Leave us alone
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section7mfuLeave us alone
Berlin 1957. Illya takes a risky responsibility
Early days 4
Winter in Berlin seemed to consist of permanently grey skies, intense cold, and occasional snow. It was once an austerely beautiful city, and might be again, once the ruins of war were finally obliterated. But, just now, and particularly for a Russian acting as an agent of the Western powers, it was pretty wretched.
The work was interesting, but often taxing and stressful. As Harry Beldon’s junior in Section 1, Illya was given the task of dealing with the more delicate diplomacy that his ebullient chief delegated to him, for which the most sensitive translation and interpretation was required. He knew he was good, but every language contains concealed tripping points to catch out even the most fluent interpreter, and in this place a careless remark could bring a return to war.
Beldon invariably addressed him by his name and patronymic rather than his surname. “Ilya Nikolaevitch, go and see so-and-so in the British Sector… the French sector…the American sector.” And sometimes, even, “Ilya Nikolaevitch, I need you to talk to Igor Ilych in the Russian sector.”
************
Today was Sunday, and he was free to relax for a few hours. There was a faint lightening of the overcast sky, even the possibility of a ray of sunshine, so he went for a walk. His lodgings were a room in a relatively undamaged house between Ku’damm and Bismarckstrasse, so, though it was a fair distance, he thought he would walk to the river and follow it right round to the ruined cathedral and make his way back along the dereliction of Unter den Linden and through the mostly repaired Brandenburg Gate to see whether the newly replanted Tiergarten was growing. A not entirely cheerful prospect. It would mean crossing into the Eastern Sector, and back again, but he was used to that – the border crossings were in theory fairly porous, though they were becoming more closely controlled on the eastern side of the city. However, Berliners living in the Eastern (Russian) Sector could still cross into the Western sectors without much challenge, and his own credentials would carry him into most places.
There was a cold east wind, of course, but with his fur hat pulled firmly down around his ears, he persevered. At the Reichstag, he wandered away from the river to look at the repairs. The great open space in front of it was still a mess, just a rough field. A woman was picking her way across it from the other direction, with a child, both dressed inadequately and only wearing scarves to keep their heads warm. As their paths began to cross, Illya saw that she was quite young, but bent like an old woman with exhaustion, and coughing. The child was small and thin, with stringy fair hair – but evidently older than she looked, probably about eleven – sisters?
Approaching them, he asked the woman, “Are you all right?” and was ashamed when she shied away from him in terror. The child was less fearful, but not friendly. “I won’t hurt you,” he said gently, “will you let me help you?”
“Lass uns in Ruhe -- Leave us alone,” said the child.
“Aber, deine Schwester sieht krank aus -- But your sister looks ill.”
“Mutti is all right.”
Her mother – good grief. “Es tut mir leid. Deine Mutter – sie wirklich krank aussieht. -- I’m sorry. Your mother – she really looks ill.”
The woman’s legs began to give way. The child cried out, but Illya caught her before she fell.
“Where do you live?”
“Near Kleistpark.” Too far. She couldn't have weighed much more than 70 pounds, but light as she was, he couldn’t carry her all that way.
“We can’t stay here, it’s too cold,” he said to the child, whose face was beginning to look less stony. “Is the bus stop near here?”
“Ich weiss es nicht – I don’t know. We always walk. No money.”
“All right, we’ll get the S-bahn – don’t worry, I have some money.”
He helped the speechless young woman back onto her feet, and, supporting her blindly stumbling steps, managed to get her walking. It took a long time, but they made their way to the subway station in Potsdamer Platz. That got them to Yorckstrasse at least, and it was then not as far as he had feared to the semi-derelict building in which the two had their home. He carried her up the stairs and set her down at their door on the third floor, breathing heavily, but at least warm from his exertions.
“Have you a key?”
“The lock’s broken,” said the child, and opened the door for him to lead her mother in. It was freezing cold – the window was also broken, and there were no curtains. There was a narrow bed in which, clearly, both of them slept. She drooped in his arm so he lifted her onto the bed and covered her.
