SUNDAY, 10 JUNE 1945
They’ve announced on the radio that the Russians are going to set up their military administration in Berlin after all, so that Russia will now stretch all the way to Bavaria, Hanover and Holstein; the English are supposed to get the Rhine and Ruhr, and Bavaria goes to the Americans. It’s a topsy-turvy world with our country all sliced up. We’ve had peace for a month now
A reflective morning, with music and sunshine, which I spent reading Rilke, Goethe, Hauptmann. The fact that they, too, are also German is some consolation, that they were of our kind.
At 1:30 p.m. I set off on a humid march through a Berlin that’s still silent and empty. In Charlottenburg we sat down again and planned. A new man has joined our group, a professional printer. He thinks obtaining paper shouldn’t be our first order of business, since anyone who has paper is going to hold onto it, and even hide it, for fear of confiscation. And if someone were willing to part with some, we have no way to pick it up or place to store it until we can start printing. At the moment our entire fleet consists of two bicycles – and that’s more than most firms. The printer thinks our primary task should be to acquire a licence from the authorities – an official allocation of printing paper. The engineer has already made the rounds of every conceivable German or Russian office and collected a lot of empty promises – he gave a rather depressing account. Only the Hungarian is bursting with optimism. He’s a sly dog, no doubt about it. I happened to mention a crate of framed photos that was still in the basement of my former firm, portraits of men who’d received the Knight’s Cross, that were intended to be handed out as prizes at some ceremony. His eyes grew bright and he immediately asked, ‘Pictures? With glass?’
‘Yes, all framed with glass.’
‘We’ll go and get the glass,’ he decreed. He’s found some potential office space, but like most spaces in Berlin, it has no windowpanes. As far as I’m concerned he can go ahead and break in. I’ll gladly act as a lookout. But my guess is that the crate has long since gone.
On my way home I dropped in on Gisela. Hertha was lying sick on the sofa again, but this time her face was no longer a glowing red – it was snow white. She’d had a miscarriage, Gisela told me. I didn’t ask any questions, just gave each of the girls one of the chocolates the Hungarian had given me on my way out, ‘as a thank-you for the good tip about the glass’. Filled mocha-beans, very tasty. It was nice to see the girls’ tense, bitter faces relax up when they tasted the sweet filling.
I told Gisela about our publishing plans, thinking that she could join us as soon as one of them becomes concrete. Gisela was sceptical. She can’t imagine that we’ll be able to print the kind of thing we want to, not here in Germany right now She thinks that they won’t allow anything that doesn’t follow the Moscow line, which isn’t her own. She’s too embarrassed to mention the word ‘God’ in front of me, but that was the gist of what she was saying. I’m convinced that she prays and that this gives her strength. She doesn’t have any more to eat than I do. She has deep circles under her eyes, but hers are lit up, whereas mine are simply bright. We can’t help each other now But the simple fact that I’m surrounded by other hungry people keeps me going.
MONDAY, 11 JUNE 1945
Another day to myself. I went to the police to try to get some kind of official permission to use the abandoned garden in the back of the burned-down house where Professor K., a dose colleague of mine used to live. I showed them a letter the old man had sent me from the Brandenburg Mark, where he had found refuge, asking me to look after his garden. I was sent from pillar to post. Nobody chimed to have the authority. Dingy cubbies with cardboard in the windows, musty smells, low-level bickering. Nothing has changed.
On the way home I picked my quota of nettles. I was very low on energy; my diet has no fat. There’s always this kind of wavy mist in front of my eyes, and I feel a floating sensation, as if I were getting lighter and lighter. Even writing this down takes effort, but at least it’s some consolation in my loneliness, a kind of conversation, a chance to pour my heart out. The widow told me she’s still having wild dreams of Russians. I haven’t had anything like that, probably because I’ve spewed everything onto paper.
My potato supply looks pretty grim. The rations they’ve given us have to last through to the end of July. We were forced to take them now, and anybody can smell the reason why: the tubers, which had just been dug out of the pit, are fermenting, so that half the potatoes are already a stinking mash. I can hardly stand the smell in the kitchen, but I’m afraid they’ll spoil even more quickly if I keep them on the balcony. What are we supposed to live on come July? What’s more, I’m worried about the gas stove. When there’s enough pressure in the gas line to use it, the pipes start banging like gunshots. And the electric cooker, patched up as it is, doesn’t want to run any more.
I have to guard the bread against myself. I’m already 100 grams into my next day’s ration – I can’t let that become a habit.
TUESDAY, 12 JUNE 1945
The automatic walking machine was back to Charlottenburg. No more joyrides on the S-Balm. Something went wrong after the first few runs and the trams are once again out of commission. We worked hard; now our designs and proposals must be submitted to all the various offices.
On the way I had a new experience. Bodies were being exhumed from a grassy lawn, to be reinterred in a cemetery. One corpse was already lying on top of all the debris – a long bundle wrapped in sailcloth and caked in loam. The man who was doing the digging, an older civilian, was wiping the sweat off with his shirt sleeves and fanning himself with his cap. It was the first time I had ever smelled a human corpse. The descriptions I’ve read always use the phrase ‘sweetish odour’, but that’s far too vague, completely inadequate. The fumes are not so much an odour as something firmer, something thicker, a soupy vapor that collects in front of your face and nostrils, too mouldy and thick to breathe. It beats you back as if with fists.
At the moment the whole city of Berlin is reeking. Typhus is going around, and hardly anyone has escaped dysentery – Herr Pauli was hard hit. I also heard that they came for the lady with eczema; apparently she’s been quarantined in a typhus-barracks. There are fields of rubbish all over, swarming with flies. Flies upon flies, blue-black and fat. Must be the life for them! Each bit of faeces is covered with a humming, swarming mass of black.
The widow heard a rumour that’s going around Berlin: ‘They’re making us starve as punishment because a few men from Operation Werewolf recently shot at some Russians.’ I don’t believe it. You hardly see any Russians at all in our district, so the werewolves wouldn’t have anyone to prey on. I have no idea where all the Ivans have disappeared to. The widow claims that one of the two drink-and-be-merry sisters who moved to our building – Anya with the cute little son – is still receiving Russian callers with packages. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. I can picture her lying across her sofa, her white throat slit.
[Scribbled in the margin at the end of June] Not Anya and not the throat, but a certain Inge, two buildings down, was found this morning with her skull bashed in, after a night of boozing with four unknown men, still at large. She was beaten with a beer bottle – empty, of course. Probably it wasn’t malice or even a lust for murder. More likely it just happened that way, perhaps after an argument over whose turn it was. Or maybe Inge laughed at her visitors. Russians are dangerous when drunk. They see red, fly into a rage against anyone and everyone else when provoked.