by Heinz Rein
‘Stop it now,’ someone calls from the corner, ‘always the same line, like a preacher, it gets too much in the end.’
The soldier Ruppert ignores the interjection. ‘I used to get on the number 1 at Andreasstrasse, went as far as Neanderstrasse and then took the underground to Neukölln City Hall, but now I’m sitting here, just a few lousy kilometres from home, but there’s no number 1, no underground, you can’t even get there on foot.’
‘No,’ Schröter says, ‘you can’t get there, the Russians are already in Neukölln.’
The soldier stands up straight.
‘What are you saying?’
Schröter takes the newspaper out of his pocket. ‘Here, Field Marshal, is the Berliner Frontzeitung-Völkischer Beobachter, the Battle Paper of the War Community of all the Berlin Newspapers, from 26 April.
‘Give it here!’ Private Ruppert says hoarsely.
‘In a minute,’ Schröter replies, ‘but first you have to enjoy the lovely headline, let it melt on your tongue.
“It is here that the decision must be made”
“Reich Capital the field of destiny of the war”.’
Private Ruppert pulls the newspaper out of his hands and scans the page. ‘Where’s the thing about Neukölln?
“The Führer’s HQ, 25 April
On either side of the lower Weser …
From the Weser south-east of Bremen …
Not a single foot of ground has been taken in the battle for Berlin. In the south the Soviets advanced to the line of Babelsberg-Zehlendorf-Neukölln …”
‘You’re right, Comrade,’ he says as if he has been destroyed, and is about to lean back against the wall, but then he suddenly jumps to his feet. ‘Damn it all to hell! Will this shit never end?’ he roars. ‘Now we’re retreating again … No, I’m not joining in this time, I’m not joining in any more.’
‘The lieutenant …’ someone warns.
‘What are you talking about, he’s fed up too, you can tell by looking at him,’ Private Ruppert replies.
‘That’s enough,’ Tolksdorff says. ‘Keep it down for a bit, Ruppert.’
Private Ruppert, mid-forties, tobacconist from Berlin-Neukölln, walks right up to Tolksdorff. ‘Tell me quite truthfully, Lieutenant, as a person, not an officer: how would you feel if you were almost home, there was only a tiny bit of three thousand kilometres left, just a tiny bit, you could almost reach your arms out for your wife, who you haven’t seen for almost two years, you can already see the colourful signs in your cigar shop, Saba, Juno, Hanewacker, you’ve got your foot close to the threshold you tripped over as a little boy, but you can’t or you’re not allowed to, or you just don’t dare …’ He shakes his head. ‘Isn’t that a real pile of shit …’
‘There’s nothing to be done about it, Ruppert,’ Tolksdorff says, and turns away because he is ashamed of the banality of his answer.
‘Why not, Lieutenant?’ Private Ruppert persists.
Tolksdorff shrugs. ‘I can’t answer that one for you, Ruppert.’
Private Ruppert is still standing very close to Tolksdorff. ‘I was only assigned to the lieutenant a few days ago,’ he says, ‘and I think the lieutenant is a decent chap, forgive me, a decent person, I meant …’
Tolksdorff smiles narrowly. ‘Thank you. What are you getting at?’
Ruppert takes a deep breath. ‘If I were to … Let’s say, if I were to make myself scarce, would the lieutenant …’
For a few seconds the wagon is completely silent. The mortars bark outside, the machine guns rattle, many different noises collide with one another, crashing, bursting, roaring, clattering, hissing, cracking, splintering, shouts and cries, but here, in the disused goods wagon, right on the main battle line in Eastern Station, it is incredibly quiet for a few seconds. Here a soldier has asked a question which, in a flash, illuminates the destruction of a whole world.
‘So, Lieutenant, you would …’ Ruppert begins again.
‘Nonsense, Ruppert,’ Tolksdorff interrupts, ‘as far as I’m concerned you can do exactly as you see fit.’
‘Thank you,’ Ruppert says, and sighs with relief. ‘I will never forget this, Lieutenant.’
‘How are you planning to do that?’ one of the soldiers asks from the corner.