“Is there a kitchen?” he asked the child.
“Just the gas-ring. We have to go downstairs for water.”
He looked around. Dear God, they had nothing. “Is there some milk we can heat up for her – and for you, too?”
“No.” The child looked distressed now.
“Here – go and get some milk, and something to eat.” He held out some money.
“No – I’m afraid on my own.” This seemed unlikely, but probably she was reluctant to leave her mother – or maybe didn’t want to leave her alone with him.
“All right, I’ll go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Is there a bell so that you can let me in?”
“You have to throw a stone.” No doubt that was why the window was broken. He sighed, but went to the window to look at where to be seen from.
“Keep looking out. I’ll wave and you can come down.”
************
She told him where to find a shop and he ran down the stairs, wondering if it would even be open at this hour on a Sunday. It wasn’t. But it was a small shop, and the owner appeared to live above it, so he hammered on the door till someone came. He could be friendly and approachable – and persuasive – when he chose, and finally the man agreed to let him in. There was little enough there. He bought a tin of milk, a sausage, a little cheese, a jar of gherkins, a hard loaf of black bread, and a bottle of beer, and that was about it, apart from a screw of paper with some sugar in it, though he had to pay well over the odds for causing such inconvenience. He returned to the home of the two waifs, and stood outside under the window, and saw the waiting child wave.
“Don’t tell me,” he said when they had climbed the stairs, and suddenly struck by a dreadful thought, “you have nothing to open the tin with.”
She smiled, and went to the table where a great thick-bladed knife lay. “We use this,” she said.
He took it gingerly, and examined it. The child was surprised and a little scornful to see his eyes close and a look of anguish cross his face. “Was ist los? -- What’s up? Don’t you know what to do?”
“Where did you find this?”
“It’s Mutti’s.”
He looked at the handle again and the initials roughly carved there. “I see,” he said, and turned resolutely to the tin of milk. “Is there a pan?”
Illya roused the young woman, and she got up to the table to drink the hot milk. Mixed with the sugar and a little beer, to add sustenance and to bulk it out for both of them, it seemed to revive her a little. She raised her sunken consumptive eyes to his and, seeing him properly for the first time without his hat, started back. “You!”
“What’s the matter?”
She snatched up the knife and tried to attack him, but she was hardly able to even hold its weight, so he caused her no damage when he simply removed it from her grasp. “What are you talking about?” he said, opening the jar of gherkins for her. “Here, have some food first and then tell me.”
He cut up the sausage and the bread, and handed some to each of them. The woman’s eyes never left his face as she struggled with the food. Starvation makes it hard to even start eating, and the hectic flush over her cheekbones told him how serious her illness was. He took the plate back and cut up the food into small pieces. “Here,” he said, dipping it into the beer to soften it, “try again.”
She swallowed a few mouthfuls and stopped, unable to finish – her daughter having easily managed all of hers as well as the cup of milk. Illya naturally took no share of this lavish repast.
“I see now,” she said, “you’re like him, that’s all.”
“Like whom?”
“One of them… Them. Why she’s here,” she said, indicating her daughter.
“And this is his knife?”
“Yes. He left it behind after …”
His face was white; she stared at him, and then dropped her eyes. “They were all drunk. He just forgot it when they left,” she said.
“Where did he go?”
“Who can say? Maybe dead, who knows?”
There was silence for a while. Illya sat, hunched over, gripping his hands together between his knees. Then he took a breath and sat up.
“This man, He didn’t come back? Not even for the knife?” She shook her head. Then – he had to ask, and almost whispered – “Did you learn his name?”
“The others called him Nikolai.”
He passed a hand across his face, sweating even in the cold.
“What is your name?” he said. “And … can I ask, how old are you?”
“My name is Gisela… I’m 26.”
“And your daughter?”
“Ursula. She’s nearly 12.”
Ursula – little bear…
***************
He gave them all the money he had on him; promised to bring more; said he would get the window repaired, some curtains… and left, sick at heart.
