A Woman in Berlin

The widow was angry and didn’t speak to me the whole afternoon. In the evening though, she told me what happened. Apparently the young devil turned out to be so tame and docile he was downright boring by the time he let her go. It seems he left her with a compliment. At first she didn’t want to reveal it, but finally she told us: ‘Ukrainian woman – like this. You – like this.’ The first ‘like this’ he illustrated with a circle formed by both his thumbs and forefingers, the second ‘like this’ with a single thumb and forefinger.

What else did the day bring? Another stair-victim, once again an older woman, about sixty; the younger ones don’t dare venture into the stairwell by day. This time it was one of the three dressmakers, the black pudding sisters. They’d heard that Anatol’s men had vacated their apartment, so they made their way into the abandoned rooms, escorted by our deserter. Together they fished a sewing machine out of the trash and general clutter and lugged it up two flights of stairs. Then one of the aunties went back down by herself to salvage some other sewing equipment – and ran right into the hands of a Russian. When the widow spoke with her it was nearly evening, and the dressmaker was still sobbing on the sofa in the booksellers’ apartment, surrounded by a whole bevy of women, moaning and groaning.

They got hold of the concierge’s youngest daughter as well, her mother told me today at the pump. At first the whole family – mother, two daughters, and the three-year-old grandson – had stayed hidden in the basement next door, which was well secured. But once people started saying that things were a little better with the Russians, the girls went back to their apartment on the first floor, to cook and do their wash. That’s where two drunken, singing heroes caught them by surprise. According to the mother they left the older sister alone. I’ve seen the girl in the meantime and I can understand why: she looks clinically emaciated, and her face is so small, her cheeks so hollow, that the outline of her skull shows through. Her mother whispered to me that the younger daughter had barricaded herself with cotton wool, though there was no real reason to, but the girls had heard that the Russians don’t like women at that time of month. It didn’t help. The men just howled with laughter as they tossed the stuff around the room and then took the sixteen-year-old on the chaise longue in the kitchen. ‘She’s doing well so far,’ her mother said, herself amazed. Even so, just to be safe, she took her daughter up to the booksellers’, where the widow says she’s been boasting to everyone how the Russians went straight for her without giving her older sister even a second glance.

One more person came to say goodbye: Andrei, the schoolteacher from Anatol’s group with the icy blue eyes. He sat with me a while at the table, talked about politics in his quiet, composed voice, gave me a lecture full of words like sotsialisticheski, kapitalisticheski, ekonomicheski. I listened quietly, mending my one and only towel and patching my violated garter. We’re starting to see a semblance of order again.

That evening we sat by Herr Pauli’s bed – the widow, the deserter’s wife and me, by candlelight. We gave the deserter’s wife one of our candles; she let us have a box of matches. The major showed up right on time, along with his chubby Uzbek shadow. He played on his little harmonica – a plundered German Hohner – wildly and full of fire. He even wound up asking his orderly to help him out of his soft leather boots and danced a Krakowiak in his socks, swinging his hips gracefully and lithely, fully aware of his talent, too. Then he danced a tango with the widow, while the rest of us sang a popular hit. After that he played some more, this time from Rigoletto and Il Trovatore – it’s amazing the music he can get out of that tiny mouth organ. His Uzbek didn’t take his pitch-black Mongol eyes off him for a second, and every now and then he’d voice his admiration in childlike, awkward Russian: ‘Oh, he is good. No one else like that.’ Finally the Uzbek let the major talk him into singing an Uzbek song, very nasal, very strange. After endless begging he also agreed to dance on his chunky legs. The deserter’s wife, a tough Berlin woman, drank the major’s wine and received his ceremonial bows. While he was dancing with the widow our guest whispered to me, ‘Well, for him I could flat out forget myself!’

The major stayed. A difficult night. His knee had swollen up from all the dancing and caused him a lot of pain. He groaned every time he moved. I scarcely dared stir. He left me alone completely. I slept deeply.

SATURDAY, 5 MAY 1945