Berlin: A Novel

Jutta gave him Jochen's old track suit and stuffed the uniform into the stove that provided central heating for the whole floor. 'What will you do?'

'Try getting through to the west as a French labourer. I got the papers from a real Frenchman, or rather from what little they'd left of him.'

'Suppose you're caught?'

'Open your fingers.' He dropped a small capsule on the palm of Jutta's hand. 'Bite the glass and pray,' he told her. 'Cyanide takes direct effect on the mucous membranes. It's all over within fifteen seconds. I must get going as soon as it's dark. Will you take the old woman down when it gets light again? Those brutes have nailed her to the church door.'

At dawn they laid the wrinkled old body on the altar: Jutta, Frau Reiche and young Frau Kolbe, whose husband had long ago run for it. 'How often?' Frau Reiche asked the young woman. 'Five times,' was the indifferent answer.

'Let's say a prayer,' Jutta suggested, 'and then we'll put her in the bomb crater behind the sacristy. And then for heaven's sake let's get home before those bastards wake up.' After praying, they put the dead woman in the crater and loosened the soil from around the edge. It soon mercifully covered the abused body. One by one, they left the church.

A new day, thought Jutta. Perhaps my last. She clutched the little capsule in her pocket.

There were splashes of blood on Dr Liselotte Dorn's white coat. 'You'll have to forgive me, but my household help hanged herself after the fifteenth liberator. and I don't have time to do any washing. My card index is up the spout too. It's Frau Weber, isn't it? Don't you come once a year for a check-up?'

'Yes. Jutta Weber, 47 Wilskistrasse. Another tenant in the building was very helpful, she gave me a douche, but I'm afraid it didn't work.'

'In the sixth or seventh week, right? You're the fourth this morning. Most of them in their sixth or seventh week. I was spared — seems they respect a doctor in Russia too.'

There was a view from the surgery window of the flowers in the garden and further away of the Fischtal park, cheerful in the summer weather, where a couple of Russian soldiers were flirting with their girls. Marshal Zhukov had withdrawn the bestial rapists and murderers of the early days, replacing them with slightly more civilized troops. It was safe to venture out again.

'Place your legs there.' The doctor strapped Jutta's knees into the supports. 'Just so that you don't get in my way. I have no anaesthetic for you.'

'The first two Russkis didn't have any for me either.' The dry scraping of the curette in her uterus went through her body like fire. It hurt horribly.

And the third?' Dr Dorn spoke in a conversational tone as she withdrew the sharp instrument from inside Jutta and introduced the next size up.

'My third was a clean, well-shaved sergeant. One of the better sort: Talking helped with the pain. 'He dragged me into Lehmann the butcher's cellar. He had whips, knives and other pretty things ready there. I had to undress. He wanted to tie me up to a hook with my hands above my head. Will it take much longer?'

'We're on number six.' The doctor turned the curette back and fourth. 'Number eight is the last.'

Jutta was breathing hard. The pain was almost unbearable. She forced herself to go on talking. 'There was only one way to stop him.' She screamed.

'Number seven,' said Dr Dorn in a matter-of-fact voice. 'So how did you do that?'

'I did it to him with my mouth — that kept him quiet. Then I pulled him down to me. He thought I was going to get astride him. I stroked his cheek. I had the capsule in my hand, and I rammed it up his nostril and hit it with my fist to make it break. The colonel was right. The mucous membranes of his nose absorbed the poison at once, and in fifteen seconds he was dead. The longest fifteen seconds of my life.'

'Finished.' The doctor straightened up. 'You were very brave.'

Jutta laughed bitterly. Aren't we all?'

'The bleeding should stop in a few hours' time. If it doesn't, please come straight back here. And by the way — in a few days' time we'll have the Western powers in the city too. The Yanks, the British and the French are each getting a part of Berlin as what they call an occupied sector. I heard it on the radio.'

'That's the best news in a long time,' said Jutta in English.

'You know English?'

'It was one of my husband's subjects. He taught at the Arndt Gymnasium. We spoke it once a week at home.'

'I just hope they'll bring us medicaments.'

'We have the water back on already, and sometimes the power too. I'll wash some of your white coats for you. And thank you very much, doctor.'

On the first Thursday in July 1945, the armoured reconnaissance vehicles of the 1st US Airborne Division rolled from the Brandenburg Gate over Hitler's East-West Axis through the devastated Tiergarten, and symbolically took possession of its sector of the city. Few Berliners watched the spectacle. They had seen more than enough military marches and parades. In the Onkel Toms Hiitte district the new masters made their presence felt with surveying troops who drove around fast in jeeps making marks everywhere, no one knew what for.

Jutta kept her windows open all day and gave the apartment a thorough clean. The old Protos vacuum cleaner howled, there was still a little Vim scouring powder for the kitchen, and Frau Reiche's green, soft soap took care of the rest. Copies of the Volkische Beobachter containing reports of the heroic battle for Berlin were no longer the latest news, but the newsprint was excellent for cleaning windows. A couple of Red Army soldiers had drunk the last of her methylated spirits. The apartment and its furnishings were as good as intact. More than half the window panes were still there, or only cracked. She neatly stopped up the others with cardboard and painted it white. She had found a pot of paint in the cellar.

Airing, cleaning and painting were an act of liberation. You could breathe again and make plans at last. It was true that public transport was only sporadic. 'But I'll make it to Kopenick somehow,' she said with optimism.

'Do you really want to go there? Kopenick is in the Russian sector.' Frau Reiche was chewing something with concentration.

'I absolutely have to see my parents. I can't phone them now. What's that you're eating?'

'Peppermint-flavoured chewing gum. Would you like a piece? A Yank gave me a packet, nice man. Showed me pictures of his family. His name's Sergeant Backols, he said. Took me a while to work out that that's how the Americans say Buchholz. His grandfather was from Konigswusterhausen.'

Jutta tried the chewing gum. The flavour was refreshing, but the gum wasn't really satisfying because you couldn't eat it. She switched on the People's Radio and turned the tuner. Lively swing came from the loudspeaker. 'This is AFN Berlin, the American Forces Network,' said the announcer. And now "Frolic at Five" with George Houdac.'

Goodbye Otto Dobrindt, Jutta thought with satisfaction.

She went down to the shopping street. In the first few days hordes of Reds, dead drunk, had kicked in the doors and looted the interiors of the shops. Now that things had calmed down some of the owners were beginning to clear up. Thomas the watchmaker was putting a few old alarm clocks in his broken window. 'Just so it won't look so empty.' Frowein and his wife were scrubbing their shelves. 'Looking forward to the first bananas,' joked the greengrocer.

Jutta had been here only once since the end of the war, to secure the bookshop door with a padlock and chain. In spite of her efforts, many books had been torn from the shelves, but most were still in good condition. She set about sorting them out.

'You can save yourself the trouble.' A man with a hat and briefcase came in, followed by two American officers. 'Wacker, District Office,' he introduced himself.

The older officer said a polite good day. The younger man, a lieutenant, looked Jutta up and down and whistled appreciatively. 'Hello, Fraulein, wie geht's?' he asked. How's things? It was obviously the only German sentence he knew.