He had no idea how he got back to his lodgings, whom he might have passed, who might have spoken to him, why he was so cold, why his eyelashes seemed to be stuck together with frost.
He dreamed that night of summer in the woods of Ukraine, but at some point, the image changed and he saw only burned trees, a failed harvest, and an empty house.
************
Whenever he had time, he went to see them, taking money, food, and anything he could find to bring colour and warmth into the room. They greeted him listlessly at first, but gradually became almost welcoming. The window was repaired, but he couldn’t find curtains. He repaired the door himself so that they could lock it; rigged up a line leading up the stairs from the front door and fixed small pieces of wood to it inside their room, that would rattle when the line was tugged. It was a foolish gesture; he knew it wouldn’t last long.
He tried to persuade Gisela to go to a doctor, to no avail. “No money.”
“I can pay.”
“No. You have done enough.”
The child was at school, so he could say what he feared for her. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You must try to get well – what would Ursula do if something happened to you?”
“I have a brother in Wannsee.”
“Wannsee! He must have money… And he doesn’t help you?”
She shook her head. “He blamed me. He doesn’t want to know.”
“Let me have his address, at least.”
******************
Nothing escaped attention in this most divided, dangerous and suspicious of cities. Everyone in Berlin was watched and their activities reported. After a while, his visits to the little family were observed, and he was interrogated and threatened. His status protected him from anything worse, but it was a warning. He went to see them once more and told them his visits had to cease, but that he would continue to send them money when he could. They both hugged him, and cried when he left.
All he could do was to write to Gisela’s brother – just a short letter to say how sick she was, and that Ursula would need him one day soon.
Months later, after he was sent to talk to the new mayor at the town hall in Schöneberg, he took a chance and went to visit them again – it was such a short distance, not quite on his way back to the office, but not so far off it.
The line he had fixed was still there. He tugged it and waited. A man came down to open the door.
“Yes?”
“I hoped to see Gisela and Ursula,” he said.
“Gisela’s dead. She died this morning,” the man said abruptly.
“Oh..! I’m so sorry. Are you her brother?”
The man nodded grimly, hostility in every line of his body. “Was it you who wrote to me?”
“Yes. Is Ursula all right?”
“She will be. Now please go away and leave us alone.”
There was a clatter of running feet down the stairs and a cry of “Illya! Illya!” and, squeezing past her uncle, Ursula flung herself into Illya’s arms, weeping. Her uncle seeing them together – fair heads, blue eyes – watched expressionlessly as she gabbled her grief into the young man’s ear.
“Why would a Russian get involved here – what’s in it for you? What do you want?” he asked as Ursula released Illya from her desperate grip.
“Nothing. I was simply there when they needed help,” he replied, and turned to Ursula again. “I have to go – I can’t stay. I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her cheek. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” She nodded; they both knew this would be better than her previous life. She wiped her eyes, and stepping back, bowed a little and held out a formal hand. He shook it gravely, and offered his hand to her uncle who took it grudgingly.
There was no more to be said. Illya waved goodbye to Ursula and left to make his way back to his office, feeling grief like a weight on his heart, but also that a burden he was unfitted for had been lifted.
At the end of the year, he learned that there had been a request for his skills from the London office. He would be posted there in the spring.
=============================Notes
After 1945, Berlin was divided into four sectors under the control of the Americans, British, French and Russians. Before 1961, when the Berlin wall was built, ordinary citizens could move fairly freely between the sectors.
Ku’damm: Kurfürstendamm, in West Berlin. Usually known by the shortened form, and now a shopping boulevard. It ends at the ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhem-Gedächtniskirche, the memorial church near the Zoologische Garten.
Wannsee: a wealthy suburb on a lake, south west of the city. (Also, the place where the Final Solution was planned.)
The new mayor in October 1957 was Willy Brandt, later Chancellor of West Germany.
The Schöneberg Rathaus, or town hall, one of the ugliest buildings in the city, is where JFK made his famous speech in 1961.
