NUERNBERG ALTSTADT
301
of wootl, and on the table I saw a hat'l1.mer, some rusty nails, two plates,
a cup, a broken knife, and a fork.
"Are you all alone here?" I asked her.
"Ach ja," she said. "I wouldn't live where those other people live
for anything. It's disgustingly dirty down there. And there's no air. It's
horrible."
I talked to her for about twenty minutes. Then I left her my matches
and went away. Back in my room I wrote to my wife, describing briefly
that evening and this particular woman. This was her war history.
She'd been bombed out of seven different places. Her husband had
been killed in a raid; her mother had been killed in a raid; her
sister had been killed in a raid; she herself had had four major
operations during the war; her only daughter, aged 21, after the
sixth bombing-out, had been evacuated to Kiel in February of
this year and never been heard of since. Her one son, aged 16, had
"gone wild" and kept disappearing. She never knew where he was,
and hadn't seen him for a month. For six weeks she had slept in
, a bunker with 200 others. But she preferred her own company, so
she'd made herself this shack in the ruins of the Altstadt. She had
one great fear. The ground on which she'd built the shack didn't
belong to her. "You see," she said, "I don't
own,
my ruin. I don't
own anything except two coats and the clothes I stand up in. I'm
afraid the people who own this bit of land may come back and
turn me out."
Early next morning, a Sunday, I returned to the Altstad t. I stood
on the spot where the lanes converged, but I didn't hear any murmuring.
I found the hole of the cavelike place where I'd seen the faces in the
candlelight; but now, by day, I couldn't see inside. I just held my breath
at the overpowering stench. I spent half an hour looking for the shack
where the woman lived alone, but I couldn't find it. On returning to
the Konigstrasse to pick up the jeep, I passed through the deserted deso–
lation of the Haupt-Markt, and out of the silence I suddenly heard the
sound of voices singing a psalm. They sounded as sad, as timeless as the
sea, as silver-voiced as a trained choir of boys, more beautiful than any
singing I'd ever heard before. While listening, I noticed at my feet a
small green weed growing out of the ancient battered cobbles, and all
of a sudden I felt convinced that man would sing as long as weeds
could grow, that however destructive, he was as indestructible as the
oceans or the Earth.
