Jemenfous
By BERNARD LEVIN Berlin is a brave city. No doubt some of the taxi-drivers who won't cross The border are wanted for various kinds of echt-Deutsch beastliness; but a fortnight in Russia will do strange things to even the deepest-rooted pre- judices about the Germans. And then, the taxi- drivers who will go across are a constant re- minder that Berlin is an outpost far behind the enemy lines. My driver nodded when I asked if he went 'in'; but he stopped in the 'Street of June 17,' which points like an accusing finger into Ulbricht's Reich, to hide his newspapers--indeed to hide every scrap of paper in the car. As we drove through he told me that he always left his papers over there—in a café, on a seat, sticking out of a litter-bin. Wasn't it dangerous, I asked, knowing perfectly well how dangerous it was. He shrugged. 'Ma' muss was ma' kann,' he said, and stopped before the raised truncheon of the guard on the other side.
'We' are winning in Berlin because 'they' can't. And unless and until they seal the border they will not be able to. What was missing in Moscow was the possibility of comparison. In Berlin comparison lies no further away than a 20- pfenning ticket on the Underground. Anybody can compare the Stalinallee to the Kurftirsten: damm, and they do.
Still, Berlin, as I say, is a brave city. And their insane and hopeless situation is met with an extraordinary attitude. There is none of the eat- drink-and-be-merry junketing that one might expect in the circumstances—I suppose they had enough of that in the last days of Weimar—but nor is there a stiff English upper-lip atmosphere. The attitude seems not unlike that which inspired the Resistance or the Escapers' Club; a calm realisation that the other side is the enemy, that one's duty is to try and beat them, that they can be beaten, though few of us will live to see the day, and that one must keep cheerful. The running band of light that spells out the news for the East, high up on a building at the border, symbolises the spirit of resistance as the massive and dominating memorial outside Tempelhof Airport symbolises the airlift. Berliners are proud of that memorial—they go out of their way to point it out to you—which symbolises a lot more than the operation it commemorates. CyniFism about Anglo-German friendship is apt to melt away at the Brandenburg Gate, and from the devastated, unbuilt acres of East Berlin Dr. Adenauer seems a tractable and accommodat- ing soul. What is more to the point, he seems right.
Just as, in Moscow, the emotional shock of feeling all the things about dictatorship I had up to then only known had been alarming in !ts force and effect, so in Berlin the sight of what the bombs did is something no mere recitation of the numbers of buildings destroyed can pos- sibly convey. Compared to Berlin, Coventry and the City of London are unscathed. Rotterdam is the closest I have ever seen to the totality of destruction in Berlin; but even there the area is far smaller. There are dozens of walks you can take in Berlin, in widely-separated districts, where for a mile or more every single building is either wholly or partially new—or not there at all. That is in West Berlin; in the East, where there has been far less rebuilding, you might be at times amid the excavated ruins of some modern Knossos; there is not a roof to be seen in any direction.
All in all, I felt sorry to leave this bright, brave, split city. But Big Brother had read my mind and decided to co-operate by very nearly making it impossible for me to do so. You will remember that last week our hero was left bound and gagged in the gas-filled cellar by the wicked villain Intourist. I had that straightened out with the head Moscow office of Aeroflot, the Soviet airline—or so I thought. I arrived at Tempelhof with an hour to spare before my Aeroflot- booked flight to Paris. And as I walked in at the door, the long hand of Soviet incompetence reached out and touched me, ghost-like, on the shoulder. In the first place, my flight left rInt from Tempelhof, but from Tegel (the other West Berlin airport). In the second place, there was ne such flight, and never had been. In the third place, my ticket was only valid for travel.by Acre. flot or its associated companies, which meant that I would have to go back into Berlin, visit their office, and get the ticket changed so that I could fly to Paris via Brussels. In the fourth place, the Aeroflot-associated flights to Brussels left from Schonefeld, in visa-less East GermanY, I went and had some black coffee while I con. sidered the alternatives. The possibility of charter- ing a plane of my own had to be rejected on the grounds of expense. To go by train seemed a happy solution until I remembered I would have to cross East Germany, and I didn't have an East German visa; and to go back into East Berlin and try to get them to issue a visa on the spot would have been futile. In the end I threw ,myself on the mercy of Pan-American Airways, who had a number of flights to Frankfurt, from which it was possible to get an Air France plane to Paris. If I had had time I should have gone and laid flowers on the' airlift memorial; Pan-American took my Aeroflot ticket without a murmur, gave me a Pan-American one 'instead, telephoned Frankfurt to book my flight On from there, saluted smartly, and wished me 'Gate Reise.' And as the plane's loudspeaker announced that we had just crossed the border into the air above the Federal Republic, I am afraid that I made a verY rude gesture indeed out of the window. East- wards, naturally.
And so to France. where jemiltforetisine, hay' ing long since replaced Roman Catholicism as the national religion, now looks likely, following the restoration of the monarchy, to rise to the heights of the national sport. Indeed, there is a rumour (started, admittedly, by me) to the effect that they are shortly going to carVe round • the top of the Are de Triomphe Mr. Arthur Koestler's celebrated motto Que l'humanite so debrouille sans moi. Parliament, by an absolute majority, requests its immediate recall. Le rdl ne le veut-pas. Parliament stays where it is. After the General, of course, the Republic will last about twenty minutes. Till then, jentenfous.
Tile then, too, it is 'spring in the Champs Elysees, and the horrors of Moscow are for-. gotten. The jolly fellows with the sten guns are slightly more obtrusive than one would like (every now and again they spray the bystanders, to the inordinate amusement of the bandits speeding by unharmed), but jentenfous de thorn too. The streets are liberally decorated with the Communists' . announcement welcoming K.. ' `mes.sager de In mix,' but they are also fairly well sprinkled with the one word 'Budapest,' and on the' road from Orly I had the intensely chau- vinistic pleasure of seeing 'K. go home' in verY large letters. The deportees in Corsica grumble. naturally (full realisation that I was no longer behind the Iron Curtain came when I found myself getting angry at their treatment), but if one doesn't want to find oneself there With them, one keeps quiet about it. All in all, La Patric is not much more ridiculous than she usually is- and every bit as agreeable. And I plan to leave an hour before K.' arrives. lemenfous.
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