I stand up – dizzy, nauseated. My ragged clothes tumble to my feet. I stagger through the hall, past the sobbing widow, into the bathroom. I throw up. My face green in the mirror, my vomit in the basin. I sit on the edge of the bathtub, without daring to flush, since I’m still gagging and there’s so little water left in the bucket.
Damn this to hell! I say it out loud. Then I make up my mind.
No question about it: I have to find a single wo1f to keep away the pack. An officer, as high–ranking as possible, a commandant, a general, whatever I can manage. After all, what are my brains for, my little knowledge of the enemy language?
As soon as I am able to move again, I grab a bucket and drag myself down the stairs and out onto the street. I wander up and down, peering into the courtyards, keeping my eyes open, then go back into our stairwell, very cautiously. I practise the sentences I will use to address an officer, wondering if I don’t look too green and miserable to be attractive. Physically I feel a little better, though, now that I am doing something, planning something, determined to be more than mere mute booty, a spoil of war.
For half an hour there’s nothing – no epaulettes with stars. I don’t know their rankings and insignia, only that the officers wear stars on their caps and generally have overcoats. But all I see is a shabby mass of uniform green. I’m just about to give up for the day. am already knocking at our door, when I see a man with stars coming out of an apartment across the street (the former tenant having managed to escape just in time). Tall, dark hair, well fed. He sees me with the bucket, then laughs and says in broken German, ‘Du, Frau.’ I laugh back and shower him with my best Russian. He’s delighted to hear his own language. We chatter away, silly, just fooling around, and I learn that he’s a sub lieutenant. Finally we arrange to meet that night, at 7p.m. at the widow’s. He’s busy until then. His name is Anatol So–and–so – a Ukrainian.’
Will you definitely come?’
‘Of course,’ he says, reproachfully. ‘As fast as I can.’
As it happened, another man showed up first, around 5p.m., someone I’d almost forgotten, Petka from the previous night, with the blond bristle and the Romeo babble. He’s brought two buddies, too, whom he introduces as Grisha and Yasha. Soon all three are sitting at our round table, like a bunch of farm boys invited into a house well above their class. Petka acts as if he’s at home, showing me off to the others with clear pride of possession. The three men stretch out on the armchairs, they feel good. Yasha pulls out a bottle of vodka, and Grisha produces some herring and bread wrapped in a greasy page of
Pravda
(the front page – unfortunately it’s old). Petka calls for glasses as if he were master of the house. He pours the vodka, then slams his fist on the table and commands, ‘
Vypit’ nado!
’ You have to drink up!
The widow and I, and even Herr Pauli, who showed up out of the blue ha1f an hour earlier, have no choice but to sit and drink with the boys. Petka sets a slice of dark, moist bread on the table in front of each of us, then divides up the herring, right there on the polished mahogany, using his thumb to press it onto the bread, all the while beaming at us as if this were a special favour and delicacy.
The widow, appalled, runs for some plates. Grisha is the silent type with a permanent smirk, his voice has a deep rasp. He makes sure each person receives an equal portion of bread and herrings. Yasha is short, with a crew cut, he smiles and nods all around. Both are from Kharkov. Little by little I start talking to them, acting as interpreter between them and Herr Pauli. We drink one another’s health. Petka from Siberia is loud and fully at ease.
I keep listening for the door and checking the dainty lady’s wristwatch on Yasha’s arm. Any minute I expect sub lieutenant Anatol to show up as arranged. I’m worried, because I suspect there’ll be a fight. Petka is strong as an ox, of course, and clean, but he’s primitive, uncouth – no protection. A sub–lieutenant, on the other hand, ought to guarantee a kind of taboo, or so I imagine. My mind is firmly made up. I’ll think of somethin g when the time comes. I grin to myself in secret, feel as if I’m performing on the stage. I couldn’t care less about the lot of them! I’ve never been so removed from myself, so alienated. All my feelings seem dead, except for the drive to live. They shall not destroy me.
Meanwhile Grisha has let it be known that he’s an ‘accountant’. Then Herr Pauli, who works as an industrial salesman, makes a similar declaration. Both men have drunk a good deal, and they fall into an embrace, shouting for joy. ‘Me accountant, you accountant, we accountants!’ And the first kiss of German–Russian brotherhood smacks across Herr Pauli’s cheek. Soon the widow’s tenant is completely drunk. He calls out to us, elated, ‘These guys are great, these Russians, full of vim and vigour!’
