Heinz Rein - Berlin Finale

Mrs Buschkamp chuckles. It sounds like the cry of a jay.

‘Funny that you’ve only just thought of asking that question. So you don’t know? That… I keep forgetting his name… so Irma’s husband is a soldier, he was in hospital somewhere in Upper Silesia, God knows where he’s crawling about these days, Irma hasn’t had a letter from him for a few months.’

‘When was Mr Lassehn last on leave?’ Lassehn asks. He would like to ask more penetrating questions, but he doesn’t have the courage, he fears this feisty woman’s keen eyes and sharp tongue.

‘On leave? I’ll give you on leave!’, says Mrs Buschkamp. ‘Not at all, the young bridegroom slept at his young wife’s place for eight days and since then not a peep. That’s a marriage for you! They’ve barely sniffed each other and already they’re getting married, I call that a dog’s wedding. So, was that the siren going off? No, it was just a tram, we’re already half crazy, we give a start every time there’s a noise.’

Lassehn nods a few times. He doesn’t know how to ask the questions that are trying to spill out of him without arousing suspicion.

‘He was a nice young man, too, Irma’s husband was, I only saw him two or three times,’ Mrs Buschkamp continues, ‘pretty fellow, a bit soft-looking, not really right for Irma.’

‘Really?’ Lassehn objects. He is filled with a strange tension, as if through the voice of this down-to-earth woman a neutral judge were delivering his verdict.

‘I was surprised at the time,’ Mrs Buschkamp goes on, ‘when Irma turned up with that boy. Don’t get me wrong, Mr Kempner, I thought the young man was very nice, but he wasn’t a match for Irma, he was actually too good for her.’

‘In what way?’ Lassehn asks, confused. ‘I had a sense that…’

‘Oh nonsense,’ Mrs Buschkamp interrupts. ‘You’re practically a boy yourself, what do you know about such things? You see, Irma is a confident girl, she knows exactly what she wants, she needs a man who’s at least ten years older than she is who can show her how to do things, you understand, in every respect. And this… Now, what’s his name again…’

‘Lassehn,’ Lassehn says helpfully.

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Buschkamp says, ‘and Lassehn was the right medium for her, she could definitely do what she liked with him. The first time she came here with him I was standing outside the front door shouting at the street kids. Well, and when I saw him arm in arm with Irma, I thought to myself, what sort of boy is she bringing home? He looks as if he’s never even been with a girl.’

Lassehn flinches at the clarity of the woman’s vision.

‘I wouldn’t have given him another thought if she had only taken him to bed the once, maybe she wanted to find out how a boy like that… Well, you know what I mean. But even today I don’t understand why she married him, and I’d eat my hat if she didn’t have very special reasons of her own.’

Lassehn holds his breath with tension, he’s aware that this strange woman knows far more about his wife than he does. Certain thoughts that often tried to raise a warning voice, but were always silenced, now take shape, but he hasn’t the time right now to look at them in detail, piece by piece, and connect them up with each other. The voice of this woman, a stranger who is really talking now, and who seems to want to get everything out of her system, leaves him no time, because with each new sentence she suggests new perspectives that had previously been completely hidden, and weren’t even vaguely present.

‘I must say, I felt sorry for the lad,’ Mrs Buschkamp continued, undeterred, ‘he must have put all his feelings into it, and when the eight days were over he probably had nothing to show for it but a pair of weak knees. You know, Mr Kempner, I’m a simple old woman, but I’ve got eyes in my head and there are things I don’t like. When I saw the two of them, it always seemed to me that Irma was just tolerating him and that was that. Yes, when she went with the others, with the Luftwaffe captain, she was a long way away from love, she fluttered her eyelashes at him, she wanted to get into his trousers…’

Lassehn feels as if an ice-cold hand has clutched his heart and is pressing it with bony fingers. The woman’s voice comes from very far away, he can’t form a coherent thought, his brain is alternately filled to the brim with thoughts and then completely empty again. He stands up and looks out of the window, he feels he has turned pale to the roots of his hair, but he doesn’t want to let the woman see, he grits his teeth to resist the questions that are trying to spill out of him and manages to hold them back. All that issues from between his teeth is a hoarse croak, which he masks with an artificial cough.

‘Ah, yes, who knows where love is going to strike,’ Mrs Buschkamp goes on.

Lassehn has now recovered himself to the extent that he can ask a question in a calm voice, but he is still looking away from her because he hasn’t got the muscles in his face under control. ‘Was Mrs Lassehn, or rather the then Miss Neidermeyer, engaged to the Luftwaffe captain?’, he asks.

‘Engaged? No, she never wore a ring,’ Mrs Buschkamp replies, ‘but she was head over heels in love with him, handsome fellow he was, a real man. You see, and I don’t understand this, a little while later she married for the exact opposite, a sweet boy that she had to train up. That’s why I’m forever saying that Irma must have had a special reason for finding another boy and even marrying him.’

‘How do you mean, Mrs Buschkamp?’ asks Lassehn, pressing his fingers tightly together to keep control of himself. ‘Did the Luftwaffe captain…’

‘…never came back, he just never came back,’ Mrs Buschkamp finishes his sentence. ‘There are plenty of pretty girls in Berlin, they all want a taste of love before a bomb falls on them. It’s not like in the old days, when girls did a lot of thinking beforehand. When they have to bear in mind that their wonderful life in Hitler’s Third Divine Reich could come to an end at any moment, they want to know what it’s like to be a woman, just once, even if it’s just a moment of pleasure between two air-raid warnings. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?’

Lassehn has turned round again and nods a few times to show his agreement, but right now he is not interested in general observations, his attention is focused on one very specific point, which he must now address with a question, whatever the result. He summons all his inner strength and at the same time tries to maintain a look of indifference. The question chokes him, it takes his breath away, it wells up inside him like a geyser, nothing can hold it back.

‘And for what reasons, Mrs Buschkamp,’ he says very slowly, matter-of-factly, because that’s the best way he has of suppressing the insecurity in his voice, ‘do you think Miss Niedermeyer married Lassehn even though her heart was still full of love for someone else?’

‘You put that very nicely, young man,’ Mrs Buschkamp says, ‘old Goethe couldn’t have put it better. Yes, sometimes you hear people say things, and then you find out it was Mrs Buschkamp as said it first. Here it comes, Mr Kempner, the next air-raid announcement.’

The music that was slipping past Lassehn’s ear constantly and unnoticed is interrupted once again. Then the announcer’s oleaginous voice rings out: ‘Attention, attention, this is an air-raid announcement. The large combat unit reported as approaching north-west Germany is now heading towards the area around Hanover and Braunschweig. Combat unit over Lower Austria flying south. Another combat unit approaching West Germany. I repeat…’

‘Well, it’s nearly time,’ says Mrs Buschkamp. ‘Here, look out the window, the way they’re running to the bunker. If the radio says north-west Germany, they’re half mad, and when it says Hanover-Braunschweig, they go completely insane.’