Berlin 1957. Illya takes a risky responsibility
Early days 4
Winter in Berlin seemed to consist of permanently grey skies, intense cold, and occasional snow. It was once an austerely beautiful city, and might be again, once the ruins of war were finally obliterated. But, just now, and particularly for a Russian acting as an agent of the Western powers, it was pretty wretched.
The work was interesting, but often taxing and stressful. As Harry Beldon’s junior in Section 1, Illya was given the task of dealing with the more delicate diplomacy that his ebullient chief delegated to him, for which the most sensitive translation and interpretation was required. He knew he was good, but every language contains concealed tripping points to catch out even the most fluent interpreter, and in this place a careless remark could bring a return to war.
Beldon invariably addressed him by his name and patronymic rather than his surname. “Ilya Nikolaevitch, go and see so-and-so in the British Sector… the French sector…the American sector.” And sometimes, even, “Ilya Nikolaevitch, I need you to talk to Igor Ilych in the Russian sector.”
************
Today was Sunday, and he was free to relax for a few hours. There was a faint lightening of the overcast sky, even the possibility of a ray of sunshine, so he went for a walk. His lodgings were a room in a relatively undamaged house between Ku’damm and Bismarckstrasse, so, though it was a fair distance, he thought he would walk to the river and follow it right round to the ruined cathedral and make his way back along the dereliction of Unter den Linden and through the mostly repaired Brandenburg Gate to see whether the newly replanted Tiergarten was growing. A not entirely cheerful prospect. It would mean crossing into the Eastern Sector, and back again, but he was used to that – the border crossings were in theory fairly porous, though they were becoming more closely controlled on the eastern side of the city. However, Berliners living in the Eastern (Russian) Sector could still cross into the Western sectors without much challenge, and his own credentials would carry him into most places.
There was a cold east wind, of course, but with his fur hat pulled firmly down around his ears, he persevered. At the Reichstag, he wandered away from the river to look at the repairs. The great open space in front of it was still a mess, just a rough field. A woman was picking her way across it from the other direction, with a child, both dressed inadequately and only wearing scarves to keep their heads warm. As their paths began to cross, Illya saw that she was quite young, but bent like an old woman with exhaustion, and coughing. The child was small and thin, with stringy fair hair – but evidently older than she looked, probably about eleven – sisters?
Approaching them, he asked the woman, “Are you all right?” and was ashamed when she shied away from him in terror. The child was less fearful, but not friendly. “I won’t hurt you,” he said gently, “will you let me help you?”
“Lass uns in Ruhe -- Leave us alone,” said the child.
“Aber, deine Schwester sieht krank aus -- But your sister looks ill.”
“Mutti is all right.”
Her mother – good grief. “Es tut mir leid. Deine Mutter – sie wirklich krank aussieht. -- I’m sorry. Your mother – she really looks ill.”
The woman’s legs began to give way. The child cried out, but Illya caught her before she fell.
“Where do you live?”
“Near Kleistpark.” Too far. She couldn't have weighed much more than 70 pounds, but light as she was, he couldn’t carry her all that way.
“We can’t stay here, it’s too cold,” he said to the child, whose face was beginning to look less stony. “Is the bus stop near here?”
“Ich weiss es nicht – I don’t know. We always walk. No money.”
“All right, we’ll get the S-bahn – don’t worry, I have some money.”
He helped the speechless young woman back onto her feet, and, supporting her blindly stumbling steps, managed to get her walking. It took a long time, but they made their way to the subway station in Potsdamer Platz. That got them to Yorckstrasse at least, and it was then not as far as he had feared to the semi-derelict building in which the two had their home. He carried her up the stairs and set her down at their door on the third floor, breathing heavily, but at least warm from his exertions.
“Have you a key?”
“The lock’s broken,” said the child, and opened the door for him to lead her mother in. It was freezing cold – the window was also broken, and there were no curtains. There was a narrow bed in which, clearly, both of them slept. She drooped in his arm so he lifted her onto the bed and covered her.
“Is there a kitchen?” he asked the child.
“Just the gas-ring. We have to go downstairs for water.”