Ruppert laughs, what emerges is more a satisfied grunt than a laugh. ‘Loaf, my dear Poppe, use your loaf. Here, take a look at this!’ He giggles again and unbuttons his grey uniform coat.
Private Poppe gets to his feet and emerges from his dark corner. ‘Blimey, Karl Ruppert,’ he says in amazement, ‘that’s a railwayman’s uniform.’
‘Quite right, my dear fellow, it is a railwayman’s uniform,’ Ruppert says with pride. ‘If the Russkies show up now, I’ll chuck my coat away, climb up on some locomotive or other, or I’ll go to a signal box and be a railwayman. And Bob’s your uncle!’
‘Terrific!’ Poppe says admiringly. ‘We should do the same. Where did you get these rags from?’
‘From the signal box over behind the mail-loading platform.’
‘So … you’re organized, aren’t you?’
‘Of course! Or did you think …’
‘There might be more clothes like this?’
Ruppert shrugs.
‘I don’t know, you’ll have to check.’
Poppe and two other soldiers glance at each other in silence and then look at Tolksdorff. ‘I would like to ask the lieutenant …’ a tall, gaunt soldier asks hesitantly.
‘Stop asking all these questions!’ Tolksdorff says impatiently. ‘Do what you like, I’m not stopping you.’
The soldiers stand uncertainly by the door for a few seconds. They have been given an answer as incomprehensible as if an inquisitor had expressly allowed a witch to cavort with Satan.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ one of them asks the lance corporal who is still sitting in the dark corner of the wagon.
Corporal Schumann emits a grunt and waves dismissively.
‘So you don’t want to?’ a soldier asks again.
‘No,’ the lance corporal replies, ‘that would conflict with my vision of the world.’
‘Look at the great German hero,’ Schröter says, and takes a few steps towards the lance corporal. ‘What kind of vision would that be?’
‘You wouldn’t understand, old man,’ the lance corporal replies contemptuously. ‘You’ve never been a soldier, have you?’
‘I have, in fact, from 1914 until 1918.’
‘Well, then you should know that soldiers don’t do anything without an order. In fact, if the lieutenant were suddenly to say: on your feet, march, march, get civilian gear …’
‘You’re round the bend,’ the tall, gaunt soldier says, and rests his head on the sliding door. ‘You can’t ask the lieutenant to do that. You’re asking a lot of him already in …’
‘Yes, it’s enough that he’s just let us go like that,’ Private Ruppert says, finishing his sentence. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. So, come on, Arthur, let’s get going.’
The tall, gaunt soldier pushes the door open. When he is about to step into the open he crashes back, turns half-way round and shouts: ‘Careful!’
‘What kind of robbers’ cave is this?’ a cuttingly harsh voice asks. ‘Step aside!’
The soldier immediately steps back. In the doorway to the wagon stands Chief Platoon Leader Robert Wiegand, who thrusts his head forward and narrows his eyes. ‘What’s going on here?’ he roars. ‘Out of here, everybody, and be smart about it, if I might be so bold.’
The men leave the wagon one after the other. The chief platoon leader studies each one with a dark, contemptuous look, his lips are slightly parted and he forces his breath through clenched teeth.
‘I demand an explanation from you, Lieutenant!’
‘We went into cover here, Chief Platoon Leader.’
The chief platoon leader gives him a menacing look. ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ he says after a moment, ‘but there’s no time for that now. Join your men. Right
, get a move on, the Bolsheviks are already on our left flank, at the Plaza!’
XV
27 April
The Tolksdorff squad didn’t manage to get away, they couldn’t get rid of their uniforms or go into hiding among the ruins or be taken prisoner. They bumped into a battalion of SS storm troopers and were dragged into the battle for the Plaza as if into a whirlpool. In spite of their best efforts they were unable to extricate themselves so they had to join in with the fighting inside the Plaza, the retreat and the renewed storming of the building, and were then swept along by the wave of the retreating SS unit when the Russian mortars put the building under constant fire and the Russian snipers were already in the surrounding houses.
The Plaza went up in bright flames behind them, the fire ate through the wide spaces like an avalanche, until the big building was one great flaming torch. The advance of the Russian tanks over the tracks of Eastern Station from Warschauer Bridge had such momentum that the SS battalion was forced all the way back behind Jannowitz Bridge and only nightfall brought the fighting to an end.
