You can go now.’

The soldier’s expression didn’t change as he stepped back onto the street without so much as a backward glance. Now the key was turning in the lock, and Mrs. Doll was able to enter the chemist’s shop, where the seventy-year-old was holed up with his much younger wife and her late-born child of two or three years. As soon as Mrs. Doll was inside, the door to the shop was locked again.

Though each individual memory of this first day of occupation was still fresh and vivid a long time after the events themselves, Mrs. Doll’s recollection of what had been said inside the chemist’s shop that day was unclear. Yes, she had her usual medication dispensed with the customary precision, and she knew, too, that when she went to pay for it her money was initially declined, and then accepted with a weary twinkle of the eye, like the playful antics of some silly child. After that, it was just casual talk; they told her, for instance, that she couldn’t possibly set out on the long ride home with all those Russians about, and that she absolutely had to remain in the shop. And then, a few moments later, the same people who had urged her to stay were wondering if the house was still a safe place to be, or whether they would not have done better to go and hide in the forest after all. And they began to reproach themselves for not getting out much earlier and heading for the western part of Germany — in short, what Mrs. Doll heard here was the same wretched, pointless talk, the talk of people worn down by endless, anguished waiting, that could be heard in just about any German household around this time.

Here, however — given that Russian tanks were rolling past the windows of the chemist’s shop — such talk was especially pointless. There were no more decisions to be made: everything had been decided, and the waiting was over! And anyway, Mrs. Doll had been outside, out in the sunny spring air, she had cycled in between the tanks, she had impulsively grabbed a Russian by the sleeve. The last vestige of that pervasive, unseen fear had left her — and she just couldn’t bear to listen to any more of this talk. In the end, she asked the family rather abruptly to open the door for her again, and she stepped back out onto the street, into the bright daylight, mounted her bicycle, and rode off towards the town centre, weaving in and out between the growing number of tanks.

Mrs. Doll was presumably the last person to see the chemist and his wife and child alive that afternoon. A few hours later, he gave his wife and child poison, then took some himself, apparently in an act of senseless desperation; their nerves, stretched to breaking point, had finally snapped. They had endured so much over the years, and now, when it looked as if things were starting to get better, and nothing could be as bad as before, they refused to endure the uncertainty of even the briefest of waits.

But the same chemist’s hand that had just now dispensed Mrs. Doll’s medication for her bilious complaint with such practised precision proved less adroit in measuring out the poison for himself and his family. The very old man and the very young child, they both died. But the wife recovered after a protracted period of suffering, and although she was left alone in the world, she did not repeat the suicide attempt.

Alma Doll had not gone very far on her bicycle before a very different scene caught her attention and brought her to a halt again. Outside the small town’s largest hotel, a group of about a dozen children had gathered, boys and girls aged around ten or twelve. They were watching the tanks rolling past, shouting and laughing, while the Russian soldiers seemed not to notice them at all.

The mood of wild abandon that had taken hold of these otherwise rather placid country children was explained by the wine bottles they had in their hands. Just as Mrs. Doll was getting off her bicycle, a boy slipped out of the front door of the hotel clutching an armful of new bottles. The children in the street greeted their companion with cries of joy that sounded almost like the howling of a pack of young wolves. They dropped the bottles they were holding, regardless of whether they were full, half-full, or empty, letting them smash on the pavement, while they grabbed the new bottles, knocked off the necks on the stone steps of the hotel, and raised the bottles to their childish mouths.

This spectacle immediately roused Mrs. Doll to fury. As a mother she had always abhorred the sight of a drunken child, but what made her even angrier now was that these children, not yet adolescents, were dishonouring the arrival of the Red Army by their drunkenness. She rushed forward and fell upon the children, snatching the wine bottles from their grasp, and handing out slaps and thumps with such gusto that the next minute the whole bunch had disappeared around the nearest corner.

Mrs.