A Woman in Berlin

That turns out to please him immensely. He repeats my words, sullenly, tenaciously: ‘Yes – that’s good – just like dogs – very good – the way dogs love – just like dogs love.’ Meanwhile both of us are so exhausted we fall asleep for a few minutes, then he starts rooting around and pushing again… I’m so sore, so wrecked; I go on resisting, stupefied, half-asleep. His lips are very cold.

Around 5 a.m., at the first cockcrow, he gets up, with difficulty, rolls up his trouser leg and pulls the grubby bandage off his jagged wound. I shrink back, involuntarily, then ask, ‘Can I help?’ He shakes his head, stares at me a while – then spits right in front of my bed, spits contempt. He leaves. One nightmare fades away. I sleep like a log for three hours more.

TUESDAY, 1 MAY 1945, AFTERNOON

We started off anxious and apprehensive, sitting in the kitchen from 8 a.m. on, already worn out, waiting for whatever new evil the day might bring. But it began the same as always. Suddenly the kitchen was full of men – some familiar, some we’d never seen. One dressed in a white smock introduced himself as a baker, and quietly promised flour and bread, much flour and much bread, if I… (most of them say ‘love’ or even ‘marry’ or sometimes simply ‘sleep with’, but all this man did was look off to the side).

Some shouting came up from the street, and they all rushed out of the kitchen. A little later they were lined up in two rows, right in full view under the maple tree. Anatol was pacing in front of them, every inch the sub lieutenant, but clearly in high spirits: he was giving a speech, his hands stuck in the pockets of his leather jacket. I could make out a few bits and pieces: ‘The first of May… victory at hand… enjoy yourselves but remember what Comrade Stalin has decreed.’ etc. Then he gave his men a roguish wink, and the men grinned back. Andrei stepped up, asked a question and got an answer. Two or three others raised their hands as well, just like in school, then they started asking questions, and speaking without restraint. I saw no signs of military discipline – no tight ranks or smart saluting. Comrade Sub lieutenant was acting very comradely indeed. Throughout the ceremony the katyushas by the school kept howling away, leaving trails of fire across the sulphur-yellow sky.

I was miserable, sore, barely dragging myself around. The widow got her medicine chest out from the crawl space where she’d hidden it, and gave me a tin with some remnants of Vaseline.

I couldn’t help thinking about how good I’d had it, until now – the fact that love had always been a pleasure and never a pain. I had never been forced, nor had I ever had to force myself. Everything had been good the way it was. But what’s making me so miserable right now is not so much the excess itself, extreme though it is; it’s the fact that my body has been mistreated, taken against its will and pain is how it responds to the abuse.

I’m reminded of a girlfriend from school, now married, who confessed to me at the beginning of the war that in a certain way she felt physically better without her husband, who had been drafted, than she had earlier in the marriage. Consummation of the marriage had always been painful and joyless, though she did the best she could to keep this from her husband. That’s probably what they mean by frigid. Her body wasn’t ready. And frigid is what I’ve been during these encounters. It can’t be otherwise, nor should it be; as long as I’m nothing more than a spoil of war I intend to stay dead and numb, without feeling.

Around noon I was able to save two lives, just by chance. It started when a German, an older man I didn’t know, knocked on our front door and called out for the lady who knows Russian’, meaning me.

I have to admit I was reluctant to go with him since he was mumbling something about revolvers and shooting, but in the end I followed him downstairs. To my relief I saw that the Russians were Anatol’s men, mostly NCOs. (Thanks to Anatol’s basic instruction I’m now pretty good at distinguishing the ranks.) The elderly postmaster was there as well, in his slippers completely silent, his face to the wall, his shoulders slumped, his head sunk. His wife, beside him, had turned round and kept yammering the same words over and over, very fast.