The Tolksdorff squad was firmly wedged between the SS units that held them as if in a vice, they couldn’t get either to the top or to the end of the retreating unit, and only the occasional remark by a section leader revealed to Tolksdorff that this fact was by no means a matter of chance. The squad is seen as unreliable, and on special orders of Hauptsturmführer Wiegand it is under strict surveillance. All of a sudden it is also clear to Tolksdorff that the Unterscharführer who shot the wounded man in the outside hall of Silesian Station was not the liaison between his squad and the battalion, but a guard dog set upon him, tailing his every step and watching suspiciously for every order, every statement, every movement.
The Tolksdorff squad, made up of Dr Böttcher, Gregor, Lassehn, Schröter, Private Ruppert, Corporal Schumann and a further eight men, spent the night in the cellar of a burnt-out house on Stralauer Strasse, which is supposedly a part of the new front line. This front line is nothing but a loose, widely spaced chain of strongholds, which abuts the Spree on Alexanderstrasse, and which is supposed to cross Alexanderplatz to the north. What is happening beyond the Spree, south of the exploded Jannowitz Bridge, is as unknown as the course of the so-called front line north of Alexanderplatz, where it seeps away somewhere between the ruined houses.
The night sky which, filled with flames, had been a dark-red colour, has made way by morning for a pale-grey curtain of cloud below which thick black clouds drift away. With the first light of dawn the artillery fire begins again and the bright flashes of the volley guns twitch in the smoke-filled sky.
Lassehn sits between Schröter and Private Ruppert in a corner of the cellar, eyes wide open, staring motionlessly into the flickering flame of a Hindenburg light that trembles sulphurous, blue and yellow in the darkness and brings the faces out of the gloom like ghostly masks. Schröter leans his head against Lassehn’s shoulder and sleeps with his mouth open. Private Ruppert stirs restlessly and twitches at brief intervals. He is lying on an old, torn mattress and has spread his coat over himself.
‘Hey,’ Ruppert whispers, ‘what time is it?’
‘After seven,’ Lassehn replies.
Ruppert registers the answer and straightens up his torso. ‘I’ve hardly slept,’ he says quietly, ‘thoughts are circling in me like poison. You know, Comrade, I used not to think about it too much, I’ve studied and worked, I’ve taken note of everything, because I’ve read a lot … You know, in a shop like the one I’ve got you always have a few hours to yourself …’
He’s happily back in his cigar shop, Lassehn thinks. ‘What have you read?’ he asks, so as not to sit there in complete silence.
Private Ruppert purses his lips. ‘Well, everything imaginable, pretty much at random, but mostly newspapers, of course,’ he replies, ‘but not much of it stayed in my head. When I really think about it, you know, there was nothing in any book or any newspaper about …’ He hesitates and blinks in the shimmering candlelight.
‘What about?’ Lassehn encourages him.
‘I don’t really know how to put it,’ Ruppert goes on. ‘Well, life, how it’s organized … You know, when I used to read, revolution in Venezuela or strikes in England, war in Abyssinia or uprising in Bengal, I always said to myself: interesting, terribly interesting, and the best thing about it is that you’re sitting here quietly and comfortably in your pretty little shop on Boddinstrasse and being involved in it without having to take any trouble and not really being affected by it. I just took note of it all and stuffed the news and knowledge into me as if stuffing it into a bag. But now …’
‘And what about now?’ Lassehn asks.
Ruppert straightens up completely and draws his legs up to his body. ‘And now I’ve got the question drilling away inside me: why is it all like this, why are they having revolutions in Venezuela, why are they up in arms in India and can’t stand each other in Palestine, and I’m squatting in this filthy basement hole …’
Lassehn half turns towards the soldier and looks at him with a cautiously serious smile. ‘You have found the life that is being played out in the world interesting, but it didn’t affect you, thank God it doesn’t affect me, you must have thought. But it does affect you, you’re just starting to think about it because life has torn you from the tranquillity of your cigar shop, has grabbed you with violent hands, gripped you by the throat and dragged you through the mud of the war. Isn’t that the case?’ Private Ruppert says nothing, he leans his back against the damp cellar wall, his eyes almost closed, his hair hanging tousled and sticky over his high, wrinkled forehead. ‘So,’ he asks after a while, ‘why are we actually born?’
