“Excuse me, gnadige Frau,” I said, feeling somewhat embarrassed, as if I were speaking in a theatre where the play had already begun.
“Could you give me some directions’? I am going to this address.” I showed her my scrap of paper, which really looked like something pulled out of a waste-paper basket.
The old lady smiled, as if she had seen an angel.
“It’s very far, young man,” she said in a gentle voice which suddenly reminded me of my childhood. “It’s very far. You must go to the Tempelhof autobahn. But it’s really very far.”
“That doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You really ought to take a bus. It would be much easier for you.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I repeated, like someone in a dream. In fact, I couldn’t think of the German words for anything else. This woman’s obvious goodness, after so much loud-mouthed bullying and malignity, moved me even more deeply than the exhausted men at Outcheni.
“I don’t mind walking. I’m in the infantry,” I finally said, smiling.
“I know,” she said, smiling even more tenderly than a moment before. “You must be used to walking. I’ll go with you as far as the Schloss von Kaiser Wilhelm. From there, I’ll be able to explain to you.” She walked along beside me. As I didn’t know what to say, the burden of the conversation fell on her.
“Where have you come from, young man?”
“From Russia.”
“Russia’s a big country. What part were you in?”
“Russia’s very big, yes. I was in the South, around Kharkov.”
“Kharkov!” she said, giving the name a very German sound. “I see. Is it a big town?”
“Yes. It’s big.”
For my kindly companion, Kharkov was clearly nothing more than a name which there was no particular need to remember. For me, Kharkov meant a city which had lost its life. If it had ever been a big town, it was now only a heap of rubble, crowned by a cloud of dust, smoke, and fire. It was also the sound of cries and moaning one shouldn’t hear in towns. It was a long corridor of stiffened corpses we had to drag out into the air, and three Bolsheviks tide to a fence, with their guts spilling from their bellies.
“My son is in Briansk,” the old lady remarked, clearly hoping for news of the front.
“Briansk,” I repeated in a thoughtful tone. “I believe that’s in the central sector. I’ve never been there.”
“He tells me that everything’s going quite well. He’s a first lieutenant in an armored division.”
“A lieutenant!” I thought. “An officer!” The opinions of a private soldier must have sounded ridiculous.
“Were things difficult in your sector?”
“Things were pretty hard, but they’re better now. I’m on leave,” I added, smiling.
“I’m really happy for you, young man,” she said, and her voice sounded as if she meant it.
“Are you in Berlin to see your family?”
“No, gnadige Frau. I’m going to see the parents of a friend.”
A friend! Ernst: a corpse.
What friend was I tramping along like this for? The old woman was beginning to get on my nerves.
“A friend from your regiment,” she said, sharing my pleasure at being on leave. I felt like knocking her onto one of those intricate railings full of spikes.
“Where do your parents come from?” she asked.
“From Wissembourg, in Alsace.”
She looked at me with surprise.
“So you’re Alsatian. I know Alsace very well.”
I almost told her that she knew it better than I did.
“Yes, I’m Alsatian,” I said, hoping to get a little peace.
She began to tell me about a trip she’d taken to Strasbourg, but I wasn’t listening any more. By forcing me to remember Ernst, she had irritated me. I had better things to do than listen to this old bird reminisce about her travels. It was a beautiful day, I was on leave, and I needed to see something gay. This desire made me wonder what attitude to take when I got to the Neubachs’. These people had just lost their son, and were probably overwhelmed by grief…. Maybe they didn’t even know he was dead. If that’s how it was, what on earth could I say to them? It would be better to visit them on my way back. By then, they would surely have been told. Hals was right. I should have listened to him. He, at least, was still alive.
We came to a crossroad opposite a bridge over a stream — or even perhaps a large river. I knew that the Seine flowed through Paris, but couldn’t have said whether Berlin was on the Elbe or the Oder. To the right, there was a massive block of buildings — the Schloss von Kaiser Wilhelm — and directly across the avenue an impressive memorial to the heroes of 1914–18: twelve hundred helmets of that time set round a forecourt, to give some idea of the sacrifice. Two sentries from Hitler’s guard walked slowly back and forth along a cement apron at the base of the monument; their slow, even pace seemed to me strangely symbolic of a human being’s slow progress toward eternity. With a regularity which a master watchmaker might well have envied, the two men executed impeccably synchronized half turns, faced each other at a distance of about thirty meters, resumed their march, crossed, turned, and began again. I found this spectacle somehow oppressive.
“Here we are, young man,” the old woman said.
“You cross the bridge and follow that avenue.”
She pointed toward the vast, stony backdrop of the city, in which I would have to find my address. But I had already stopped listening. I knew that I wasn’t going to the Neubachs’, and that these explanations were superfluous. Nevertheless, I outdid myself in expressions of gratitude, and pressed the old lady’s hand. She withdrew, repeating her protestations of good will. I couldn’t help smiling. As soon as she had disappeared, I rushed back in the direction from which we’d come, trying to make up for lost time, and find the station for the West as quickly as possible.
I walked along the river bank with the obsessive speed of a maniac. Suddenly, the air filled with martial music, and an elegantly dressed military band marched out through a tall gateway, and turned into the street. I remembered what we were taught at Bialystok, and snapped to attention, presenting arms to the indifferent troupe. After an hour and a half, with innumerable stops to ask my way, I arrived at the station from which trains left for the West, and France. I looked desperately for Hals amid the throngs on the platform: he would surely be on this train too — but I couldn’t find him in the few minutes before departure. As I caught my breath on the train, the slow regular progress of our acceleration seemed to merge with the measured tempo of the German capital. Everything here was so entirely different from Russia. Even the soldiers had an air of seriousness which matched the civilized, organized life of all large European countries.
The contrast with Russia was so great that I wondered if what I’d seen there wasn’t part of a bad dream.
Night fell, and the train rolled on. We had been moving for at least three hours, during which it seemed that we had never left the city. There was no countryside, only buildings. Suddenly, the train came to a stop, although we were not in a station. Everyone leaned out the windows to see what was happening. Although it was dark, the distant sky glowed with red light. We could hear a muffled rumbling, mingled with the boom of guns. The throbbing of a mass of airplanes overhead rattled the windows of the train.