by Heinz Rein
Lassehn has initially allowed himself to be carried along by the stream of people moving eastward. At Wittenbergplatz he has joined a group of three people, two men and a woman, who were making for Alexanderplatz. Their acquaintance came about quite casually, since after the air raids people have become rather more open than before. But there is no real friendliness in that openness, it is only a reaction to the danger that has been survived once more, a great sense of wonder and a kind of gratitude for the life that has been saved. It has nothing to do with the much-vaunted people’s community, it is only a kind of reassurance upon which one lays claim when the feeling of being alone or an encroaching danger become so overwhelming that one can no longer endure it alone, it is the liberating feeling of having re-established a connection with the herd. For a short time, in one’s fellow man or one’s neighbour, one greets once more a creature of a related species, the rat race, the fight for a seat in the bunker or the S-Bahn, in the queue outside the grocers’ shops or for the favour of the Party bosses, is laid to rest.
The air raids (and war in general) have joined people not into Goebbels’ national community, but more into a kind of loose guild of people under threat. The emotion felt by these people before and during an air raid can be compared more or less with that of a school student who is relieved to discover that it wasn’t only his essay that was given a poor mark, but that almost the whole class performed badly. Having survived the danger, once life re-emerges from caves and cellars into the smoke-dimmed daylight, people are governed by a feeling comparable to the one that travellers have towards each other once they have charged shoulder to shoulder onto a train and are now sitting opposite one another in the compartment, when the joy at finding a seat is still echoing within them and they now see someone who was a dangerous rival a moment ago as simply a harmless fellow passenger with rights equal to their own.
Lassehn had taken up position outside Wittenbergplatz underground station, whose entrances are closed, and the expression of bafflement on his face is too obvious to be ignored. While he stood irresolutely by the bars wondering whether it was worth waiting, two gentlemen and a lady walked up to the bars, darted a quick, practised look into the bleak interior of the ticket hall and then turned round again. The lady glanced briefly at Lassehn and then stopped in front of him.
‘You could be waiting there for a long time,’ she says amicably.
‘Don’t you think the underground …’ Lassehn wonders.
‘Are you from out of town?’ the lady asks rather than answering.
Do I look that way?, Lassehn thinks quickly and nods.
‘Come on, Lisa,’ says one of the two gentlemen, ‘it’s already late enough.’
‘Give me a minute, fatso,’ the lady says, casually waving away his demand. ‘Where are you trying to get to?’ she says, turning back to Lassehn.
‘To Silesian Station,’ Lassehn says. ‘I was wondering if the underground is still …’
‘No point waiting for that, young man,’ says the man the lady just addressed as fatso. He has a broad, red face with wobbly cheeks and a massive chin. ‘Come along with us,’ says the other man, ‘we’re going to Alexanderplatz.’ He is a gaunt man of medium height with a pair of dark horn-rimmed spectacles, perhaps a teacher.
‘If I may …’ Lassehn says politely. He looks directly at the lady, she has bright, friendly eyes and her mouth is painted dark red.
And now Lassehn walks with them down Kleiststrasse, where there is barely a house that hasn’t been destroyed, on either side nothing but burnt-out ruins, the intersecting streets are blocked by rubble. They walk first along the promenade and then, where the underground rises to the station at Nollendorfplatz, along the carriageway. Berliners have long assumed the habit of walking along the carriageways, as the pavements are often impassable, covered with rubble and debris, and also because it is less dangerous, for it is not uncommon for the looming walls to collapse all of a sudden. Lately people in the city have been telling of how on Müllerstrasse a ruined house fell on a tram, killing more than forty people, but the newspapers have not yet reported this misfortune.