Another round. Here’s to international accountancy. Now even the widow is feeling merry, for the moment having forgotten about the herring being sawn right on her polished table. (None of the boys bother with the plates.) I drink very measuredly, secretly switching glasses, I want to keep my wits about me for later. Still, the mirth at the table is tainted, especially for us two women – we want to forget what happened three hours before.
Outside, the sun is setting. Yasha and Petka sing a melancholy song, with Grisha chiming in. Herr Pauli is in a blessedly relaxed mood. It’s a bit much for him, after all, only this morning he was courting death with the Volkssturm, until his troop had the sense to disband and, lacking both weapons and any orders to the contrary, dismissed themselves and went home. Suddenly he belches, falls forward and throws up on the carpet. The widow and fellow accountant Grisha immediately spirit him into the bathroom. The others shake their heads, express their sympathy. Then Herr Pauli crumples into bed in his room next door, where he spends the rest of the day, and, as it turns out, the foreseeable future. A lame duck – probably his subconscious wants him that way. Neuralgia of the soul. Even so, his simple male presence keeps things somewhat in check. The widow swears by him and his rare pronouncements about the world situation and massages his back.
Twilight, a distant howling along the front. The widow has managed to get hold of a candle, we light it and stick it onto a saucer. A meagre pool of light on the table. soldiers come and go – evening is when things get busy. People hammering on the front door, pushing through the back into the kitchen. But we are unafraid, nothing can happen to us as long as Petka, Grisha and Yasha are sitting at our table.
Suddenly Anatol is standing in the room, filling the space with his masculine self. A regular soldier is trotting behind him carrying a canteen full of alcohol and a round dark loaf of bread under his arm. The men are at their best–fed, strong and strapping, their uniforms clean, practical and rugged, their movements broad, very self –assured. They spit inside the room, toss their long cigarette filters on the floor, scrape the herringbones off the table onto the carpet and plop down into the armchairs.
Anatol reports that the front has reached the Landwehrkanal, and I think of that old dreary tune ‘Es liegt eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal...’ A body floats down the Landwehr Canal. Lots of bodies at the moment. Anatol claims that 130 German generals have surrendered in the past few days. He takes a cellophane bag, pulls out a map of Berlin, shows us the progress of the front. The map, printed in Russian, is very exact. It’s a strange feeling when, complying with Anatol’ s request, I show him where our house is located.
So... Saturday, 28 April 1945... the front at the Landwehrkanal. As I write this, it’s Tuesday, 1 May. The rockets are singing over head, the oily drone of Russian aero planes. Long rows of Stalin Organs are stacked in the school across the street, the Russians call them by the tender name Katyusha – little Kate – the tide of a popular song among the soldiers. When they are fired they howl like wolves. They don’t look like much – upright balusters, made of thin tubes. But they howl and shriek and wail so loud they nearly break our eardrums as we stand in line for water not far away. And they spew bundles of fiery streaks.
They were howling overhead this morning when I stood in line for water. The sky was full of bloody clouds. Smoke and steam rising over the centre of town. The la C k of water brings us out of our holes. People come creeping from all sides, miserable, dirty civilians, women with grey faces, mostly old – the young ones are kept hidden. Men with stubbly beards and white armbands to show they’ve surrendered stand and watch the soldiers fill bucket after bucket for their horses. Naturally the military always has priority. Still, there’s never any quarrel. Quite the contrary: one time the handle broke while a civilian was using it, and a Russian nailed it right back together.
They’re camped out in the garden plots, under the flowering trees. Howitzers mounted in the flower beds. Russians sleeping outside the sheds. Others give water to their horses which are stabled inside the sheds. We’re amazed to see so many women soldiers, with field tunics, skirts, berets and insignia. They’re regular infantry, no doubt about it. Most are very young – small, tough, their hair combed back smooth. They wash their things in tubs. Shirts and blouses dancing together on hastily strung clotheslines. And overhead the organs howl away, a wall of thick black smoke cutting off the sky.
