hooligans don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck about all that bollocks. You can’t do anything about what happened half a century ago. At least we won the war and didn’t do what the Red Army did. We’ve moved on and now we’re on the piss in the middle of the same city the RAF bombed. It’s sinking in. Where we are and what we’re doing. Sitting in Berlin hearing an echo of a miserable past who’ll piss off in a minute. Life is for the living.
Mark comes over to help out and tells me to forget the old grannies and feel sorry for all those sad wankers at home stuck in front of the box. Or if Rod’s lucky he’ll be wandering round Blockbuster trying to make the right choice. Keep the missus sweet. Rod trying to get the CD player to stop jumping. Mandy’s disco compilation skipping while his mates are in Germany with some extra-strong Deutschelager in their hands. We’re centre of the world. Maybe not the world, but the wannabe leader of a brave new reich. Berlin is a place you hear so much about as a kid that you form this strong image.
The Berlin Wall was right there as kids and we were raised on Cold War politics and the threat of nuclear disaster. We’re packed full of anti-Soviet images, our papers matching KGB sadists to the trendy cunts on the council, all those pro-queer, pro-black, anti-white cunts chipping away at England. We’ve been taught to hate the scum in the East and the rubbish selling our culture down the drain. Listening to the woman brings it back. It’s the real story and I can’t imagine the English acting like the Russians in a war. Maybe if you’ve lost twenty million people you just don’t care any more, but that’s not the English way. We’re not mass murderers like some of these cunts. We fight because we have to and have our honour. That’s why the Germans wanted to surrender to the English. That and the fact they’d killed so many Russians.
The woman looks at Mark and nods. She understands more than I think and I feel small. I’ve seen nothing compared to her. He’s cut across her and the tears have stopped. Her pride is there for everyone to see, except I’m the only one looking. She says she has to go to the shops and stands up, and though part of me wants to hear her stories another part wants her to fuck off and leave me alone. Let me enjoy myself without all this misery. She has to be a headcase anyway. Talking about angels like that. Fucking nutters everywhere these days.
Football is serious, but it’s still a game. We’re doing our own thing without anyone shouting orders. I don’t want to start thinking about women and kids getting butchered. It makes you sick, don’t care who it is. So when the woman leaves I bury her in my head. It all becomes unreal again, something for the film-makers and soundtrack writers. I don’t know. Her time has come and gone, I suppose, just like the pensioners who fought for us in the war. We respect them, of course we do, but respect doesn’t pay the bills. The Government doesn’t give a fuck, whether it’s the Conservatives or Labour. It’s all money to Parliament. People’s names are just more statistics.
The old woman walks through this mob of English hooligans. Blonde teenager getting fucked rigid by the troops of the great democratic experiment. The boys move aside and let an old woman pass. A shadow filtering through the years. Tiny pin-prick face on the horizon waiting for the strategic missile to pass by and destroy the munitions dump. Designer explosives directing shrapnel in the opposite direction. I wonder if she’s making it up about the angels. I try to imagine these figures in the wood. All I can think of is fat cherubs with wings, but know that’s not what she means. I suddenly wonder if she ever got married and had kids. I wish I’d asked. A happy ending makes you feel better about things.
– What was she on about? Mark asks, sitting down, looking at my face and laughing. What’s the matter you miserable cunt? Cheer up, you slag, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. She was a bit pale I suppose, but just another nutter like you get back home. They’ve all got the same story.
– She was talking about how the Russians killed the people in her village and how she escaped to Berlin through the woods.
– Couldn’t have been much fun, Mark nods. Still, they did enough themselves didn’t they, the old Germans and that. They slaughtered the Russians and Jews and anyone else they could get hold of without any problem, so what do they expect? Hitler didn’t think about all that when he was bombing London did he? They killed enough of our boys. Bet she wasn’t out there protesting when the bombers left for London or the yids were being hauled out of their homes. There were enough kids ripped from their parents then.
– She was a child. So it wasn’t her fault, was it? I mean, how was she to know what was going on? It wasn’t down to her personally.
Mark thinks for a moment and looks for the woman. She’s gone.
– Suppose not. Don’t worry about it anyway. It’s all in the past.
– Those Russians were fucking scum, says Brighty, coming over. I heard what that granny said and she’s right. Communists are the fucking scum of the earth. There’s enough of the cunts over in East Berlin. Me and Harris are going over there later to have a look. There’s some Germans he knows coming in from Leipzig. They’re from the East, know what they’re talking about because they had to grow up under the cunts. They know where to go. You want to come along. We should have a tidy firm together. There’s a few card carriers, but they’re mostly along for the ride. They’re not into the football.
Football and politics are separate as far as I’m concerned. That’s the way I see it anyway. Still, it’s an excuse for a row I suppose and these things are always played up. Long as it’s not against some hostel for women and kids. Harris comes over and a few other blokes seem game enough. The majority keep clear. Harris tells Billy he doesn’t reckon it’ll be up to much, because the area of East Berlin they’re talking about is full of wankers. They’re students and squatters, people like that, a few cracked hippies, white dreads and such-like. But we’ll visit some of the sights because we’re staying in West Berlin. A cheap hotel behind these bars and restaurants. Might as well see the rest of the town.
We were lucky getting the place when we arrived. We get off the train expecting a reception committee but the locals are sleeping. Ends up a few of us turn down this street where there’s a flashing sign. Harris leads the Expeditionary Force into Reception. There’s this old Turk sitting behind the desk reading his papers. He’s finished the Arabic and is studying the German version. Looks tired and lifts his head. He’s got the muddy remains of his Turkish coffee. I think of Hank in Amsterdam. A night-shift brotherhood hooked on caffeine. Abdul’s peering through his glasses. Harris asks if there’s any rooms going and the bloke can’t be bothered. He’s tired and probably doesn’t fancy the look of the clientele. Men stinking of drink and a railway journey. Short hair, tattoos, jeans, trainers, small bags, a Cross of St George around the shoulders of the man with the missing hand. Can’t say I blame him. Abdul says the place is full. Harris stares hard for a moment, then shrugs and turns. We head back to the door.
Suddenly something clicks. The caffeine kick-starts Abdul’s brain.
– Hey, he says. You English?
Harris turns back again and nods. He’s not impressed.
– That’s right mate, we’re English. You got a problem with that?
The man’s face opens and his manner changes.
– You, he stammers. You hooligans?
There’s a second’s pause and we start laughing. Abdul seems excited for some reason.
– We’ve come for the
football, Harris says.
Abdul frowns.
– But, you hooligan?
Harris shakes his head.
– We’re good boys. We won’t wreck the place if that’s what you’re worried about. We’re the Society For Better Anglo-Kraut Relations.
The man doesn’t get the joke and hurries around the front of the desk. He’s short and chubby. He peers at Harris, then points to the Chelsea tattoo and Cross of St George. Points to the rest of the boys waiting to see what happens.
– No, he insists, you boys are hooligans.
– Is he taking the piss? Mark asks.
– You hooligans, the man half shouts. Come and sit down boys. I have rooms for hooligans.
Nobody knows what the fuck the bloke’s on about, but he’s obviously been reading his papers. We sit down and he starts rabbiting on about the English hooligans and how there’s going to be a lot of fighting with the Germans. We go through the routine of signing the book and this takes ages, but Abdul’s the owner and his hooligan prices are low. He calls some help for the bags. The bloke’s suddenly a character instead of a grumpy old cunt. He’s running around and can’t do enough for us. It’s a mad world. It’s worked out well. The hotel’s handy and cheap, and now we’re pointing new arrivals in Abdul’s direction.