We took advantage of Herr R.’s absence for a little female gossip. Ilse is a worldly, discriminating woman, very stylish. She’s travelled all over the globe. So what’s her opinion of the Russian cavaliers?
‘Pathetic,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘No imagination whatsoever. Simple-minded and vulgar, every last one, from everything I’ve heard around the building. But perhaps you had better experiences with your officers.’
‘No, not in that regard.’
‘Maybe they have the latest in socialist planned economies, but when it comes to matters erotic they’re still with Adam and Eve. I told my husband that too, to cheer him up.’ Then she says with a wink, ‘with food so scarce a poor husband doesn’t count for much. Mine is already getting a complex about it; he thinks that the Red Army with all its ladykillers really has a chance with us women.’ We laughed and agreed that as normal suitors under normal conditions, ninety-nine out of a hundred of our worthy enemies wouldn’t have the slightest chance with us. At most this hundredth might be worth a try.
We gossiped that way for a while, taking our mocking revenge on everyone who had humiliated us.
The engineer really did bring some news back from the neighbour’s: evidently Berlin is to become an international city, for all the victors, and Leipzig will become the capital of the Russian areas. He also heard that Himmler has been caught. Still no confirmed news of Adolf. While Ilse seems very relaxed and manages to sneer at the recent state of affairs with ladylike superiority, her husband is dazed and distraught. His career has come to an end. They’re clearing out what’s left of his armaments factory. The Russians are hauling off the German machines. On my way over I saw several cargo trucks with huge wooden housings on top. Now I know what’s inside. Herr R. is afraid of social demotion, that he’ll have to start all over again as a labourer. He craves contact and news, worries about surviving, is frantically looking for some job where he can earn his bread once again. He’s applied at the hospital for something in central heating. He’s still stunned by the defeat. Once again it’s dear that the women are dealing with this better, we’re not so dizzy from the fall. Ilse and her husband are both learning Russian. Although reluctantly, he’s contemplating a move to Russia, since ‘they’ll be shipping all the means of production out of here’. He doesn’t believe that we Germans will be permitted to produce much worth mentioning in the foreseeable future; he also heard from the crystal-set neighbour that the whole country is to be converted into one great potato field. We’ll see.
Repeated goodbyes. After all, you never know when and whether you’ll see each other again. On my way back I dropped in on the widow’s shotgun-wed niece, the young mother-to-be, who’s living with her friend Frieda. She was lying on her back, looking very sweet, glowing from within. But her body was far too thin for her vaulted belly, which was literally jutting out. You can almost see the baby draining all the juices and all the strength from the mother’s body. Naturally no news of the father. He seems entirely forgotten amid the daily needs of finding food and fuel. Since there’s only one electric cooker in the apartment, which is useless at the moment, the girls have built a kind of brick oven on the balcony and feed it with laboriously gathered fir branches. It takes forever for them to cook their bit of gruel. Moreover, Frieda has to constantly tend the fire, fanning it and adding wood. The place smelled of resin, like at Christmas.
Then the long march back home. A poster in German and Russian proclaims the imminent opening of a ‘free market’. By whom? For whom? A ‘wall paper’ – a news-sheet posted on a wall – announces the new heads of the city – all unknown dignitaries, presumably repatriated Germans from Moscow Colourful troops of Italians stepping my way, singing, loaded down with trunks and bundles, evidently for the journey home. More bicyclists rattled past on bare rims. Schoneberg was more forlorn, and the ghost tunnel by the S-Balm was black and deserted. I was glad when it was behind me, when I saw the buildings on our block. I returned home as if from a big trip, and divvied up my news.
Tired feet, humid day. Now the evening brings rest and rain.
By six in the morning the widow was already up and moving about the apartment. She’d received a note from the building chairman the previous evening. (Building chairman is another new invention. In our building the role is being played by the husband of the woman from Hamburg.) The note, which was on a mimeographed scrap of paper, instructed the widow to report at the town hall at 8 a.m. for work, nothing more. ‘It would be nice if it turned out to be cutting asparagus,’ she mused, making our mouths water at the prospect of a tasty dinner.
