“See you soon, my love.”
The day was so beautiful we should have been leaving for a day in the country. I stood on the step for a long time, watching the outline of my beloved growing smaller and smaller, and finally disappearing for ever.
I will soon come back, Paula. But I never went back. I never saw Paula again, or Berlin, or Killeringstrasse, or the Neubachs…. Paula, we’ll be married, I swear it. But the war prevented me from keeping my word, and the peace made it lose all its value. France reminded me of that severely enough. So please forgive me, Paula. It wasn’t all my fault. You knew the misery of war too, and fear, and anguish. Perhaps — and I wish it with all my heart — perhaps you also were spared. That at least would allow us both to remember. The war destroyed Berlin, and Germany, and Killeringstrasse, and perhaps the Neubachs too, but not you, Paula… that would be too horrible. I have forgotten nothing. Whenever I close my eyes, I relive our marvelous moments, and hear once again the sound of your voice, and smell your skin, and feel your hand in mine….
5. TRAINING FOR AN ELITE DIVISION
I remained in the corridor of the crowded train, and quickly opened the little box Paula had given me as we parted. It contained two packs of cigarettes which I had given her from my father’s parcel. My father wasn’t a smoker, and must have collected those cigarettes on odd occasions, for years. Paula had added a short note, and her photograph. In her note, she said that she hoped the cigarettes would help me through some of the hard moments ahead. I must have read her words over at least ten times before tucking her letter and photograph into my pass book.
The train lurched forward. Everyone was wrapped in his private melancholy. I tried to find a relatively stable spot where I could press a piece of paper against the window frame and begin a letter to Paula, but some bastard from the Alpine Corps had to try and talk to me.
“So, leave’s over. Always too short, isn’t it? Mine’s over too. Now, back to the guns!”
I looked at him without answering. He was a pain in the neck.
“And with good weather like this things must be really rough out there. I can remember that very well from last summer. One day we…”
“Excuse me, Kamerad, but I’m writing a letter.”
“Ah. A girl, eh? Always girls. Well, don’t worry about it.”
I felt like sticking my bayonet into his stomach.
“There are such marvelous girls everywhere! I can remember in Austria once…”
Enraged, I turned my back on him, and tried to begin my letter, but the general uproar was too distracting, and I had to give up till later. I stood for a long time with my forehead pressed against the glass, staring with unseeing eyes at the countryside sliding past us. The carriage was full of raucous talk and laughter. Some of the men were trying to joke, to help themselves forget the hideous reality of a front which stretched from Murmansk to the Sea of Azov — a reality in which two million of them would lose their lives. The train moved slowly, making frequent stops. At every station, both soldiers and civilians got on and off, although most of the passengers were military, and bound for the East. We arrived at Poznan during the night, and I ran to the re-groupment center, where my pass had to be stamped before midnight. I thought that I would then go to the dormitory where I had slept for a few hours passing through the other way. The crush of the crowd at the military police office kept me from thinking of Paula. All the formalities were handled far more rapidly than on the way out, as if the double line of soldiers was moving forward to be devoured by a diabolic machine with the appetite of a giant. Inside of ten minutes, my expired pass had been initialed, stamped, and registered, and I was told to proceed to train number 50 for Korosten.
“Oh?” I was surprised.
“When does it leave?”
“In an hour and a half. You’ve got time.”
We would be traveling that night, then. I followed a group of soldiers who were walking along the wooden gallery toward train 50 — an interminable string of passenger and freight cars which would be crammed to the bursting point with soldiers.
I walked through the frantic din, looking for a more or less comfortable corner where I could settle myself and write my letter. Following the advice of my father, who considered the rear cars safest in case of derailment, I was thinking of one of the carriages with straw-covered floors at the back of the train. I pushed my way inside one of the cars, past five pairs of boots dangling from an open door.
“Welcome aboard, young fellow,” cried the landser already there. “Get set for Paradise.”
“Well, kid, coming with us to shoot some Russians?”
“Going back to shoot Russians, you mean.”
“Hell. The first time around, you must have still been in your diapers.”
Despite everything, we were able to laugh. Suddenly, in that sea of green cloth, I saw Lensen.
“Hey, Lensen! Over here!”
“I’ll be damned,” Lensen said, climbing over the fellows in the doorway.
“So you didn’t desert!”
“And you didn’t either!”
“It’s not the same for me, though. I’m Prussian. I’ve got nothing in common with you black-haired bastards from the other side of Berlin.”
“Good answer!” shouted one of the boys in the doorway. Lensen was laughing, but I knew that he had meant every word. “Look,” he said. “There’s another of our gang.”
“Where?”
“Over there — the big fellow who thinks he’s so tough.”
“Hals!”
I jumped down from the carriage. “Whoever quits the nest loses his nook,” someone shouted.
“Hey, Hals!” I was already running to meet him. I could see his face lighting up.
“Sajer! I was wondering how I’d ever find you in this mob.”
“Lensen saw you.”
“Is he here too?”
We turned back to the train. “Too late, boys. Full up.”
“That’s what you think!” shouted Hals, grabbing the legs of one of the kibitzers, and pulling him down onto the platform on his backside. Everybody laughed, and, with a jump, we were on board.
“Well, that’s fine,” said the fellow Hals had dislodged, rubbing his backside. “If this goes on, we’ll be jammed in here like frankfurters in a box, and there won’t be any room to sleep.”
“So it’s you, you bastard,” said Hals, giving me a long stare. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you for two solid weeks.”
“I’m really sorry… but when I tell you what happened…”
“You’d better make it good. It got so that I really didn’t know what to say to my parents.”
I gave my friend an account of my misadventures.
“Goddamn it,” Hals said. “They certainly fucked you up, didn’t they? If you’d only listened to me. We could have gone to Dortmund together. Plenty of alerts there too, of course, but the planes only passed over. You got it right in the neck.”
“Well, that’s life,” I answered, in a mock-melancholy tone.
In reality, of course, the experiences of my leave left no regrets. If I had gone straight home with Hals I would never have met Paula.
And Paula had been able to obliterate for me all the sights and sounds of Tempelhof’s blazing fires.