“It is right,” she had said. “Men are fools. Give them a flag and a shirt exactly like their neighbours’ and they will think they are gods.”
The People’s Police came next in their smart uniforms. They were armed, and military in every detail—a German Army, in spite of the Potsdam Agreement. One could understand the justice of the British Military Government’s protests that these so-called Police were in reality an army trained under von Seydlitz and von Paulus.
How clever the Russians had been! While men of call-up age were unemployed and kicking their heels in our zone looking vainly for a meal ticket, the Soviet had directed their unemployed through the Labour Exchanges into this Police Force. Those who were fit and were between eighteen and thirty-five had been trained into splendid physical condition, armed, put into smart uniforms, and told:
“Now you’re in the People’s Police, it’s up to you to keep order in the State we have founded for you.”
These men were in every respect the replicas of the former SS troops, and the one hundred and fifty smartest of them—all picked men—were to be inspected by Pieck. And here he came, the man whom Fritz had admired, a little weary-looking old man standing in an open car and acknowledging the roars of the crowd, as his former bitter opponent, Hitler, had so often done. The carpenter and the house painter—but on opposite sides of the fence, or were they?
At last it was over and the young people and the workers were being addressed by their new President. They had been given full sovereignty by the generous Soviet, he told them, and there were not enough words for the thanks we owed the Soviet Union and Stalin for this generous action.
Max clutched me by the arm.
“I think I am going to be sick,” he said.
“Shut up! Silence there!” hissed a man next to us. The crowd was listening with the rapt breathlessness that they had once given Hitler at the Nazi rallies. It was incredible.
Max looked really ill. Sweat was pouring from his forehead and he was dead white, with what I now realized was fury.
“It’s disgusting,” he muttered.
The man next to us turned on him angrily.
“Be quiet!” he snarled.
I thought we had better get out—and suddenly I saw Fritz. He was standing on a raised platform addressing some of the Youth Movement who were getting ready now for the Torchlight Procession which was to end the Rally. He wore their uniform, and two youths stood on either side of him holding great pictures of Stalin and Pieck.
“Max!” I whispered, “hold on a bit, do. Look at that fair man up there—that’s Fritz!”
“Are you sure?” he hissed.
“Positive. Let’s get nearer to him, please.”
It wasn’t easy. The crowd was dense and enthralled, and no one wanted to make way for us. We had to push very slowly and very carefully towards our objective. Even as we got nearer it began to break up, and progress was appallingly difficult. I hate crowds and began to feel quite ill. It was impossible to breathe; people pressed against one’s chest, and I thought of a terrible incident in London when so many people had been just squeezed to death in a panic on some steps leading down to a shelter.
Max, who was huge and pushed a way for me as well as he could, was sweating himself.
“Let’s give it up,” he begged, above the roar of the crowd. “You’ll get hurt, and I shall get into trouble.”
“I’m going to deliver that message from his mother if I get trampled to death doing it,” I shouted.
“All right then, lean against me and push,” he yelled.
Afterwards I couldn’t think what had possessed me to do such a thing. It must have been the excitement and the infectious madness of the crowd. I felt that nothing in the world mattered but my objective, and that was Fritz. I was going to tell him what his mother said somehow. We pushed and fought and did everything except bite, and suddenly we were there by the raised stand and there was Fritz standing at the head of a column of youngsters.
“Fritz!” I yelled.
He turned. He had recognized me. A flicker of something almost like pleasure, and yet more like fear, crossed his face and he turned away and gave some orders to the children.
I grabbed his arm.
“Fritz! I must speak to you—please!”
He spoke to another man in the same uniform as his, and then turned round again.
“Meet me over there,” he pointed to a less crowded part of the street, “in ten minutes. I can’t come with you. I’ll join you there.”
“Promise?” I asked.
He nodded. “I give you my word.”
We struggled again. Max was as exhausted as I was, but he forced a way for me with his great bulk. When we got to the fairly clear space indicated by Fritz he mopped his face and said: “Well, well, not so bad for the moderate British. I never thought you could stand that.”
“You should know by now that we are tougher than we appear,” I said, sinking down on to a stone on a pile of debris. We sat there recovering our breath. What we wanted was a drink, but that was impossible. We smoked a cigarette and got cooler. Some of the uniformed children were standing about near us. We called some of them and talked to them. They came from all over the Zone. Some had come hundreds of miles for this. They were to see all the sights of Berlin—although there were not many left to see. They were tired, and some were damp from the drizzling rain which had now stopped, but they were enthusiastic and happy. They had been told not to go into the British and American sectors, although some of them had relatives there whom they wanted to visit.
“But I’m going,” said one boy. “Mother said I could.”
“Won’t you get into trouble?” we asked.
Apparently not. They had to obey certain rules. They had been brought by their leaders who were responsible for them, and naturally they would obey them, but they had not actually been forbidden to go, only advised to stay in their own sector.
I could not see that they were very different from our girl guides and boy scouts as they stood about in little groups. It was when they were marching that they were so terrifying. I said so to Max.