This morning was like yesterday. On my way home I ran into Herr Golz, loyal Nazi to the end. Now he’s adapted. He spotted a Russian with bright rows of decorations on his breast, all wrapped in cellophane, and asked, ‘Ribbons?’ (It’s the same word in Russian and German, as he informed me, not realizing how much Russian I understand.) He gave me a little notebook, a German–Russian dictionary for soldiers, assuring me he could get hold of some more. I’ve looked it over, it has a lot of very useful words like ‘bacon’, ‘flour’, salt’. Some other important words are missing, however, like ‘f ear’ and ‘basement’. Also the word for ‘dead’, which I never used on my travels, but which I find myself reaching for quite often in recent conversations. Instead I substitute the word ‘kaput’ –which works well for a lot of other things too. The dictionary also contains a number of expressions for which I have no use at all now, despite my best intentions, such as ‘Hands up!’ and ‘Halt!’ At most we might hear those words being used on us.
Getting back to Saturday evening, 28 April. Around 5p.m. Petka and his entourage left – official business of some sort. Petka mumbled something about coming–back–soon, in a low voice so the sub lieutenant wouldn’t hear. Then he crushed my fingers again and tried to look me in the eye.
Incidentally, the officer’s stars seem to have strangely little effect on the enlisted men. I was disappointed. No one felt any need to restrain their happy mood because of Anatol’ s rank, and he himself simply sat alongside the others very peacefully and laughed and carried on with them, filling up their glasses and sharing his pot of liquor. I’m worried about my taboo. Apparently the strict Prussian order of ranks we’re so used to doesn’t apply here. The ones with stars don’t come from any special class, they’re by no means superior
than
the others in background or education. Nor do they have any special code of honour – especially when it comes to women. Western traditions of chivalry and gallantry never made it to Russia. As far as I know they never had any jousting tournaments, no minnesingers or troubadours, no traincarrying pages. So why should they be expected to be chivalrous? They’re all peasants including Anatol. Of course, my Russian isn’t good enough for me to tell from a given man’s speech and vocabulary what his education or profession is. And I’ve scarcely been able to speak with any of them about literature and art. But I have the feeling that, deep inside, all these simple, undiscriminating men feel insecure in front of me, despite their blustering. They’re children of the people.
Still, at least Anatol is a full two hundred pounds. So maybe his size will help even if his stars do not. In any case, I’m not changing my mind. He moves like a comet, with a tail of young people, boy–like soldiers, who in the meantime have found shelter in the apartment abandoned by the puddingsisters. One of Anatol’s entourage really is just a child – Vanya, sixteen years old, with a stern face and intense black eyes. The widow takes me aside and whispers that he could have been the one, back then on the stairs, his face was small and smooth, his body slender. For his part, Vanya doesn’t show any sign of recognition, although that’s to be expected, since he never even saw the woman he took in such a clumsy. juvenile fashion – he only felt her. Still, I have the sense he knows who she is. After all, he heard her voice, the widow told me how she sobbed and begged. In any event, Vanya follows her around like a puppy, carrying fresh glasses and washing out the dirty ones.
I drank a lot that evening. I wanted to drink a lot, wanted to get drunk. and I did. That’s why I only remember bits and pieces: Anatol next to me again, his weapons and things scattered around the bed... All his buttons and all his bags and everything in them... Friendly. helpful, childlike... But born in May – a Taurus, a bull... I felt like I was a doll, no sensation, shaken, shoved around, made of wood... All of a sudden someone is standing in the dark room, shining a torch. And Anatol is yelling at him roughly, shakes his fists, and the man disappears. Or did I dream that?
Early in the morning I see Anatol standing by the window, looking outside, a reddish glow is flaming into the room, a yellow light tugs at the wallpaper. I hear the katyushas howling away as Anatol stretches his arms and says, ‘
Petukh paiot
’ – the cock is singing. It’s true –between shells you can actually hear a rooster crowing down below.
As soon as Anatol left I got up, washed myself in the bath with what water was left, scrubbed down the table, swept away the cigarette butts, herring tails and horse manure, rolled up the carpet and stowed it in the chest. I looked in the next room, where the widow had set up camp under the protection of her tenant, both were snoring away. Ice–cold air was blowing through the cardboard on the windows. I felt rested and refreshed after five hours of deep sleep. A little hungover, but nothing more. I’d made it through another night.