A Woman in Berlin

It turns out they have a package they want to send to Russia; they’d like to have it sewn up in a cloth cover – which of course should be done by hand. With great eloquence consisting mostly of repetition, I convince the boys that current technology isn’t up to the task, that this is more a job for grandmother’s simple handiwork.

Finally they nod their round heads and agree. They’re carrying a whole loaf of bread as payment. The widow thinks for a moment and decides to pass this princely commission to the bookselling wife, who is skilled at sewing and short on bread. She hurries over to fetch her from her triply secured apartment.

And the woman actually decides to come. She’s mistrustful, hesitant… and at the same time eagerly considering the bread. She and her husband are living off beans and barley. She takes her place at the kitchen window and carefully sews white linen cloth around the bundle. The contents remain a mystery. It feels soft probably clothes.

I try to imagine what the Russians think about all these things lying around unprotected and abandoned. There are deserted apartments in every building that are theirs for the taking. Basements with whatever is stowed in them. There’s nothing in this city that isn’t theirs if they want it – the problem is there’s simply too much. They can no longer take it all in, this abundance; they nonchalantly grab whatever objects catch their eye, then lose them or pass them on; they haul things away and then discard them as soon as they become a burden. This is the first time I’ve seen them take the trouble to pack up and mail some of the plunder. For the most part they have no ability to assess the value of things. They grab the first thing they see and they have no concept of quality or price – why should they? They’ve always just worn what they’ve been allotted; they don’t know how to judge and choose, how to figure out what’s good, what’s expensive. When they steal bedding, for instance, they’re just looking for something to lie down on right away. They can’t tell eiderdown from shoddy. And what they value most of all is liquor.

While she sews, the bookseller passes on what she knows. Yes, eighteen-year-old Stinchen is still being kept by her mother in the crawl space, lately during the day as well, ever since two Russians came back with the designated water carriers, burst into the apartment, brandished their pistols and shot a hole in the linoleum floor. The girl looks pasty. No wonder. But at least she’s still intact. The bookseller also tells about some new residents, two young sisters, one a war widow with a three-year-old son. They moved into one of the empty apartments, where they carry on with the soldiers, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, rumour has it things are very merry there. We also learn that a woman across the street jumped out of a fourth-storey window when some Ivans were after her. She’s buried in the little yard in front of the cinema. A number of people have apparently been buried there. I can’t say, since I take a different path to get my water. And that’s the only place you go outside these days.

So the bookseller stitches away and recounts what she knows. Rumours – the goddess Fama. I’ve always pictured her as an old woman all shrouded up and murmuring away. Gossip. We feed on it. Years ago people got all their news through hearsay and word of mouth. It’s impossible to overestimate how this affected ancient cultures, how unclear and uncertain their view of the world must have been – spooky, nightmarish, a swamp of murmured horrors and fears, of malicious men and resentful gods. These days, too, there are times when I feel I can’t be sure of anything, that nothing is true, that Adolf may have long ago escaped by submarine to Spain and that Franco is putting him up in a castle where he’s sketching plans for Truman about getting the Russians back to Russia. But one thing is beyond doubt – the deep-down feeling of defeat, the certainty of our being at the mercy of the victors.

The two Russians come back, are very pleased with the sewing, take the package and give the woman her fresh bread. I talk with them and find out that neither one is actually an ethnic Russian. One comes from around Kuban and is of German descent; the other is a Pole from Lvov. The German is named Adams, his ancestors came from the Palatinate two hundred years ago. The few German words he produces are in that local dialect, for example, ‘Es hat gebrannt’ – it burned – for Es hat gebrennt. The Pole is strikingly handsome, with black hair and blue eyes, quick and lively. He breaks up a crate for our firewood and exchanges a few words with the widow, who as a child used to visit relatives on an estate in East Prussia, where she picked up a few phrases from the Polish field hands. He offers to go with me to get the water.