Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

33

Trudel Hergesell

The Hergesells were on the train from Erkner to Berlin. Yes, that’s right, there was no Trudel Baumann any more. Karl’s stubborn passion had prevailed, they were married, and now, in the year of disgrace 1942, Trudel was five months pregnant.

After their marriage, they had given up their jobs in the uniform factory – following the run-in with Grigoleit and the Babyface, neither of them had felt easy there. Karl was now working in a chemical factory in Erkner, and Trudel earned a few marks by taking in sewing. With quiet embarrassment, they thought back to the time of their illegal activity. Both knew that they had failed, but both knew too that they were not suitable for such work, which demands that one put oneself second. Now they lived only for the happiness of their home life and looked forward to the arrival of their baby.

When they left Berlin and moved out to Erkner, they thought they would be able to live in complete seclusion. Like many city dwellers, they’d had the mistaken belief that spying was only really bad in Berlin and that decency still prevailed in small towns. And like many city dwellers, they had made the painful discovery that recrimination, eavesdropping, and informing were ten times worse in the small towns than in the big city. In a small town, everyone was fully exposed; you couldn’t ever disappear in the crowd. Personal circumstances were quickly ascertained, conversations with neighbours were practically unavoidable, and the way such conversations could be twisted was something they had already experienced in their own lives, to their chagrin.

Because neither of them belonged to the NSDAP, because they both contributed the bare minimum to any collection, because they both had the inclination to live in quiet privacy, because they both preferred reading to attending meetings, because Hergesell with his long, tangled hair and dark burning eyes looked the embodiment of a Socialist and pacifist (in the view of the Party), because Trudel had once been heard to say that you had to feel sorry for the Jews – for all of these reasons they very soon acquired the reputation of being politically unreliable, and every step they took was watched, every word they said passed on.^∗

The Hergesells suffered under the atmosphere they were obliged to live in at Erkner. But they told themselves and each other that it didn’t concern them and that nothing could happen to them, as they were doing nothing against the State. ‘Thoughts are free,’ they said – but they ought to have known that in this State not even thoughts were free.

So, increasingly, they took refuge in their happiness as husband and wife. They were like a pair of lovers clasped together in a flood, with waves and currents, collapsing houses and the bloated corpses of cattle all around them, still believing they would escape the general devastation if they only stuck together. They had failed to understand that there was no such thing as private life in wartime Germany. No amount of reticence could change the fact that every individual German belonged to the generality of Germans and must share in the general destiny of Germany, even as more and more bombs were falling on the just and unjust alike.

The Hergesells parted on Alexanderplatz. She had some sewing to deliver in Kleine Alexanderstrasse, and he wanted to inspect a second-hand baby carriage he’d seen advertised in the paper. They arranged to meet up again at the station around noon, and went their separate ways. Trudel Hergesell, who after initial difficulties had gained a wholly new feeling of confidence and happiness from her now advancing pregnancy, soon reached her destination on Kleine Alexanderstrasse and started up the staircase.

There was a man going up the stairs ahead of her. She saw him only from behind, but she knew him right away from the characteristic way of holding his head, his stiff neck, his lanky form, his hunched shoulders: it was Otto Quangel, the father of her onetime fiancé, the man to whom she had once betrayed the existence of her illegal organization.

Instinctively, she hung back. It was evident that Quangel was unaware of her presence. He climbed the stairs at an even speed, without haste. She followed half a flight behind, always ready to stop the moment Quangel rang at one of the many bells in the office building.

But he didn’t ring. Instead she watched as he stopped at a window, took a postcard from his pocket, and laid it on the sill. As he did so, he turned and his eyes met hers. It wasn’t clear whether he recognized her or not. He walked past her down the stairs, not looking at her.

When he was a little way below her, she hurried up to the window and picked up the card. She read only the first few words: ‘HAVE YOU STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD THAT THE FÜHRER WAS LYING TO YOU WHEN HE CLAIMED RUSSIA WAS ARMING FOR A SURPRISE ATTACK ON GERMANY?’

Then she ran down after Quangel.

She caught up with him as he was leaving the building, pressed against his side, and said, ‘Did you not recognize me a moment ago, Dad? It’s me, Trudel, Ottochen’s Trudel!’

He turned his head toward her, and never had it looked so tough and birdlike to her as it did then. For a moment she thought he didn’t recognize her, but then he nodded curtly and said, ‘You’re looking well, girl!’

