A German four-storey house. A building from the Wilhelminian era in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district. A two-room flat in the second floor without a lift. It wasn’t hard at all to get our things up there because all we had were clothes and shoes that someone in Berlin had kindly given us when we were still staying with him. He had also given us towels and kitchenware. The flat distinguishes itself with its spacious layout and ceilings at least three metres high. That is why there are still no lamps because we would need a tall ladder to hang them.
In one corner of the bedroom stands a tall, light-blue tiled stove. The exact same tile decorated my childhood bathroom. The stove in my parents’ home is also this delicate light blue. This is where the similarities end. I was 15 years old when I left my parents’ flat and my carefree life. This was followed by student residency halls and family flats. At some point I broke up and rented a two-bedroom on the ground floor.
The walls of our new flat are think, the floor in made of wood, not linoleum or laminate flooring like in the Soviet prefabricated estates. Here you won’t hear your upstairs neighbour squeaking at night. And you don’t have to worry if you lose control and a scream slips out in a moment of intimacy. It won’t wake the neighbours as long as the windows are closed.
I go into the kitchen to cut an orange and an apple into pieces. I do this just before he arrives so that they don’t go brown. I pull a large, sharp knife out of the drawer. I can use it to cut the orange into narrow half-moons. He brought me this knife last time. He wanted to help me prepare the evening meal, but I just had a small knife. That’s why he came with several knives of different sizes the next time we met.
The building we live in now surely survived the Second World War. In 1945, after the war, historians claim that only eleven percent of all residential buildings in Berlin were completely destroyed, eight per cent were badly damaged, ten percent needed repair, and the remaining 70 per cent could be used. It isn’t difficult to imagine who might have lived here back then. Perhaps a Wehrmacht officer who ended up in the Soviet Ukraine? Or a single mother whose son was conscripted and never returned? Did the mother have to carry fire wood for the stove after that as long as she had the strength? Did a couple without children live here? In Ukraine, a hook in the ceiling of the bedroom is a sign that children were raised here because they were used for cradles. They hung right next to the bed so the mother or father could rock the baby without getting up. Perhaps this kind of hanging cradles were once fashionable here?
And that pub on the corner, how long has it been there? Was it frequented by Erich Maria Remarque, whose initials adorn a plaque on a house 200 metres from here. That is exactly where he wrote All Quiet on the Western Front. On the Northern front, where we were before fleeing, there was plenty of news after 53 days of bombing and shelling on Chernihiv. Leadership in the Russian army wanted to capture this regional capital and continue on towards Kyiv on the motorway. Intense combat continued for five weeks, but the Russian army was unable to advance as far as Chernihiv. Following a series of military setbacks, the Russian troops withdrew from the region at the beginning of April. During this period, official military estimates that around 500 civilians were killed and over 1,500 were wounded. During the occupation, civilian and critical infrastructure in the entire region was massively damaged and 60-70 per cent of the residential units were destroyed.
Perhaps Jewish people living in this flat had to flea in the autumn of 1938? There are so many ‘stumbling stones’ memorials in front of the house. Entire families died. It is quite possible that French people lived here after the division of Berlin. After all, Charlottenburg was in the French sector.
It is quite likely that the initial owners of this flat were not particularly wealthy. The kitchen is tiny, there is no balcony, no bathtub and no mouldings on the ceiling. Unlike other buildings in this neighbourhood, there is no maid’s room here.
After chopping the vegetables, I check on the warm gratin in the oven and go into the living room. There I notice the drying rack. The clothes are already dry, so I can put them back in the wardrobe. At first, I dried my washing on a small radiator in the bedroom and hung the bed linen on the door. It is impossible to stock up on everything overnight. When I was bedridden with a high temperature, he came to visit us every evening after work for five days in a row. He brought me medication and food, washed the dishes, did my laundry, took my daughter for a walk in the park and helped her with her homework. One time, he had already said goodbye and left, but ten minutes later the doorbell rang again. When I opened the door, he was standing there smiling with a drying rack. ‘Until you get a new one, this one will do. Someone on your street put it out,’ he said cheerfully. I want it to be used for as long as possible, I don’t want a new one. He had returned just for that and had missed his train to give us this unexpected gift.
I go into the bedroom and apply some perfume. Then I glance in mirror and adjust my hair. I walk to the window and open one side. The windows of our Berlin flat look out onto the courtyard that is so small that there isn’t even space for the children to play. This is why it is so quiet here; you can hear birds flying away from one branch only to land on another tree. The bedroom window is opposite the courtyard entrance. All across Berlin, the buildings are constructed around courtyards, not in tower blocks like Ukraine. I think this has many advantages. For example, it is good for socializing. I just have to remember to close the window before he lovingly carries me to bed, so we don’t disturb the neighbours.
I remember back in Ukraine rushing home from the school basement to pack from the evacuation. It was the second consecutive week that the Russian troops tried to break through our city’s defences. There was a man guarding the entrance to the building, despite the incessant shelling and the inherent danger. He asked me to prove that I lived there and wasn’t running inside to steal something or – even worse – as a member of a Russian sabotage squad. He wanted to see my passport. What the hell, I thought. My daughter is alone in the basement, have no time to lose; a missile could hit me or the basement where I my daughter was sleeping – and I’m supposed to prove something to this stranger. “And who are you? Maybe you want to take me hostage. Maybe you’re Russian and want to break into my home and steal something or take my food,” I replied. However, his civilian clothes indicated he was no Russian. He told me his name and his flat number. I removed my key from my jacket pocket and said that should be sufficient proof for him; after all, I wouldn’t be climb through the windows. My flat was on the first floor of a five storey building. There was no lift. I never took the stairs. There wasn’t any playground nearby where I could take my daughter; that’s why I didn’t know a single neighbour after three years living there. In Berlin, on the other hand, I became friends with almost all of the neighbours, from day one on. You never know, I thought.
In the basement where we were sheltering there were around 200 people and no one that I could ask to watch over my daughter while I was gone. What would be if war would break out in Berlin and we had to live in a basement for a long time? Then at least I would have someone who I could ask to take care of my daughter.
I am the only Ukrainian in the building. That is why my neighbours projected all Ukrainian customs, life, tradition and characters onto me, because they hadn’t every interacted closely with any of us before me. Maybe they didn’t even used differentiate between Ukrainians and Russians.
I stand dreamily at the window and wait to see him in the courtyard so that I can open the door and greet him. I don’t want to waste a minute of our encounter. First I see his dandelion head, which he has to duck in the low passageway to the courtyard. When the weather is nice, it looks like his light, free-spirited curls fly off in all directions. And when it rains, they are like the first early clouds in the sky, dense and clearly shaped. He is carrying a rucksack. There is a roll of paper peeking out. What kind of flowers this time? Oh, never mind, he always picks flowers with the scent of my old home. He knows so much about Ukraine, even visited my home country as a child. Now, in my temporary flat in Berlin, just like the tiles on the oven, the flowers he gives me will remind me of home, perhaps it will be the same ones my mother planted in front of her house. The doorbell rings. I open it and embrace him as if I were growing into him. I become a green, young ivy creeping up the outside of a grey German building. I close my eyes and hold my breath so that I can smell his body better. He smells of peace, of home. When he is nearby, I feel at home.