He looked around. Dear God, they had nothing. “Is there some milk we can heat up for her – and for you, too?”
“No.” The child looked distressed now.
“Here – go and get some milk, and something to eat.” He held out some money.
“No – I’m afraid on my own.” This seemed unlikely, but probably she was reluctant to leave her mother – or maybe didn’t want to leave her alone with him.
“All right, I’ll go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Is there a bell so that you can let me in?”
“You have to throw a stone.” No doubt that was why the window was broken. He sighed, but went to the window to look at where to be seen from.
“Keep looking out. I’ll wave and you can come down.”
************
She told him where to find a shop and he ran down the stairs, wondering if it would even be open at this hour on a Sunday. It wasn’t. But it was a small shop, and the owner appeared to live above it, so he hammered on the door till someone came. He could be friendly and approachable – and persuasive – when he chose, and finally the man agreed to let him in. There was little enough there. He bought a tin of milk, a sausage, a little cheese, a jar of gherkins, a hard loaf of black bread, and a bottle of beer, and that was about it, apart from a screw of paper with some sugar in it, though he had to pay well over the odds for causing such inconvenience. He returned to the home of the two waifs, and stood outside under the window, and saw the waiting child wave.
“Don’t tell me,” he said when they had climbed the stairs, and suddenly struck by a dreadful thought, “you have nothing to open the tin with.”
She smiled, and went to the table where a great thick-bladed knife lay. “We use this,” she said.
He took it gingerly, and examined it. The child was surprised and a little scornful to see his eyes close and a look of anguish cross his face. “Was ist los? -- What’s up? Don’t you know what to do?”
“Where did you find this?”
“It’s Mutti’s.”
He looked at the handle again and the initials roughly carved there. “I see,” he said, and turned resolutely to the tin of milk. “Is there a pan?”
Illya roused the young woman, and she got up to the table to drink the hot milk. Mixed with the sugar and a little beer, to add sustenance and to bulk it out for both of them, it seemed to revive her a little. She raised her sunken consumptive eyes to his and, seeing him properly for the first time without his hat, started back. “You!”
“What’s the matter?”
She snatched up the knife and tried to attack him, but she was hardly able to even hold its weight, so he caused her no damage when he simply removed it from her grasp. “What are you talking about?” he said, opening the jar of gherkins for her. “Here, have some food first and then tell me.”
He cut up the sausage and the bread, and handed some to each of them. The woman’s eyes never left his face as she struggled with the food. Starvation makes it hard to even start eating, and the hectic flush over her cheekbones told him how serious her illness was. He took the plate back and cut up the food into small pieces. “Here,” he said, dipping it into the beer to soften it, “try again.”
She swallowed a few mouthfuls and stopped, unable to finish – her daughter having easily managed all of hers as well as the cup of milk. Illya naturally took no share of this lavish repast.
“I see now,” she said, “you’re like him, that’s all.”
“Like whom?”
“One of them… Them. Why she’s here,” she said, indicating her daughter.
“And this is his knife?”
“Yes. He left it behind after …”
His face was white; she stared at him, and then dropped her eyes. “They were all drunk. He just forgot it when they left,” she said.
“Where did he go?”
“Who can say? Maybe dead, who knows?”
There was silence for a while. Illya sat, hunched over, gripping his hands together between his knees. Then he took a breath and sat up.
“This man, He didn’t come back? Not even for the knife?” She shook her head. Then – he had to ask, and almost whispered – “Did you learn his name?”
“The others called him Nikolai.”
He passed a hand across his face, sweating even in the cold.
“What is your name?” he said. “And … can I ask, how old are you?”
“My name is Gisela… I’m 26.”
“And your daughter?”
“Ursula. She’s nearly 12.”
Ursula – little bear…
***************
He gave them all the money he had on him; promised to bring more; said he would get the window repaired, some curtains… and left, sick at heart.
He had no idea how he got back to his lodgings, whom he might have passed, who might have spoken to him, why he was so cold, why his eyelashes seemed to be stuck together with frost.
