A Woman in Berlin

Around 8 p.m., tired and worn out, I arrived home. Except it turned out it wasn’t home any more. Our accidental family has fallen apart. In view of the dwindling supply of potatoes in the basket, Herr Pauli finally blew up at the widow – it was a long time coming – and demanded she stop sharing their room and board with me. My stock has gone down since Nikolai vanished into thin air and there’s no other prospect in sight, no viable candidate for ‘sleeping up’ some food. The widow met me in the hallway, hemming and hawing, to deliver the bad news. On the one hand she likes me. The bad times have brought us together. On the other hand she’s known Herr Pauli longer than she’s known me, feels bound to him, and she is also counting on him to provide some sort of guarantee for the future. She doesn’t want to antagonize him.

I said, ‘Thank God I know where I stand. I haven’t exactly been savouring the meals here for some time. To tell the truth I was glad to be eating with the Russians this past week.’

Of course I have no idea what I’m supposed to live off next week, once the work for the Russians is finished and I’ll be sitting alone upstairs in the attic apartment, forced to rely on the little bit we’ve been allotted but have yet to receive. I packed my belongings – a few spoons and a handful of old clothes – and trundled upstairs, though as I’m writing this I’m back in the widow’s apartment, where I’m spending the last night. It’s an orphan’s lot to wander, I suppose. The most bitter thing in the life of a single woman is that every time she enters some kind of family life, after a while she ends up causing trouble: she’s one too many, someone doesn’t like her because someone else does, and in the end they kick her out to preserve the precious peace.

And still this page is smudged with a tear.

WEDNESDAY, 30 MAY 1945

Our last washday. Starting tomorrow we’re free, all of us. The Russians were tying up their bundles, the air was full of imminent departure. Inside the shed they’d lit a fire under the washboiler, because some officer wanted to take a bath. The others scrubbed themselves in the open, using bowls they set on chairs, and rubbing their broad chests with wet hand towels.

Today I made a conquest. Using gestures and broken German, our amorous young pursuers led me to understand that ‘that one’ was in love with me and was willing to do anything I wished, if I would… ‘That one’ turned out to be a tall, broad soldier, with a peasant’s face and innocent blue eyes; his temples were already greyed. When I glanced his way he averted his eyes, but then moved a few tiny steps closer, took the heavy bucket of water from me and carried it over to the tub. An entirely new model! What a brilliant idea – to think it never occurred to any of the others. I was even more surprised when he spoke to me in perfect, Russian-free German: ‘We’re leaving tomorrow, somewhere far away from here.’ Moreover he pronounces his ‘h’ like ‘h’ and not ‘Ich’ – he says ‘here’ and not ‘khere’. I figured out right away that he was an ethnic German from the Volga basin, one of the Volga-Germans. Yes, he comes from the Volga region, and German was his slightly rusty mother tongue. He followed me round the whole day, with friendly fatherly eyes. He wasn’t the pinching type, more on the shy side, a farmer. But he had this fawning, doglike look in his eyes that he used to express any number of things. As long as he was near me, the men by the washtubs refrained from pinching and jostling.

Once again the three of us worked like slaves. Little Gerti was in fine spirits, warbling away. She’s happy because as of today she’s sure there won’t be any little Russian, from back then on the sofa – which makes me think about the fact that I’m a week late now Even so I’m not worried; I still believe in my inner No.

But happy Gerti had bad cramps. We tried to help her a bit, washing some of her things. The day was grey and humid; the hours passed very slowly. Towards evening the Russians trickled in to pick up their clothes, which had dried in the meantime. One of them took out a dainty lady’s handkerchief with a crocheted hem, held it to his heart, rolled his eyes romantically and spoke a single word, and – the name of a place landsberg’. Looks to me like another Romeo. Perhaps Petka, too, will one day press his lumberjack paws to his heart, roll his eyes and murmur my name unless of course he’s still cursing me with every chop of the axe.