A Woman in Berlin

I’m constantly repulsed by my own skin. I don’t want to touch myself, can barely look at my body. I can’t help but think about the little child I was, once upon a time, the little pink and white baby who made her parents so proud, as my mother told me over and over. And when my father had to become a soldier in 1916, when he said goodbye to my mother at the train station, he reminded her never to forget to put my lace bonnet on to protect me from the sun. So that I would have a lily-white neck and a lily-white face. That was the fashion of the times for girls from good homes. So much love, so much bother with sunbonnets, bath thermometers and evening prayers – and all for the filth I am now.

Back to Sunday. It’s difficult to recollect everything, my mind is such a jumble. By 10 a.m. all the usual guests were gathered: Andrei, Petka, Grisha, Yasha and little Vanya as well, who once again washes our dishes in the kitchen. They ate, drank and chatted away. At one point Vanya told me, his child’s face turning very serious: ‘We humans are all bad. Me too, I’ve done bad things.’

Then Anatol showed up, lugging a record player – I have no idea from where – with two of his entourage carrying the records. And what do they keep playing, over and over, at least a dozen times? After quickly sampling and rejecting records like Lohengrin and Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms and Smetana? An advertising jingle! – A record the C&A Textile Company on the Spittelmarkt used to give customers for buying a certain amount. ‘Stroll on down to C&A and see what’s in our store today…’ Followed by a list of their entire collection crooned to the rhythm of a foxtrot. But that’s just what Ivan wants – they started warbling along, happy as larks.

Once again the spirits are going around the table. Anatol gets the familiar glint in his eye and finally kicks everybody out under fairly obvious pretences. This particular door doesn’t even have a lock; he simply shoves the wing chair against it. Meanwhile I can’t stop thinking about my conversation with the widow, this morning at the oven. I make myself stiff as stone, shut my eyes, concentrate on my body’s veto, my inner No.

He moves the chair back away from the door to let the widow in with the soup tureen. She and I take our places at the table. Even Herr Pauli comes hobbling in from his room, perfectly shaved and manicured, in a silk robe, but Anatol stays sprawled across the bedstead, his legs dangling in their boots, his black hair tousled. He sleeps and sleeps, gently exhaling.

For three hours he sleeps, like a baby, all alone with us three enemies. But we feel safer, even when he’s sleeping; Anatol is our earthwork, our rampart. He snores away, his revolver stuck in his holster. And outside there’s war, the crackle of gunfire, the centre of town all in smoke.

The widow takes out a bottle of the burgundy I looted from the police barracks and serves it to us in coffee cups – just in case of Russians. We talk very quietly, so as not to wake Anatol. It does us good to be together like this, polite and friendly. We enjoy an hour of calm, the chance to be nice to one another. Our souls recover somewhat.

Around 4 p.m. Anatol wakes up and rushes out, head over heels, to attend to some duty. A little later we hear loud banging on the front door. We tremble, my heart skips a beat. Thank God it’s only Andrei, the schoolteacher with the icy-blue eyes. We beam at him; the widow hugs him with relief. He smiles back.

We have a good conversation, this time about humanity, not politics. He lectures, about himself, about how he sees women as comrades and not mere female bodies, how he disapproves of ‘that kind of thing’ – and here he looks past me, awkward and embarrassed. Andrei is a fanatic, his eyes are far away as he says this. He is convinced that his dogma is infallible.