Thereby hangs a tale, which begins with the widow’s nephew who was a medical student once upon a time. One night he was assigned to air-raid duty at his university. A young female medical student was assigned as well, and their joint watch produced a pregnancy and a shotgun wedding. The bride was nineteen and the groom twenty-one. Then the war machine snatched him and sent him off to the front, and no one knows where he is. His wife, however, who is now in her eighth month, moved in with a girlfriend, the Frieda now sitting on our kitchen chair and bringing us news from the outside world.
The widow’s first question: And you, did they also…?’
No, Frieda is still unscathed – well, not entirely: some Russian pushed her against the wall of the basement, but had to run off and fight so he couldn’t take his full pleasure. It seems the soldiers reached the block where the two girls are living shortly before the surrender, and galloped through without setting up camp. The expectant mother had tapped her belly and said, ‘Baby’ and they didn’t touch her.
Frieda delivers her report and turns to us with blank, shiny eyes. I know that look, I saw it far too often in my mirror, back when I was living off nettles and porridge. And that’s the predicament the two women are in now, which is why Frieda took it upon herself to make the long, arduous journey here, through streets she says were completely silent and deserted. She asks if she could have some food for the widow’s niece by marriage and the child who is on the way. She tells us that the young woman spends the whole day flat on her back and gets dizzy at the slightest attempt to stand up. A nurse who looks after her occasionally explained that when a mother isn’t getting proper nourishment, the foetus sponges off her body’s calcium and blood and muscle tissue.
Together the widow and I look for what we feel we can give: some of the major’s butter and sugar, a tin of milk, a loaf of bread, a piece of bacon. Frieda is ecstatic. She herself looks pitiful, her legs are like sticks and her knees jut out like gnarled bumps. Even so, she’s quite cheerful and not afraid of the two-hour trip home. For our part, we’re happy to have this envoy from the distant district. We ask her to describe in detail the route she took, to tell us what she saw. We pet her and beam at this calflike, half-starved eighteen-year-old, who mentions that she once wanted to teach gymnastics. Well, there won’t be much demand for that any more, not here, not for the foreseeable future – people are happy not to have to make any extraneous movements – or at least the others are, the people going hungry. Right now this doesn’t apply to me, I still have my strength. The widow hits a sore point when she suggests to Frieda, ‘Well, my child, couldn’t you find some halfway nice Russian and give him a pretty smile? So that he’d bring you girls a little something to eat?’
Frieda gives a smile, a little foolishly, and says that there are hardly any Russians left on her block, otherwise… And she packs up the presents and stashes them in the shopping bag she brought along.
Her visit really bucks us up. So we’re not entirely cut off from the world – we, too, could risk hiking across town to see friends and acquaintances. Since Frieda came we’ve been planning and scheming, wondering whether we should take our chances. Herr Pauli is against the idea. He sees us both being nabbed and sent off somewhere to do forced labour, possibly to Siberia. We think of Frieda, who managed to do it, and keep on planning.
It’s late afternoon as I write this and I’ve just returned from my first big trip. It came about very unexpectedly. I was sitting at the window seat, even though you hardly see anyone on the street now except Russians and people getting water. And lo and behold, a Russian comes bicycling right up to our door – it’s the major.
I race downstairs. He has a sparkling new German man’s bicycle. I beg and plead: ‘Could I take it for a ride? Just for five minutes?’ The major stands on the kerb, shakes his head. He’s not sure what to do, he’s afraid that someone might steal the bike from me. At last I persuade him.
Sunshine. The weather turns warm in the twinkling of an eye. I pedal as fast as I can. The wind roars in my ears. I’m speeding because it makes me happy, after being so miserably cooped up all the time – and also because I want to prevent anyone stealing the bike. I race past blackened ruins. In this part of town the war ended one day earlier than where we are. You can see civilians sweeping the streets. Two women are pushing and pulling a mobile operating unit, probably recovered from the rubble sterile lamps ablaze. An old woman is lying on top under a woollen blanket, her face is white, but she’s still alive.
