Nightmare in Berlin Read Online Free PDF

been hidden or buried, and put them back where they belonged, so as not to offend the victors by the appearance of mistrust. Such suggestions were greeted by other family members with much irritation and head-shaking: ‘You wouldn’t, Olga, surely!’ — ‘What nonsense you talk, Elisabeth, better safe than sorry!’ Or even: ‘I don’t think we’ve hidden anything away, Minnie, you must be imagining things!’
    This neighbourly exchange reached its climax when two old men, who must have been in their seventies, got really fired up over the account of the scene in front of the hotel with the drunken children. At first, the fury of the two old men was indescribable. Had they not, for weeks and months past, been beating a path to the door of this self-same hotelier, whose regular customers they had been since time immemorial — and making that journey almost daily, despite their advanced years and the distance involved — and had not this villain, this criminal, this traitor to his own people, refused their requests for a bottle, or indeed just a glass, of wine, nearly always with the same refrain: that he just didn’t have anything left, because the SS had drunk the lot?! And now it turned out that he still had wine after all, lots of wine most likely, a cellarful, whole cellarfuls, which had been unlawfully denied them, and which children were now emptying onto the street!
    And the two old men stood there looking at each other — their faces, which had been grey and careworn just a few minutes earlier, now flushed red to the roots of their white hair, as if bathed in the reflection of the wine. They patted each other on their bellies, which had grown so slack over the past year that they no longer filled out their trousers, and recited the names of their favourite grape varieties to each other in fond reminiscence. One of them was short, invariably clad in a green huntsman’s suit, and a passionate devotee of Moselle wines; the other was tall, always in shirtsleeves, and tended to favour French wines. As they danced around each other, shouting and patting each other on the belly, they seemed to be drunk already on the wine they had not yet imbibed. The uncertainty of the hour, the war that was barely over yet, the danger that might be lurking round the corner, all this was forgotten, and every memory of long-endured suffering was blotted out by the prospect of a drink. And as they now resolved, each egging the other on, to head into town immediately with a couple of handcarts, and fetch the wine that had been wrongfully denied them, Doll compared them in his mind to people getting ready to dance on an erupting volcano.
    Thank heavens they both had wives, and these wives now made sure that the day’s planned foray into town came to nothing, especially as the roar of heavy vehicles passing through the town, which could be heard very clearly across the lake, was getting steadily louder. Turning back to his loose wire ends, Doll said: ‘But if things don’t turn out quite as expected, we’ll be the ones to blame because they didn’t go and hide in the forest. Just as we’ll be the ones to blame for everything that happens from now on …’
    â€˜Well, I didn’t say anything to persuade them one way or the other’, said his young wife defensively.
    â€˜It’s not about what you said’, replied Doll, and yanked a staple out of the stake with his pincers. ‘The point is that our dear neighbours have now found a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.’ He coiled up a length of wire. ‘They won’t show us any mercy, you can be sure of that! For the last few years they’ve always tried to put the blame on others for everything that’s happened, and never on themselves. What makes you think they’ve changed?’
    â€˜We’ll get through it’, replied his young wife with a defiant smile.