A Woman in Berlin полностью

At last I was sitting in the office of the commandant, the present lord and master of at least a hundred thousand souls. A small, slender man, very much spit-and-polish, pale blond, with a conspicuously quiet manner of speaking. Russian is his only language, but he has an interpreter at his side, a bespectacled woman in a checked dress – not a soldier. Fast as the wind she rattles away in German and Russian – translating between the commandment and a sharp-nosed woman, the owner of a café. The woman wants to reopen? Excellent, she should go ahead and do so. What does she need? Flour, sugar, fat, sausage. Hmm, hmm. What does she have? Coffee substitute? Good, she should serve that along with a little music, if possible, perhaps set up a gramophone – the goal is for life to return to normal very soon. The commandment promises that she should have power back tomorrow, along with the rest of her street. The interpreter summons a man from the next room, most likely an electrical engineer; he brings in some blueprints and shows the commandant how power is being restored in the district. I crane my neck to look, but our block isn’t there.

More petitioners follow. A man in blue overalls asks if he can take home a horse that’s lying lame and bleeding in the park, to nurse it back to health. Please, go ahead – as long as he knows something about horses. I’m secretly amazed that the horse hasn’t been cut up into pot-sized pieces by now Or have we seen the last of those days, when animals were slaughtered right where they fell? It’s astonishing to see all these people suddenly so fixated on obtaining permits just so they can cover their backs for anything they want to do. ‘Commandant’ is clearly the word of the day.

A factory owner comes in with two stenotypists to register his small business, a stovepipe plant, temporarily closed due to lack of material. Bud’et,’ says the commandant – ‘It will be’ – a magic Russian formula that the interpreter consolingly translates as, ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be new material coming in soon.’ Well, bud’et is definitely one of the words I can manage, along with the second magic formula, ‘zavtra’ – tomorrow.

Next come two men, apparently managers of a chocolate factory. They’ve brought along their own interpreter, someone at the same level as me; the man must have spent time in Russia as a soldier working there. Chocolate is still a long way off, of course, but the men want to bring some rye flour from a warehouse outside town and use it to make noodles. Go ahead! The commandant promises them a truck for ‘zavtra’.

The atmosphere is very matter-of-fact – no stamps and very few papers. The commandant works with small scribbled notes. I’m all eyes and ears watching the authorities in action; it’s fun and exciting to observe.

Finally it’s my turn. I jump right in and brazenly confess the obvious, namely that my Russian isn’t up to the complex task of interpretation. In a friendly way he asks where I learned Russian, what I studied. Then he says he’s sure that in the foreseeable future there’ll be a need for people trained in drawing and photography, that I should wait. That’s fine with me.

Meanwhile two Russians have come in, boots gleaming, their freshly pressed uniforms richly decorated. Being washed and groomed is a mark of kultura for them, a sign of a higher level of humanity. I still remember all the posters I saw hanging in offices and trams throughout Moscow: ‘Wash your face and hands every day, and your hair at least once a month’ with cute little illustrations of splashing and blowing and rinsing in washbasins. A religion of cleanliness. Polished boots are also part of the same kultura, so I’m not surprised by how eager the men are to shine them up whenever possible.

The two men whisper with the commandant. Finally he turns to me and asks whether I could accompany Sub lieutenant So-and-so (Ch-ch-ch… this time the name was clearly stated but I immediately forgot it) as an interpreter while he makes his rounds – he’s been assigned to inspect the banks in the district. That’s fine with me as well. I’m happy to do anything that isn’t fetching water or scavenging for wood.

So I traipse through the Berlin streets alongside the swarthy, good-looking officer. He talks to me slowly, careful to pronounce every word distinctly, the way you do with foreigners who barely speak your language, and explains that we first have to call on the district mayor, a German, to request a list of the various banks’ branch offices.