The car had skidded badly once and the coffin slid heavily against one door, the lock of which was broken. The door opened—and for one awful moment Stampie thought that Herr Altmann had gone. He stopped the car just in time to save the coffin from falling into the road. It was perilously balanced, but he was not strong enough to push it back on to the floor of the car at the only angle at which it would fit in. He stood there heaving at it with his whole strength to no avail.
Fortunately for him the weather was so awful that there was no one about on the road, add the thickly falling snow hindered visibility. A solitary passer-by refused suspiciously to help heave until Stampie had produced a whole packet of cigarettes. The man then willingly lent his shoulders and between them they finally got Herr Altmann back into the car. No questions were asked by the stranger, nor was any explanation offered by Stampie. The man took the cigarettes, asked for matches, and disappeared happily into the snow.
After that Stampie drove very cautiously until he reached the cemetery. It was a bleak bare place and, as he said, could have been anywhere in Siberia on that afternoon. The light was already failing, and the little which remained was worsened by the snowstorm which never let up for one moment.
It was a very long time before the mourners arrived. They had had a long walk after the U-bahn journey, but the Pastor was already there and half frozen. He accepted a cigarette and a seat in the car most gratefully.
Stampie had driven the car right into the cemetery as near to the grave as he could get. The grave-diggers looked like frozen gnomes huddled against the wall with sacks over their heads and shoulders. They were longing to get away and find some shelter from the snow. So hard was the frost that they had been obliged to use their pickaxes to break up the mound of what had been loose earth for filling in the graves.
It was almost dark when the funeral party arrived, and it took all the men—the Pastor included—all their strength to shoulder the coffin and bear it to the grave. If one man did not slip, another did, and they were constantly swaying and sliding, with Herr Altmann performing a macabre dance of death on their shoulders.
There should have been a wheeled bier on which to place the coffin, but like everything else it had disappeared—probably stolen for the wood or wheels, said the Pastor. Thieves had no qualms nowadays, and even hacked up the pews and the wooden collection boxes for firewood.
Ursula had been ordered to wipe the lipstick from her mouth, and remove her nail-varnish before leaving the house. Frau Altmann had been dissatisfied with her appearance. She was, said her mother, too vulgarly conspicuous to attend something which should have been sacred to her.
Ursula had been furious. The lipstick would not come off easily; it was, she said, permanent. She had removed the bright red nail-varnish reluctantly, saying that her father could not see it, and that, under her gloves, neither could the mourners.
Frau Altmann and her daughters had stood by the coffin with the Pastor, Hermann, Luise, Stampie and a few friends. Stampie said that they were all three veiled with thin black veils and that the girls looked quite lovely. Lilli, he said, had an almost unearthly beauty in the cold failing light, her small triangular face and shining hair showing through the veil. Ursula, on the contrary, looked quite terribly alive and vital among these others, ageing and resigned. She looked, he said, as if she had so many lovely things to do that she was unwilling to waste any time on the dead.
The snow got thicker and thicker, and the Pastor’s voice quicker and quicker as he strove to finish his sad task before they were all frozen. His teeth were chattering, but his voice was steady as he read the solemn service which is almost exactly the same as our own.
Frau Altmann wept as she was handed the scoop of earth, and with it scattered some flowers into the grave after the perilous task of lowering the coffin had been achieved. None of the men with the exception of Stampie had the strength for such a task. Their diet was simply not sufficient for any form of heavy manual labour. It had been quite horrible, and Hermann, whose strength had been sapped by alcohol as well as lack of food, had collapsed suddenly, and for a moment or two they thought that he had gone to join his brother. Stampie had scandalized the mourners by giving him a swig of schnapps from his pocket flask. He hadn’t any brandy, but the Steinhager had done just as well. The Pastor had continued steadily with the service while Hermann revived sufficiently to stand up for the last amen.