‘Yes,’ she said, and her eyes shone. ‘I feel stronger and happier than I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m having a baby. I’m married. You’re not angry with me, are you, Dad?’

‘Why would I be angry? Because you’ve got married? Don’t be silly, Trudel, you’re young, and Ottochen’s been dead for two years. No, not even Anna would hold your marrying against you, and she still thinks of her Ottochen every day.’

‘How is Mother?’

‘As ever, Trudel, as ever. Nothing much changes with us old people.’

‘But it does!’ she said, and she came to a stop. Her expression now was very serious. ‘It does, lots of things have changed with you. Do you remember the time we stood in the corridor in the uniform factory, under the posters with the executions? Back then, you warned me…’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trudel. An old man forgets.’

‘Today it’s me warning you, Dad,’ she went on quietly, but all the more penetratingly. ‘I saw you put the card down in the stairwell, that terrible card that I’ve now got in my purse.’

He stared at her with his cold eyes, which now took on an angry gleam.

She whispered, ‘Dad, you’re risking your life. Other people could see you like I saw you. Does Mum know you’re doing this? Do you do it often?’

He was silent for such a long time that she thought she wasn’t going to get an answer. Then he said, ‘You know I don’t do anything without Mother.’

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. You’re dragging her into it too.’

‘Mother’s lost her son. She’s not over it yet – don’t forget that, Trudel!’

Her cheeks coloured, as if he had reproached her. She murmured, ‘I don’t think Ottochen would have approved of his mother getting involved in something like this.’

‘We all make our own way in life, Trudel,’ replied Otto Quangel coldly. ‘You go your way, we go ours. That’s right, we go ours.’ His head jerked backward, then forward again – like a pecking bird’s. ‘And now we’d better say goodbye. I wish you well, Trudel, you and your baby. I’ll pass on your regards to Mother – maybe.’

He was gone.

Then he came back. ‘That card,’ he said, ‘don’t keep it in your purse, you understand? Put it down somewhere, like I did. And don’t breathe a word of it to your husband – will you promise me that, Trudel?’

She nodded, and looked fearfully at him.

‘And then forget all about us. Forget you ever knew the Quangels; if you ever see me again, you don’t know me, understand?’

Again, she could only nod.

‘All right, then, be good,’ he said once more, and he was gone, when she had so many things still to say to him.

When Trudel dropped Otto Quangel’s card, she felt all the fear of the criminal, the fear of being caught in the act. She hadn’t read any more of it. Tragic fate, even for this card of Quangel’s: found by a friendly person and even then not having its desired effect. It, too, had been written in vain, for the friendly person who had taken it in her hands felt nothing but the desire to be rid of it as soon as possible.

Once Trudel had put the card down on exactly the same windowsill where Otto Quangel had originally left it (it would never have occurred to her that it could have gone anywhere else), she darted up the last few steps and rang the bell at the office of a lawyer for whose secretary she had sewn a dress – made of fabric looted from France and sent to the secretary by a friend in the SS.

During the fitting, Trudel felt hot and cold flushes, and then suddenly she blacked out. She had to lie down in the lawyer’s office – he was away in court – and later drink a coffee, a good, strong coffee (procured from Holland, by one of the secretary’s other SS friends).

While all the office personnel were being touchingly solicitous – her condition was quite apparent because she carried her bump at the front – all this time Trudel Hergesell was thinking, He’s right, I must never tell Karl about this. Please God it doesn’t hurt the baby that I got so upset. Ach, I wish Dad didn’t do such stuff! Doesn’t he even think about the trouble and fear he inflicts on people? Life is difficult enough as it is!

By the time she finally went back down the stairs, the card was gone. She sighed with relief, but her relief didn’t last. She couldn’t help wondering who had found the card next, and whether he would feel as great a shock as she had, and what he would do with it. Her thoughts kept circling round that question.

She returned to Alexanderplatz rather less carefree than when she had left it. She had meant to go on some more errands, but she didn’t feel up to it. She sat down quietly in the waiting room and hoped Karl would come soon. Once he was there, the fear she still felt would disappear – even if she didn’t say anything to him. His mere being there had that effect…

She smiled and shut her eyes.

Dear Karl! she thought. My own darling… !

She fell asleep.