What to do? There’s no water. The superheated air was blasting out of the basement like a searing wind, exactly as during the night-time air raids, which is why no one got very excited. ‘Smother it,’ people said. ‘Let’s cover it with rubble.’ In no time we’d formed two chains. People passed chunks of stone from hand to hand, and the last person tossed them into the flames. Someone called out to hurry, it was already nine, and all civilians had to be off the streets by ten.
A few figures rolled a barrel of liquid over from somewhere; we used buckets to scoop out the smelly stuff. In passing me a bucket, one woman accidentally hit my temple with the metal rim. My head spinning, I staggered over to a mound of stone on the grass across from me, the circular patch with all the graves, and sat down. A woman sat down next to me and told me in a monotone that ‘the people under here’ were an officer and his wife who took cyanide. I knew that already, but I let her talk. ‘No coffin, nothing,’ she said. ‘They were simply wrapped in blackout paper tied up with string. They didn’t even have sheets on their beds. They’d just been relocated here when their own place was bombed.’ But they must have had the poison ready.
I felt dizzy I could literally feel the bruise swelling on my forehead. The fire was soon contained and smothered. I joined a group of people and, at first, couldn’t understand why they were cursing owner of the delicatessen in the ruined building. Then I learned the man had left some of his wine stores in the basement, which was partially intact. The Russians discovered the alcohol, or perhaps I should say they sniffed it out, and cleared it off the shelves, candles in hand. By accident a spark must have landed in some of the straw used for wrapping the bottles and that eventually led to the fire. According to one witness: ‘The boys were lying dead drunk in the gutter. With my own eyes I saw one of them who was still able to stand in his boots go down the row pulling watches off his comrades’ arms.’ General laughter.
Now I’m lying in bed, writing, cooling my bruise. For tomorrow we’re planning a trip all the way across Berlin to the Schöneberg district.
The morning went by with housework, breaking wood, fetching water. The widow soaked her feet in water with baking soda after trying out various hairstyles to find the one that shows as little grey as possible. Finally at 3 p.m. we were ready to set off on our first tour of the conquered city.
Poor words, you do not suffice.
We clambered past the cemetery in the Hasenheide park – long, uniform rows of graves in the yellow sand from the last big air raid in March. The summer sun was scorching. The park itself was desolate. Our own troops had felled all the trees to have a clear field for shooting. The ground was scored with trenches strewn with rags, bottles, cans, wires, ammunition. Two Russians were sitting beside a girl on a bench. It’s rare to see one on his own; they probably feel safer in twos. We went on, through what were once heavily populated working-class streets. Now they seem so mute, the houses locked up and shut off from the world – you would think the ten thousand people who lived there had emigrated or were dead. No sound of man or beast, no car, radio or tram. Nothing but an oppressive silence broken only by our footsteps. If there are people inside the buildings watching us, they are doing so in secret. We don’t see any faces at the windows.
Onward to the edge of the Schöneberg district. We’ll soon find out whether we can continue, whether any of the bridges leading west over the S-Bahn survived intact. Some of the buildings have red flags, the first we’ve seen. Actually they’re more like flaglets, evidently cut from old Nazi flags
All along the way we see debris left by the troops: gutted cars, burned-out tanks, battered gun-carriages. Occasional posters in Russian celebrating May Day, Stalin, the victory. Here, too, there are scarcely any people. Now and then some pitiful creature darts by – a man in shirt sleeves, a woman with dishevelled hair. No one pays us much attention. A woman passes us, barefoot and bedraggled. She answers our question – ‘Yes, the bridge is still there’ – and hurries away. Barefoot? In Berlin? I’ve never seen a woman in that condition before. The bridge is still blocked by a barricade of rubble; my heart is pounding as we slip through a gap.
