Nightmare in Berlin (2 page)
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
The author of this novel is far from satisfied with what he has written on the following pages, which is now laid before the reader in printed form. When he conceived the plan of writing this book, he imagined that alongside the reverses of everyday life â the depressions, illnesses, and general despondency â that alongside all these things which the end of this terrible war inevitably visited upon every German, there would also be more uplifting things to report, signal acts of courage, hours filled with hope. But it was not to be. The book remains essentially a medical report, telling the story of the apathy that descended upon a large part, and more especially the better part, of the German population in April 1945, an apathy that many have not managed to cast off to this day.
The fact that the author could not alter this, and could not introduce more elements of levity and gaiety into this novel, is not simply due to his own outlook on life, but has to do much more with the general situation of the German people, which today, fifteen months after the end of hostilities, remains grim.
The reasoning behind the decision to place the novel before the public despite this shortcoming is that it may perhaps be of some value as a
document humain
, a faithful and true account (to the best of the author's abilities) of what ordinary Germans felt, suffered, and did between April 1945 and the summer of that year. The time may soon come when people are no longer able to understand the paralysis that has blighted this first post-war year to such disastrous effect. A medical report, then, and not a work of art â I'm sorry to say. (The author, too, is a child of his times, afflicted by that same paralysis.)
I have just called the book âa faithful and true account'. But nothing that is related in the following pages happened exactly as it is described here. For reasons of space alone, a book such as this cannot possibly record everything that happened; I had to be selective, to invent material, and things that were told to me could not just be set down verbatim, but had to be recast in a different form. None of this means that the book cannot â therefore â be âtrue': everything related here
could
have happened in the manner described, but it is nonetheless a novel, or in other words a product of the imagination.
The same is true of the characters who appear here: none of them exists outside the pages of this book exactly as they are portrayed here. Just as the events described had to obey the laws of narration, so too did the characters. Some are pure invention; others are amalgams of several different people.
Writing this novel has not been an enjoyable experience, but to its author the book seemed important. Amidst the changing fortunes of life, the upturns and the reverses, what remained important to him throughout was what people went through after the end of the war, in mind and in body. How nearly everybody lost faith, yet in the end rediscovered a little bit of courage and hope â that is the story that these pages tell.
Berlin, August 1946
PART ONE
Downfall
CHAPTER ONE
The first illusion
Always, during those nights around the time of the great collapse, Dr. Doll, when he did eventually manage to get to sleep, was plagued by the same bad dream. They slept very little those first few nights, constantly fearful of some threat to body or soul. Well into the night, after a day filled with torment, they stayed sitting by the windows, peering out onto the little meadow, towards the bushes and the narrow cement path, to see if any of the enemy were coming â until their eyes ached, and everything became a blur and they could see nothing.
Then someone would often say: âWhy don't we just go to bed?'
But usually nobody answered, and they just carried on sitting there, staring out, and feeling afraid, until Dr. Doll was suddenly overcome by sleep, as if ambushed by some bandit clapping his great hand over his whole face to smother him. Or else it was like some tightly woven spider's web that went down his throat with every breath he took, overpowering his consciousness. A nightmare â¦
It was bad enough, falling asleep like that, but, having fallen asleep in this hideous fashion, he was immediately visited by the same bad dream â always the same one. And this was Doll's dream:
He was lying at the bottom of a huge bomb crater, on his back, his arms pressed tightly against his sides, lying in the wet, yellow mud. Without moving his head, he was able to see the trunks of trees that had toppled into the crater, as well as the facades of houses with their empty window openings, and nothing behind them. Sometimes Doll was racked by the fear that these things might fall down deeper into the bomb crater and end up on top of him, but not one of these dangerously precarious ruins ever shifted its position.
He was still tormented by the thought that a thousand water veins and springs would inundate him and fill his mouth with the sloppy yellow mud. And there would be no escape, because Doll knew that he would never be able to get up out of this crater by his own strength. But this fear, too, was groundless; he never heard a sound from the springs or the trickling water veins, and all was deathly silence inside the huge bomb crater.
He was haunted by a third fear, and that was an illusion, too: vast flocks of ravens and crows flew in a constant stream across the sky above the bomb crater, and he was terrified that they might spot their victim lying down there in the mud. But no, the deathly silence continued unbroken; these vast flocks of birds existed only in Doll's imagination, otherwise he would at least have heard their cawing.
But two other things were not figments of his imagination, and he knew for certain they were true. One of them was that peace had finally come. No more bombs came screaming down through the air, no more shots were fired; peace had come, and silence reigned. One last huge explosion had flung him into the mud at the bottom of this crater. And he was not alone in this abyss. Although he never heard a sound, and saw nothing except what has been described, he knew that his whole family was lying here with him, and the whole German people, and all the nations of Europe â all just as helpless and defenceless as him, all tormented by the same fears as him.
But always, throughout the endless hours filled with anguished dreams, when the busy and energetic Dr. Doll of the daytime was obliterated and he knew only fear â always in these harrowing interludes of sleep he saw something else. And what he saw was this:
Sitting on the edge of the crater, silent and motionless, were the Big Three. Even in his dreams he called them only by this name, which the war had seared into his brain. Then the names Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin came to mind, though he was sometimes tormented by the thought that something had changed there recently.
