A Woman in Berlin

The pavements are full of horses that leave their droppings and spray their pee. A strong scent of stables. Two soldiers ask me to show them to the nearest pump – the horses are thirsty. So we traipse through the gardens for fifteen minutes. Friendly voices, good-natured faces. And questions that will keep coming back, heard now for the first time: ‘Do you have a husband?’ If you say yes, they ask where he is. And if you say no, they ask if you wouldn’t want to ‘marry’ a Russian. Followed by crude flirting.

These two first address me using the familiar ‘du’, but I dismiss the impropriety by sticking with the formal form. We walked down the deserted green path, as artillery shells arc across the sky. The German line is ten minutes away. No more German planes, though, and hardly any German flak. No more water in the taps, no electricity, no gas. Only Russians.

Back with the buckets, now full of water. The horses drink as the two men look on contentedly. I stroll around, talking to this Russian and that. It’s past noon, the sun so hot it feels like summer. There’s something strange in the air though, something I can’t put my finger on, something evil, menacing. A few men look past me shyly, exchanging glances. One young man, small and sallow and reeking of alcohol, gets me involved in a conversation. He wants to coax me off into the courtyard, shows me two watches on his hairy arm, he’ll give one to me if I…

I draw back to the passage that leads to our basement, then sneak out to the inner courtyard, but just when I think I’ve shaken him he’s standing next to me, and slips into the basement along with me. Staggering from one support beam to the next, he shines his torch on the faces, some forty people all together, pausing each time he comes to a woman, letting the pool of light flicker for several seconds on her face.

The basement freezes. Everyone seems petrified. No one moves, no one says a word. You can hear the forced breathing. The spotlight stops on. eighteen-year-old Stinchen resting in a reclining chair, her head in a dazzlingly white bandage. ‘How many year?’ Ivan asks, in German, his voice full of threat. No one answers. The girl lies there as if made of stone. The Russian repeats his question, now roaring with rage: ‘How many year?’

I quickly answer, in Russian: ‘She’s a student, eighteen.’ I want to add that she’s been wounded in the head, but I can’t find the right words so I resort to the international word ‘kaput’. ‘Head kaput, from bomb.’

Next comes a conversation between the Russian and myself, a rapid back and forth of questions and answers that would be senseless to record, for the simple reason that it was senseless. All about love: true love, passionate love, he loves me, do I love him, whether we want to make love. ‘Maybe,’ I say, and start heading towards the door. He falls for it. The people all around are still paralysed with fear, don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on.

I flirt with fluttering hands, hardly able to speak because my heart is pounding so. I look the man in his black eyes, amazed at his yellow, jaundiced eyeballs. We’re outside in the hall, it’s nearly dark, I prance backwards ahead of him, he doesn’t know his way in this labyrinth, he follows. I whisper: ‘Over there. Very beautiful there. No people.’ Three more paces, then two stairs… and we’re back out on the street, in the bright afternoon sun.

Right away I run to my two horse handlers, who are now combing their steeds. I point at my pursuer: ‘He’s a bad egg, that one, ha-ha!’ The man looks daggers at me and takes off. The horse grooms laugh. I talk with them a while and catch my breath. Little by little my hands calm down.

As I was chatting away, a number of heroes visited our basement, but they were more interested in watches than in women. Later I would see many an Ivan with whole collections on both arms – five or six pieces, which they would constantly compare, winding and resetting, with childlike, thief-like joy.

Our street corner has become an army camp. The supply train is billeted in the shops and garages. The horses munch their oats and hay, it’s comical to watch them stick their heads out of the broken display windows. There’s a hint of relief in the air – Oh well, there go the watches. ‘Voyna kaput,’ as the Russians say. The war is kaput. And for us it is kaput, finished, all over. The storm has rushed past and now we’re safely in its wake.

Or so we thought.