Late in the afternoon someone knocked on our door, calling for me. I was amazed to see one of the figures, now practically forgotten, from our basement-past: Siegismund, believer in victory, who’d heard from somewhere that I had connections to ‘higher Russians’. He wanted to know if it was true that all former party members had to report voluntarily for work or else risk being lined up against a wall and shot. There are so many rumours flying about, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. I told him that I didn’t know anything and didn’t think anything like that was planned, that he should wait and see. It was almost impossible to recognize the man. His pants were billowing loosely around his emaciated body, his whole person looked miserable and crumpled. The widow gave him a sermon about the dangers of fellow-travelling, how he surely sees for himself what that can lead to. Siegismund – I still don’t know his real name – swallowed it all meekly, then asked for a piece of bread. And he was given one, too, which caused a family row as soon as he left. Herr Pauli fumed and shouted that it was outrageous for the widow to give that man something – after all, he was responsible for the whole mess, and the worse off he was now, the better, they ought to lock him up and take away his ration cards. (Pauli himself was always against; he has a contrary character – dissenting, negating, a Mephistophelian ‘spirit that always denies’. From what I’ve seen there’s nothing on earth he’s in complete and unreserved agreement with.) At any rate no one wants to hear another word about Siegismund and the man, he doesn’t dare show himself in the house. Everyone would give him a tongue-lashing; no one wants to have anything to do with him, especially not those in the same boat. He must find it all bleak as well as baffling. I also gave him a piece of my mind, which bothers me right now Does that mean that I, too, am following the mob? From ‘Hosanna!’ to ‘Crucify him!’ – the eternal refrain.
Half an hour ago, in the evening twilight, sudden shots. Far off, a woman’s scream. We didn’t even look out of the window. What for? But reminders like that aren’t a bad thing – they keep us alert.
This morning the entire community of tenants – as we are again officially called – gathered in the back garden, which I had at one point pictured as a cemetery. We were there to dig, all right, but only a pit for the building’s garbage, which was towering over the bins. People were eager to work and had funny things to say. Everyone felt relieved, happy to be able to do something useful. It’s so strange that no one has to go ‘to work’ any more, that we’re all on a kind of leave, that the married couples are with each other from dawn to dusk.
After that I mopped the living room, scrubbed away all the Russian spittle and boot polish and swept the last crumbs of horse manure off the floor. That left me good and hungry. We still have peas and flour. The widow has rendered what she could from the rancid leftovers of Herr Pauli’s Volkssturmbutter and uses it as fat.
The apartment was sparkling when our guests arrived from Schönberg. They’d come together, even though Gisela had never met the widow’s friends. All three were cleaned up, neatly dressed and their hair nicely done. They took the same route we did and saw the same thing – that is hardly anyone except the occasional Russian, only silence and desolation. We showed them lavish hospitality: thin coffee and bread with a little fat for all of them!
I took Gisela into the living room for a chat. I wanted to know what she was thinking of doing. Her predictions were dire. She sees her world, the western world steeped in art and culture, as disappearing – and it’s the only world she finds worthy. She feels she’s too tired to start all over. She doesn’t think that a discriminating individual will have any room to breathe, let alone do any kind of intellectual work. No, she’s not thinking of taking Veronal or some other poison. She intends to stick it out, even if she has little courage and less joy. She spoke of trying to find ‘the divine’ within her soul, wanting to be reconciled with her innermost self and finding salvation there. She’s undernourished, has dark shadows under her eyes, and will have to go on being hungry, along with the two girls she’s taken in, whom I think she’s feeding out of her own portion. Her small store of peas and beans and oats was stolen from of her basement – by Germans, before the Russians invaded.