“The only way to deal with these Communists is to match them with something even stronger and more ruthless. You have a saying I like in Britain: ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’ isn’t it? Well, what’s the good of fighting this with a Socialist Government? You want something more ruthless and brutal than your tolerant middle path.”
“A dictatorship, in fact?”
“If necessary, yes,” he said quietly.
I was about to protest when Fritz appeared. We had almost given him up. Max had been sure that he would not come, but here he was coming towards us hurriedly.
I looked at him carefully. He had grown a moustache and his hair was cut short and was almost shaved in its military neatness. He had filled out. His shoulders no longer drooped, his head was held high. His eyes were no longer hopeless, they were filled with an almost fanatical light.
“Do we shake hands?” he asked smiling. I introduced Max. They had not met since Fritz was a child.
“I can’t stay long,” he apologized hurriedly. “I am in charge of all those youngsters over there, and until we dismiss I am on duty. My colleague has taken over for me for half an hour; shall we go over and get a drink somewhere?”
“It’s hopeless,” said Max. “Have a cigarette?”
“You look well,” I told him. “In fact, you look wonderfully fit. Are you happy?”
He nodded emphatically. “Very happy indeed, thank you.”
I said: “Look, I came for one reason only, Fritz, to give you a message from your mother. You know she is dead?” He bowed his head.
“How?” I asked in astonishment.
“From Tante Karin,” he said.
“You see them?” I asked. For there had been no word of Fritz in the letter she had written me after I had told her of her sister’s death.
“Only recently—the boy, my cousin Heinz, is a
member of the Youth Movement. I recognized the name although I had never seen him, and found out where they were living. They had left the old address.”
“Yes,” I said, “they had to leave after the Russians kidnapped your uncle.”
“Hist, be careful!” He looked around anxiously. “You are in the Eastern sector, not your own.”
“On your ground, in fact,” I said.
“Yes, on my ground,” he said, looking straight at me. “I suppose that in your sector I am still wanted, but Fritz Altmann doesn’t exist any more.”
“He does,” I said sternly. “You can never run away from the past—you’ll find that out as you get older. Your sister has found it out already.”
“Ursula?” he said.
I nodded.
“Where is she?” he asked.
I told him she was in America.
“And my mother,” he asked, looking away from me. “Where did she die? I was told not in Berlin.”
I told him where she died.
“Alone?” he asked, with a tremor in his voice.
“No, I was with her,” I said. “She died in a strange place, and with none of her family there, and she had suffered terribly, physically as well as mentally.”
He kept his face averted.
I said: “She left a message for you, and I promised to give it to you should I ever see you. I never expected to—it’s extraordinary—but life is extraordinary.”
He said, still not looking at me: “Was she very upset that I am a Communist? Did she know?”
I told him that we had known, and that we knew the name he had assumed. He was astounded.
“Oh yes. We are not so stupid over in our Zone,” I assured him. “But don’t worry, no one is interested in you.”
“They couldn’t do a thing if they were,” he retorted hotly.
“Now, now,” I said gently. “Let’s leave that out of it. I want to give you your mother’s message, and then we will go,” and I repeated Frau Altmann’s words to him.
He was silent.
I said: “It is only three years since we first met in Berlin, and in that time your father, your sister Lilli, and now your mother have died. Think it over—that’s all.”
I got up to go. Max hadn’t addressed one word to Fritz after giving him a cigarette, but now he said tersely: “I don’t give a damn for your politics, rotten as they are, but for the way you treated your mother, whom I loved as my own, I’d like to knock you down, and by God I’m going to.”
With a sudden upper-cut he felled Fritz to the ground.
I was appalled at our danger. We were here in the forbidden East sector. If there were a brawl we would both be arrested. Fritz could have us both removed now if he said the word. Too late I thought of my own little one waiting for me at home. Too late I remembered Stampie’s warning about Max’s unreliability. Fritz was struggling to his feet. His face was contorted with fury, his mouth bleeding.
“Want some more, comrade?” sneered Max.
“Stop it! Stop it!” I cried urgently, and remembering some advice in a book on etiquette for young Victorian women which had said that when in an emergency and at a loss what to do, a lady could always faint, I slithered limply between their feet.
When I got up again there were many interested spectators.
The two were both solicitous and apologetic.
“That was unfair of you, Max,” I said, as they helped me to my feet, “and what’s more it was very stupid.”
Fritz was looking anxiously round at the onlookers.
“I can’t fight you here,” he said in a low furious voice to Max, “because of our British friend. It would cause trouble for her, and you should know better than to expose her to such danger in a crowd like this. You may not believe me, but I respect her for her own sake, apart from what she has done for my mother. You’d better get out while you can. We’ll meet again and I’ll pay you back for this.”
“I’ll escort you to the Tor,” Fritz said, taking my arm. “And thank you for coming. I realize what a risk you took to get through such a mob. Isn’t it wonderful? It is a huge success.”
He took me through the Soviet sentries at the Tor, and bade me goodbye.
“Please believe that, although you can’t understand, I loved my mother too, and I am grateful to you. What I have done I had to do; there was no other way for me.” The sincerity in his voice was too real to be mistaken.