Stampie was a born story-teller. He made this scene so real for me, illustrating his points with his own inimitable gestures and remarks, that I asked him to take me to see the grave which had now been filled in roughly and covered with a few frozen wreaths and flowers. It had stopped snowing and the sky was slate-grey with the bulging look of more to come. I never saw a more desolate cemetery anywhere in the world. There wasn’t a bush or tree to be seen—all had been ruthlessly hewn down for fuel—just a vast expanse of snow, out of which the headstones and crosses rose like ghostly sentinels.
XV
I KEPT my promise to Frau Altmann and tried to get news of Fritz, although Stampie was positive that by now he had fled into the Russian Zone. I had seen her several times since her husband’s death and found her calm but terribly unhappy. She said very little, but I sensed the almost numbed grief in which the double shock of Oskar’s death and Fritz’s flight had submerged her. She asked me to give her more work to do for the babies—she found relief in doing things, she said. It seemed to me that there were many things waiting to be done for Lilli, but she appeared completely blind to the needs of her daughters. She asked me again and again to try and get news of Fritz. I don’t know how she thought I could do so, but she had a fixed belief that I would find him.
I discovered from Ursula the names of all the places he had frequented for his Black Market deals, and one evening when my husband was at a late conference Stampie and I did the round of the night clubs and cafes.
First we went to Sophie’s, for she had been friendly with Fritz and had done quite a bit of business with the brother and sister. Her place was quite new, and had sprung up as so many others had done, like a mushroom overnight. Hers could have been any night club in any capital in the world, except that it was much better furnished and appointed than most. Thick carpets and heavy curtains shut out the cold, the table linen was immaculate, the silver good, and there were flowers and discreet lighting. The orchestra was playing Liebling mit dem blonden Haar as we entered. It was terribly hot in there as one came in from the icy wind outside. Sophie knew Stampie quite well, and we were warmly greeted, but she had seen nothing of Fritz.
We drank some wine with her and she saw us off solicitously. She wanted a pair of shoes—couldn’t I get them for her? She’d give me anything, pay anything for them. Everyone wanted something, from elastic to keep up their underclothes to pins, needles and buttons, and every kind of tablet and medicament. Sometimes I told Lotte that if anyone asked me for one more thing I should scream.
We went on to Bobby’s Bar, to Johnnie’s Bar and then to the café on the Reichskanzlerecke. This was the place I liked—it was always full of the most fascinating people, and I longed for my sketchbook. No one knew anything at all about Fritz. Ursula had already been there inquiring for her brother and had settled the account he had run up for drinks.
There was still time to spare and I asked to see some of the night clubs in the U.S. sector. In one place painted to represent a blue lagoon there were astonishing frescoes of well-fed nude girls dancing under a tropical sun. They were good, and I asked about the artist who had painted them. He was dead, said the proprietor carelessly—did I think the paintings any good? I asked of what he had died and if he were young. He had been very young and he had killed himself, said the man with a shrug of his shoulders. He had fed the lad for a month in return for his frescoes, but he couldn’t do it any longer. No one wanted works of art now—they wanted food, food, food! It was of far more value than money.
The blue water in the lagoon had some kind of
mechanical device behind it causing it to move in a rise and swell—I could imagine that after a few drinks one could feel sea-sick just from looking at it. The music was slow, dreamy and voluptuous. The couples on the floor were so tightly locked together that all they could indulge in was necking.
“Come on! We can’t stay in here—Christ, it makes me sick!” Stampie pulled me firmly through the door into the fresh air. We went to two more, much the same, but with no news of Fritz. If any of them knew anything, which was doubtful, they were not telling.
Stampie suggested a snack at the American snack-bar in Kronprinzenallee.
“We have to pay in dollar scrip,” I objected.
“Got plenty,” he said grinning. “I like to bring Johnnie here and watch him eating ice cream sundaes.”
We ate hot dogs and fried eggs between rounds of thickly buttered bread—then chocolate ice cream with marshmallow sauce. It was wonderful after our monotonous army rations, with its bully beef and egg powder which tasted of fish. The only shell eggs we had seen since our arrival had been two which Frau von R.’s hens had laid and which she had insisted on giving to John.
