Page 38 - Excerpts from the diary

protruding, wet, and ugly to the point of repulsion. Nevertheless I did not abandon my intention to proceed. She spread her legs.
I undressed and lay down, but the moment I touched her intimately, the “electric current” vanished. I was terrified. I flushed and was
frightened beyond measure.

“Help me switch the electricity on and connect it to the circuit.”

She would have been glad to help, but she understood that it did not depend on her and made a helpless gesture. I was weakened by the
nervous shock. Having read so many warning books, I thought myself permanently lost to sexual life. She looked at me in surprise and
did not understand.

Then it occurred to me to try bringing the two opposite charges into contact and moving them against one another. I touched one “charge”
coming from me to the other and repeated the movement several times. Suddenly the current returned, struck its mark, and rushed from
me into her.

How many times I repeated the movement I do not remember. She counted: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. At sixteen, when she was already
quite breathless and had long since put both legs over my shoulders, I took pity on her and stopped. I examined her once more from feet
to head: a small body covered with bite marks and scratches, some bleeding; breasts not fully developed but already hanging downward;
and below, slippery as a snail, the opening divided into two lips.

Someone knocked at the door. A woman’s voice in Russian asked us to open. I told the German girl to dress and urged her to hurry. She
was very quick and was ready within a minute. I had not yet dressed, however, and so did not open. The knocking stopped, then soon
began again. I opened the door. The cook called us to dinner. When I frankly told the German girl why the cook had appeared and why he
was being so hospitable, she refused the food although she was very hungry: “I cannot give myself to everyone; that is not good. I would
rather stay hungry.” I liked that [...].

17.10.1945
5:00 p.m. Berlin time. At the top of the Victory Column. All Berlin is visible. Around the column is the green of the Tiergarten, then
buildings. The streets are narrow; only two or three are broad. The ruins of the city are ugly.

A bronze lattice railing surrounds the pedestal on which “Victory,” in the form of a woman holding a raised laurel wreath, spreads herself
above the city.

For a long time I searched my pockets for something suitable with which to leave an inscription on the wall as a record of my visit, but
found nothing. Then I noticed someone’s scratches in English standing out brightly against the bronze, blackened with age. And an idea
came to me—a knife!

At least an hour passed while I carved the inscription. Another man came up onto the balcony, looked around, walked a circuit, compared
the view with Moscow, made a remark, not without poetry, about my scribbling, and went back down. I kept writing. At last I could bear
no more. I scratched something more manageable, added my surname to one side, put away the knife and paper, and, after one last glance
at the city stripped bare by ruins, headed for the exit. The lift was out of order. I had to use my legs. If the climb had been tiring, the
descent was unbearable, even harder; I almost leaped down the final steps and ran out.

I reached Alexanderplatz as dusk was already falling. The market of “der Schwarze Markt,” as the Germans call it, had not thinned.
People bustled and pushed. The shrill whistles of German policemen, cries of running people, the horns of English and American vehicles
filled the air, and everywhere men in Red Army uniform with red armbands bearing the conspicuous letters “KN” darted through the
crowd.

Darkness came decisively, and the day reluctantly withdrew into the gray breadth of the horizon. People looked sadly at the faintly
flickering stars that had just appeared and began to leave. It was time for the “tourists” and “pilgrims” of Alexanderplatz, having had their
fill of its delights, to scatter across Berlin and far beyond it, toward home.

Now the Germans could no longer find buyers for their goods and sold cheaply. I stayed in the square even after the underground trains
had stopped running and the dark autumn sky had drunk its fill of stars.

For 250 marks I bought a Rasierapparat, an electric shaving device. I cheaply obtained two pairs of women’s shoes—one for 100 and one
for 200 marks—to send to Mother. I paid little for women’s dresses. But I was cheated on a coat. In the morning, when I examined it
carefully, it turned out to be full of holes—so many that one could not even make trousers from it.

At ten in the evening I returned to Weißensee.
I arrived very late at the apartment of the German Jewish Rischowski family. They treated me to skillfully prepared sweets and gave me
hot tea. When I was leaving they almost pulled the photographs from my hands—pictures of Berlin that I had received from the photo
shop only the day before. Of seven views I had to leave five with them. I wrote inscriptions in German, “Zum Andenken,” and so on,
shook everyone’s hands firmly, and ran for the tram. But it was no longer running either.

Then I began stopping cars. The prospect of spending the night in the street or walking six kilometers to the “Grand Hotel,” where I am
writing these lines, did not appeal to me, and I decided to use all my energy and ingenuity to be in bed within an hour. And indeed I
managed it.