Doris Gercke

There was no way she was going to face the aggressive atmosphere on the Steindamm now. So she jumped into a taxi and asked to be driven to Süders Strasse. She got out at the gasworks. It was hot and loud. There was scarcely a tree along the road. Slowly she started walking. The allotments were supposed to be at the end of the road. But it was a very long road with no end in sight.

Sighing, she looked up the road. Where prostitutes waited for kerb crawlers – the end of the road for them. Here between the goods yards, factories and warehouses, a tiny part of the 250,000 million sexual services per year were bought, on which West German men spent 12.5 billion marks each year. The women were at the mercy of their johns in this god-forsaken place. Bella knew that the police patrols did not see it as their duty to protect the women. Why should they, prostitutes were scum, and these here the worst of the scum, a policeman on patrol had once told her, in all seriousness.

The snack bars smelled of old chip fat. Bella was hungry, but she had no desire to squeeze into one of these food joints, all of which were overcrowded at lunchtime. She passed a new restaurant, but the poshly dressed men, sitting behind the windowpanes, eating and keeping a beady eye on the road, were even more repulsive. A bar that had opened up in a former petrol station looked more normal. ‘Eddie’s’ was written above the door. She decided to go there after her initial exploration.

The road took on a different character in the district higher up. There were fewer industrial buildings. Blocks of flats appeared, first here and there, and then in closed ranks. Unadorned buildings, without balconies, built soon after the war. Some of them had been renovated in the meantime. A few trees stood on the pavements around here. They were small and barely offered any shade. What must the people here think about their road, Bella wondered, as she walked past closed windows. Almost all the curtains were drawn to block out the midday sun. How can they bear to go past these women day after day, without asking themselves who is responsible for their misery. Then it occurred to her that, even if all the residents were hauled from their houses and asked, she might be the only one who would think something was amiss.

How wonderful, you’ve managed to bring yourself back down to reality, Bella Block, she thought and hurried past the last of the flats. The street ended in a cul-de-sac. A footbridge crossed a sidearm of the Bille. Beyond the bridge the allotments began.