Lassehn listens to his companions’ conversations, he himself does not join in, he has soon discovered that the lady is married and her husband is in Italy where he is an army paymaster, that she works in something that she calls the government office, and the red-faced man is one of her colleagues. While the gentleman in the horn-rimmed glasses is a total stranger to them, their acquaintance is based solely on their shared occupancy of a public air-raid shelter, and only their common destination has made companions of them. The lady essentially dominates the conversation. Lassehn is amazed that there are so many words about things which, given the ruins and the constant threat from the air, should have sunk into utter insignificance. While Lassehn’s gaze wanders constantly to the shattered walls, the smoking piles of rubble and the mountains of debris, he studies women with troubled faces carrying rubble out of their houses in buckets, or waiting stoically for water by the street pumps. While his boots crunch on shards of glass and slip along the tram lines, the three of them stride through the ruined streets with complete indifference, their eyes reflect neither horror nor surprise, and Lassehn finds himself wondering whether these people are even capable of greater emotions. It is as if the profusion of great events, whether negative or positive, has covered their souls with the calluses of complete insensitivity, and only very small emotions can penetrate them, that their brains have room only for extremely personal concerns, eating, drinking, sleeping and copulating, extra rations and air-raid reports.
Lassehn only occasionally catches a few words of their conversations, but he can’t do anything with them, they awaken no associations, something quite different resonates within him. Given the destruction that is an almost permanent presence in the street, the superficiality causes him a nearly physical pain, and in the end he cannot hold back from making an observation during a pause in the conversation.
‘I wonder,’ he says, struggling to keep a note of reproach out of his voice, ‘that you can walk so unperturbed among these ruins. Personally I’m terrified …’
The red-faced man turns towards Lassehn in surprise and looks at him as if only now noticing his presence.
‘I don’t understand,’ he says, ‘this is completely normal …’
The man with the horn-rimmed glasses interrupts him. ‘Normal, certainly, but only for those of us who have experienced the growth of the destruction …’
‘The growth of the destruction?’ Lassehn replies ‘But that’s …’
‘… a paradox, you mean,’ the man with the horn-rimmed glasses says. ‘Yes, of course, that’s what it is, a mocking paradox, because growth and destruction are contradictory concepts, but let’s leave that aside for now. What I meant was, and this is how you must understand my words, that we have witnessed house after house, street after street, district after district collapsing, because it didn’t happen all at once. It wasn’t, if I may use the comparison, a quick surgical strike, it is a great wound from which the pus goes on flowing again and again and further and further. When we saw the first ruined houses with their torn flanks, the twisted iron joists and the splintered beams, we were just as horrified as you seem to be now, because the first destroyed houses were gaps in the middle of life, but now life vegetates in the midst of destruction. Destruction has now become so great and so extensive that a ruined street is nothing special and barely worthy of attention. You can hardly imagine it.’
‘Of course, if as an outsider one is suddenly placed in the midst of this ruined Berlin,’ the lady says quickly, almost breathlessly, as if afraid that she won’t have the chance to speak, ‘of course you are horrified. But we also live, as you can see, in the midst of the rubble, and in the pauses between the air raids.’
‘Is that life?’ Lassehn wonders. ‘Is not every action overshadowed by the coming dangers, by …’
‘Oh nonsense,’ the red-faced man cuts in rough
ly, ‘don’t get all poetic on us, lad, it doesn’t fit this place. We’re still alive …’
‘And we still love,’ the lady says, and laughs slightly hysterically. ‘Take pleasure in life …’ she hums a few bars of the song, but soon falls silent again.
However, the conversation has paused, both the lady and the red-faced man seem to have grown thoughtful, and the other gentleman has in any case always been more of a listener than a speaker.
