A Woman in Berlin

Around noon I went out onto the balcony to sun myself. From there I could see straight into the window across the way, where a woman was working at her sewing machine stitching red and white stripes. Then she started cutting circles out of a white sheet and trimming them into stars. Stars and stripes. It’s supposed to be an American flag. Earlier the woman with eczema asked me on the stairwell how many stars the American flag ought to have. I didn’t know for sure whether it was forty-eight or forty-nine, so I told her to look it up in the widow’s encyclopedia. It’s a difficult flag for our German seamstresses to sew because of the colours and particularly because of the design. Compared to that the Russian flag is a cinch; all you need is to take an old swastika flag – available in every unbombed household – remove the black-and-white swastika pattern, and sew a yellow hammer, sickle and star onto the red background. I’ve seen some touchingly crooked hammers and twisted sickles. The tricouleur works best (the French are victors as well). Just stitch together three vertical strips of blue, white and red, and you’re done. For red most of the seamstresses use ticking or scraps from Nazi flags. White’s easy enough to find, too – an old sheet does the trick. The problem is the blue. I’ve seen people cutting up tablecloths and children’s clothes for that. The widow sacrificed an old yellow blouse for a hammer, sickle and star. Her encyclopedia also came in handy for the Union Jack. The only problem is that ours doesn’t wave very well. It sticks out from the flagpole like a board thanks to several yards of flat braid sewn behind the blue background – made from an apron – in order to keep all the crosses and stripes in place.

This could only happen in our country. An order came – I have no idea from where – to hang out the flags of the four victorious powers. And lo and behold, your average German housewife manages to conjure flags out of next to nothing. If I were one of the victors looking for a souvenir to take home, I’d go round after all the celebrations were over and pick up some of these amazing rags – all so different in colour, fabric and form. All throughout the afternoon, these bits of cloth kept popping out of the buildings on our street, like pennants stuck on a doll’s house, touchingly crooked and faded.

Around 5 p.m. Ilse R. stopped in unexpectedly – the woman I visited in Charlottenburg almost two weeks ago. She walked here the long way, in high heels, too, since that’s all she has, elegant lady that she once was. She came with a plan. Her husband knows a Hungarian who somehow wound up in Germany shortly before the war broke out. She says that this Hungarian has a wad of US dollars that he wants to use as start-up money. He thinks a press would be the most lucrative venture – he’s published newspapers, magazines and books. According to him all the old publishing houses are dead because they made deals with the Nazis. So the field is wide open for the first person who comes along with a clean slate and some paper. They’d like me to go in on it since I have publishing experience and know how to do layout. But I don’t know the Hungarian, I’ve never even heard of him and it all sounds to me like so much hot air. Then again I might be wrong. Anyway I said I’d go along. As soon as the company is set up I’d get an employment card and along with that a Group II card and 500 grams of bread per day instead of 300. It staggers the mind!

The widow came by while Ilse was visiting. The three of us chatted away like a ladies’ tea club. All that was missing was coffee and cake; I had nothing to offer. Still, all three of us were pretty merry, outdoing one another with our rapish wit.

Then I spent a quiet evening, brightened by the radio I recovered from the roofers. But I turned it off again. After jazz, more disclosures, some Heinrich Heine and humanity, they started broadcasting tributes to the Red Army, a little too saccharine for my taste. Better nothing at all or else a straightforward, ‘Let’s just declare the whole thing over and start a new chapter.’

SUNDAY, 3 JUNE 1945

A peaceful morning, hot sun, the pitiful little homemade flags dotting the street with colour. I pottered around the room and cooked my barley soup on the electric hotplate that kept going out. Two more soups and that’s the end of the barley. There’s no fat left, and they have yet to distribute any. But in the shop they said that Russian sunflower oil was on its way. I saw before me the golden sunflower fields of the Ukraine. That would be nice.

After I ate I made my second trek to Charlottenburg, cutting across the hazy, desolate city. My legs moved of their own accord. I’m like an automatic walking machine.