Read Online The City in Flames by Elisabeth von Berrinberg - Free Book Online

approaching herd until she found herself eye-to-eye with a cow.
    What followed was a sight the farmer may well have talked about many times thereafter. Whether he was believed is another matter. Who wouldn’t have doubts when told of a woman bathing in the village fountain in the middle of the night who, after being interrupted by a herd of thirsty cows, ran the length of the main street in dripping-wet underwear, letting out a swarm of unintelligible sounds accompanied by the hearty laughter of two girls desperately trying to catch up with her?

    Our mother bathing with the cows
    Back to front

Chapter Fourteen
Bartering with the Farm Wives
    My mother soon found a solution to replenish our provisions: making weekly trips on her bicycle to nearby villages, where she bartered for flour, eggs, and sometimes a big slab of bacon.
    On one of our salvage trips into the ruins of the city we discovered a cellar beneath a bombed-out house. The cellar contained a huge pile of paper sacks containing a white powder. We decided to load our four-wheeled cart with several of the bags.
    We were still not sure what exactly we had found. Tasting it was not an option. Once my mother decided that we had found laundry detergent, we returned to the cellar to load up whatever our cart could hold.
    My sister soon regretted our find. As we pushed the cart up the hill to the cabin, one of the bags slipped off the cart and landed on her big toe. It took weeks for the nail to heal.
    With an abundance of the white powder, my mother decided to do some bartering, especially after she was certain—after several loads of laundry—that she was dealing with laundry detergent.
    This worked well. The farm wives were happy with their exchange until one day when one of the farmers realized his wife was washing laundry with fertilizer!
    It was an honest mistake by my mother. She really did think it was laundry detergent and swore to its getting the laundry clean. Unfortunately, her bartering with “laundry detergent” had come to an abrupt end.
    To the best of my memory, it took months to use up the remaining bags. Finally, after only a small amount was left and curiosity had gotten the better of us, my sister and I decided to find out if it really was fertilizer. So what better way than to sprinkle some of it on our own vegetable garden?
    I don’t remember the exact results, but our father could never figure out why a certain patch of cabbage was covered with a white substance that burned little holes into the leaves.

Chapter Fifteen
Easter 1945: Where is the Easter Bunny?
    At night, the front came closer with every hour.
    It was difficult to keep track of the days without a calendar. Let’s see . . . the wind came from the west this morning, so we could hear the bells of the village church—it must be Sunday.
    “Happy Easter, everybody!” my father jokingly commented as he spooned a piece of bread from his bowl of coffee. Our Easter dinner: imitation coffee or Ersatz with hard bread soaking in it.
    “Remember how we used to hunt Easter eggs on this day?” my sister reminisced.
    How could I forget that annual event! It was the same every year for as long as I could remember. Saturday afternoon we would leave the city, loaded down with knapsacks that held our provisions for the weekend. On holiday weekends, we always had something special to eat. Our family’s favorite meal consisted of wiener schnitzel and potato dumplings. Next morning at sunrise, my father snuck out to the garden to hide the eggs. By the time we awoke, he was back in bed. Sometimes he snored in his sleep, but other times he just pretended. That way he could overhear our whispered conversation:
    “Hey, Rita, are you awake?”
    “Hmm.”
    “Think the Osterhase has been here?”
    “I don’t know. Why don’t you look and see?”
    By that time, the rhythm of the snoring coming from the bed above us was cut off with a loud “Chrrrauh!” My mother had punched my father’s mattress