The Big Three sat close together, or at least not very far apart; they sat as if they had just turned up from their part of the world, and stared down in silent grief into the vast crater, at the bottom of which lay Doll and his family and the German people and all the peoples of Europe, defenceless and defiled. And as they sat there and stared, silent and full of grief, Doll knew with absolute certainty in the innermost depths of his heart that the Big Three were ceaselessly pondering how he, Doll, and everyone else with him could be helped back on their feet again, and how a happy world could be rebuilt from this ravaged one. They pondered this ceaselessly, the Big Three, while endless flocks of crows flew homewards over the pacified land, from the killing fields of the world to their old roosts, and while silent springs trickled inaudibly, their waters bringing the sloppy yellow mud ever more perilously close to his mouth.
But he, Doll, could do nothing; with his arms pressed tightly against his sides, he had to lie still and wait, until the Big Three, deep in mournful thought, had come to a decision. This was perhaps the worst thing about this bad dream for Doll, that although he was still threatened by many dangers, there was nothing he could do except to lie still and wait, for an endless eternity! The empty house fronts could still fall in on him, the flocks of crows, hungry for carrion, could still spot the defenceless figure, the yellow mud could still fill his mouth; but there was nothing he could do except wait, and maybe this waiting would make it too late for him and his family, whom he loved very much ⦠Maybe they would all perish yet!
It took a long time for the last traces of this haunting bad dream to leave Doll, and he did not really break free until a change in his life forced him to stop brooding and busy himself with useful activity again. But it took a great deal longer for Doll to realise that this entire bad dream, rising up from within like a ghostly apparition, was only there to fool and delude him. As painful as this dream was, Doll had believed it was true.
It took a very long time for him to grasp that there was nobody out there who was prepared to help him up out of the mire into which he had plunged. Nobody, not the Big Three, much less any of his fellow countrymen, was remotely interested in Dr. Doll. If he died there in the wet mud, too bad for him â but only for him! Not a heart in the world would grow heavier on his account. If he really had a desire to work again and write things, then it was up to him and him alone to overcome this apathy, get up on his feet again, brush the dirt off, and get down to work.
But at that time Doll was still a long way from understanding this. Now that peace had finally come, he thought for a long time that the whole world was just waiting to help him back on his feet again.
CHAPTER TWO
The second illusion
On the morning of 26 April 1945, Doll had finally woken in a good mood again. After weeks and months of passively waiting for the war to end, the hour of liberation now seemed nigh. The town of Prenzlau had been taken, the Russians could arrive at any moment; in the morning, planes had been circling over the town â and they were not German planes!
But the best news had come to Doll's ears in the late evening: the SS was pulling out, the
Volkssturm
had been disbanded, and the little town would not be defended against the advancing Russians. That took a huge weight off his mind: for weeks now he had not ventured out of the house for fear of drawing attention to himself. Because he was absolutely determined not to fight in the
Volkssturm
.
But now, after this welcome news, he could venture outdoors again without worrying about what the neighbours would say â three of whom, at least, overlooked his house and garden. So he stepped outside with his young wife into the glorious spring day. The sun felt warm, and its warmth did them a power of good, especially down here by the water's edge. The leaves and grass were still fresh and bright with all the myriad hues of the season's first growth, and the ground beneath their feet seemed to heave and tremble with urgent fecundity.
As Doll was soaking up the sun outside the house with his wife, his gaze fell upon two long borders planted with shrubs, which lay either side of the narrow cement path that led to his door. There was new growth sprouting in these borders, too, and the first grape hyacinths, primroses, and anemones were starting to come into flower. But welcome as this sight was, it was spoilt by a tangle of wire, some of it hanging free, some of it still attached to ugly wooden stakes, which formed an untidy mess that was an affront to the young growth, while the loose ends of wire, dangling where they could catch you unawares, made it dangerous even to walk along the footpath.
No sooner had Doll's gaze taken in this untidy mess than he exclaimed: âI've got my work cut out for me today! That hideous tangle of wire has been annoying me for ages!' And he fetched his pincers and mattock, and went to work with a will.
While he busied himself in the sun, he was finally able to see into his neighbours' gardens again. He soon noticed a lot of unusual activity there. Wherever he looked, there were people running back and forth, lugging suitcases and furniture out of their houses and into sheds â or the other way round â and others wandering about aimlessly (or so it appeared) with spades, which they drove into the ground here and there, seemingly at random.
One neighbour ran out along the jetty and then stood still, hands in pockets, as if he suddenly had all the time in the world. Then something plopped into the water, and after the neighbour had looked around in an elaborately oh-so-casual way to see if anyone was watching â Doll carried on swinging his mattock the while â he sauntered back to his house with a rolling gait, as if deep in thought, and then promptly threw himself into another round of frenetic activity.
Then, all of a sudden, everything came to a halt again. Groups of people gathered at the fences dividing their properties and whispered conspiratorially among themselves. Large packages changed hands over the wire, and then everybody scattered again, looking furtively about them, intent on more secret business.
Doll had only been living at this property, which belonged to his second wife, for a few months, and as an âoutsider' he remained excluded from all these busy comings and goings, which suited him just fine. The fact was that most of the people engaged in this blatantly surreptitious behaviour were women or very old men, which gave him licence to dismiss it all contemptuously as âwomen's stuff'.
But he was not able to enjoy his isolation for long, because two women, ostensibly friends of his wife, now turned up at his property. These women, whom he had never been able to stand, hung around next to him and acted all surprised that he had time for that sort of work on a day like this â when the Russians would be arriving any minute!