Helga Schneider - The Bonfire of Berlin - A Lost Childhood in Wartime Germany

I wandered about the little asphalt paths, trying to keep out of sight. In the end I stopped where the women usually went to beat their carpets, but there was not a soul to be seen. The sparrows were hopping about in the sunbeams and rose into the air with an indignant commotion. I swung from a beam with my legs in the air and my head dangling, and watched the world upside down; soon my head was spinning.

The place was quiet, surrounded by tall trees, and the canopy of branches and leaves concealed the sky. A strong smell of autumn and mould hung in the air.

I became aware of how isolated I was, and all of a sudden a profound loneliness swept through me with such violence that it left me feeling stunned and anxious.

I started crying, sobbing loudly and dejectedly. I wept for a long time, and the harder I wept the angrier and more rebellious I felt: God couldn’t hear me! He would not stop punishing me. First he had taken away my father, then my mother, finally my grandmother too.

Why did I have to stay with my stepmother? She didn’t love me! I started to kick a tree trunk, but in fact I was kicking God. ‘If you exist,’ I thought furiously, ‘give me a sign!’ As I was kicking the tree in a blind fury, I saw a cat emerge from beneath a bush. It was grey with white stripes, and had yellow eyes. It stared at me intently. Finally it came over and rubbed against my legs with gentle familiarity. That contact, that gesture of solidarity, made me start sobbing again but this time with gratitude. I convinced myself that God was trying to reassure me.

After some time I heard Ursula calling me from the kitchen window. Although she couldn’t see me, I drew back to hide behind the fat trunk of a tree. ‘Heeeelgaaaaa!’ she shouted. I didn’t reply. No, I didn’t want to go back to her, I never wanted to go back to that house. Then I went and hid behind a bush whose spiny branches scratched my arms and face. I felt one of my eyebrows tearing, and blood ran down my face to the comer of my mouth. I wiped it away with a handful of dry leaves. The cat had vanished.

All of a sudden the wind came up, shaking the branches of the trees, unleashing a whirl of dead leaves. The leaves fell drunkenly, like big, lost butterflies joining their fellows in death.

Once again I heard my stepmother’s voice, closer this time. She must have come down to the courtyard. She persisted: ‘Helgaaa! Helgaaa!’ In her voice there was a mixture of irritation and concern, as though she was obliged by circumstance to worry about something that did not really touch her heart. Other voices joined hers, and I realised that she had roused the neighbours. I became frightened. I hid myself even further inside the bush, still dabbing at my cut eyebrow. The voices were getting closer. All of a sudden I heard my stepmother right in front of me: ‘She’s gone too far this time, I’m not having it any more! She’s an impossible child, she’s making me crazy!’ The voices went on calling me, each with a different intonation; I didn’t budge. After a while they moved off, and all that remained was the wind.

I started breathing again. Night was falling quickly. It was as though someone had stretched a dark cloth over a lampshade, then added others in quick succession. I was cold and hungry, but I didn’t want to go back to my stepmother for anything.

Soon, beyond the roofs, I heard a dark rumble, like the sound of planes; as the sirens hadn’t sounded, I hoped it was only a thunderstorm. A big drop of rain fell on my forehead, so I decided to take shelter. There were no voices now, no footsteps. The tree-trunks and bushes were dark, sinister shadows; I imagined I was surrounded by goblins that were spying on me; perhaps they were benevolent, perhaps merely curious.

In the end I extricated myself from the bush and made it back to the main path. I ran towards the door into the entrance hall and caught my breath. Everything was dark and deserted. I pressed the light-switch, but the power was so feeble that I could hardly see a thing. What should I do? I opened the door to the cellar, which had been left unlocked to allow access during air-raids. I ran my hand along the wall until I felt the hard knob of the switch, but the light that came on was merely a glimmer.

I smelled the damp cellar smell, then went down the concrete steps, a cold wind blowing against my neck. A long corridor opened up at the foot of the stairs, leading in two directions; I hesitated. Usually, when the siren sounded, we would take the left turn to reach the room that served as a shelter; I decided to investigate what lay to the right.

I saw legless chairs and armless dolls, dusty trunks and a perfectly preserved tailor’s dummy. The light was faint and flickering. Finally I reached the gloomy bowels of the building, where the coal was stored. I saw a mountain of briquettes and a smaller one of coke. Two shovels and a broom leaned against the wall. On a rudimentary shelf there was a pile of jute sacks.

With cold determination, I decided to avenge myself on Ursula. I would stay out all night, I would make her die of worry. Between the pile of coal and the wall, I discovered an empty space: just what I was looking for! I went back to the shelf and took down all the sacks. With some of them I made a kind of bed, planning to cover myself with the rest.

I contemplated my work with a sudden sense of unease: what would happen to me once it was totally dark? But my desire for revenge was stronger than my fear. I gritted my teeth, lay down on my makeshift bed and waited for the light to go out.

All of a sudden darkness swooped upon me like a great bat. I cried out and found that I was drenched in sweat. The darkness was dense and menacing. I heard hisses, murmurs, the strangest noises. I began to imagine the creatures creeping around me◦– rats, spiders or millipedes◦– and was tempted to get up, switch on the light, go back to the flat and prostrate myself at Ursula’s feet. But I resisted. I clenched my fists and wept with fear.

All of a sudden I heard the creak of the cellar door and footsteps scurrying down the steps. Muffled voices were calling to me: ‘Helga! Where are you?’

I didn’t move a muscle. All of a sudden someone came into the coal-cellar and turned on the light. There must have been four or five women, judging by the sounds their shoes made. One of them said: ‘She isn’t here either, wherever can the poor child be?’ I heard my stepmother’s voice: ‘She’ll pay for this, how she’ll pay for this!’ Then they left.

I heard the door closing. I was on my own again.

I awoke with a start: a chorus of voices was calling me from the path outside: ‘Helga! Helga!’

I got up but suddenly felt terribly dizzy. I waited for my lightheadedness to pass, then shook off the sacks; I was literally covered in coal. My arms had been scratched to bits by the spines of the bush I’d hidden in, and I was faint with hunger.

A dim light shone through the air vents, faintly illuminating the coal pile. The place had lost its sinister atmosphere and was merely a cellar.

I hurried down the corridor to the steps, opened the door quietly and, seeing no-one, slipped into the entrance hall. But it was cold there, so I ran into the courtyard. The slanting light of early morning gave no warmth, but it did comfort me. The frost was melting on the paths.

As there had been no sirens that night, I knew that the enemy must have taken the day off.

I started wandering the paths, battling against terrible hunger pangs. A single long, grainy cloud stretched in the sky like a bank of pumice. I was almost drunk with weakness and would have eaten the bark off a tree.

In fact I very much wanted someone to find me, and, all of a sudden, a group of women emerged from nowhere and ran towards me. ‘There you are! Thank heavens you’re alive! What on earth happened to you!’ One of them said to me, ‘Your mother’s been looking for you since yesterday.