In the park we rested on a bench. A young woman sitting next to us was taking a walk with two small boys. A Russian came by and waved his inevitable companion over, saying to him in Russian, ‘Come here, there are some children. They’re the only ones you can talk to in this place.’ The mother glanced at us, anxious, and shrugged her shoulders. Sure enough a conversation developed between the men and the two little boys, whom the soldiers took on their knees and bounced to a Russian song.
Then one of the soldiers turned to me and said in the friendliest tone in the world, in Russian, ‘It’s all the same who sleeps with you. A cock’s a cock.’ (I’d learned that expression in all its country-boy crudeness from Anatol.) I had to strain to keep up my act of not understanding what he was saying – since that’s what he was counting on. So I just smiled, which made the two men roar with laughter. As you please!
Home with tired feet. Herr Pauli had posted himself in an armchair next to the window and was keeping an eye out for us. He refused to believe that in three hours of trekking about we’d run into only a few wandering Russians. He had imagined the centre of town would be abuzz with troops. After the fact we were surprised ourselves, and wondered where all the victors might have gone. We gulped down the dean air of our corner, still shuddering at the thought of the dusty wasteland in Schöneberg.
I’m having a hard time falling asleep. Grim thoughts. A sad day.
Housework. We soaked our laundry, peeled the last potatoes from our kitchen stores. Fräulein Behn brought us our new ration cards, printed in German and Russian on newsprint. There’s one type for adults and one for children under fourteen.
I have my card right here beside me and am making a note of the daily ration: 200 grams of bread, 400 grams of potatoes, 10 grams of sugar, 10 grams of salt, 2 grams of coffee substitute, 25 grams of meat. No fats. If they really give us all that it will be quite something. I’m amazed even this much order has been brought out of the chaos.
When I saw a queue in front of the greengrocer’s I took my place and used our coupons to get some beetroot and dried potatoes. You hear the same talk in the queue as at the pump: everyone is now turning their backs on Adolf, no one was ever a supporter. Everyone was persecuted, and no one denounced anyone else.
What about me? Was I for… or against? What’s clear is that I was there, that I breathed what was in the air, and it affected all of us even if we didn’t want it to. Paris proved that to me, or rather a young student I met in the Jardin du Luxembourg three years after Hitler came to power. We had taken shelter from a sudden shower under a tree. We spoke French, and recognized right away that it was a foreign language for both of us. Then we had fun bantering back and forth guessing where the other was from. My hair led him to place me as a Swede, while I pegged him as a Monegasque – I’d just learned what citizens of Monaco are called and found the name amusing.
The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. We set off, and I gave a little skip so I would be walking in step with him. He stopped and proclaimed, ‘
So much for fun and banter. For then the young man introduced himself, not as a Monegasque, but as a Dutchman and a Jew. And that was the end of our conversation. We went our separate ways at the next fork in the path. The experience left a bitter taste. I brooded over it for a long time.
I realized it had been ages since I heard about Herr and Frau Golz, my neighbours from my earlier building that burned down, who used to be faithful party followers. I went the few buildings’ distance to find out. It took forever before their neighbours finally cracked open the door, keeping it on the chain, and told me that Herr and Frau Golz had stolen away unnoticed, and how that was a good thing since some Russians had been by looking for him. Evidently he’d been denounced.
