Page 41 - Excerpts from the diary

I have repeatedly received insulting remarks about my appearance. Even the cold rubberized raincoat cannot now be worn abroad, since
in the eyes of foreigners it distorts the uniform prescribed for the Red Army. The brigade assistant chief of staff has twice wanted to place
me under arrest and once publicly ordered me to leave the officers’ club.

In view of the above, I request your assistance in providing me with winter uniform and also granting me two days’ leave to the Potsdam
area, where the 27th OPros is stationed, so that I may obtain the clothing book which remained there in place of the clothing certificate
issued to me.

16.01.1946
Hennigsdorf.
I spent the night with Margot again. She has changed a little: still pretty, but her hands are covered with pimples, and she has scratched
them all over her body. I now feel a certain aversion, though not enough to leave her altogether. Last night, after everyone had gone, I
touched even those forbidden parts of her body that are not freely named in words.

Now I am writing and she is watching me. She is very curious to know what I am writing, and Mummy, smiling, says, “But you cannot
read it.” Now I kiss Margot in front of her mother. Earlier her mother would not even allow her daughter to sit up late with me. Before
going to bed I had even arranged with the girl that she would come to me at midnight. Only her mother’s watching and supervision
prevented us from tasting all the sweetness of the dream and physical closeness.

Earlier she concealed her exact date of birth and said she was eighteen. Yesterday mother and daughter, one after the other, admitted that
the girl is only sixteen.

I have just been intimate with Margot, but I myself was not satisfied. She remains motionless and obedient like an object. I had to do
twice the work and became terribly tired, but my efforts alone did not bring the desired result. When I stopped, she took me in her hands
and began to play. Only then did the milky foam spill. She had climbed into the room through the window, even putting a chair beneath
it. My neighbors talked nearby, and everything went smoothly. As I have said, if she resisted, it was only for appearances. A beautiful
body, though scratched all over by pimples, and her intimate parts were wet and smelled unpleasantly. Her face is astonishingly beautiful.
Inga was cleaning the neighboring room and listening; when I later walked down the corridor, she looked at me openly and with a kind of
pride.

Major Skorkin is probably dissatisfied with my trip. Everyone told me to go to him quickly, since a trip to Potsdam was necessary in
connection with attaching our Base to the military trading organization, but during our conversation I did not remind him of it, and he
said one ought to work rather than travel about. Very well. I will try to obtain permission through the chief of staff.

24.03.1946
It is already late, deep night—an old woman of a night. The shy stars in the sky have dimmed. The radio too is silent; all Europe sleeps.
Faraway beloved Moscow no longer speaks, tired after the day’s work. Only I cannot sleep, and my eyes keep watch over the silence.

I had barely been assigned to some commission for measuring iron when a new decision by Major Skorkin overtook it: I was appointed
head of labor. But I did not remain there long either. Two days later—yesterday—I was ordered, in the name of the Base chief, to hand
over my duties to another officer and go on a long, open-ended assignment as head of an intra-brigade mobile facility.

A problem! In a few days the officers are moving elsewhere, and I may find that all my belongings and my apartment have been left
unattended, exposed to looting from the street. Manufactured goods from the military trading store will arrive in my absence; the German
girls in Velten will be there without me; and Berlin will hardly see me again—my tunic is being made there, and my suitcases are there
too.

Kremmen is another subject of concern: my boots are there. And in Velten, in addition, I need to have an overcoat made and collect the
radio receiver for which I have already paid.

24.07.1946
Berlin Ostkreuz.

Germans divide all newspapers appearing in Germany into Russian, English, American, and French. They do not count the Party
papers—Communist, Socialist, Christian Democratic, Liberal, and others.

Berlin-Reinickendorf. I am going back to Hennigsdorf. I bought only a few foodstuffs, enough to count on my fingers, and seven hundred
marks vanished as though they had never existed. They now accept the old German money that circulated under Hitler, which is good. I
had up to five hundred of those marks and got rid of them.

Fresh cherries got wet and tore through their paper bag. I had to dispose of them, and despite the special fastidiousness I have developed
since my illness, without washing the cherries or even freshening my hands I immediately began eating them at the station.

A wretched little specimen came up to me—a shabby, spiteful-looking German. First he peered from one side, then the other, rising on
tiptoe because he was a dwarf of a man, smiling ingratiatingly and staring at what I was eating. When I asked angrily, “What do you
want?” he turned away. Then, without losing his smile, he moved off saying, “Schmeckt gut?” and for a long time kept wrinkling his
nose, sniffing, and looking around with his small eyes, made even smaller behind his spectacles. I spat out cherry pits for a long time,