Lassehn hadn’t paid particular attention to the lady, he had only taken in her appearance with a fleeting glance, and had only really noticed her fiery red mouth, while now her laugh and the intimate tone of her voice draw his full attention to her. She is of middle height, well upholstered, as they say, and her suit is tailored in such a way that it emphasizes all the charms and assets of her figure, admittedly she is wearing rough ski-boots and thick, rolled-up woollen socks, but that is more than made up for by her very short skirt, which reveals a pair of slim and shapely legs. Lassehn’s eye, which carefully rises from the lady’s feet, now comes to rest on her face, the pretty face of a woman who is no longer quite young, with a small nose and full lips, precise eyebrows and bright, round eyes whose long, dark lashes reveal the experienced hand of a cosmetician. Her light-coloured hair, only a curl of it visible under her tight, dark-brown turban, is almost white-blonde. Her age is difficult to determine. Lassehn thinks she must be in her late twenties or early thirties, but he isn’t quite sure, because he has no experience in such matters.
All in all, Lassehn decides, she is someone with a strong and even dangerous seductive power, every movement, every glance contains a barely restrained sensuality. She repels and attracts Lassehn to the same degree; she has all the qualities that stimulate the senses, and none of the charm of a young girl.
‘You are unusually cheerful, madam,’ says the man with the horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Where does your good mood come from?’
‘From trivia, nothing but trivia,’ she replies, laughing. ‘The fact that the weather is nice today …’
‘… and offers an excellent view to the Americans,’ the red-faced man joins in.
‘… and half a pound of extra butter that I got yesterday …’ the lady goes on.
‘… for a hundred and seventy-five marks,’ the red-faced man says.
‘… and the fact that I’ve still got my flat,’ the woman continues her list.
‘… which could have gone up in smoke today,’ the red-faced man insists.
‘… and doubtless a field-post letter from your husband,’ the man with the horn-rimmed glasses ventures to add.
The lady looks at him almost dismissively. ‘Yes, of course, certainly, that too,’ she says hastily, but it doesn’t sound as convincingly delightful as the butter and the fine weather.
Meanwhile they have reached Potsdamer Bridge, and here again there is little but rubble, ruined houses and mounds of debris. But the destruction is somehow contained and cleared. The rubble doesn’t just lie around on the pavements, it has been carried inside the ruins, the battered bricks have been lined up neatly in the gaps of the burnt-out façades, posters and signs announce the new addresses of the destroyed firms and factories, half-faded chalk inscriptions announce ‘everyone’s alive’ or ‘we’re still alive’, or the Berlin address book of 1945 is listed, ‘Otto Schulz, now 74 Hauptstr., with Pfeiffers’ (someone who wanted to stay nearby), or ‘Baensch family to Basdorf, 26 Summterstr.’ (they chose instead to leave Berlin). But there are also inscriptions in fresh white oil paint: ‘Our walls may break but never our hearts’, or ‘Führer, we follow you’, or ‘We will never surrender!’
North of the bridge there rise the remains of the round square, the semicircle of a building, collapsing before it was completed, the arch of the windows boarded over, still wrapped in the spider’s legs of the scaffolding, defiant witness of an upstart desire to build, which blindly erected and tore down houses for centuries, to construct its Babylonian temple.
‘I must say, gentlemen,’ the red-faced man says, ‘I’m incredibly hungry.’
‘Let’s go to the Bayernhof,’ the lady says quickly, ‘they may have something decent to eat.’
‘I agree!’ says the man with the horn-rimmed glasses.
‘It’s a date!’ says the red-faced man.
Lassehn doesn’t say anything, he wants to leave this company now, he is absolutely starving but he has no food cards, and visiting a restaurant strikes him as too dangerous. The special patrols of the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo and the OT prefer to go to restaurants – when they don’t go to cinemas – to hunt out deserters, Jews and other illegals who can’t afford the horrendous prices of the black market and have to fall back on the fixed-price menus in the local restaurants. But the company of the lady with the red lips (and Lassehn can’t take his eyes off that tantalizing mouth) holds him back. Before he can make his mind up, he is already being pushed through the revolving door, and finds himself standing in a spacious restaurant, very simply furnished, with wood panels, polished wooden tables and farmhouse chairs, and which yet manages to create an almost distinguished impression.
