Apart from that there was much to do in the afternoon, a lot of wiping and washing: the time passed. I was astonished suddenly to see the major standing in the room; the widow had let him in. This time he’d brought a brand-new pack of cards, which he laid out on Pauli’s quilt. Apparently the two men have found a game they both play. I don’t have the faintest idea what it is, so I’ve slipped off to the kitchen, where I’m quickly writing this down. The major has even brought some ‘play money’ – German coins, 3- and 5-mark pieces, which were withdrawn from circulation ages ago. How on earth did he get them? I don’t dare ask. He didn’t bring anything to drink, for which he apologizes to each of us. No matter, today he’s our guest – we inherited a bottle of liquor from the distiller.
It’s still cool, but clearing, a little ray of sunlight. Another restless night – the major woke several times and kept me up with his groaning. His knee is supposed to be getting better, but it still hurts when he bumps it. Despite that, he didn’t let me rest much. Among other things he talked about the drink-and-be-merry sisters who moved into the abandoned apartment on the ground floor. Apparently they’re very popular with the Russian officers, who call them Anya and Liza. I saw one of them on the stairs: very pretty, dressed in black and white, tall and delicate. As he reported their goings-on, the major looked uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. He himself had been invited into the apartment that morning, in broad daylight – and found the girls in bed with two men. Laughing, they invited him to join in – an offer that continued to shock the proper middle-class major as he was telling me the story. Apparently a prime attraction for the soldiers is the one sister’s very cute three-year-old son, who can already babble a few words of Russian, according to the major, and whom the male guests pamper as best they can.
Moving right along – the new day. It’s so strange living without papers or calendars, clocks or monthly accounting. A timeless time, which slips by like water, its passing measured only by the comings and goings of men in their foreign uniforms.
Occasionally I’m amazed at how determined I am to capture this timeless time. This is actually my second attempt to carry on a conversation with myself in writing. My first was as a schoolgirl; we were fifteen or sixteen, wore wine-red school berets and talked endlessly about God and the world (sometimes about boys as well, but very condescendingly). In the middle of the school year our history teacher had a stroke and was replaced with someone who had just finished her training, a snub-nosed novice who exploded into our class. She brazenly contradicted our patriotic history book by calling Frederick the Great an adventurer, a gambler, and praised Friedrich Ebert, the Social Democrat whom our former teacher had enjoyed deriding as a mere ‘saddler’s apprentice’. After making these audacious declarations she would flash her black eyes, lift her hands and appeal to us, ‘Girls, you better go and change the world. It needs it!’
We liked that. Because we didn’t think much of the world of 1930 either. In fact, we emphatically rejected it. Everything was so muddled, so full of barriers and obstacles. Unemployment was in the millions, and we were constantly told that practically all the professions we aspired to had no prospects, that the world wasn’t waiting for us in any way.
By chance elections to the Reichstag were being held then. The ten or fifteen largest parties convened assemblies every evening, and we would march over in little groups, spurred on by our teacher. We worked our way from the National Socialists through the Centrists and the Democrats to the Social Democrats and Communists, raising our arms in the Hitler salute with the Nazis and letting ourselves be addressed as ‘comrade’ by the Communists. That’s when I started my first diary, out of a desire to form my own opinion. For nine days, I believe, I faithfully wrote down the gist of what the speakers had said – along with my youthful rebuttals. On the tenth day I gave up, although my notebook still had many blank pages left. I couldn’t find my way out of the political undergrowth. It was the same for my friends. Each party, we felt, was partly right. But they all engaged in disreputable tactics – horse-trading, we called it – the haggling, the lobbying, the jostling for power. No party seemed dean. None stuck uncompromisingly to their principles. Today I think we probably should have founded a party of sixteen-year-olds just to satisfy our moral demands. Whatever grows older, grows dirtier.
Monday around noon we had a visitor. Not from the building and not from next door, but from distant Wilmersdorf, a district in the west of the city, two hours from here by foot. A girl named Frieda, whom the widow had heard of but never met.
