A Woman in Berlin

Just counted my cash: 452 marks. No idea what I’ll do with all that money – the only things left to buy cost no more than a few pfennigs. I also have about a thousand in the bank, again because there’s nothing to buy. (When I opened that account, in the first year of the war, I was still thinking of saving for peacetime, maybe even taking a trip around the world. That was a long, long time ago.) Recently people have been running to the bank – assuming they can find one that’s still open – to withdraw their money. What for? If we go down, the mark goes with us. After all, money, at least paper money, is only a fiction and won’t have any value if the central bank collapses. Indifferent, I run my thumb over the wad of bills, which probably won’t be worth anything except as souvenirs. Snapshot of a bygone era. I assume the victors will bring their own currency and let us have some. Or else they’ll print some kind of military scrip – unless they decide not to give us even that, and force us to work just for a helping of soup.

Noontime. Endless rain. Walked to Parkstrasse and got some more paper money to add to my wad of souvenirs. The head clerk paid me last month’s salary and made my ‘vacation’ official. The whole publishing house has dissolved into thin air. The employment office has also breathed its last; no one is looking for help any more. So for the moment we’re all our own bosses.

Bureaucracy strikes me as a fair-weather friend. The whole civil service shuts down at the first sign of shrapnel. (By the way, it’s very peaceful just now Alarmingly peaceful.) We’re no longer being governed. And still, everywhere you look, in every basement, some kind of order always emerges. When my house was hit I saw how even people who’d been injured or traumatized or buried in the rubble walked away in an orderly manner. The forces of order prevail in this basement as well, a spirit that regulates, organizes, commands. It has to be in our nature. People must have functioned that way as far back as the Stone Age. Herd instinct, a mechanism for preservation of the species. With animals they say it’s always the males, the lead bull, the lead stallion. But in our basement lead mares would be closer to the truth. Fräulein Behn is a lead mare, so is the woman from Hamburg, who keeps very calm. I’m not one, and I wasn’t in my old basement either. Besides, back there we had a lead bull bellowing around, dominating the field, a retired major who brooked no rivals. I always hated having to huddle together down there, always tried to find a corner of my own to sleep in. But when the herd leader calls I follow willingly.

I walked alongside the tram. I couldn’t get on, since I don’t have a Class III ticket. And it was nearly empty, too; I counted eight passengers in the car. Meanwhile hundreds of people were trudging right next to it in the pouring rain, even though the tram could easily have picked them up – it has to run anyway. But no – see above under: Order. It’s rooted deep inside us; we do as we are told.

I bought some rolls in the bakery. The shelves still appear to be stocked, you don’t see any panic-buying. After that I went to the ration-card office. Today they were stamping potato coupons 75 to 77 for people with my last initial. The line went surprisingly quickly, although there were only two women on duty with rubber stamps, instead of the usual group. They didn’t even look at the coupons, just stamped them automatically, like machines. Why all this stamping? No one knows, but we all go there, assuming that there’s some sense in it. The last group – X to Z – is to report on 28 April, according to the posted schedule.

Carts covered with sopping wet canvas were trundling through the rain into the city. Under the tarpaulins are soldiers. That was the first time I’d seen men from the real front line – dirty, grey-bearded, all of them old. The carts were pulled by Polish ponies, dark-coated in the rain. The only other freight they’re hauling is hay. Doesn’t look much like a motorized Blitzkrieg any more.

On the way home I went behind the black ruins where Professor K. used to live and broke into his abandoned garden, where I picked several crocuses and tore off some lilac branches. Took some to Frau Golz, who used to live in my old apartment building. We sat across from each other at her copper table and talked. Or rather, we shouted above the gunfire that had just resumed. Frau Golz, her voice breaking: ‘What flowers, what lovely flowers.’ The tears were running down her face. I felt terrible as well. Beauty hurts now. We’re so full of death.