Lassehn shrugs. He looks into the candle, which is flickering uneasily, distorting outlines.
‘To live, isn’t that right?’ Ruppert goes on. ‘It’s to live, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly to live,’ Lassehn admits. What’s he getting at? he wonders.
Private Ruppert pulls away from the wall again, leans towards Lassehn and grabs him by the shoulders. ‘Certainly to live, you say,’ he says, his voice trembling with agitation. ‘Is it so certain, Comrade? Are we alive? Is this a life? Have you not removed yourself far from your real life, aren’t you living here in the outermost tip of the shadow cast by your life, so very close to the border that you step out of the shadow into nothingness at any moment?’
Lassehn doesn’t reply.
The soldier’s agitated voice breathes hotly at him and revives all the questions that he has kept silent for so long.
‘You say we’re born to live,’ Private Ruppert goes on. ‘Don’t we seem to be born to tear one another to pieces, to dismember one another and shoot one another down, to drench each other in blood?’
‘Calm down, Comrade,’ Lassehn says, and carefully removes Ruppert’s hands from his shoulders.
‘I can’t calm down,’ the soldier says, his whole body quivering. ‘We are born because men love women, and we will die because people hate each other. How can love turn to hatred? We are begotten by people and destroyed by people. Do you understand why it is so, Comrade?’
‘It isn’t always the case that people die at the hands of other people,’ Lassehn says, trying to calm him down.
‘But now it is!’ Ruppert’s voice slides into ever greater agitation. ‘Why does the peasant Ivan So-and-so shoot at the tobacconist Karl Ruppert? And why does the music student Joachim Lassehn stick his bayonet into the body of the metalworker Nikita So-and-so? Why does the peasant Ivan So-and-so not peacefully pull his plough in the Ukraine or wherever, and why am I not standing behind my counter selling cigarettes and cigars? Why can’t I lead my calm, peaceful, clean, modest life, and sleep with my wife at night? Why can’t I do that, Comrade, why?’
Lassehn shrugs and gestures vaguely.
‘Must people live like that?’ Ruppert asks, now in a furious state of agitation. ‘Like pigs, worse than pigs? I was at Romny one time, halfway between Kiev and Harkov, and
the front line ran through the middle of the marshes. We couldn’t even dig foxholes, we sat behind tree stumps, we lay on the damp, cold, slippery ground and had stretched tarpaulins over our heads against rain and snow, without shifts, without reinforcements, without connection to other units we vegetated on that island of trees, and a few days later we were sitting in a bunker hole, you couldn’t stand up straight, and you had to keep baling out water, otherwise you would have drowned miserably in there, and the Russkies were firing their shells right at the entrance, so you were in a dark, wet trap. The fact that we even got out alive … Is that a life, do you think?’
Before Lassehn can answer, a voice comes from the other corner of the cellar. ‘Christ, you’ve got nerves of steel,’ young Corporal Schumann shouts, ‘if you can listen to that nonsense so calmly. Ruppert’s talking out of his arse! Can’t you tell that he’s just greedy for female flesh, that his lecherousness has gone to his brain? He’s constantly blethering on about his wife, and his wife again and on and on.’
Lassehn is about to say something, but Private Ruppert is ahead of him. ‘What do you know about it, you little toerag?’ he shouts. ‘What you call lechery is only a yearning for peace, for a life of cleanliness and order, and tenderness, of course, and also a yearning for freedom. Do you have any idea what freedom is, you little know-all?’
‘Don’t get so worked up,’ Corporal Schumann says, and they sense rather than see his indifferent gesture. ‘Why wouldn’t I know what freedom is?’
‘Would you just shut up?’ another soldier says. ‘Get some shut-eye rather than rabbiting on.’
‘How would you know?’ Ruppert asks, ignoring the interruption. ‘Where would you have encountered freedom? In the Hitler Youth, in labour service or even in the army?’