Me – Saturday, December 24, 1949
I’m beginning to panick. If the Stöhr woman hadn’t interrupted us… If, if, if. What if? How can I put together 50 marks for the deposit on the typewriter? I can only hope for a miracle. I know there’ll be a miracle again… How often we played that song on the gramophone. I can’t believe it: my life, my happiness, my future hangs on a single lousy fifty mark bill. I must get my hands on that money, I must! I take some more Pervitin, 20 milligrams.
Slowly, it starts to work. Everybody in this city has got 50 marks, I’m the only who doesn’t. I’m worth much more than any of them. They should take a leaf out of my book. I beat them all. There will be a film about me: The Woman who fought for her Life’s Happiness or The Fearless Woman Who walked over the Dead. After all other people did it and monuments were built to celebrate them: Frederick the Great, Bismarck, Napoleon. Hundreds died in their wars. And I do it just for my own little happiness. A Love so great or What you do for Love. Someone will want to film my life. They’ll all be talking about Elisabeth Kusian. The Woman who never gave up or The Woman who took what she deserved to have. No that’s too long for a title. Maybe just: Elisabeth K. My life is like no other. My life is unique. I’ll tell the film makers that I want to play myself. Then it’ll say in big letters: Kusian plays Kusian on every marquee. I’ll have tons of money and the children can attend a Swiss boarding school. The Little Nurse turned Diva, they’ll write about me. Then I’ll finally be the person I was meant to be.
I’m in great shape now. I’ll get that money. I have an idea, I put on my coat and I run downstairs to the telephone box. I know the Robert-Koch Hospital phone number by heart of course.
“Hello, this is Nurse Elisabeth. I would like to speak to Mr. Ramolla.” They put me through. “Ah, finally. I know for a fact, Mr. Ramolla that you have political ambitions. So it wouldn’t look good if your name was in tomorrow’s papers. Nurse, unjustly fired, jumps in front of oncoming train. In her suicide letter, she accuses the administrative director of Robert-Koch Hospital.” Max Ramolla remains silent.
“What do you want from me?”
“250 marks compensation for my suffering or in exchange for my silence.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No but I’m freezing. I’m standing on the platform at Zoo station, waiting for the U-Bahn to Ruhleben. You will be here at 12 o’clock sharp. With the money. Otherwise I’m throwing myself on the tracks. And my suicide note is on my night table.” I hang up.
I still have an hour to wait and I wander through the streets. Christmas is being celebrated everywhere among the ruins. What will next year be like…, Christmas 1950? I’ll be living in Munich with Kurt. I’ll be reborn. It’ll be my second life.
I keep checking my old watch. I go to Zoo station and go down the stairs to the U-Bahn. Will Ramolla come? Is he already hiding behind one the many yellow pillars? I walk all the way to the edge of the platform. A train comes. Instinctively I take a step back.
Ramolla has not come yet. He won’t come. I swear under my breath. “Another shot in the dark!” I can hear my grandmother say: “Child, bad luck sticks to you like glue.”
I really could jump in front of the oncoming train. But I still want to live, I want to live with Kurt, with my baby. So I go back home. I must call Beigang! I’d almost forgotten the most important thing in my life.
“Hello, dear Mr. Beigang, this is Nurse Elisabeth. I wanted to come by to make my deposit and take the typewriter but I can’t leave the hospital. I can’t leave the operating room – a bad accident. Would it be all right if I came later, around 4?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m getting ready to close the store so I can be with my family in time for Christmas, today is Christmas Eve.”
“Couldn’t you drop off the typewriter at my place…? I live at 154a Kantstrasse.”
“No, that’s impossible. We live in Rudow.”
I’m desperate now. “There’s got to be a way. I beg you…!” That must have moved him because I hear him talking to Mrs. Merten. Thirty seconds go by. “Look, Mrs. Kusian, today or tomorrow it’s impossible but my saleslady Mrs. Merten could come by your house on the second day of Christmas and bring you the typewriter. Could you wait till then?”
“Yes, I will of course. Thank you so much.” My baby can only come on the second day of Christmas anyway, that’s when we’ll exchange presents. I’m sure now that everything will turn out fine.
Again the strange pain that rakes my body: from my lower abdomen something like a ball rises up in my body, all the way to my throat. My jaws and my tongue stiffen, I can’t talk. As soon as I’m back in my room, I inject myself with morphine.
Walter comes by; he’s bringing me a back pack full of coal pellets. He won’t stay because he’s going to see the children at the home. I don’t have the strength to go with him.
Early in the evening I sit with Mrs. Stöhr and her mother in the main room. She doesn’t have a Christmas tree, just a pine cone wreath with a little bit of tinsel and a few bright colored balls. It’s sad. I think of how it must be in other families. I’m filled with melancholy so I go out and take the train to Kurt’s place. I stand in front of his apartment building for half an hour and stare up at his window. Then I return to Kantstrasse and go to bed. I’m so exhausted, as if I were sick. I sleep until late the next day, the first day of Christmas. In the afternoon the only thing that gets me out of bed is that I’m as hungry as a wolf. I eat and then I go back to the safety of sleep.