A Woman in Berlin

We feel our way back downstairs. Our building has long since become a regular barracks. The stench of horses is everywhere, the whole place sprinkled with manure tracked in by the soldiers. These victors also feel free to piss on any wall any time they choose. Puddles of urine in the stairwell, on the landings, in the entrance hall. Evidently they do the same in the abandoned apartments that they now have entirely to themselves.

Vanya the Child is already waiting in our kitchen, erect as a sentry, his machine gun at the ready. With the look of a loyal dog he offers to escort us to the basement. So once again we went down into the dark. Several Russians are still sprawled out in the back hallway, slumbering into the day, on proper bedding, too, which they’ve managed to get hold of somewhere. One of them is lying right under the spiral staircase, blocking our way, in his own little puddle still trickling from his body. Vanya kicks him and he moves aside, muttering under his breath. Even though he’s just sixteen, Vanya is a sergeant, and demands that his rank is respected. Andrei has told me that Vanya was sent to labour on an estate in East Prussia, but joined the advancing Russian army and quickly climbed the ranks thanks to various heroic deeds.

We grope around the basement, looking for the widow’s things. Things that I wouldn’t recognize and that the widow doesn’t want to identify too carefully, as she is simply grabbing whatever she feels might come in useful. By the faint glow from the upper windows, amplified by Vanya’s torch, we gather potatoes and onions and even find a number of jars of preserves, still intact, which we take down off one of the shelves.

A man comes up, eyes like slits, makes some lewd comments mixed with German words. Whereupon Vanya says, as if to no one in particular, All right, that’s enough.’ And the slit-eyed man moves on.

The midday meal. We still have more than enough to eat. Compared to my meagre meals, alone in the attic, I’m living well here. No more nettles; now there’s meat, bacon, butter, peas, onions, canned vegetables. Even on his bed of pain, Herr Pauli manages to eat like a horse – until he starts cursing when he bites into a stewed pear and pulls a long sharp splinter of glass out of his mouth. I find myself chewing on something jagged as well – evidently one of the jars we brought from the basement was chipped.

Outside the war is still on. And we have a new morning and evening prayer: ‘For all of this we thank the Führer.’ A line we know from the years before the war, when it was printed in praise and thanksgiving on thousands of posters, proclaimed in speeches. Today the exact same words have precisely the opposite meaning, full of scorn and derision. I believe that’s what’s called a dialectic conversion.

A quiet afternoon. Anatol is out with his men. Evidently they’re preparing a May Day celebration. That makes us anxious; supposedly all Russians are to get an extra ration of vodka.

No Anatol. But around 9 p.m. someone else shows up instead, a small man, on the older side, pockmarked and with scarred cheeks. My heart pounds. What a terrible-looking face!

But it turns out he has good manners, uses highly refined language and is very solicitous. He’s also the first soldier to address me as ‘grazhdanka’ – meaning ‘citizen’ – which the Russians use for foreign women whom they can’t refer to as ‘comrade’. He introduces himself as Anatol’s new orderly, charged with informing us that his superior will be joining us for supper and with procuring the necessary provisions. He tells me all of this from outside the door, which I haven’t unchained.

I let him in, offer him a seat. Clearly he was hoping to get into a conversation with me. He’s bound to realize that his face isn’t one to inspire confidence, so he’s twice as eager to please in some other way. He mentions that he’s from the Caucasus, from an area that Pushkin visited and where he found much inspiration. I can’t understand everything, since the man is using very sophisticated expressions and constructing long, elaborate sentences. Still, I take my cue from ‘Pushkin’ and manage to name a few titles – Boris Godunov and The Postmaster. I tell him that they’d made a film of The Postmaster in Germany a few years back; the orderly is clearly pleased to

hear it. In short, a genuine parlour conversation, very unusual. I don’t know how to read these men, and am always taken aback at how they surprise us.

A sudden noise, men’s voices in the kitchen. Anatol? The little orderly doesn’t think so. We both rush to the kitchen, run into the widow who is fleeing in visible terror.

‘Watch out, it’s Petka!’

Petka? My God, so he’s still around. Petka with the blond bristles and the lumberjack paws that shook so much when he launched into his Romeo babble.