A Woman in Berlin

Back from getting coal, 1 p.m. Heading south I could feel I was literally marching towards the front. They’ve already closed off the S-Balm tunnel. The people standing outside said a soldier had been hanged at the other end, in his underwear, a sign with the word ‘traitor’ around his neck. His body was dangling so close to the ground you could spin him around by the legs. The person who said this had seen it himself he’d chased off the street kids who’d been amusing themselves.

Berliner Strasse looked desolate, half torn-up and barricaded off. Queues in front of the stores. Blank faces amid the flak. Trucks were rolling into town. Filthy figures in shabby bandages trudged alongside, their bodies sprayed with dirt, their faces empty. A baggage train of hay carts, grey-haired men on the boxes. Volkssturm units are posted at the barricade, in motley uniforms hastily pieced together. You see very young boys, baby faces peeping out beneath oversized steel helmets; it’s frightening to hear their high-pitched voices. They’re fifteen years old at the most, standing there looking so skinny and small in their billowing uniform tunics.

Why are we so appalled at the thought of children being murdered? In three or four years the same children strike us as perfectly fit for shooting and maiming. Where do you draw the line? When their voices break? Because that’s what really gets me the most, thinking about these little boys: their voices, so high, so bright. Up to now being a soldier meant being a man. And being a man means being able to father a child. Wasting these boys before they reach maturity obviously runs against some fundamental law of nature, against our instinct, against every drive to preserve the species. Like certain fish or insects that eat their own offspring. People aren’t supposed to do that. The fact that this is exactly what we are doing is a sure sign of madness.

No one was at the publishing house. The building was completely abandoned, the basement full of coal. The woman relocated to our building had a problem and plied me with questions about what to do. Her oldest daughter is the mother of an eight-week-old infant; it seems that yesterday she stopped giving milk, so that all of a sudden she can no longer nurse her baby, and the little one has been bawling. Everyone’s worried how the mother will pull the child through, now that there’s no more cow’s milk. I suggested to the young mother that eating some wild vegetables might help bring on her milk. Together we bent over the grass in the garden, which was soaked through with rain, and pulled up the young nettle shoots alongside the wall, using handkerchiefs to protect our hands. Then dandelions, the few we could find smell of plants and soil, primrose, red hawthorn, spring. But the flak keeps yapping away.

I filled a pack with hard coal and probably carried off fifty pounds. Yet even with the load I managed to overtake another troop of soldiers on my way back. I saw my first weapons in several days: two bazookas, one sub-machine gun, ammunition boxes. Young guys wearing their cartridge belts like some barbaric adornment.

A little before noon there was a burial on our street, or so I was told, the pharmacist’s widow had been there. A seventeen-year-old girl: grenade, shrapnel, leg amputated, bled to death. Her parents buried her in their garden behind some currant bushes. They used their old broom cupboard as a coffin.

So now we’re free to bury our dead wherever we wish, just as in ancient times. It makes me think of the time a huge Great Dane died in my old apartment building and wound up being buried in the garden. But what a scene beforehand – the landlord, the concierge, the other tenants, everybody fought against it. And now they bury a human being and nobody gives it a second thought; in fact, I think the parents find comfort in their daughter being so close. And I catch myself assigning graves in our own little bit of garden.

4 p.m. in the attic. I just had an amazing experience. I was visiting Frau Golz and started playing with the telephone, just for fun. To my amazement I could hear something, despite the fact the line has been dead for days. I dialled Gisela’s number and managed to get through to her, even though she lives an hour away in Berlin W. We were so eager to hear what the other had to say we couldn’t stop talking. It turns out her company has just collapsed. Her boss gave a rousing speech and then fled to the west, leaving the little people to fend for themselves. We’re completely forgotten, we strain our ears to the void. We are all alone.