In October 1945, the war has been over for a few months. All four Allied forces have each taken over administration of their allotted city sectors, the Soviets retaining the largest piece of the pie.
Though severely limited in rolling stock, public transit has been restored. S-Bahn trains are shorter, waiting periods longer and crowds and line-ups are longest.
It is just past six pm and the vast corps of ‘Trümmerfrauen’, the rubble clearing women, are on their way home.
“Good night, Frau Doctor,” calls a cheerful young woman, and another, a middle-aged one, cleans her glasses and waves. Her clothes are two sizes too large for her, though the Trümmerfrauen receive ration card #2, not entirely bad, all considered.
She limps a little, her grotesquely swollen feet clad in sandals of an uncertain colour. Combined energies of the surging crowd behind her sweep her onto the train. As she gets hold of an overhead loop, someone steps on her right heel and the sandal, inexpertly repaired several times, gives way, slides under the nearest seat, and her bare foot touches metal.
Briefly, Frau Doctor examines the ceiling, her glasses fogging over. A young boy, bent a little out of shape between two rows of seats, feels water dropping on his forehead. How does one deal with tears of a stranger one's mother’s age?
“Fräulein,” he says under his breath, viewing the swollen foot, “have you lost your shoe? Is it down here?”
She nods. He dives in among the legs, parcels, the odd shabby attaché case, retrieves the sandal.
“Oh,” he says. “Yes.”
“I think I have some, some string on me," he says hopefully, fumbling in his pockets. “I could wrap it around your foot and the sole, and — want to try?”
She nods.
They stumble out at Zehlendorf station, make their way over to the old bench. She sits.
He kneels down on the platform, loops the scratchy string around her foot, down below the sole, secures it at the ankle.
She gets up, thanks him warmly, limps away, reaches the stairwell to the street, the sandal loosely flopping about.
He has been pacing, waiting for the next train, sees her bend and adjust, drag the foot up the first step. He runs over.
“Let me take you home, to your door,” he says, dismayed at the failure of his attempted repair. Reaches for her bag.
“You are so very kind, so helpful,” says Frau Doctor, “I always thought the war had done away with all that.”
Her things are heavy, with the work gloves, tools, lunch box and purse. All the way home. She takes down his name and phone number, carefully pockets the scrap of paper.
And …
“I am so very glad that I did,” she says, as she raises her glass, having told this story to the dinner guests celebrating her 90th birthday, fifty years later.
She looks at the newly retired, slightly greying man and his smiling wife, as other guests begin to applaud.
“That’s how I met Hans Joachim. Like the rest of you, he is family.”