A Woman in Berlin

One or two other people, colourless, unremarkable. A community of discards, unwanted at the front, rejected by the Volkssturm, the civil defence. A few of our group are missing: the baker who’s gone out to his allotment plot to bury his silver (he’s the only one in the building with a red Class III ticket), and Fräulein Behn, a brash spinster who works in the post office, who just raced off to get today’s news-sheet during a lull in the bombing. Another woman left for Potsdam to bury seven of her family who died in the heavy bombardment there. The engineer from the third floor is also absent, along with his wife and son. Last week he boarded a barge that was to take him and his household goods along the Mittelland Canal to Braunschweig, where his armaments factory has been moved. The entire workforce is heading for the centre of the country. It must be dangerously overpopulated – unless the Yanks have already arrived. We no longer know a thing.

Midnight. No power. An oil lamp is smoking away on the beam above me. A sudden surge in the constant drone outside sets off our mania, and we all wrap our cloths around our mouths and noses. A ghostly Turkish harem, a gallery of half-veiled death masks. Only our eyes are alive.

SATURDAY, 21 APRIL 1945, 2 A.M.

Bombs that made the walls shake. My fingers are still trembling as I hold my pen. I’m covered in sweat as if from hard labour. Before my building was hit I used to go down to the shelter and eat thick slices of bread with butter. But since the night I helped dig out people who’d been buried in the rubble, I’ve been preoccupied, forced to cope with my fear of death. The symptoms are always the same. First the sweat beads up around my hairline, then I feel something boring into my spine, my throat gets scratchy, my mouth goes dry, my heart starts to skip. I’ve fixed my eyes on the chair leg opposite, and am memorizing every turned bulge and curve. It would be nice to be able to pray. The brain dings to set phrases, fragments of sentences: ‘Pass lightly through this world, for it is nothing’… ‘and each one falls as God desires’… Noli timere…’ And so on, until this wave of bombers passes.

As if on command, everyone starts chattering feverishly, laughing, joking, shouting over one another. Fräulein Behn steps up with the news-sheet and reads Goebbels’s speech in honour of the Fiihrer’s birthday (the date had slipped most of our minds). She reads with a new intonation, a mocking, sarcastic voice we haven’t heard down here before: ‘Golden fields of grain… a people at peace…’ ‘How about that,’ say the people from Berlin. ‘That would be nice!’ High-blown phrases that now fall on deaf ears.

Three in the morning. The basement is dozing away. Several all-clears sound, immediately followed by new alarms. No bombs, though. I’m writing. It does me good, takes my mind off things. And Gerd needs to read this if he comes back – if he’s still – no, cross that out, I mustn’t jinx things.

The girl who looks like a young man just snuck up and asked what I’m writing: ‘Nothing special. Just some private scribbling. Gives me something to do.’

After the earlier wave of bombs ‘Siegismund’ turned up, an elderly gentleman from the neighbourhood. His nickname comes from Sieg, victory: he keeps talking about the victory at hand, the certain victory, Sieg this and Sieg that, which is presumably why he was kicked out of his own basement. Siegismund genuinely believes that salvation is at hand, and that ‘that man’ (as we now call A.H.) knows exactly what he’s doing. Whenever he talks the people sitting nearby exchange silent, meaningful glances. No one challenges Siegismund. Who wants to argue with a madman? Besides, madmen can be dangerous. The only person who agrees with him is the concierge’s wife, and she is fervent in her support, pronouncing through her fang-like teeth that you can count on ‘that man’ as if he were God himself.

Nine in the morning, up in the attic apartment. (I can only guess at these times; as long as there’s no dock in sight my life is timeless.) Grey morning, pouring rain. I’m writing on the windowsill, using it as a standing desk. The all-clear sounded shortly after three. I came upstairs, took off my shoes, slipped out of my dress and collapsed onto my bed, which is always turned back and ready. Five hours of deep sleep. The gas is out.