Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)

54

Anna Quangel and Trudel Hergesell

Maybe it was just mismanagement that following Berta’s death Anna Quangel was given Trudel Hergesell as a cellmate. Or maybe it was that Inspector Laub had nothing but contempt for them anyway. What they knew had been wrung out of them – whatever they had heard from their menfolk – and then that was it. The real criminals were always the men; the women were mere accomplices – which admittedly did nothing to save them from being executed along with the men.

Yes, Berta had died, the Berta who had innocently betrayed to Anna the presence of her sister-in-law and brought down the wrath of Inspector Laub upon her head. She had sputtered out like a light. With ever quieter voice she had kept imploring her cellmate not to send for anyone, and she finally died in Anna Quangel’s arms. Berta – whatever her surname was, whatever she was in for – was suddenly no more. There was a strange rattle in her throat, she had struggled for breath, and then a wash of blood had come up, and her arms, round Anna’s shoulders, had relaxed…

She had lain there, very pale and still – and Anna in anguish asked herself whether she was not partly to blame for this death. If only she hadn’t mentioned her sister-in-law to Inspector Laub! And then she thought of Trudel Baumann, and she started to shake – there was someone she really had betrayed! Of course there were reasons, excuses. How could she have known what the consequences would be of mentioning Ottochen’s bride? And then it had been got away from her, step by step by step, and in the end the betrayal was plain to see, and she had brought misery to a human being who was dear to her, and maybe to more than one.

When Anna Quangel imagined being confronted with Trudel and having to repeat to her the perfidious words she had said, it made her shake all over. But when she thought of her husband, she felt true despair. Because she was convinced that this conscientious, diligent man would never forgive her for this betrayal, and that she had lost the only comrade she had ever had, even before her approaching death.

How could I have been so feeble, Anna Quangel upbraided herself, and each time she was fetched to an interrogation session with Laub, she didn’t pray that he not torture her, she prayed for the strength not to incriminate others in spite of all the tortures he had ready for her. And this small, slight woman insisted on bearing her part, and more than her part: she insisted that it had been she, and she alone – with one or two exceptions – who had delivered the postcards, and that she alone had thought up their contents and dictated them to her husband. She was the only begetter of the postcards; once her son had fallen, that’s when she had had the idea.

Inspector Laub, well aware that her statements were lies and that this woman was not capable of doing the things she claimed to have done – Inspector Laub ranted and raved and tortured her as much as he liked, but she would sign no other statements and refused to withdraw any of her confessions, even if he proved to her ten times over that they couldn’t possibly be right. Laub had overwound the screw, and he was powerless. And when Anna was brought back to her cell after each such interrogation, she had a feeling of relief, as though she had atoned for a part of her guilt, as though Otto could be a tiny bit pleased with her. And the thought grew in her that by taking all the guilt upon herself, she might even be able to save Otto’s life…

In accordance with the way things were done in the Gestapo prison, there was no hurry to remove the dead woman’s body from Anna’s cell. It might have been mismanagement, or again it could have been further, intentional torture – at any rate, Berta’s corpse was on its third day in the repulsively sweetish-smelling cell when the door was unlocked and there was shoved into the cell the very woman whom Anna had been in such dread of seeing.

Trudel Hergesell advanced one step into the cell. Her eyes took in almost nothing; she was tired to death and almost insensate with fear for Karli, who had not come round and from whom she had just been brusquely separated. She gave a little scream of horror when she smelled the disgusting sweet reek and saw the dead woman, bloated and discoloured on her wooden pallet.

She moaned, ‘I can’t go on,’ and Anna Quangel caught the woman she had betrayed as she keeled over.

‘Trudel!’ she whispered in her ear, ‘Trudel, can you forgive me? I told them your name, because you were Ottochen’s bride. And then he tortured me until he got everything out of me. I don’t understand it myself any more. Trudel, don’t look at me like that, I beg you! Trudel, weren’t you going to have a baby? Have I destroyed that for you as well?’

While Anna Quangel was speaking, Trudel Hergesell had broken away from her embrace and retreated to the door of the cell. Now she leaned against the iron-studded door, and with a face gone pale looked over at the old woman, who was looking back at her from the opposite wall.

‘It was you that did that, Mother?’ she asked. ‘You did it?’

And with a sudden outburst: ‘Oh, it’s not me that I care about! But they broke my Karli, and I don’t know if he’ll ever come round. Perhaps he’s already dead.’

The tears spurted from her eyes as she cried, ‘And I can’t see him any more! I don’t know what’s being done to him, and maybe days and days will pass before I hear anything. He might be dead and buried, but he’s still living in me. And I won’t get to have his baby – how poor I have suddenly become! Only a few weeks ago, before I met Dad, I had everything I needed to be happy, and I was happy too! And now I’ve got nothing. Nothing! Oh, Mother…’

And she suddenly added, ‘But the miscarriage wasn’t your fault, Mother. That was before anything happened.’

Suddenly Trudel Hergesell rushed swaying through the cell, buried her head in Anna’s bosom, and wailed, ‘Oh, Mother, I’m so unhappy! Won’t you tell me that Karli will make it!’

And Anna Quangel kissed her and whispered, ‘He will live, Trudel, and so will you! You’ve not done anything bad, either of you!’

They embraced each other silently. Each rested in the other’s love until a faint hope stirred.

Then Trudel shook her head and said, ‘No, we won’t make it out alive. They’ve found out too much about us. What you said is true: neither of us did anything bad. Karli kept a suitcase for someone without knowing what was in it, and I dropped a postcard for Dad. But according to them, that’s high treason and will cost us our lives.’

