WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 1945
Once again it’s evening, and the walking machine has come back home. The rain is streaming down outside, and inside – oh joy! – the water is streaming from the tap in my apartment. I fill the bath and shower myself with water. No more lugging those heavy buckets up the stairs.
Another day hard at work. I went with the Hungarian to look into renting office space. Our first stop was the Rathaus, where he obtained some official papers, stamps and signatures that are meant to authorize his plans and attest to his clean record. There were a number of amazing characters there, types you haven’t seen for years, people who’ve been staying out of sight and are now crawling out of the woodwork everywhere you look. I saw young male dancers, a Jewish woman who’d gone underground and was talking about her nose operation, an older man with a bright red Assyrian’ beard who was a painter of ‘degenerate’ art.
After a cup of real coffee, use and her husband had a heated discussion about whether he should accept a job in Moscow They’re offering him a high-level position, good pay. But use is dead set against it, if for no other reason than he would have to make the move by himself at first. He doesn’t want to go either. He’d prefer to keep breathing western air, our publishing plans have helped him take heart and he’s hoping to get back in the usual boys’ game of money and power and big cars.
Today the Allies are conducting negotiations. The radio is spitting speeches, brimming with the tributes our ex-enemies are paying one another. All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their whims. I can’t change any of that; I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky. And maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing’s for sure: my life has certainly been full – all too full!
THURSDAY, 7 JUNE 1945
Today the walking machine had the day off. I got up early to queue at the greengrocer’s for some pickled pumpkin. Unfortunately the stuff proved too briny for me to get down. Luckily I got two bunches of dried vegetables – known as ‘shredded wire’ – and a bag of dried potatoes. On top of that I picked a handbagful of nettles in the gardens outside the ruined buildings, elegantly plucking them using the fishnet gloves I saved from my air-raid gear. I devoured them greedily, even drinking the greenish stock I’d boiled them in, and felt properly refreshed.
After that I calculated that my period was over two weeks late, so I strode seven buildings down to where a woman doctor had hung her signboard, though I’d never seen her before and didn’t even know if she had started practising again. Once inside I met a blonde woman, not much older than me, who received me in a wind-battered room. She’d replaced the windowpanes with old X-rays of unidentified chests. She refused to engage in small talk and got right down to business. ‘No,’ she said, after examining me. ‘I don’t see anything. Everything’s all right.’
‘But I’m so late. I’ve never had that before.’
Do you have any idea how many women are experiencing the same thing? Including me. We’re not getting enough to eat, so the body saves energy by not menstruating. You better see that you get a little meat on your bones. Then your cycle will get back to normal.’
She asked for 10 marks, and I handed them to her. But I felt bad – after all, what could she do with that? After we were through I risked asking whether there were indeed lots of women who’d been raped by the Russians and were now pregnant and coming and asking her for help.
‘It’s better not to speak of such things,’ she said curtly, showing me out.
A quiet evening, all to myself. Gusts of wind are sweeping through the empty window frames, swirling dust into the room. Where can I possibly go if the real tenant shows up one day? What’s certain is that, if I hadn’t been here, the apartment would long since have been cleared out by the roofers and various other fellow citizens. When it comes to heating, other people’s furniture burns better than your own.
FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 1945
The walking machine is back at it. An amazing event today: a section of the S-Balm has resumed operations on a trial basis. I saw the red and yellow cars up on the track, climbed the stairs, paid two old groschen for a ticket and got on board. The passengers were sitting on the benches, with an air of ceremony – two of them immediately moved closer together so I could squeeze in. Then we went hurtling through the sunny wasteland of the city, while all the endless, tedious minutes I had spent marching flew by the window. I was sorry I had to get out as soon as I did. The ride was so nice, a real gift.
I put in a lot of work. Ilse and I sketched out the first number of our planned women’s magazine. We still haven’t decided on a name for it, so we put our heads together on that. Each periodical definitely has to contain the word ‘new’.
The day was strangely dreamlike; people and things appeared as if behind a veil. I walked back home on sore feet, listless from hunger. All we had to eat at Ilse’s was more pea soup – two ladlefuls apiece, since we’re trying to make the supplies last. It seemed to me that every person I passed had hollow, hungry eyes. Tomorrow I’m planning to go and pick some more nettles. I kept my eyes peeled for every spot of green along the way.
Everywhere you turn you can sense the fear. People are worried about their bread, their work, their pay, about the coming day. Bitter, bitter defeat.
SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 1945
Day off for me. We agreed that for as long as I don’t have anything to eat, I’d make the 12-mile trek only every other day.
In the store where I’m registered they gave me groats and sugar in exchange for coupons – enough for two or three meals. Then with my elegantly begloved hands I picked an entire mountain of nettle shoots, orache and dandelions.
In the afternoon I went to the hairdresser’s for the first time in ages, and asked for a shampoo and set. They washed about a pound of dirt out of my hair. The hairdresser had popped up from somewhere to take over the shop of a colleague who was pressed into the Volkssturm at the last minute and is missing in action. Supposedly the man’s family was evacuated to Thuringia. The place had been pretty well ransacked, but one mirror is still intact and one dryer is still halfway serviceable, if rather dented. The man’s speech was very pre-war: ‘Yes, ma’am. Why of course, ma’am, I’d be happy to, ma’am.’ I find all the overly solicitous and polite phrases somewhat alien now ‘Yes, ma’am’ is for internal use only, a currency of no value except among ourselves. To the rest of the world we’re nothing but rubble-women and trash.