No one was at the publishing house. The building was completely abandoned, the basement full of coal. The woman relocated to our building had a problem and plied me with questions about what to do. Her oldest daughter is the mother of an eight-week-old infant; it seems that yesterday she stopped giving milk, so that all of a sudden she can no longer nurse her baby, and the little one has been bawling. Everyone’s worried how the mother will pull the child through, now that there’s no more cow’s milk. I suggested to the young mother that eating some wild vegetables might help bring on her milk. Together we bent over the grass in the garden, which was soaked through with rain, and pulled up the young nettle shoots alongside the wall, using handkerchiefs to protect our hands. Then dandelions, the few we could find smell of plants and soil, primrose, red hawthorn, spring. But the flak keeps yapping away.
I filled a pack with hard coal and probably carried off fifty pounds. Yet even with the load I managed to overtake another troop of soldiers on my way back. I saw my first weapons in several days: two bazookas, one sub-machine gun, ammunition boxes. Young guys wearing their cartridge belts like some barbaric adornment.
A little before noon there was a burial on our street, or so I was told, the pharmacist’s widow had been there. A seventeen-year-old girclass="underline" grenade, shrapnel, leg amputated, bled to death. Her parents buried her in their garden behind some currant bushes. They used their old broom cupboard as a coffin.
So now we’re free to bury our dead wherever we wish, just as in ancient times. It makes me think of the time a huge Great Dane died in my old apartment building and wound up being buried in the garden. But what a scene beforehand – the landlord, the concierge, the other tenants, everybody fought against it. And now they bury a human being and nobody gives it a second thought; in fact, I think the parents find comfort in their daughter being so close. And I catch myself assigning graves in our own little bit of garden.
4 p.m. in the attic. I just had an amazing experience. I was visiting Frau Golz and started playing with the telephone, just for fun. To my amazement I could hear something, despite the fact the line has been dead for days. I dialled Gisela’s number and managed to get through to her, even though she lives an hour away in Berlin W. We were so eager to hear what the other had to say we couldn’t stop talking. It turns out her company has just collapsed. Her boss gave a rousing speech and then fled to the west, leaving the little people to fend for themselves. We’re completely forgotten, we strain our ears to the void. We are all alone.
Gisela told me she’s exactly as old as her father was when he fell at Verdun in the first world war – almost to the day. She never saw her father. Now she says that she can’t stop thinking about him, she talks with him in spirit, as if her time were coming, as if she was going to meet him soon. We never spoke about such things before; we would have been embarrassed to bare our hearts like that. Now the deepest layers are pushing to the surface. Farewell, Gisela. We’ve each lived our thirty years or so. Maybe we’ll see each other again some day, safe and sound.
Back in the cave, Monday, 8 p.m. Today the first artillery hit our corner. Whizzing, hissing, howling: uuueee. Flames flashing up. Terrified shouts in the courtyard. Stumbling downstairs, I could hear the shells landing right outside the cinema. The enemy is shooting at us. Incidentally, people say the Russians are sticking to the smaller guns. And we’re beginning to feel a little less terrified about the American carpet-bombing, since at least here in Berlin they’d wind up hitting Russians as well.
A new rumour floats around the basement, which the wife of the liquor distiller heard from a reliable, very secret source and announces with a heaving bosom: the Yanks and Tommies have quarrelled with Ivan and are thinking of joining with us to chase Ivan out of the country. Scornful laughter and heated discussion. The woman is offended and gets so angry she slips into her native Saxon dialect. She just returned yesterday to her apartment – and our basement – from their (somewhat small) distillery behind Moritzplatz, where she and her husband had been spending the nights, so she could hold the fort at home. Her husband stayed with the bottles and vats – and a redhead named Elvira, as everyone in the basement knows.
People are still taking care of business. Just before the shops closed I managed to get another 150 grams of coarse grain. Suddenly I heard excited screams around the corner, and the sound of running feet: a wagon was being unloaded near Bolle’s, barrels of butter – all rancid – were being carried into the building for distribution. One pound per person, and – here’s what’s frightening – for free! All you have to do is get your card stamped. Is this the first sign of panic or is it the voice of reason speaking from beyond the bureaucratic files? Right away people started crowding outside the shop door, pounding one another with umbrellas and fists. I joined in the pushing, too, for a few minutes, and in the process overheard talk of reserves, reinforcements and German tanks from somewhere – one woman claimed to have picked up something like that last night over the radio detector. Then I decided to let butter be butter, I didn’t want to get into a fistfight over it, at least not today. But maybe I’ll have to learn how soon.
Silent night. Distant pounding. Not a peep from the cave dwellers, not a word – they’re too exhausted. Only snoring and the short shallow breaths of the children.
TUESDAY, 24 APRIL 1945, AROUND NOON
No news. We’re completely cut off. Some gas but no water. Looking out of the window I see throngs of people outside the stores. They’re still fighting over the rancid butter – they’re still giving it away, but now it’s down to a quarter of a pound per ration card. The Schutzpolizei are just now getting things under control – I see four of them. And on top of that it’s raining.
At the moment I’m sitting on the window seat in the widow’s apartment. She just stormed in, all worked up. A shell hit outside Hefter’s meat market, right in the middle of the queue. Three dead and ten wounded, but they’re already queuing up again. The widow demonstrated how people were using their sleeves to wipe the blood off their meat coupons. ‘Anyway, only three people died,’ she said. ‘What’s that compared to an air raid?’ No question about it: we’re spoiled, all right.
Still, I’m astounded at how the sight of a few beef quarters and hog jowls is enough to get the frailest grandmother to hold her ground. The same people who used to run for shelter if three fighter planes were spotted somewhere over central Germany are now standing in the meat line as solid as walls. At most they’ll plop a bucket on their head or perhaps a helmet. Queuing is a family business, with every member on shift for a couple of hours before being relieved. But the line for meat is too long for me; I’m not yet ready to give it a go. Besides, meat has to be eaten right away; it won’t keep for more than a meal. I think they’re all dreaming of eating their fill one last time, a final meal before the execution.
2 p.m. Just caught a glimpse of the sun. Without giving it a second thought, I strolled out to the balcony overlooking the courtyard and sat down in my wicker chair, basking in the sun – until a formation of bombers whizzed by overhead and one explosion merged into the next. I’d actually forgotten there was a war on. As it is, my head is oddly empty – just now I jerked up from my writing, something fell close by, and I heard the clink of shattering glass. Once again I’m having hunger pangs on a full stomach. I feel the need to gnaw on something. What’s the baby who’s still nursing supposed to live off now, the baby who can’t get any milk? Yesterday the people queuing up were talking about children dying. One old lady suggested that a piece of bread chewed up and full of saliva might help the little ones when they can’t get milk.