‘It must be that horrible Laub who said that to you!’

‘I don’t know his name, and I don’t want to, either. They’re all like that! The ones who bring you here are all the same. But maybe it’s better this way: sitting in prison for years and years…’

‘But they won’t be in power for years and years, Trudel!’

‘Who knows? And all the things they were able to do to the Jews and the other peoples – unpunished! Do you believe there is a God, Mum?’

‘Yes, Trudel, I do. Otto was dead against it, but it’s the one secret I kept from him: I still believe in God.’

‘I never did, really. But it would be nice if He existed, because then I could be sure that Karli and I would be together after death!’

‘And so you shall, Trudel. You see, even Otto doesn’t believe in God. He says he’s sure everything comes to an end after this life. But I know we will be together once we’re dead, for ever and ever. I know it, Trudel!’

Trudel looked over at the cot with the motionless body on it, and fretted.

She said, ‘That woman looks so awful! It scares me to look at her, all puffy and blotchy! I don’t want it to be me, lying there like that!’

‘It’s her third day like that, Trudel – they won’t take her away. She was beautiful when she died, quiet and dignified. But now the soul has flown from her, and she’s just lying there like a piece of rotting meat.’

‘They should take her away! I can’t stand to look at it! I don’t want to breathe the stink any more!’

And before Anna Quangel could do anything to stop her, Trudel had run over to the door. She drummed with her fists against the iron and shouted: ‘Open up! Open up! Hey!’

That wasn’t allowed. They weren’t supposed to make any noise; in fact, even speaking was against the rules.

Anna Quangel dashed over to Trudel, seized hold of her hands, drew her away from the door, and whispered fearfully, ‘You mustn’t do that, Trudel! It’s against the rules! They’ll come in and beat you up!’

But it was too late. The lock cracked open, and a gigantic SS man dashed in with rubber truncheon upraised. ‘What are you shouting about, you whores?’ he yelled. ‘Do you want room service?’

The two women looked at him in terror from a corner of the cell.

‘It stinks like a morgue in here. How long has that been lying there?’

He was a young fellow, and his face had gone ghastly pale.

‘The third day already,’ said Anna. ‘Oh, won’t you be kind and get the dead woman out of here! We really can’t breathe any more!’

The SS man mumbled something and left the cell. But he didn’t lock the door behind him.

The two women snuck over to the door and pushed it open just a little, and drew in the smells of disinfectant and toilet from the corridor as if they were balm.

Then they retreated inside again, because the young SS man was coming back along the corridor.

‘There!’ he said. He had a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Well, get on with it then! You, old woman, take the legs, and you, young one, take the head. Come on – surely you can manage a bundle of bones like that!’

For all its coarseness, his tone was almost cheery, and he helped them carry.

They went down a long corridor; then there was an iron door in the way. Their escort showed the sentry his piece of paper, and they went down many flights of stone steps. It got damp, and the electric light grew dim.

‘There!’ said the SS man, opening a door. ‘This is the morgue. Lay her down on the pallet there. But take the clothes off her. Clothes are in short supply. We need all we can get!’

He laughed, but it sounded forced.

The women gasped with horror. Men and women, all naked as the day they were born, lay there with smashed features and bloody welts, with twisted limbs encrusted with blood and dirt. No one had bothered to shut their eyes, and their dead stares seemed sometimes to blink, as if they were curious about the newcomer, or eager to welcome her.

While Anna and Trudel with shaking hands set about undressing Berta, they couldn’t help looking around at this collection of the dead: a mother whose long-drooping breasts were now empty for all time; an old man who had looked forward to dying peacefully in bed at the end of a long, hardworking life; a young, pale-lipped girl, created to give and receive love; a youth with a shattered nose and a beautiful symmetrical body that looked as if it had been fashioned from yellow ivory.

It was quiet in the room except for the rustling of Berta’s clothes in the hands of the two women. Then a fly buzzed, and everything went quiet again.

Hands in his pockets, the SS man stood and watched the two women at their work. He yawned and lit a cigarette, and he said, ‘Well, that’s life!’ And then everything was quiet once more.

Once Anna Quangel had tied the clothes into a bundle, he said, ‘Okay, let’s go!’

But Trudel Hergesell laid her hand on his black sleeve and begged, ‘Please, please – couldn’t you let me look around here! It’s my husband – in case he’s down here somewhere…’

For a moment he looked at her. Suddenly he said, ‘Girl! Girl! What are you doing here?’ Slowly he moved his head this way and that. ‘My sister back home in the village is about your age.’ He looked at her again. ‘Okay, you can check. But be quick about it.’

She walked quietly among the bodies, looking into all the extinguished faces. Many were disfigured by wounds, but the skin colour or physical marks on the bodies told her they couldn’t be her Karli.

She came back, very pale.

‘No. He’s not here – not yet.’

The sentry avoided her eye. ‘Okay, go!’ he said, and let them precede him.

But as long as he was on duty that day, he kept opening their door, so that they might have slightly better air in their cell. He brought fresh sheets for the dead woman’s bed, too – a mercy in this implacable hell.

That day, Inspector Laub didn’t get much joy from his interrogation of the two women. They had been able to comfort one another, they had taken a little sympathy from one another and even from the SS man, and as a result they felt strong.

But there were many days ahead of them, and this particular SS man was never on duty in their corridor again. He had probably been dismissed as unsuitable – he was too human to do duty here.