A Woman in Berlin

What was going on? Apparently the refugee girl who had been lodged at the postmaster’s, who just this past Saturday morning had been moaning to us about not being able to go on any more and ending it all – apparently she’d been caught in the stairwell with a revolver in her coat pocket. She probably brought it all the way from Königsberg, no one really knows for sure. Anyhow, she broke away from her pursuers, raced up the stairs and somehow vanished in the maze of attic rooms. No one’s seen her since. So they ransacked the postmaster’s whole apartment and found – God forbid! – a photo of her… next to a soldier from the SS. The Russians have the picture right there, they show it to me. I have to verify that it is indeed the girl from Königsberg. The SS man could be her fiancé, or most likely her brother, since he has the same large head.

So the Russians have detained the elderly couple as hostages, now they’ve threatened to shoot them if they don’t produce the girl, if they don’t say where she is hiding.

I can start by clearing up a misconception. The Russians think the postmaster and his wife are the girl’s parents – evidently these men are still used to proper families, they don’t realize how jumbled and scattered our homes have become, aren’t familiar with our patchwork households. As soon as they learn that the girl was only lodging there, that she was a complete stranger, they change their tone. And right away the old woman, who’s been watching us closely, her frightened eyes going back and forth between the Russians and me – right away she takes advantage of a lull in the conversation and starts cursing and vilifying the girl from Königsberg, hoping to girl in, they’re fed up with her, she’s nothing but trouble, they aren’t surprised at anything. And if the woman knew where the girl was hiding she’d say. After all, she has no reason to keep it a secret. And so on.

She really would give the girl away, if she could – no doubt about it. She keeps repeating the same nonsense, her voice shaking with fear, while her husband keeps standing there with his face to the wall, impassive and inert.

Meanwhile I talk and talk, explaining to the Russians that the girl couldn’t possibly have intended to kill any of them, that I myself had heard her say she was planning to commit suicide, which she’s probably long since done it. Maybe they’ll find her body very soon. (The word for suicide – samoubistvo – isn’t in the soldier’s dictionary either. I got Andrei to teach it to me.)

Little by little the tension eases. I go so far as to portray the postmaster and his wife in a comic light, as a pair of silly old fools who don’t have a clue about anything. In the end the postmaster turns back from the wall, threads of saliva dribbling from his open mouth, just like a baby. The woman is silent, her bright old-lady eyes darting wildly between the Russians and me. Finally they are both allowed to leave, unscathed.

The Russians instruct me to inform all the civilians in the building that if another weapon is found the entire place will be burned to the ground, according to martial law. And they swear to find the girl and liquidate her.

My merry vodka-drinkers are completely changed – beyond recognition! They give not the slightest indication of all the times they’ve sat at our little round table and drunk my health. Their happy singing doesn’t mean a thing, evidently; work is work and drink is drink – at least for these three. I better make a note of that, and be careful with them.

Afterwards I am quite pleased with myself, but also scared. Intervening like that is a good way to attract attention, and sticking out like a sore thumb won’t do me a bit of good. I have to admit that I’m afraid; I’d like to stay hidden. As I was leaving, the German who’d fetched me asked me to translate a Russian phrase he’d heard many times: ‘Gitler durak.’ I told him what it means. ‘Hitler is a fool.’ The Russians say it all the time, triumphantly, as if it were their own discovery.

WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY 1945, AND THE REST OF TUESDAY

I spent half of Tuesday afternoon sitting by Herr Pauli’s bed, updating my account. To play it safe I’ve doctored the last few pages of this notebook to look like a German—Russian vocabulary, which I can always show to any Russian who comes bursting in and wants to see what I’m writing. I actually had to do this on one occasion, and was promptly rewarded with praise and a pat on the shoulder.