He dreamed that night of summer in the woods of Ukraine, but at some point, the image changed and he saw only burned trees, a failed harvest, and an empty house.
************
Whenever he had time, he went to see them, taking money, food, and anything he could find to bring colour and warmth into the room. They greeted him listlessly at first, but gradually became almost welcoming. The window was repaired, but he couldn’t find curtains. He repaired the door himself so that they could lock it; rigged up a line leading up the stairs from the front door and fixed small pieces of wood to it inside their room, that would rattle when the line was tugged. It was a foolish gesture; he knew it wouldn’t last long.
He tried to persuade Gisela to go to a doctor, to no avail. “No money.”
“I can pay.”
“No. You have done enough.”
The child was at school, so he could say what he feared for her. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You must try to get well – what would Ursula do if something happened to you?”
“I have a brother in Wannsee.”
“Wannsee! He must have money… And he doesn’t help you?”
She shook her head. “He blamed me. He doesn’t want to know.”
“Let me have his address, at least.”
******************
Nothing escaped attention in this most divided, dangerous and suspicious of cities. Everyone in Berlin was watched and their activities reported. After a while, his visits to the little family were observed, and he was interrogated and threatened. His status protected him from anything worse, but it was a warning. He went to see them once more and told them his visits had to cease, but that he would continue to send them money when he could. They both hugged him, and cried when he left.
All he could do was to write to Gisela’s brother – just a short letter to say how sick she was, and that Ursula would need him one day soon.
Months later, after he was sent to talk to the new mayor at the town hall in Schöneberg, he took a chance and went to visit them again – it was such a short distance, not quite on his way back to the office, but not so far off it.
The line he had fixed was still there. He tugged it and waited. A man came down to open the door.
“Yes?”
“I hoped to see Gisela and Ursula,” he said.
“Gisela’s dead. She died this morning,” the man said abruptly.
“Oh..! I’m so sorry. Are you her brother?”
The man nodded grimly, hostility in every line of his body. “Was it you who wrote to me?”
“Yes. Is Ursula all right?”
“She will be. Now please go away and leave us alone.”
There was a clatter of running feet down the stairs and a cry of “Illya! Illya!” and, squeezing past her uncle, Ursula flung herself into Illya’s arms, weeping. Her uncle seeing them together – fair heads, blue eyes – watched expressionlessly as she gabbled her grief into the young man’s ear.
“Why would a Russian get involved here – what’s in it for you? What do you want?” he asked as Ursula released Illya from her desperate grip.
“Nothing. I was simply there when they needed help,” he replied, and turned to Ursula again. “I have to go – I can’t stay. I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her cheek. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” She nodded; they both knew this would be better than her previous life. She wiped her eyes, and stepping back, bowed a little and held out a formal hand. He shook it gravely, and offered his hand to her uncle who took it grudgingly.
There was no more to be said. Illya waved goodbye to Ursula and left to make his way back to his office, feeling grief like a weight on his heart, but also that a burden he was unfitted for had been lifted.
At the end of the year, he learned that there had been a request for his skills from the London office. He would be posted there in the spring.
=============================
After 1945, Berlin was divided into four sectors under the control of the Americans, British, French and Russians. Before 1961, when the Berlin wall was built, ordinary citizens could move fairly freely between the sectors.
Ku’damm: Kurfürstendamm, in West Berlin. Usually known by the shortened form, and now a shopping boulevard. It ends at the ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhem-Gedächtniskirche, the memorial church near the Zoologische Garten.
Wannsee: a wealthy suburb on a lake, south west of the city. (Also, the place where the Final Solution was planned.)
The new mayor in October 1957 was Willy Brandt, later Chancellor of West Germany.
The Schöneberg Rathaus, or town hall, one of the ugliest buildings in the city, is where JFK made his famous speech in 1961.
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Date: 2017-10-10 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-11 06:17 am (UTC)Our very comfortable lives make it all but impossible to remember or imagine the deprivation that people suffered in the past. I remember some of it, but never actually experienced total deprivation.
Thanks for commenting.