Meanwhile I was wilting in this demoralizing wait to get away. There was nothing I could do, except live in hope that someone would do me a favour. For the present, I was accommodated in the officers’ hotel – a vast building with wide corridors and spacious rooms which, until recently, had been an almshouse. Where were the old ladies who had inhabited it living now?
In the room I had been allocated there were traces of its recent occupant: under a glass dome was a little ivory church with a crucifix in it, crosses on a rosary made of mother-of-pearl or wooden beads. Soon these objects of devotion were joined by a prominently displayed white enamel colander. It belonged to Tanya, the girl now sharing with me. I was leaving but she had just arrived in Germany, having served the whole war in the army, but seeing it through to the end in the USSR.
Her large, happy, hospitable family had all been killed in Stalingrad, with the exception of her mother, who lived on among the ashes, a prey to deprivation and loneliness. Tanya, womanly and gentle, was full of positive feelings about life and of constructive intentions. Once she had a job in Germany she intended to bring her mother over. She wanted to have children and, to that end, to marry a good man, never doubting that she would soon meet one here. The colander, purchased or otherwise acquired, was the first step in realizing that life, and the therapeutic news about it flew by mail back to Stalingrad to her mother who had lost everyone and everything, including her kitchen utensils that were completely irreplaceable in our devastated country, and in the midst of which she had spent her life, taking care of her family. Tanya had nothing other than the colander to show for the present, but she had made a start. Her calmness, her warmth, her very basic human aspirations and attractive, womanly appearance made it easy to like her.
There she was, waiting to be appointed to a job, while I was waiting to be sent home, and neither of us had anything to do. We walked through the outskirts of Potsdam in the warm autumn haze of the lakes. How still it was here, and beautiful. The German gardens were preparing for their winter rest: we had no inkling on those walks of the terrible winter about to befall the Germans in their unheated homes.
Living in Potsdam at that moment, I knew nothing of Cecilienhof, where just over two months previously a conference of the Allies had taken place. I knew nothing of the Garrison Church to which, when he came to power, Hitler immediately repaired, wearing a tailcoat, to pose for journalists at the grave of Frederick the Great. I did not even know about Sanssouci, the palace of that emperor in Potsdam, which had suffered during the war. If I had, I would in any case have had no interest in it, because the only thing I wanted was to go home. That gentle, healing autumn, Tanya and I wandered by the shores of the lakes, in the park, along the streets past the hedges in front of the houses, and a sense of joie de vivre was born in my heart. It was not that keen, animal sense of being alive that could transfix you for a moment at the front, but a different, quiet feeling, consoling, lifeaffirming.
We did not stray far from headquarters, and one day I was sent for to report immediately to the aerodrome. I cannot remember now who the kind person was who had taken the trouble to help me. Perhaps it was just the headquarters commandant, for whom I was a burden. It is a pity, though, that I do not remember. It can have been no simple matter to get me a place on Marshal Zhukov’s cargo plane. It was going to take off even though it was not ‘flying’ weather and Moscow would not give permission for it to land. The aerodrome there was closed because of the bad weather.
In order not to overload what was, after all, a cargo aircraft, I was ordered to, and did without regret, leave behind the radio receiver, the official ‘valuable parting gift’ awarded me by my military unit. A car hastily transported me, and Tanya who came to see me off, to the aerodrome. It was a gloomy, overcast day. A few sturdy, surly chaps in leather coats, Zhukov’s aircrew, were standing by the plane. In Poznań Zhukov’s aircrew had often dropped in to have tea or a meal with us, but theirs had not been a cargo plane. These were pilots I did not know. One of them silently jabbed a finger at the leather case hanging from a strap over my shoulder with a complete set of Vertinsky’s records, an unofficial gift when the radio centre was dismantled. ‘The aircraft is already overloaded,’ the others chimed in. I obediently took it off and transferred the strap to Tanya’s shoulder, rescuing only my favourite record.
Whether they were genuinely concerned about overloading the plane, or whether they just thought it was bad luck to have a woman on board, especially in bad weather, I do not know. Perhaps they hoped that, reluctant to part with my booty, I would refuse to fly. At all events, if they were wanting to get rid of this unwelcome passenger, they may have had a point, because I was to give them a hard time on the flight. Then, though, I had no such thoughts in my head and just wanted to make sure they took me with them. My cardboard suitcase, my rucksack, and the box with the doll presented to me by the Italians in the already far-off days of May were grudgingly lifted into the plane. I said goodbye to Tanya and, through her, to everything that had happened or would happen here. I had nobody else to say goodbye to as I bade what I thankfully supposed to be my last farewell to Germany.
It was the first time in my life I had been in a plane. The propellers thundered and I never noticed the aircraft leaving the ground. I was immediately distracted and captivated by the indescribable sight of Berlin beneath us. However devastated it might have appeared from the ground, from above this vast, immense, dead city was a truly monstrous sight. Blackened grey hulks of city blocks, buildings that looked like opened boxes. Our allies’ air forces had bombed the city night and day, systematically wrecking building after building, and appeared to have contrived to drop a bomb in every last one.
And then Berlin, which a moment before had been so close beneath us, was out of sight. The plane gained altitude and the ground, disappearing from under my feet, suddenly lurched towards me. I do not know what that was or how to convey it. It felt as if the force of gravity had suddenly caught up with an inept runaway. I was plunged into a depth of despair such as I had never experienced during the war. I can’t do this, I can’t! Throw me out, let me get back down to the ground!
The Douglas cargo aircraft had two bench-like metal seats solidly attached opposite each other to the sides of the aircraft. Not including me, there were four passengers, all pilots. They took off their leather coats, turned a suitcase on its end, and were soon furiously playing cards. The plane was empty: there was no cargo. The light cardboard box with my doll in it skated up and down its empty floor. I didn’t care. There I was, all my insignia jangling, with my officer’s belt and shoulder straps, as helpless as a kitten and very miserable. The airmen solicitously laid me on an iron bench, magnanimously spread their coats under me and assured me I would feel better lying down.
And no doubt I should have felt better, lying behind their calm, warm backs, but we were tossed around the sky, jerked sideways, and fell precipitously down into some celestial underworld. It was, after all, not flying weather and the aerodrome in Moscow had been closed for a reason. But no prohibitions or weather forecasts deter the aircrews of Marshal Zhukov who was, for some reason, returning them urgently to Moscow. And so I came, however remotely, into contact of a sort with the commander-in-chief who, by commanding them to fly, enabled me to be taken along with them. I little dreamed at the time that I would meet the marshal himself twenty years on. That, too, would be in autumn.