The German waitresses behind the bar wore chintz frocks and tiny frilled aprons with large provocative bows on their heads. They said, “You’re welcome!” when we thanked them. Their accents ranged from New England to California, and it was difficult to believe that until a year ago most of them had never spoken a word of English.
On the way back we looked in again at the café on the Reichskanzlerecke, as we thought Joe and Ursula might be there. They were not, and we came away quickly. A fracas was going on between three coloured sergeants and two huge G.I.’s. They had been fighting, but suddenly finished quite amicably, for they all scrambled up from the débris of the broken table and crockery, shook hands all round, and produced wads of notes to pay for the damage they had done. A minute later, as we left, U.S. Military Police cars came screaming round the corner, but the brawlers had all been let out of a side door by that time.
“Well! We’re certainly seeing life, although we haven’t found Fritz,” said Stampie as we went home.
It was just after the most magnificent Red Army Day party at which General Sokolovsky had entertained us in the lovely Sans Souci Palace at Potsdam—now the Russian headquarters—that I encountered my first returning prisoner from Russia.
I was with Peggy, a very charming new neighbour, whose little sons played with John. We had been seeing some friends off at Charlottenburg station and as we were coming away she clutched my arm, saying “My God! Just look at that!”
A young man, as emaciated as a scarecrow, in rags, and walking with agonizing difficulty, was hobbling in the same direction as we were. It wasn’t the sores on his hands or the bare bleeding feet bound to pieces of wood in place of shoes which made one catch one’s breath—but the look on his young face.
We stopped and offered him a lift. He got in after some hesitation, and sat next to the German driver whose contempt and aversion for this poor derelict were apparent as he drew himself away.
We questioned the boy. He had just come from Russia and had found his family gone and his home in ruins. He had been captured in Stalingrad in ’43. Where was he going now? He didn’t know, but he thought that his aunt in Westphalia might still be alive. He had to find the fare and obtain the permit to leave Berlin and go into the British Zone. We drove back to the Grunewald, and as Peggy’s flat was on the ground floor took him in there. The maid who opened the door to us exclaimed in horror and disgust at the gnädige Frau bringing in such people. Peggy turned on her like a tigress.
“When I see people like you and the driver behaving in this way, then I understand Belsen, Buchenwald and all those other places,” she said fiercely. “This man is one of you! He’s a German. He fought for you! And this is how you receive him when he comes home after years in a prison camp!”
The woman merely remarked that the gnädige Frau had better be careful, there were lice and other unpleasant things in prison camps. She was eyeing the rags with horror and disgust.
“Fetch the cook,” ordered her mistress. This woman was equally shocked, but anxious to help, as Peggy told her to get a meal ready and to bring coffee immediately. The boy did not want to sit in a chair—he said it was years since he had sat on anything except the bare floor—he was too dirty for a chair, he apologized.
“Would you like a hot bath?” asked Peggy.
He was incredulous, saying that a bath was something of which they had dreamed for years in the prison camps. While the disgusted maid went to prepare a bath he talked to us. He had come from Sverdlovsk in the Urals, he said. There were a great many prison camps round Sverdlovsk, as the Russians were building enormously round this, the capital of the Urals. They employed the prisoners, working in bitter cold, on digging out the foundations for building railways and new roads. Why had he been released? He was ill—he had already had several haemorrhages of the lungs. The Russians had sent him to Sevro, almost at the North Pole, he told us. It was a wonderful health centre for that part of Russia, and was full of tubercular patients. The doctors had been kind and he had received treatment for his lungs, but the cold had been appalling. Thousands of prisoners died from the cold in Sverdlovsk—they had been frozen to death. In Sevro the food was better than in Sverdlovsk, where they had been kept ravenously hungry. After a year in Sevro they had told him that he would be released. He could do no more work.