“I believe you,” I said, “but for God’s sake, Fritz, do you realize where you are going?”
“We are building a new world,” he said, throwing out his arms, “and I am going with it. The old one is finished, rotten and worn out. The new one lies before us.”
He held out his hand. “I am doing what I believe to be right.”
I shook hands, and looked into his face. Now that he was not wearing his Party mask of anticipation and alertness, it was still that of a bewildered little boy.
Max had already withdrawn and was waiting for me through the Tor. We went back to the West sector without a word and joined some friends there.
“I am sorry,” he apologized later; “I am terribly ashamed of myself, but when I saw how utterly callous he was about Tante Maria I just had to hit him.”
“But he wasn’t callous,” I corrected him. “There were tears in his eyes when I told him about her death. That’s why he kept his face averted. He was totally unprepared for your blow because he was so upset.”
“Crocodile tears!” sneered Max. “Haven’t you discovered how sentimental we are? Ach! it makes me sick!”
Stampie was very angry indeed when he heard about the whole affair.
“Told you so!” he reminded me. “There’s two kinds of Jerries—the one who doesn’t think and is a sheep—he’s easy to know—and the one who thinks, and he’s the kind who turns into the one the others follow. You can never tell with a chap like Max. He’s too damn fond of hitting people—it’s about time I knocked him out myself.”
I told him that it had really been my fault, that the crowd hysteria must have affected me too, because I had suddenly been seized with that violent decision to reach Fritz at all costs, and that the terrible struggle with the mob had been too much for Max, who had just about had enough before he met Fritz.
“I came and looked for you, but in that mass of silly hypnotized sheep there wasn’t a hope, so I went and had some schnapps and looked at it from a distance, and that’s the proper place from which to look at such things,” said Stampie severely.
The day after my return to Westphalia I saw my son playing in the garden with five other little boys. Four of them were Germans and included his great friend, Hans Jurgen. They were doing some kind of drill and were carrying a flag. They all had toy weapons. One of the young farmers came by in a large wagon.
“Anyone want a ride?” he called.
With shrieks of joy they dropped their things and scrambled up into the farm wagon. I went out and picked up the flag thrown down with the mock guns. It was a swastika, extremely well drawn and painted on a piece of unbleached linen.
EPILOGUE
AUTUMN
1953
IT was in an outwardly very different Berlin that Ursula was awaiting me on a lovely September afternoon, and as the plane bringing me from Hanover circled low over the city the new roofs were flashing in the sun. It was exactly the same time of year as when I had come here seven years ago.
Germany was emerging like a great phoenix from her ashes, and here, as in the West, was the sound of the workmen’s hammers as they toiled unceasingly to rebuild their cities. There was something frightening in the speed of this re-birth of a defeated nation—just as there was that which compelled one’s admiration and praise.
Great blocks of flats, shops, theatres, cinemas and schools were proudly pointed out to me. Flags flew everywhere, the new Federal German one, and the city’s standard with its coat of arms, the black bear rampant with a mural crown. The Industrial Exhibition had filled
the town with visitors.
I wondered what Ursula would think of her birthplace, which she had not seen for five years. She had left it a grey ruin, and from her letters still regarded it as such. Now she was here, after all this time, and waiting for me at her hotel.
I walked down the Kurfürstendamm and marvelled at its opulence and at the cars parked all down each side of the crowded pavements. At the end of all this new luxury the lovely Gedächtniskirche stood aloof and somehow far more distinguished in its forlorn beauty than any of the slightly vulgar modern buildings. Against a sky streaked with rose from the late sun its grace was that of a lily amongst gaudy sunflowers.
On just such an evening as this Stampie had first pointed it out to me. “Makes a lovely ruin, doesn’t it?” he had said whimsically. I was thinking of this as I turned away, and walked back up the Kurfürstendamm to Ursula’s hotel.
She was waiting for me there. She had grown into a very lovely woman—and she was beautifully dressed. I had forgotten how young she was as she flung herself impulsively upon me—just as she used to do—and embracing me warmly pulled me down into the chair beside hers. Her voice was a soft drawl, slightly husky, infinitely more attractive than the harsh pseudo-American one she had simulated when last I had seen her.
“You haven’t changed a bit!” she cried happily, pulling off her gloves, throwing back her coat, and shaking out her beautiful hair as impetuously as she always did.
But she had—outwardly at least. She was perfectly groomed, her hands white and beautifully manicured, and she wore exquisite shoes and stockings. She had the poise of a woman who is loved and cherished.
We went up to her room. She had a private bathroom and there were flowers everywhere.
“Joe sent those, through the international service. Wasn’t it darling of him?” she said, flinging her hat and coat on the bed and pulling some photographs out of her bag.
“I expect you wonder why I’m staying here, and not in the old home—Tante Luise has two lodgers, you know—I’m glad I’m in a hotel; seeing the old place last night upset me. Joe thought it might, that’s why he fixed me up here. Here are the children, look, Junior and little Lilli.”
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