Елена Ржевская - Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter - From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker

But that, too, passed and Bystrov changed again. I do not think I knew anyone as inwardly restless as he was. He worried feverishly about what direction his life should take now, what choices he should make, whether he should go back to his previous studies as a biologist or stay in the army. There was some obscure, disquieting obstacle to his returning to his old career. He could not speak about it with his usual directness, something remained unsaid. He also lamented the loss of a loyal, discriminating counsellor in his mother-in-law, who had died before the war. He evidently had been guilty of some pre-war misdeed in respect of one of his colleagues and wondered whether now, in what seemed like the purer atmosphere after the war, he would be welcomed back by his fellow biologists. It troubled him.

At first he wondered about staying in the army. An observant person, he asked me, ‘Do you see the type of commander they want now?’ He saw for himself that promotion was coming to those who made relentless, harsh demands on their subordinates over even the most trifling detail. He understood that he himself needed to change, to change his completely inappropriate manner when dealing with his subordinates. Having given a task to a private, he would often ask, ‘Right then, sport, sure you’ve got that?’ He tended to be indulgent, over-lenient, too understanding of the other person’s situation, and was inclined to cover up if they got something wrong.

He began trying to break himself in, to act a part, to adapt to the stereotype of the successful officer. Instead of his easy-going, and often affectionate, term of address (‘sport’), he now became relentlessly demanding and obnoxious. Soon, however, realizing he was a round peg in a square hole, that he did not belong in the army and would never go far, Bystrov gave up the idea and tried to go back to being his old self. That, however, proved impossible. You cannot violate your true self without leaving a wound.

There was only one thing left, and that was to go back to biology. He was soon acting with his characteristic purposefulness, still unable to imagine living without setting himself targets and achieving them.

If the refugees are sitting on the ground by the town hall; if at the customary lunchtime, between twelve and one o’clock in the afternoon, the Germans, closing their stores and shops and offices, greet each other when they meet in the street with, ‘’Mahlzeit !’; if in the atelier a dress is being sewn for the wife of the Burgomeister to attend the opening of the local theatre; if Trudi, dishevelled, going feral, is torn between her master and the foreigners’ kitchen, breaks free and, jangling on her collar the highest Nazi military and paramilitary award, the ‘Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves’, and a medal ‘For Participation in the Winter Campaign in the East’, rushes to greet her master and he, squeezing through the green hedge, with some effort replaces the bowler hat on his head, totally ignoring Trudi’s satanic decorations and responds with his customary strictness to her greetings and walks unabashed into the house, leading his wife – if all this happens, then truly the war is over.

In the evening, through the open window of a nearby house come the tones of Alexander Vertinsky, a captured record. That, instead of a low whistle, is the signal for a secret assignation with R.

Even before Vertinsky has finished the song, a captured 8 mm film projector for home use is switched on. ‘Wait till you see this!’ The projector clatters and on a white pillowcase hung on the wall as a screen a little mouse starts running round a pantry in pursuit of a sausage hanging from a hook.

‘Funny?’ ‘Uh-huh.’ But it isn’t the least bit funny. I translate the subtitles, but my viewing is being blocked by a sorrow rising from the bottom of my heart. Something is leaving us, evaporating. A beastly German cat puts an end to the beastly German mouse that nibbled a beastly German sausage…

What is happening to us? Where are we? We are being dragged out to the provinces of a victory. We are now two trains on a narrow-gauge track. One lets the other pass, not yet knowing which route to follow into the chasm of days ahead, not exchanging whistles, deaf to each other.

How shall we honour this victory? How shall we honour the life it has given us, which we have yet to know? That tumultuous sense of living that bubbled up with victory, is receding.

Life without enchantment. During the war nobody expected any, but in the war nobody was ordinary. No one. The ordinariness followed almost immediately, in a foreign, vanquished land, with the hatefulness of occupation.

And that wonderful sense of being alive: is it possible now or was it taken away with them by those who perished? Perhaps, too, victory itself is only a short period of festivity followed by a persistent sense of disquieting responsibility.

While we were in occupation of Stendal there swept out of the darkness of the Nazis’ concentration camps the Eternal Chancer, an obligatory character that follows in the wake of wars and cataclysms. In Stendal he appeared in the guise of an adroit, nimble gentleman with a narrow-brimmed hat and a face moulded from grey, heat-resistant clay, on which the dots of eyes, the crosses of nostrils, and the line of his lips had been etched.

Declaring he was a former political prisoner, he lost no time in setting himself up nicely. He moved into the Schwarzer Adler (Black Eagle) Hotel and cornered the legal owner. His eye had alighted on this wellkept hostelry because its owner, who had vanished without trace, had been a prominent Nazi in the town, which now enabled this type, whose first name was Hans and whose surname I have forgotten, to carry out, covertly and with impunity, an expropriation. The abandoned co-owner, a small, rounded woman, now spent her inactive days in an obscure corner of her restaurant in the guise of an employee, and in reality under house (restaurant) arrest. The old staff were fired and their replacements kept a close eye on her. The chef, a concentration camp chum of Hans, was a hunchbacked strongman with a cheery, red, roguish face who could cook dishes unimaginable for that time, in total disregard of norms and the strict ration limits.

A theatre opened in Stendal and a dreamy actress with luxuriant ashblonde hair crooned something pre-Nazi. From the screens, Marika Rökk, ‘The Woman of My Dreams’, in a chinchilla fur coat, raked over old coals by hymning the blandishments of the high life. ‘Ex-prisoner’ Hans sent out a team of women he hired near Potsdam to find champignons. German boys walked with their arms round German girls as if we were simply not there. At the time-honoured hour, the Germans, locking up their Geschäfts and offices, dispersed for lunch, calling ‘’Mahlzeit! ’ to their acquaintances. Ramming their spades into the ground, the road workers stood in trenches in the street, unwrapped their packed lunches brought from home, and ate the stale bread of poverty.

An interpreter was constantly in demand, if not for anything of great importance. It was an odd life, as if you were imagining it. There was nothing here for Bystrov to do. A car he had captured was being repaired in a German garage and he was planning to drive back home in it. He was expecting at any moment to be given the signal that would allow him to leave. There was already a distance between us. It was like approaching your destination in a train when the food for the journey has been eaten, everybody has told their personal stories to everybody else, the cases have been put out in the aisle and scarves are already on necks. The temporary community that has come together on the journey is falling apart. Everybody is on their own, separately thinking about what they have to do next, about the excitement of imminent reunions.