There aren’t many customers in the restaurant at this time of day. The red-faced man and the lady seem to know their way around, and make their way to a table in the area elevated by a few steps at the back of the restaurant. Lassehn has allowed himself to be dragged along, even though he doesn’t know how things will go from here, he guesses that he may be putting himself in danger, but in fact there is danger everywhere, and here there is a woman with a tantalizing red mouth and an enticing, alluring body. She walks up the steps to the platform, her skirt rises to the backs of her knees and stretches tightly around her hips, and now Lassehn sees the lady the way men tend to see a woman, gone is the veil that the clothing spreads over strong thighs, a slender torso with wide hips and an abundant bosom. Lassehn is befuddled, tormented by an ardent longing for feminine tenderness, his blood shoots wildly into his heart and flows through his veins.
Then he is sitting next to her, with the two gentlemen opposite. The red-faced man seems annoyed that the lady has ended up sitting next to Lassehn, but he struggles desperately to look indifferent and casually takes a wallet from his jacket, gives the waiter an order and hands him his food card, the man with the glasses and the lady have set a few banknotes on the table and wait for the waiter to come to them.
Only Lassehn sits there, not knowing where to look, now that he is among people and his loose connection with the three people at his table is assuming a kind of social form, he feels doubly abandoned and helpless. All the others, sitting here with a sense of their inalienable civic rights, papers and food cards, they all have a flat or at least a room, a human being to give them shelter or support, in spite of war, worry and death. They are all sitting here with their bourgeois dignity, as they once sat at Rheingold or in Kempinski’s, a little more modest, but essentially unchanged, he alone sits there like an outsider, he feels like a tramp who has wandered unwittingly into an elegant party.
‘And what would you like, sir?’
Lassehn starts from his contemplation when the waiter bends down slightly towards him. ‘The fixed menu, please,’ he says.
‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ the waiter says, straightening again, ‘but we don’t serve the fixed menu in the afternoon.’ Lassehn is distraught, he curses his carelessness in coming here with the others. ‘Then forget it,’ he says, it’s supposed to sound indifferent, a phrase uttered in passing, but even he notices that the effect is meek and pitiful, he tries to smile, but all he manages is a spasmodic twitch at the corners of his mouth.
The waiter raises his eyebrows arrogantly. ‘But I can bring you a glass of beer, sir?’ He says it quite correctly, but it sounds as if he has said, ‘Oh, you poor bastard, you don’t even have the five grams of fat you need?’
‘Just a moment,’ the lady says now, rummages hastily in her handbag and puts two brightly coloured little coupons on the table. ‘Bring the gentlem
an the same as me.’
The waiter assumes an expression of confidentiality. ‘The gentleman will surely …’
But the lady cuts him off abruptly. ‘No speeches,’ she says in a commanding voice, ‘just see to it that we are served quickly.’
The waiter’s face immediately freezes expressionlessly again, he takes the coupons from the table and quickly disappears.
‘You seem to be richly blessed with coupons,’ says the red-faced man, his voice raw with barely repressed fury.
‘Whether richly or not,’ the lady replies quickly, ‘is it any of your business?’
‘Of course not,’ the red-faced man says and catches his lower lip between his teeth. ‘Don’t you have any food cards?’ he says, turning on Lassehn.
‘No,’ Lassehn says apologetically, ‘I only arrived in Berlin yesterday.’
‘But you must have food coupons,’ the red-faced man continues his interrogation.
‘It all happened so quickly …’ Lassehn tries to explain. He feels himself growing very cold inside, he touches his trouser pocket with his elbow to check that his revolver is there, and with his eyes he gauges the distance from the entrance, only about forty metres, and the passage in the middle is wide, but at various tables on either side there are officers and two labour service leaders.
‘Leave the gentleman in peace,’ the lady says imperiously. ‘I can imagine that fleeing the Bolsheviks like that is no small matter, Mr …’
‘Joachim Lassehn,’ says Lassehn, he smiles with relief and bows slightly to the lady and the two gentlemen.