We asked if there were many civilian prisoners. Thousands, he said, and women as well as men. The women had mostly been kidnapped from the East Zone of Germany and transported to Russian labour camps. They were fairly well treated—the Russians were not cruel, and they hadn’t much food themselves. I asked him if he had seen the terrible destruction which Germany had vented on Russian towns and villages. He had both seen it and been told of it—again and again—the Russians saw to that, he said.
We asked what the Russian people in the far north were like? They were, he said, so fit and physically perfect that in the Urals they could walk barefooted in the snow without frostbite. They had beautiful teeth and fine strong bodies, could endure great hardships and had a fanatical love of their country. They were a marvellous race; although they had few luxuries they were happy and would sing and dance in the evenings after work. Did they grumble? Of course—quite a lot. Did he speak Russian? Yes, all prisoners were taught Russian as soon as they arrived. At the end of five years’ labour the civilian prisoners could do as they pleased—return to their homeland or stay in Russia—and some chose to stay.
We were astonished to hear this. Peggy and I could have listened to him all day, but he was tired, and we searched for some clothes for him to put on after his bath.
He was pathetically grateful, and after the bath, in clean clothes, having enjoyed a good meal and a cigarette, he looked quite different but alarmingly ill. He had cleaned the bath most carefully, Peggy told me, not having missed the expression on the maid’s face. When he tried to thank us he broke down and cried like a child. He wasn’t much more—having been sent to the Eastern front at sixteen and a half.
We took him to the Social Welfare Centre where I knew the officials. They were always willing to help and promised to arrange the permits for him to go to Westphalia.
I thought that perhaps Frau Altmann would like to talk with him. Her son Kurt had been captured at Stalingrad too, and she had not received a word from him since then. This boy told us that he had never received any news from his home, although he knew that his parents would have written, so that it was quite likely that Kurt Altmann was alive. Now that he looked so different it would not be so painful for Frau Altmann to see him. She had heard through another returned prisoner that Kurt had been in Sverdlovsk at one time, and I hoped that it might buoy up her hopes of Kurt coming home again to see and talk to this lad.
She went to the Social Welfare Centre and saw him. She took him all kinds of little things, Ursula told me, and talked with him f
or hours. She saw him off at the station on his way to Westphalia and told me that he bore absolutely no animosity towards the Russians—indeed he liked the peasant people.
Later we got a letter from him, and one from his mother, whom he had found safely at his aunt’s home near Herford. A postcript to the mother’s letter of thanks told us that her son’s lungs were beyond repair—nothing could be done for him.
“Supposing it had been one of our sons,” said Peggy when we had read this. “Wouldn’t we have blessed any woman who did for ours the little that we did for him?”
I told her about Fritz, of whom there was still no news, and whom we thought must certainly be in the Russian Zone. Many lads were being lured there with the promise of a uniform, a job and good pay. Being allowed to march again to a band, even if the flag under which they marched was a hammer and sickle in place of a swastika, meant a great deal to a German.
Swastikas were definitely out. All Nazi literature and flags had been burned by order of the Allies, and it was a punishable offence to possess either.
“But you can’t burn memories,” sighed Frau Altmann, “and the young people have not forgotten that evil régime—to them it was thrilling, exciting and glorious to march with those jack-booted monsters.”
Sometimes we would see a swastika chalked up on a wall or pavement. The Germans had no flags, no uniforms and no bands now. They were all forbidden. The Russians promised them all three, and they could march to The Red Flag or to the rousing tune of Brüder zur Sonne zur Freiheit if they wished. Some excellent propaganda films were already helping this project.
XVI
IT was at a special matinee of the ballet that Lilli collapsed on the stage, and I realised that she was really ill. She had been quite excited about this matinée, for she was an ambitious dancer and practised assiduously by herself. They were going to dance Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune. I did not expect too much, for their ballet standard did not come up to ours, but Lilli had told me that the boy who was going to dance the Faun was wonderful—he could leap almost as high as Nijinsky had done when he had created the famous rôle.
The Dancing Bear Page 11